Samma Dynasty

At a glance

Who were the Sammas?

The Sammas were one of the oldest tribes of the lower Indus. They appear already in the Chachnama, the account of the Arab conquest of Sindh, coming out "ringing bells, and beating drums and dancing" to receive Muhammad ibn Qasim in the eighth century. Later chronicles describe them as the largest landholding people of Sindh. The Tuhfat al-Kiram, written in 1767, says that "the Sammas are the owners of the land throughout Sind, as far as Guzerat, including also the greater part of Rajputana, and they form the majority of the population of Sind", a claim of its own century.

Their origins were told in many ways, each serving a purpose:

• Persian kingship. The Akbar-era historians said the Sammas claimed descent from the legendary Persian king Jamshid, and that "this word Jam, which they gave to their leaders and chiefs, preserves the memory of that connection".
• Arab ancestry. The Tuhfat al-Kiram offers genealogies from the Prophet's Quraysh opponents Abu Lahab and Abu Jahl, or from Sam, son of Noah.
• Rajput and Yadava descent. British writers of the nineteenth century, following James Tod, made the Sammas descendants of Samba, son of Krishna, and "Rajputs of the great Yadava stock". The British historian H. M. Elliot, who reported these claims, dismissed the Arab and Persian genealogies as "arrant nonsense"; his own Yadava theory is itself a colonial-era opinion.

Online sources sometimes call the Sammas a branch of the Jats. No source consulted for this entry supports that: the chronicles list the Jats as a separate people alongside the Sammas.

The chronicles even disagree on which way the Sammas moved. The Tarikh-i Ma'sumi of 1600 says some Sammas "had previously come from Kachh and had settled in Sind"; the Tarikh-i Tahiri tells the reverse, that Sammas fled from Sindh to Kutch and seized a fort there by hiding armed men in hay-carts, a folk motif found in other stories too.

What does the title Jam mean?

Jam was the title of the Samma chiefs and kings. The court historians of Akbar linked it to Jamshid, but the Cambridge History of India calls that explanation "not convincing" while noting it is "the only one which has been offered". Elliot observed that the title was not a family name but "merely of the chiefs", and that it was still borne in his day by other rulers of the region, among them the Jams of Las Bela and Nawanagar.

One detail suggests that the title may be older than Samma rule. The historian Barani, writing in the 1350s, says that a rebel fleeing Muhammad bin Tughluq "fled to Thatta, where he found refuge with the Jam", at a time when he calls the rulers of Thatta Sumras. The historian Mahdi Husain read this as Barani using "Jam" for a Sumra chief; Elliot thought the title was borne by Sammas only.

How did the Sammas come to power?

By displacing the Sumras, the dynasty that had ruled lower Sindh under the loose authority of Delhi, in the decades around 1340. The first Samma ruler named in the chronicles is Jam Unar. The Tarikh-i Ma'sumi tells that the leading men of Sindh, oppressed by a tyrannical Sumra ruler named Armil, brought Unar into the city, killed Armil, "placed his head over the gate of the city" and put Unar on the throne.

A contemporary witness may describe the same events. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta reached the Indus on 1 Muharram 734, 12 September 1333, and at Sehwan he witnessed the aftermath of a revolt. "Living in this town were the amir Wunar al-Samiri … and the amir Qaisar al-Rumi, who were both in the Sultan's service and had under their command about 1,800 horsemen." Resenting the appointment of a Hindu official, Ratan, as governor of Sindh, they killed him, seized the treasury and "set the above-mentioned Wunar at their head, entitling him Malik Firuz". Wunar soon withdrew to his own tribe; the remaining rebels were besieged, and the Delhi commander had them flayed and their skins hung on the city wall, which Ibn Battuta saw from his lodging.

Whether Ibn Battuta's Wunar was Jam Unar is uncertain. His translator H. A. R. Gibb notes that the account "has apparently some relation to the rise of the Rajput Sammas to power in Sind", but that "whether I.B.'s Wunar was in reality a Samma, or a Sumra associated with the Sammas, remains problematical". Gibb reads Ibn Battuta's word Samira as the Sumras. The Indian historian S. H. Hodivala accepted the identification; Mahdi Husain doubted it.

When was the Samma dynasty founded?

The date is uncertain, and three families of dates are found in the sources:

• About 1333–1339. The Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908) gives 1333, the Cambridge History of India (1928) "about 1336", Firishta's history 740 AH (1339), and Hodivala, reconstructing the chronology from fixed points, about 736 AH (1335/36). These dates tie Jam Unar to Ibn Battuta's Wunar.
• 752 AH (1351). The Tuhfat al-Kiram gives this date, and Elliot followed it. It coincides with the death of the Delhi sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq on the Indus "at fourteen kos from Thatta", in March 1351, during a campaign against the rulers of Thatta.
• 843 AH (1439). The Tarikh-i Tahiri starts Samma rule here. Elliot and the Cambridge History reject it, the latter as "at least a century too late".

The reason for the confusion is that the chronicles give only reign lengths, not dates. Hodivala showed that four of the Akbar-era lists of Samma rulers "are all derived from one and the same source", a lost Gujarati history, and that "the initial date is nowhere stated". The border data behind this map draws the Samma kingdom from 1344.

Where was the Samma capital?

At first at Samui, below Makli Hill, about three miles north-west of today's Thatta, and later at Thatta itself. According to Elliot's sources, a later Jam built a fort called Tughluqabad on the site of an older one, Kalan Kot, south of Thatta. The Tarikh-i Tahiri credits Jam Nizamuddin with founding Thatta on a site chosen by astrologers.

That claim cannot be right as it stands. Thatta is named as the seat of the Jams by Barani in 1351 and by Shams-i Siraj Afif in his account of Firuz Shah's wars in the 1360s, a century before Nizamuddin. The fourteenth-century Thatta, Afif writes, lay on both banks of the Indus, with mud forts on each side. Nizamuddin may have rebuilt or moved the city; the sources do not say.

How did the Sammas resist Firuz Shah Tughluq?

The Delhi sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq, of the Tughlaq dynasty, led two great campaigns against Thatta, and the Sammas survived both by retreating, raiding and finally negotiating. The fullest account comes from Shams-i Siraj Afif, whose father served on the campaign. "At that time," he writes, "the Jam, brother of Rai Unar, and Babiniya, his brother's son, were masters of Thatta."

• The first campaign. Firuz marched down the Indus with, by Afif's account, 90,000 cavalry and 480 elephants. Famine and disease among the horses left the army weakened, the Sindhis captured the Delhi boats, and Firuz retreated towards Gujarat. Guides led the army into the Rann of Kutch, and "for six months no news of the army reached Dehli". The people of Thatta mocked the sultan: "By the will of God Sultan Muhammad Tughlik died in pursuit of us, and Sultan Firoz Shah has fled before us."
• The second campaign. After refitting in Gujarat with its whole revenue, Firuz returned at harvest time. The Sindhis withdrew to their forts on the far bank, a Delhi force crossed the Indus upstream near Bhakkar, and famine set in.
• The submission. The Jam and Babiniya sued for peace through the Sufi saint Sayyid Jalal al-Din Bukhari of Uch. Babiniya came first, "with his turban in front of his throat and a sword upon his neck, like a repentant criminal". They paid "four lacs of tankas in cash" and promised tribute, and the son of the Jam and Babiniya's brother Tamachi were placed over Thatta.

Afif gives no dates. Modern reconstructions differ: the Cambridge History places the expedition in 1362–63, while Hodivala, counting from other events in Firuz's reign, has the army reach Thatta in February 1366 and the surrender come in March 1367. The two Samma rulers were taken to Delhi, where they lived in a mansion known as the "Palace of Thatta", received allowances and sat at court. Babiniya was sent back to Thatta in 1388 but died on the road.

The war also shows that the Sammas were already Muslims. Afif reports that Firuz recalled a force from battle because "the combatants on both sides were Musulmans". The later claim that the Sammas converted to Islam only around 1391 rests on Firishta's reading of the rulers' names and is contradicted by this contemporary account.

How independent was Samma Sindh?

Increasingly so after 1400. When the armies of Timur took Multan and Uch in 1397–98 and the Delhi Sultanate fell apart, the Sammas were free of Delhi. The Tarikh-i Ma'sumi says that after Timur's invasion "Multan came under the authority of the Langahs and the whole of Sind remained subject to its own kings".

The fifteenth-century rulers are known mostly as names and reign lengths. Jam Tughluq, who reigned for about twenty-eight years, made his brothers governors of Sehwan and Bhakkar and punished Baloch raiders in the north. His successors include short reigns ended by poison or rebellion, and a chamberlain, Mubarak, who held Thatta for three days. Firishta says the Jams opened "a friendly intercourse" with the new Sultanate of Gujarat, which had broken away from Delhi like the Jaunpur and Bengal sultanates, which shaped Samma politics until the end.

The names and reign lengths differ between the chronicles, and the Ma'sumi list adds a Jam Tamachi early in the dynasty. Dates before 1461 are reconstructions.

Who was Jam Nindo?

Jam Nizamuddin II, called Jam Nanda or Nindo, was the most celebrated Samma ruler. According to the Tarikh-i Ma'sumi, he "succeeded Jam Sanjar on the 25th Rabi'u-l awwal, in the year 866 (December, 1461)", raised by the agreement of "the learned and the good, the soldiers and the peasants". He had been "a student, and spent much of his time in colleges and monasteries". UNESCO gives his reign as 1461 to 1509; the Tuhfat al-Kiram dates his death to 914 AH, which ran from April 1508 to April 1509.

His reign is remembered as the golden age of Samma Sindh. The chronicles give it a peaceful character: he spent his first year at Bhakkar suppressing highway robbers, and the Tarikh-i Ma'sumi tells that he stroked his horses and said he had no wish to ride them in war, "for within my four boundaries all the rulers are Musulmans". The German scholar Annemarie Schimmel called him "the most enlightened Jam Nizamuddin", who died "after 46 years of peaceful reign".

Thatta became a centre of learning. The Jam spent much time "discoursing and arguing upon matters of science with the learned", and a famous scholar of Shiraz, Maulana Jalal al-Din Muhammad, planned to move to Sindh; he died before he could, but his disciples settled at Thatta.

The peace had limits. "Towards the end of the reign", the Tarikh-i Ma'sumi records, Shah Beg Arghun's army from Kandahar raided northern Sindh and was defeated, Shah Beg's brother being killed, and "no further attack was made upon Sind during the life of Nizamu-d din". The chronicles give his reign very different lengths, from 32 to 73 years; the dates in the table above follow the Tarikh-i Ma'sumi and UNESCO.

Who was Darya Khan?

The real power behind the throne in the last Samma decades. The Tarikh-i Tahiri tells that he was a slave boy named Kabula, "in reality the son of a Saiyid", whom Jam Nindo took into his service, titled Mubarak Khan and loved "better than his own children". The Tuhfat al-Kiram says Darya Khan and Mubarak Khan were the same man, the Jam's adopted son; Firishta treats them as two different people and calls Darya Khan a relation. Dying, Jam Nindo entrusted his young son Firoz and the kingdom to him.

How did the Samma dynasty end?

Through a succession war, Gujarati intervention and an invasion from Kandahar.

A disputed succession. Jam Firoz was "of tender age" at his father's death. A rival, Jam Salahuddin, a grandson of Jam Sanjar, claimed the throne and turned to Sultan Muzaffar of Gujarat, a relative by marriage. Darya Khan put Firoz on the throne, but Firoz gave himself to drink and pleasure, and Darya Khan withdrew to his estate at Kahan. Salahuddin returned with a Gujarati army and took Thatta; according to the Tarikh-i Ma'sumi, Darya Khan then forged a letter that frightened Salahuddin into flight after eight months, and Firoz returned.

The Arghun invasion. Shah Beg Arghun, ruler of Kandahar, had been pressing into Sindh through the Bolan Pass for years, and Babur, the future Mughal emperor, was pressing him from the north. In late 1520 Shah Beg's army crossed the Indus near Thatta at a ford shown by a local man. The Tarkhan-nama dates the crossing to "the 15th day of Muharram A.H. 927 (December, 1520)", and the Tuhfat al-Kiram fixes the year with a chronogram, Kharābī-i Sind, "the downfall of Sind", whose letters add up to 927. In the battle on the Khanwah canal near Thatta, Darya Khan "with a host of Sammas, was killed", and Thatta was plundered for days.

Many websites call this the "Battle of Fatehbagh". No chronicle consulted for this entry uses that name; Fath Bagh appears in the sources only later, as a district governed by the Tarkhan family.

The end of the Jams. Firoz submitted with "a sword hanging from his neck" and was left to rule lower Sindh under Shah Beg. When Shah Beg died in 1522, Firoz rose again, and Shah Beg's son Shah Husain defeated him in a battle in which, the Tarkhan-nama says, "nearly 20,000 men fell". Firoz fled to Gujarat. Elliot's sources "concur in fixing the extinction of the Samma dynasty in 927 h. (1521 a.d.)"; the Las Bela Gazetteer of 1907 dates the final defeat to "about 1523". The common end date of 1524 matches only a tradition that Shah Beg died in 930 AH.

Firoz lived on at the court of Bahadur Shah of Gujarat, who received him in 1528/29. In 1535, during the Mughal emperor Humayun's war against Bahadur, Mughal troops killed "Firuz, formerly Jam of Sind", according to the Cambridge History of India.

What is the tomb of Jam Nizamuddin?

The tomb of Jam Nizamuddin II on Makli Hill is the dynasty's signature monument and one of the most admired buildings of medieval Sindh. It stands at the northern end of the vast necropolis of Makli, which UNESCO describes as some half a million tombs and graves over about 10 square kilometres. UNESCO inscribed the "Historical Monuments at Makli, Thatta" on the World Heritage List in 1981.

The tomb is a square stone building, never finished and never roofed. A report by the Government of Sindh to UNESCO in 2025 gives its footprint as about 11.2 by 11.3 metres and its height as about 8.5 metres. Its walls are covered in bands of carved ornament, lotus medallions and Quranic inscriptions, and its west face has a projecting carved balcony. The ICOMOS evaluation of 1980 noted that it "establishes evident ties with Hindu architecture of the Gujrat style", while being "in no way a question of simple copies".

How it was meant to look is debated. The archaeologist Henry Cousens wrote in 1929 that it was intended to carry a dome and that "much of its sculptured material had been removed from one or more [Hindu] temples". The Sindh government's 2025 report argues instead that the walls show no provision for the weight of a masonry dome, and that its masons were more familiar with post-and-lintel construction than with vaulting. The architectural historian Rabela Junejo reads the unfinished southern façade as a sign of the political turmoil after the Jam's death.

Was Makli on UNESCO's Danger List?

No, although many websites say so. UNESCO's World Heritage Committee repeatedly warned that the site might be placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger, in decisions of 2016, 2017 and 2019, mainly because of the unstable foundations and cracks of the Jam Nizamuddin tomb. It was never placed on that list. In 2016 UNESCO's monitoring report described the mausoleum as "in a perilous state". Crack monitors have since been installed, and the Sindh government's 2025 report found that the main crack in the tomb was still active. In 2024 the Committee asked Pakistan for detailed plans for its conservation.

How do the Sammas live on in Sindhi poetry?

Through the romances that the great Sindhi poet Shah Abdul Latif (1689–1752) retold in his Risalo. Two of them are set among the Samma rulers:

• Nuri and Jam Tamachi. The Samma prince Jam Tamachi fell in love with Nuri, a fisherman's daughter of Lake Keenjhar, and made her his queen. In Shah Latif's poem Sur Kamod, Schimmel explains, Nuri stands for the humble soul at peace.
• Lila and Chanesar. The story of Queen Lila, who traded her husband's love for a necklace, "can be dated back to the time of Jam Chanesar, one of the Summa rulers in 14th century Sind", Schimmel wrote.

A third famous romance, Umar Marui, is often attached to the Sammas, but Schimmel placed it in the Sumra period; its King Umar of Umarkot was not a Samma ruler. Schimmel also noted a tradition that the Sufi saint Shaikh Hammad Jamali recited a Sindhi verse in Jam Tamachi's favour, which "would enable us to trace the first known Sindhi verse back to the year 1375".

Who claims descent from the Sammas today?

Several ruling houses of western India and Pakistan claimed Samma descent. The Bombay Gazetteer of 1880 called the Jadejas, the ruling clan of Kutch, "the leading Hindu representatives of the old Sind tribe of Samma Rajputs", and the Jadeja Jam Raval founded the state of Nawanagar in Kathiawar in 1540; its rulers kept the title Jam Sahib. Many Muslim Samma families in Sindh, the same gazetteer noted, claimed Arab origin.

The Jams of Las Bela in Balochistan are often linked to the Sammas, but the Las Bela Gazetteer of 1907 records that their family claimed descent from the Arab Quraysh, and that they were counted as "Jamshaidi" in the census of 1901.

Common myths about the Samma dynasty

Timeline of the Samma dynasty

What the map shows next

The border data draws the Samma kingdom from 1344 to 1525; at 1435 on the map it covers Sindh. The Delhi power whose sultans fought the Jams in the fourteenth century appears at Tughlaq dynasty, and the empire of Timur, whose invasion freed Sindh from Delhi, at Timurid Empire. A century after the Arghun conquest, Sindh belongs to the Mughal Empire.