Map - Betul district (Betūl)

Betul district is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. The city of Betul serves as its administrative headquarters. The district is a part of Narmadapuram Division.

It lies almost wholly on the Satpura range and occupies nearly the whole width of the range between the Narmada Valley on the north and the Berar plains on the south.

Little is known of the early history of the district except that it must have been the centre of the first of the four ancient Gond kingdoms of Kherla, Deogarh, Garha-Mandla and Chanda-Sirpur. According to Ferishta, the Persian historian, these kingdoms engrossed in 1398 all the hills of Gondwana and adjacent countries, and were of great wealth and power. About the year 1418 Sultan Hoshang Shah of Malwa invaded Kherla, and reduced it to a dependency. Nine years later the Raja rebelled, but although with the help of the Bahmani kings of the Deccan he managed for a time to assert his independence, he was finally subdued and deprived of his territories. In 1467 Kherla was seized by the Bahmani sultan, but was afterwards restored to Malwa. A century later the kingdom of Malwa became incorporated into the dominions of the emperor of Delhi. In 1703 a Muslim convert of the Gond tribe held the country, and in 1743 Raghoji Bhonsle, the Maratha ruler of Berar, annexed it to his dominions.

The Marathas in the year 1818 ceded this district to the East India Company as payment for a contingent, and by the treaty of 1826 it was formally incorporated with the British possessions. The district was administered as part of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories until 1861, when the territories were incorporated into the Central Provinces. Betul District was also part of the Nerbudda (Narmada) Division of the Central Provinces and Berar, which became the state of Madhya Bharat (later Madhya Pradesh) after India's independence in 1947.

Detachments of British troops were stationed at Multai, Betul and Shahpur to cut off the retreat of Appa Sahib, the Maratha general, and a military force was quartered at Betul until June 1862. The ruined city of Kherla formed the seat of government under the Gonds and preceding rulers, and hence the district was, until the time of its annexation to the British dominions, known as the "Kherla Sarkar." The town of Multai contains an artificial tank, from the centre of which the Tapti is said to take its rise; hence the reputed sanctity of the spot, and the accumulation of temples in its honour.

This district suffered very severely from the famine of 1896–1897, in 1897 the death-rate being as high as 73 per 1000. It suffered again in 1900, when in May the number of persons relieved rose to one-third of the total population. In 1901 the population was 285,363, showing a decrease of 12% in the decade, due to the results of famine.

In 1901 the population of the town was 4,739. The administrative headquarters of the district were transferred to the town of Badnur, 3 miles north. At the beginning of the 20th century, the principal crops in the district were wheat, soybean, millet, other food-grains, pulse, oil-seeds, and a little sugar-cane and cotton.