The Malla period stretched over 600 years, as they presided over and flourished the Newar civilization of Nepal Mandala which developed as one of the most sophisticated urban civilisations in the Himalayan foothills and a key destination on the India-Tibet trade route.

Similarly, dozens of Kshatriya-status noble and ruling clans of Mithila too came along as the nobility or as part of the Malla entourage who fled Muslim invasions.

Other groups too immigrated and eventually assimilated in the Newar society, some of which are the present-day Khadgis (Nāya/Shahi), Dhobi, Kapalis/Jogis, Halwai/(Rajkarnikar) and Tamrakar of Lalitpur, Podya (Chamahar), Kulu (Dusadh), among others.

[20] Beginning in the early twelfth century, leading notables in Nepal began to appear with names ending in the term malla, ("wrestler" in Sanskrit),[21] indicating a person of great strength and power.

[23] The long Malla period witnessed the continued importance of the Kathmandu Valley as a political, cultural, and economic centre of Nepal.

During this process, all of the regional kingdoms in India underwent a major reshuffling and considerable fighting before they eventually fell under Delhi's control.

In 1255, one-third of the population of Kathmandu (30,000 people, including King Abhaya Malla) were killed when the valley suffered an earthquake with the epicentre right below the city.

[27] A devastating Muslim invasion by the Sultan of Bengal Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah in 1345–46,[24] during the reign of Jayaraja Deva (r. 1347–1361), left plundered Hindu and Buddhist shrines in its wake.

[28] The early Malla period, a time of continuing trade and the reintroduction of Nepalese coinage saw the steady growth of the small towns that became Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhadgaon.

Royal pretenders in Patan and Bhadgaon struggled with their main rivals, the lords of Banepa in the East, relying on the populations of their towns as their power bases.

The betrothal in 1354 of her granddaughter to Jayasthiti Malla, a man of obscure but apparently high birth, eventually led to the reunification of the land and a lessening of strife among the towns.

His authority was not absolute because the lords of Banepa were able to pass themselves off as kings to ambassadors of the Chinese Ming emperor who travelled to Nepal during this time.

Nevertheless, Jayasthiti Malla united the entire valley and its environs under his sole rule, an accomplishment still remembered with pride by Nepalese, particularly Newars.

Bhadgaon extended its feeble power as far as the Dudh Kosi in the east, Kathmandu-controlled areas to the north and as far west as Nuwakot, and Patan included territories to the south as far as Makwanpur.

Although all three ruling houses were related and periodically intermarried, their squabbles over minuscule territorial gains or ritual slights repeatedly led to warfare.

The complete flowering of the unique culture of the Kathmandu Valley occurred during this period, and it was also during this time that the old palace complexes in the three main towns achieved much of their present-day forms.

During the sixteenth century, when the Mughals were spreading their rule over almost all of South Asia, many dispossessed princes from the plains of northern India found shelter in the hills to the north.

[31] Legends indicated that many small principalities in western Nepal originated in migration and conquest by exiled warriors, who added to the slow spread of the Khasa language and culture in the west.

The influence of the Mughals is reflected in the weapons and dress of Malla rulers in contemporary paintings and in the adoption of Persian terminology for administrative offices and procedures throughout Nepal.

The expansion of big empires in both the north and south thus took place during a time when Nepal was experiencing considerable weakness in its traditional center.

All of these small, increasingly militarized states were operating individually at a higher level of centralized organization than ever before in the hills, but they were expending their resources in an almost anarchic struggle for survival.

[35] By 1764 the British East India Company, officially a private trading corporation with its own army had obtained from a decaying Mughal Empire the right to govern all of Bengal, at that time one of the most prosperous areas in Asia.

The increasingly powerful company was emerging as a wild card that could, in theory, be played by one or more of the kingdoms in Nepal during local struggles, potentially opening the entire Himalayan region to British penetration.

[31] The Malla dynasty ruled the Kathmandu Valley until Prithvi Narayan Shah of the Gorkha Kingdom invaded it in 1768-69 CE with the Battle of Kirtipur.

It was a time when all of the people were celebrating, and many of them were unconscious as they were drunk, which gave Prithvi Narayan Shah the advantage to assassinate his fellow rival.

The rivalry between the three kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley found its expression not only in warfare but also in the arts and culture, which flourished in the competitive climate, quite similar to that of Renaissance Italy.

The outstanding collections of exquisite temples and buildings in each city's Durbar Square are a testament to the huge amounts of money spent by rulers striving to outdo each other.

Traders would cross the jungle-infested Terai during winter to avoid virulent malaria and then wait in Kathmandu for the mountain passes to open later that summer.

[36] The Malla era shaped the religious as well as artistic landscape, introducing the dramatic chariot festivals of Indra Jatra and Matsyendranath.

In the early 18th century, during the reign of Pratap Malla, Capuchin missionaries passed through Nepal to Tibet, and when they returned home gave the West its first description of exotic Kathmandu.