Mahmud Begada
Mahmud Begada ruled Gujarat for fifty-three years, took the two hill fortresses his name records, built a capital under one of them, and sent the fleet that gave the Portuguese their only defeat at sea in the Indian Ocean. He came to the throne in 1458 at thirteen after the nobles deposed his brother, put down the nobles' conspiracy the next year, and never afterwards shared power with anyone. The name Begada means the taker of two forts. Junagadh under Girnar, the Chudasama stronghold in Saurashtra, fell in 1472 after a siege in which he starved it out, and Champaner under Pavagadh, the Rajput fortress on the road to Malwa, fell in 1484 after twenty months; he built Muhammadabad beside it and made it his capital, and its mosques, which put Jain and Hindu carving on Islamic plans, are a World Heritage site. He fought Malwa, the Rajputs of Idar, the pirates of the Kathiawar coast, and the Sultan of Khandesh, and won. The Portuguese arrived on the coast in his old age with the intention of taxing the trade of Cambay, which was his revenue. He joined the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, whose spice trade the Portuguese were strangling, and in March 1508 his governor of Diu, Malik Ayaz, and the Egyptian admiral Husain caught the Portuguese squadron at Chaul and killed its commander, the viceroy's son. The viceroy came for his revenge in February 1509 and destroyed both fleets off Diu, and after that the ocean's trade paid Portugal. He was said to eat a quantity of food that European visitors reported as a marvel, and to have been so dosed with poisons from childhood that a fly landing on him died; the Italian traveller Varthema wrote it down and the story went round Europe. He died in 1511 and his son succeeded. Champaner was abandoned within a generation and its ruins are the reason the reign can still be seen.
- Lived: 1445 CE – 1511 CE
- Nationality: Gujarati
- Roles: sultan, monarch
