Ahmedabad is the largest city and former capital of the Indian state of Gujarat. Ahmedabad was founded on 26 February 1411 by Sultan Ahmed Shah of the Gujarat Sultanate, and it was named in his honor. In 1487, Ahmed's grandson Mahmud Begada fortified the city with an outer wall with 12 gates, 189 bastions, and over 6,000 battlements, but the Mughal emperor Humayun briefly conquered Ahmedabad in 1535. In 1573, the Mughals permanently conquered Ahmedabad during the reign of Akbar the Great, and it became a thriving center of the transcontinental textile trade. In 1758, Ahmedabad was conquered by the Maratha Confederacy, and it was briefly captured by the British in 1780 during the First Anglo-Maratha War and permanently conquered in 1818 during the Third Anglo-Maratha War. In 1864, the British built a railroad between Ahmedabad and Mumbai (Bombay), and it was nicknamed the "Manchester of the East" for its booming textile industry. During the Indian independence movement of the 1920s-1930s, its textile industry was crippled by nationalist strikes and peaceful demonstrations encouraged by Mahatma Gandhi, and the Partition of India in 1947 led to intercommunal violence and the arrival of thousands of Hindu migrants from Pakistan. By 1960, Ahmedabad had slightly under 500,000 people, and it served as capital of Gujarat from 1960 until the late 1970s, when the planned city of Gandhinagar replaced it. In 2002, the city was devastated by renewed intercommunal violence between Hindus and Muslims. In 2011, Ahmedabad had a population of 5,633,927 people, 81.56% of whom were Hindu, 13.51% Muslim, 3.62% Jain, .85% Christian, .24% Sikh, and .24% other.
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