Gujarat’s biggest city was once called India’s Manchester
Ahmedabad, also Amdavad and once Karnavati, is Gujarat’s most populous city and a major industrial-cultural hub. Cotton mills earned it the Manchester of India tag beside Kanpur. In July 2017 Old Ahmedabad joined UNESCO’s World Heritage list, while metro GDP estimates hit about $136.1 billion in 2023.
Relics from the old city and the writings of al-Biruni suggest an early Bhil settlement here called Ashaval. In the eleventh century the Chaulukya king Karna of Anhilwara, modern Patan, defeated Ashaval's Bhil ruler and founded Karnavati by the Sabarmati, though its exact site is uncertain. Rule passed to the Vaghela dynasty and then the Delhi Sultanate, until the governor Zafar Khan declared himself Sultan of Gujarat early in the fifteenth century.
His grandson Ahmed Shah I laid the foundation of a walled capital on 26 February 1411 at Manek Burj and named it after himself, though another tradition credits four local saints called Ahmed. Manek Burj honours Maneknath, a Hindu saint said to have helped build Bhadra Fort, and his thirteenth-generation descendants still raise a flag there on the city's foundation day.
The 2011 census counted about 5.57 million residents, fifth in India, and the urban area held around 8.85 million by 2024. The city sits 25 km from Gandhinagar, its twin, and houses the Gujarat High Court. As India's second-biggest cotton producer it shared the Manchester of India label with Kanpur, and its stock exchange, second oldest in the country, closed in 2018. Economic liberalisation tilted work toward trade, communication and construction, and population growth brought skyscrapers.
Rankings followed: third on a Forbes list of the decade's fastest-growing cities in 2010, best city to live in by The Times of India in 2012, and one of Time's fifty greatest places in 2022. The Narendra Modi Stadium, holding 132,000, is the world's largest, and the city is to host the 2030 Commonwealth Games.
Source: Ahmedabad
