Description: In the early 16th century, before the Portuguese arrived in India, Surat was reportedly just one of many fort towns dotting Gujarat’s shoreline, described by early visitors as a shanty town with buildings predominantly built using reeds, cow-dung, and clay. The Portuguese, in their conquest to wrestle away control of the Western Indian littoral from the Gujarati Sultans, set fire to both Surat and Rander. Khudawand Khan, a Muslim convert of Italian and Albanian origin came to Surat on an Ottoman ship and quickly rose up the ranks of the Gujarati aristocracy. For his loyalty to the Sultan, he was awarded a title and allowed to use Surat as his headquarters, where he built a fort in 1540 CE, which is today referred to as Surat Castle (Subrahmanyam).

Following Khudawand Khan’s death, there were power struggles between the Gujarat Sultanate, the Timurids, the Mughals, and the Portuguese. In 1573, Akbar finally captured the fort. Surat then became a crown jewel of the Mughal empire. The Portuguese kept trying to gain control of the port, employing both force and espionage, to no avail. This meant that before the British finally captured Surat in 1759, Surat was free of European domination. In the two centuries following the construction of the Surat Castle, Surat became one of the most important and prosperous centers for commerce on the western Indian littoral (Subrahmanyam). In the late seventeenth century, Ovington, a British traveler described mid-seventeenth century Surat as follows:Surat is reckoned the most fam’d emporium of the Indian Empire, where all commodities are vendible, though they were never there seen before. The very curiosity of them will engage the expectation of the purchaser to sell them again with some advantage, and will be apt to invite some other by their novelty, as they did him, to venture upon them. And the river is very commodious for the importation of foreign goods, which are brought up to the city in hoys and yachts, and country boats, with great convenience and expedition. And not only from Europe, but from China, Persia, Arabia, and other remote parts of India, ships unload abundance of all kinds of goods, for the ornament of the city, as well as the enriching of the port (Haynes).