Khambhat (/kɑːmˈbɑːt/, Gujarati: [kʰəmbʱɑt] ⓘ), also known as Cambay, is a city and the surrounding urban agglomeration in Anand district in the Indian state of Gujarat.

In the folklore of Khambat, the beginning of the craft is attributed to Baba Ghor, a 1500 AD saint from Ethiopia (Habash) who had led a large contingent of Muslims (Siddi) to settle in the city.

However, in the archaeological record the origin of the craft can be traced to nearby Lothal, a Harappan outpost that flourished about 4000 years ago.

Cambay was formerly a flourishing city, the seat of an extensive trade, and celebrated for its manufactures of silk, chintz and gold stuffs.

The reason is that the majority of its inhabitants are foreign merchants, who continually build there beautiful houses and wonderful mosques -- an achievement in which they endeavour to surpass each other.

Another Italian, visiting in about 1440, Niccolò de' Conti, mentions that the walls of the city were twelve miles in circumference.

The Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa visited the city, which he calls Cambaia, in the early sixteenth century.

He states: "Entering by Guindarim [Gandhar port, Bharuch],[10] which is within on the river, there is a great and fair city called Cambaia in which dwell both 'mouros' [Muslims] and 'gentios' [Hindus].

Therein are many fair houses, very lofty, with windows and roofed with tiles in our manner, well laid out with streets and fine open places, and great buildings of stone and mortar.

Duarte Barbosa also noted that many ships from the Kingdom of Cambaya sailed to the Sultanate of Mogadishu in the Horn of Africa with cloths and spices for which they in return received gold, wax and ivory.

[12] Owing principally to the gradually increasing difficulty of access by water by the silting up of the gulf, its commerce has long since fallen away, and the City became poor and dilapidated.

To the southeast there are very extensive ruins of subterranean temples and other buildings half-buried in the sand by which the ancient City was overwhelmed.

The principal one, as the inscription intimates, is Pariswanath or Parswanath, carved in the reign of the emperor Akbar; the black one has the date of 1651 inscribed.

Nawab Yavar Ali Khan was titled Sarkar Sahab (Governing Prince), because he was able to maintain peace and unity.

After 200 years, Duarte Barbosa described Cambay as an important commercial center with carpets, and other textile goods in Mughal established industries.

Mid November to January is winter, which results in essentially mild cold during the nights and early mornings with warm noons.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, Khambhat was well known for Muslim gravestones carved in marble which were exported to various locations along the Indian Ocean rim, including Southeast Asia.

In May 2001, India's Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Science and Technology division, Murli Manohar Joshi, announced that the ruins of an ancient civilization had been discovered off the coast of Gujarat, in the Gulf of Khambhat.

The site was discovered by NIOT while they performed routine pollution studies using SONAR, and was described as an area of regularly spaced geometric structures.