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Malwa is a region of central India, lying in the western part of Madhya Pradesh state. It lies at the headwaters of the Chambal River and its tributaries, the Kali Sindh and the Parbati. Ujjain is the ancient center of the region, and Indore is presently the largest city.
Ujjain emerged as the first important center in the Malwa region during India's second wave of urbanization in the seventh century BCE (the first wave being the Harappan civilization). Around c. 600 BCE, an earthen rampart was built around Ujjain, enclosing a city of considerable size. Ujjain was the center of the Kingdom of Avanti, which emerged c. 500 BCE as an important kingdom of western India until its conquest by the Maurya empire in the mid-fourth century BCE. Ashoka, who was later a Mauryan emperor, was governor of Ujjain in his youth. Ujjain was major trade center during the first centuries CE.
Around 500 CE, Malwa reemerged from the dissolving Gupta empire as a separate kingdom, and in 528 Yasodharman of Malwa defeated the Huns who had invaded India from the northwest.
From the mid-tenth century, Malwa was ruled by the Paramara clan of Rajputs, who established a capital at Dhar. King Bhoj, who ruled from about 1010 to 1060, was known as the great polymath philosopher-king of medieval India; his extensive writings cover philosophy, poetry, medicine, veterinary science, phonetics, yoga, and archery. Under his rule, Malwa became an intellectual center of India. Bhoj also founded the city of Bhopal to secure the eastern part of his kingdom. His successors ruled until about 1200, when Malwa was conquered by the Delhi Sultanate.
The sacking of Delhi by the Mongol conqueror Timur in the early fifteenth century caused the breakup of the sultanate into smaller states, and in 1401 Dilawar Khan, previously Malwa's governor under the rule of Delhi, declared himself sultan of Malwa. He established a capital at Mandu, high in the Vindhya Range, overlooking the Narmada River valley. His son and successor Hoshang Shah (1405-1435) embellished Mandu. Hoshang Shah's son Ghazni Khan ruled for only a year, and was suceeded by Sultan Mahmud Khalji (1436-1469), first of the Khalji sultans of Malwa, who expanded the state to include portions of Gujarat, Rajasthan, and the Deccan. The Muslim sultans invited Rajputs to settle in the country. In the early 1500's the sultan sought the aid of the sultans of Gujarat to counter the growing power of the Rajputs, while the Rajputs sought the aid of the Sesodia Rajput kings of Mewar. Gujarat stormed Mandu in 1518 and 1531, and shortly thereafter the Malwa sultanate collapsed. The Mughal emperor Akbar captured Malwa in 1562, and made it a province of his empire. Mandu was abandoned by the seventeenth century.
As the Mughal state weakened after 1700, the Marathas raided Malwa. Malhar Rao Holkar (1694-1766) became leader of Maratha armies in Malwa in 1724, and in 1733, the Maratha Peshwa granted him control of most of the region, which was formally ceded by the Mughals in 1738. Another Maratha general, Anand Rao Ponwar, established himself as the raja of Dhar in 1742, and two Ponwar brothers became rajas of Dewas. The Holkar dynasty ruled Malwa from Indore and Maheshwar on the Narmada until 1818, when the Marathas were defeated by the British in the Third Anglo-Maratha War, and the Holkars of Indore became princely state of the British Raj. Upon Indian independence in 1947, the Holkars and other princely rulers acceded to India, and most of Malwa became part of the new state of Madhya Bharat, which was merged into Madhya Pradesh in 1956.
Malwa plateau
The Malwa plateau lies under central Madhya Pradesh and southeastern Rajasthan states, north and west of the Vindhya Range in central India. it is bounded by the plains of Gujarat to the west, and the Madhya Bharat plateau and Bundelkhand upland on the north. It is of volcanic origin.
In Fiction
In the Belisarius series by David Drake and Eric Flint, the people of Malwa are chosen by creatures from the future to change the course of history. The Byzantine general Belisarius is set on them by a creature sent by another group of future beings.
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