page_title: History of Assam
section_title: Medieval Assam (1206–1826)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Assam / Medieval Assam (1206–1826)
caption_attribution_description: English: The picture depicts a 1206 rock inscription from near Guwahati, Assam, India. This image of has high historical value because it gives a significant evidence of a historical event, and the year depicted on the inscription, 1206 CE, divides the History of Assam into the ancient and medieval periods on the basis of this inscription. The image also has high historical value because it depicts the Assamese script in its historical development. The image will be used to depict both its historical significance as well as evidence of the script. Text in Sanskrit sak 1127 sake turaga yugmese. madhumase troyodose kamarupa samagatya. turushka kshayamayyu. Text in English In Saka 1127 on the thirteenth of the month of honey (Chaitra) upon arriving in Kamarupa, the Turks perished.
context_page_description: The history of Assam is the history of a confluence of people from the east, west, south and the north; the confluence of the Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Austroasiatic cultures. Although invaded over the centuries, it was never a vassal or a colony to an external power until the third Burmese invasion in 1821, and, subsequently, the British ingress into Assam in 1824 during the First Anglo-Burmese War.
  The Assamese history has been derived from multiple sources. The Ahom kingdom of medieval Assam maintained chronicles, called Buranjis, written in the Ahom and the Assamese languages. History of ancient Assam comes from a corpus of Kamarupa inscriptions on rock, copper plates, clay; royal grants, etc. that the Kamarupa kings issued during their reign. Protohistory has been reconstructed from folklore: epics like Mahabharata, and two medieval texts compiled in the Assam region—the Kalika Purana and the Yogini Tantra.
  The history of Assam can be divided into four eras. The ancient era began in the 4th century with the mention of Kamarupa in Samudragupta's inscriptions on the Allahabad pillar and the establishment of the Kamarupa kingdom.
context_section_description: In the middle of the 13th century, Sandhya, a king of Kamarupanagara, moved his capital to Kamatapur, and thus established the Kamata kingdom. on account of attacks by the Turks of Bengal.  The last of the Kamata kings, the Khens, were
  removed by Alauddin Hussain Shah in 1498. But Hussein Shah and subsequent rulers could not consolidate their rule in the Kamata kingdom, mainly due to the revolt by the Bhuyan chieftains, a relic of the Kamarupa administration, and other local groups. Soon after in the beginning of the 16th century Vishwa Singha of the Koch tribe established the Koch dynasty in the Kamata kingdom. The Koch dynasty reached its peak under his sons, Nara Narayan and Chilarai.
  In the eastern part of the erstwhile Kamarupa kingdom, the Kachari (south bank of river Brahmaputra, central Assam) and the Chutiya (north bank of river Brahmaputra, eastern Assam) kingdoms arose, with some Bhuyan chiefs controlling the region just west of the Chutiya kingdom. The founder of the Chutiya kingdom Birpal formed his first capital in Swarnagiri (near present Subansiri river) in 1187 and later his son Ratnadhwajpal shifted the capital to Ratnapur  (present Majuli), absorbing the ancient Pala dynasty  in 1225 and finally to Sadiya in 1248. In the tract between the Kachari and the Chutiya kingdoms, a Shan group, led by Sukaphaa, established the Ahom kingdom.  The 16th century is crucial in the history of medieval period because of the consolidation of the Ahoms (who partially annexed the Chutiya kingdom and pushed the Kachari kingdom away from central Assam) in the east, the Koch in the west and the growth of Ekasarana Dharma of Srimanta Sankardev.  After the death of Nara Narayan of the Koch dynasty in the late 16th century, the Kamata kingdom broke into Koch Bihar in the west and Koch Hajo in the east. The rivalry between the two kingdoms resulted in the former allying with the Mughals and the latter with the Ahoms. Most of the 17th century saw the Ahom-Mughal conflicts, in which the Ahoms held the expansive Mughals at bay epitomized in the Battle of Saraighat of 1671, and which finally ended in 1682 with the defeat of the Mughals at Itakhuli in Guwahati. The Ahom kingdom reached its westernmost boundary till Manas River which it retains until 1826. Though the Ahom kingdom saw itself as the inheritor of the glory of the erstwhile Kamarupa kingdom and aspired to extend itself to the Karatoya river, it could never do so; though an Ahom general, Ton Kham under Swargadeo Suhungmung, reached the river once when he pursued a retreating invading army in the 16th century.
  After the Ahom kingdom reached its zenith, problems within the kingdom arose in the 18th century, when it lost power briefly to rebels of the Moamoria rebellion. Though the Ahoms recaptured power, it was beset with problems, leading to the Burmese invasion of Assam in the early 19th century.  With the defeat of the Burmese in the First Anglo-Burmese war and the subsequent Treaty of Yandaboo, control of Assam passed into the hands of the British, which marks the end of the Medieval period.
caption: The medieval period in Assam begins with the Kanai Baraxiboa rock inscription of 1206. That year saw the first Muslim attack by Bakhtiyar Khilji, which led to the annihilation of the invading army and the death of its leader
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