Sher Shah Suri in the context of "Grand Trunk Road"

The tola (Hindi: तोला / Urdu: تولا, romanized: tolā; also transliterated as tolah or tole) is a traditional South Asian unit of mass, now standardised as 180 grains (11.6638038 grams) or exactly 3⁄8 troy ounce. It was the base unit of mass in the British Indian system of weights and measures introduced in 1833, although it had been in use for much longer. It was also used in Aden and Zanzibar: in the latter, one tola was equivalent to 175.90 troy grains (0.97722222 British tolas, or 11.33980925 grams).

The tola is a Vedic measure, with the name derived from the Sanskrit तोलः tolaḥ (from the root तुल् tul) meaning "weighing" or "weight". One tola was traditionally the weight of 100 Ratti (ruttee) seeds, and its exact weight varied according to locality. However, it is also a convenient mass for a coin: several pre-colonial coins, including the currency of Akbar the Great (1556–1605), had a mass of "one tola" within slight variation. The first rupee (Urdu: رپيا; rupayā), minted by Sher Shah Suri (1540–45), had a mass of 178 troy grains, or about 1% less than the British tola. The British East India Company issued a silver rupee coin of 180 troy grains, and this became the practical standard mass for the tola well into the 20th century.

Pargana or parganah, also spelt pergunnah, equivalent to Mohallah as a subunit of Subah (Suba), was a type of former administrative division in the Indian subcontinent during the time of the Delhi Sultanate, Mughal and British Colonial empires. Mughal Empire was divided into Subah (Suba) or province headed by a Subahdar, which were further subdivided into sarkars or tarafs, which in turn were further subdivided into groups of villages known as parganas or Mahallas (Mahal). Depending on the size, the parganas may or may not be further subdivided into pirs or mouzas which were the smallest revenue units, consisting of one or more villages and the surrounding countryside. In Bengal, the Sarkar system was replaced in the early 18th century by the Chakla system. In the Punjab region, the British established new Punjab Canal Colonies in which the smallest unit [equivalent to village or Mauza or pir] were termed Chak. Above-mentioned revenue units were used primarily, but not exclusively, by Muslim kingdoms. After Independence of India in 1947, the parganas became equivalent to Block/Tahsil, and pirs or mahals became Grampanchayat.

The Mughal government in the pargana consisted of a Muslim judge and local tax collector. Under the reign of Sher Shah Suri, administration of parganas was strengthened by the addition of other officers, including a shiqdar (police chief), an amin or munsif (an arbitrator who assessed and collected revenue) and a karkun (record keeper).

The Sur Empire was an empire ruled by the Afghan-origin Sur dynasty in northern India for nearly 16 or 18 years, between 1538/1540 and 1556, with Sasaram (in modern-day Bihar) serving as its capital. It was founded by Sher Shah Suri.

The Sur dynasty held control of nearly all the Mughal Empire territories along the Indo-Gangetic Plain, from eastern Balochistan in the west of Indus River to modern-day Rakhine, Myanmar in the east. Even as Sher Shah Suri consolidated his power over North India, Eastern India was still considered to be the seat of Sur power in India. This is demonstrated by the fact that 8 of the 16 silver mint cities he established were in the region between Chunar and Fathabad.

Azimabad (Hindi: अज़ीमाबाद, Urdu: عظیم آباد) was the name of modern-day Patna during the eighteenth century, prior to the British Raj. Today, Patna is the capital of Bihar, a state in North India. In ancient times, Patna was known as Pataliputra. This was the capital of the Maurya and Gupta Empires.

Medieval India marked Pataliputra's invasion of Muslim Pashtun Bakhtiyar Khilji and other Muslim rulers. This event is arguably seen by modern historians and scholars as a milestone in the decline of Buddhism in India. Long before Pataliputra was conquered, however, most of the ancient city was abandoned in the seventh century of the Common Era but revived more than 800 years later during the rule of Pashtun emperor Sher Shah Suri as Patna.Sher Shah Suri had moved his capital from Bihar Sharif to Pataliputra. Not long after Sher Shah Suri's death in 1545, Patna and Bihar fell to the Mughals. The name Pataliputra continued to be used, however.

Purana Qila (lit. 'Old Fort') is one of the oldest forts in Delhi, India. It was built by the second Mughal Emperor Humayun and Surid Sultan Sher Shah Suri. The fort forms the inner citadel of the city of Dinpanah. It is located near the expansive Pragati Maidan exhibition ground and is separated from Dhyanchand Stadium by Mathura Road, Delhi.

Humayun's tomb (Persian: Maqbara-i Humayun) is the tomb of Mughal Emperor Humayun situated in Delhi, India. The tomb was commissioned by Humayun's first wife and chief consort, Empress Bega Begum under her patronage in 1558, and designed by Mirak Mirza Ghiyas and his son, Sayyid Muhammad, Persian architects chosen by her. It was the first garden-tomb on the Indian subcontinent, and is located in Nizamuddin East, Delhi, close to the Dina-panah Citadel, also known as Purana Qila (Old Fort), that Humayun found in 1538. It was also the first structure to use red sandstone at such a scale. The tomb was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, and since then has undergone extensive restoration work, which is complete. Besides the main tomb enclosure of Humayun, several smaller monuments dot the pathway leading up to it, from the main entrance in the West, including one that even pre-dates the main tomb itself, by twenty years; it is the tomb complex of Isa Khan Niazi, an Afghan noble in Sher Shah Suri's court of the Sur Empire, who fought against the Mughals, constructed in 1547 CE.

The complex encompasses the main tomb of the Emperor Humayun, which houses the graves of Empress Bega Begum, Hajji Begum, and also Dara Shikoh, great-great-grandson of Humayun and son of the later Emperor Shah Jahan, as well as numerous other subsequent Mughals, including Emperor Jahandar Shah, Farrukhsiyar, Rafi Ul-Darjat, Rafi Ud-Daulat, Muhammad Kam Bakhsh and Alamgir II. It represented a leap in Mughal architecture, and together with its accomplished Charbagh garden, typical of Persian gardens, but never seen before in India, it set a precedent for subsequent Mughal architecture. It is seen as a clear departure from the fairly modest mausoleum of his father, the first Mughal Emperor, Babur, called Bagh-e Babur (Gardens of Babur) in Kabul (Afghanistan). Though the latter was the first Emperor to start the tradition of being buried in a paradise garden. Modelled on Gur-e Amir, the tomb of his ancestor and Asia's conqueror Timur in Samarkand, it created a precedent for future Mughal architecture of royal mausolea, which reached its zenith with the Taj Mahal, at Agra.

Sasaram (pronunciation), also spelled as Shahasaram and Sasseram, is a historical city and a municipal corporation region in the Rohtas district of Bihar state in eastern India.

The city served as the capital of the Sur dynasty during Sher Shah Suri's rule over India in the 16th century, and was residence place sub capital of epic monarch Sahastrabahu (Kartivirya Arjuna).