File:Dhar city map with historic sites and ruins.jpg

English: Dhar is an ancient town and now a growing city in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh, west of Indore. It is mentioned as Dharanagara in 6th-century Hindu texts, possibly because it was a famed metallurgy hub for blades (dhārā, Sanskrit: edge, blade) in products such as knives and swords. This theory is supported by ancient metallic items and iron pillars discovered here that have not corroded after centuries of weathering.

Dhar city is located on the northern slopes of the Vindhya Range. It stands craddled in one of the gaps in this mountain range, along the ancient, convenient trade routes to the Narmada River valley and from there to the Deccan and the south India. It was also a key economic hub for the Malwa Plateau and the Nimar tract fueling its prosperity. Its recorded history before the 9th-century is limited, found in inscriptions and glowing mentions in the Puranic literature of central India. It became a capital of the Hindu Paramara dynasty.

The Paramaras built a planned city including a fort in near-circular, mandala style per Hindu architecture texts such as Prabandhacintamani – a design also found in Warangal, Telangana (source: George Michel (1992), City as Cosmogram: The Circular Plan of Warangal”, South Asian Studies 8). Under the Paramaras, particularly 11th-century Raja Bhoja, Dhar became an education and monasteries center, a hub of major Hindu and Jain temples, and a prosperous trade center.

Dhar was an early target for plunder and conquest by the Delhi Sultanate. It was conquered by Al-ud-din Khalji in 1305, who by 1315 built the first hypostyle Kamal Maula mosque – also called Bhojashala or Raja Bhoja's school – from parts of destroyed Hindu and Jain temples of Dhar. After Khiljis, Muḥammad bin Tughluq rebuilt the fort with stone in mid 14th-century. Dhar remained under Muslim rule through the Mughal period, attracting many more tombs and Islamic monuments. Of these, the Lat masjid of 1405 CE is one such notable monument, oft visited and studied. Dhar was reclaimed by the Hindu Marathas in 1730, came under Hindu rule in the 18th-century, bringing another wave of Hindu architecture such as chhatris.

During the colonial era, the survey and archaeological efforts unearthed numerous temple ruins and artwork in Dhar. These colonial era discoveries and the publication of the evidence of the use in its historic mosques of pillars and artwork from Hindu and Jain temples, and of stone panels in mosque's floor that were inscribed with Sanskrit texts, made Dhar a place of religious conflict between the regional Hindu and Muslim communities.

Dhar was an important site in the 1857 Indian Rebellion against the British Empire (also called the First War of Independence in 1857). Indian forces captured Dhar from Colonel Durand, and they controlled Dhar for many months. Dhar was retaken by the British in October 1857 in an operation that attracted allegations of brutal revenge and abuse of human rights by the British. Dhar played an important role in the nonviolent independence movement in early 20th-century.

Note: This is a derivative work on Dhar Plan.jpg and the licensing terms therein apply to this image as well. See wikimedia commons guidelines on how to use this image outside wiki-sister projects.