Battle of Sammel

Timeline

1. 1543Sammel entrenchments · RajasthanSher Shah led roughly eighty thousand cavalry through Didwana into Marwar, entrenching along the river near the village of Sammel in the Jaitaran area. Rao Maldev assembled about fifty thousand Rathor troops and advanced to the scrubland around Giri for a standoff. Resupply in the desert was difficult, the Afghan army grew increasingly short of food, and neither side dared risk open battle.
2. c. 1544Rathor camp at Giri · RajasthanSher Shah had men scatter forged letters falsely claiming that the Rathor generals had agreed to betray from within. Maldev fell for the ruse, suspected Jaita, Kumpa, and other generals of disloyalty, and around January 4 withdrew with his own forces toward Jodhpur, leaving only part of the army behind. The forged letters were the key to victory, not mere field-battle superiority.
3. 1544Battlefield of Sammel · RajasthanTo prove their loyalty, Jaita, Kumpa, and others did not follow their king in retreat but launched an offensive against the Afghan camp with vastly inferior numbers; the fighting was extraordinarily fierce. Sher Shah ultimately won, but the heavy casualties prompted his remark that he had 'almost lost Hindustan for a handful of millet.' His general Hakim Khan occupied Jodhpur, and Sur power at one point controlled the area from Ajmer to Mount Abu; after Sher Shah's death in 1545, Maldev gradually recovered the lost territory.