Map - Dholka City (Dholka)

Dholka is a city and municipality in the Ahmedabad District of the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the headquarters of Dholka Taluka, and is 48 km by road via National Highway 8A southwest of the city of Ahmedabad. Dholka has an average elevation of 17 m.

Large numbers of old buildings in the city suggest that it was important in ancient times; archaeologists have discovered small stone chert tools made of chalcedony, quartz and agate which date to the Middle Stone and Iron Ages.

Dholka is said to stand on the site of Viratpur, or Matsyanagar, which, in their wanderings, the Pandavas found governed by queen Sudishva of the Kaiyo or Bhil race. Her brother, Kichak Kaiyo, a prince of great power, was, according to the story, slain for an attempt on the chastity of Draupadi.

Here too in 144 AD, Kanaksen, a prince of the race of the sun, Suryavansh, is said to have settled.

At the close of the eleventh century, the town was adorned with a lake – still its chief ornament – by Minaldevi, the mother of Jayasimha Siddharaja of the Chaulukya dynasty.

In the 12th century, Muhammad al-Idrisi mentioned Dholka as one of the chief trading towns in Gujarat. Vaghelas were vassals of the Chaulukya rulers of Gujarat. As the Chaulukyas went into decline, so the Vaghelas rose in power, becoming rulers of Gujarat from 1243 until the Muslim conquest in 1297. They restored stability to Gujarat for the latter half of the 13th century, while the Vaghela kings and their officials were dedicated patrons of the arts and temple-building. Early in the thirteenth century, it was apparently called Dhavalgadh and held by Vir Dhaval, the founder of the Vaghela dynasty, whose territories included the lands of Godhra and Lat. In records of the Muslim kings and viceroys, though never a place of great consequence, Dholka is often mentioned as a town and fort, the quarters of a local governor; its remains show that at one time, it was adorned by many beautiful Muslim buildings.

In the eighteenth-century troubles, Dholka seems to have been taken by the Marathas in 1736; to have been recovered by the Viceroy in 1741; to have again fallen into the Gaikwad's hands in 1757; and to have remained with him till its cession to the British in 1804. It suffered much from the 1813 famine: when surveyed in 1820–1822, it showed few signs of returning prosperity.