Burhanpur

Burhanpur is a town in Madhya Pradesh state, India. It is the administrative seat of Burhanpur District. It is situated on the north bank of the Tapti River 310 miles northeast of Bombay.

It was founded in 1400 by a Muslim prince of the Farukhi dynasty of Kandesh, whose successors held it for 200 years, when the Faruqi kingdom was annexed to the Mughal empire by Akbar in 1601. It formed the chief seat of the government of the Deccan provinces of the Mughal empire till Shah Jahan removed the capital to Aurangabad in 1635. Burhanpur was plundered in 1685 by the Marathas, and repeated battles were fought in its neighborhood in the struggle between the Marathas and the Mughals for the supremacy of India. In 1739 the Mughals finally yielded to the demand of the Marathas for a fourth of the revenue, and in 1760 the Nizam of the Deccan ceded Burhanpur to the Peshwa, who in 1778 transferred it to Sindhia. In the Second Anglo-Maratha War the army under General Wellesley, afterwards the Duke of Wellington, took Burhanpur (1803), but the treaty of the same year restored it to Sindhia. It remained a portion of Sindhia's dominions till 1860?, when, in consequence of certain territorial arrangements, the town and surrounding estates were ceded to the British government. Under the Mughals the city covered an area of about 5 sq. mi., and was about 11 mi. in circumference. In the Ain-t-Akbari it is described as a large city, with many gardens, inhabited by all nations, and abounding with craftsmen. Sir Thomas Roe, who visited it in 1614, found that the houses in the town were only mud cottages, except the prince's house, the chans and some few others. In 1865-1866 the city contained 8000 houses, with a population of 34,137, which had decreased to 33,343 in 1901.

Burhanpur was celebrated for its muslins, flowered silks, and brocades, which, according to Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who visited it in 1668, were exported in great quantities to Persia, Egypt, Turkey, Russia and Poland. The gold and silver wires used in the manufacture of these fabrics are drawn with considerable care and skill; and in order to secure the purity of the metals employed for their composition, the wire-drawing under the native rule was done under government inspection. The town of Burhanpur and its manufactures were long on the decline, but in the early twentieth century they made a slight recovery.

The buildings of Interest in the town are a palace, built by Akbar, called the Lal Kila or the Red Fort, and the Jama Masjid or Great Mosque, built by Ali Khan, one of the Faruqi dynasty, in 1588. A considerable number of Boras, a class of Muslim merchants, reside here.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

Burhanpur District

Burhanpur district was created on August 15, 2003, when the southern portion of Khandwa district was made a separate district. The Tapti River flows through the district from east to west. The district is divided from Khandwa on the north by the Satpura Range, which is also the divide between the Narmada River valley and the valley of the Tapti. The pass through the Satpuras that connects Burhanpur and Khandwa is one of the main routes connecting northern and southern India, and the Asirgarh fortress, which commands the pass, is known as the "Key to the Deccan"