Hridayshah, also called Hirde Shah, was the 54th and last great king of

Garha-Mandla The Garha Kingdom, also called Garha Mandla or Garha Katanga was northern part of Gondwana. History The first Gond king of Garha-Mandla was Jadurai. He became king after disposing the Kalchuri Rajputs of Garha-Mandla, where earlier he worked in ...

. Hridayshah was a great patron and lover and of music, and contributed to music. Hriday koutuk and Hriday prakash were written by him. He moved his kingdom's capital from Chouragarh to

Ramnagar Ramnagar may refer to the following places: Bangladesh * Ramnagar, Bangladesh, a village in Chittagong Division * Ramnagar Union, Jessore Sadar India Jammu and Kashmir * Ramnagar, Udhampur, a town in Jammu and Kashmir ** Ramnagar Fort Udha ...

Mandla Mandla is a city with municipality in Mandla district in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of Mandla District. The city is situated in a loop of the Narmada River, which surrounds it on three sides, and ...

district.

Reign

When Madhukar Shah, Chandra Shah's successor committed suicide, Prem Narain, his eldest son who was in Delhi at the imperial court, rushed back to Garha. While going, he left his eldest son Hirde Shah at the court.

Jhujhar Singh Jhujhar Singh was a Raja of the Orchha region in India during the 17th century. Jhujhar Singh was the first-born son of Vir Singh Deo and the senior of his three queens. In 1626, he succeeded his father as ruler and determined not to remain a ...

Orchha Orchha is a town, near city of Niwari in Niwari district of Madhya Pradesh state, India. The town was established by rajput ruler Rudra Pratap Singh some time after 1501, as the seat of an eponymous former princely state of covering parts of c ...

invaded and killed Prem Narain by treachery and his cunning. However, Hridayshah retook the kingdom from

with Mughal intereference and help. Hridayshah was a great and able Gond ruler. He maintained friendly relations with the

Mughals The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

, he spent days at the imperial court in Delhi as well. As Eyre Chatterton describes- He had a keen interest in taking care of animals, especially tigers, of whom he had 16. A genealogy of the Gond kings of Mandla was prepared by a Hindu named Jaya Govinda on his orders in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

on a tablet, now found on the walls of the Gond royal palace at Ramnagar, near Mandla. During the reign of Mughal emperor

Shah Jahan Shihab-ud-Din Muhammad Khurram (5 January 1592 – 22 January 1666), better known by his regnal name Shah Jahan I (; ), was the fifth emperor of the Mughal Empire, reigning from January 1628 until July 1658. Under his emperorship, the Mugha ...

, Pahad Singh Bundela of Orchha attacked Hirde Shah, hence he shifted his capital to

. This was the second time the Bundelas of Orchha had attacked Garha. He was a descendant of the great

Sangram Shah Sangram Shah was a king of the Garha Kingdom of Gondwana, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. Sangram Shah, who belonged to the Gond Dynasty in central India, was the 48th and most well known ruler of the dynasty, and during his reign he had c ...

and a close relative of the valiant Gond queen,

Rani Durgavati Rani Durgavati (5 October 1524 – 24 June 1564) was the ruling Queen of Gondwana from 1550 until 1564. She was born in the family of Chandel Rajput king Salibahan at the fort of Mahoba. She was married to Dalpat Shah the son of the king Sangr ...

's family. Moti Mahal was built by him 350 years ago, which is a wonderful example of the architecture of that time. He also built 'Begum Mahal' for the queen and 'Badal Mahal' for the generals. The Gond royal palace at

was built by Hriday Shah around 1630 AD, when he made

his capital.

Legacy

Hriday Shah was the last great king of Garha-Mandla. After his death, no great ruler appeared and court intrigue was common, greatly weakening the state. They alternatively invited

Aurangzeb Muhi al-Din Muhammad (; – 3 March 1707), commonly known as ( fa, , lit=Ornament of the Throne) and by his regnal title Alamgir ( fa, , translit=ʿĀlamgīr, lit=Conqueror of the World), was the sixth emperor of the Mughal Empire, ruling ...

and the

Marathas The Marathi people (Marathi: मराठी लोक) or Marathis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are indigenous to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. Maharashtra was formed as a M ...

for help. It ceded away portions of its territory and revenues to buy off its enemies. Thus when the Maratha ''peshwa'' made demands, the king of Mandla, Narhar Shah, could not fulfill them and was defeated by the Maratha king of Nagpur and the kingdom annexed.

References

* ''The great Gondi shahs'' (retold), 2008, G.H. Stein (original author- Kartabhanu), Motilal Banarsidass Publishers {{India-royal-stub History of India