It is a fertile country, yielding wheat and rice and sesame oil and clarified butter, cotton and the Indian cloths made therefrom, of the coarser sorts.

The metropolis of this country is Minnagara, from which much cotton cloth is brought down to Barygaza.In earliest foreign mention, Egyptian mathematician, geographer, astrologer Claudius Ptolemy and Greek manuscript Periplus both call this region "Surastrene" The region is mentioned in the Junagadh Rock inscription dating 150 CE, attributed to Rudradaman I.

Prior to this, during the rule of Ashoka (268–232 BCE), the region was under Yavana Tushaspa, and governed by Pushyagupta during Chandragupta Maurya's reign (322BC – 298BC).

[7] From the 8th to 11th century, Brahmin merchants from Saurashtra region started migrating towards Southern India due to the frequent Muslim invasions, these merchants upon the invitation of Chola, Pandya, Vijayanagara, Nayak and Thanjavur Maratha Kings set up mercantile silk-weaving guilds throughout Southern India and were involved in the trade of silk clothes and diamonds to the royal families of ancient South India, as the silk became the attire of royal families after the period of Gupta dynasty.

There are even claims that a mix of rice and urad dal ground together and later steamed to form cakes had its origins in Gujarat.

Sorath, a Muslim name of Saurashtra, was initially one of ten prants, but by the colonial age it was one of only four surviving ones, the others being absorbed.

In 1947, Junagadh's Muslim ruler desired to accede his territory to Pakistan, but the predominantly Hindu population rebelled.

The exercise took up a lot of Shri Vallabhbhai Patel's time to convince the local princes and petty subas (totalling 222 in Saurashtra alone).

A set of eight stamps in 1929 included pictures of Junagadh, the Gir lion, and the Kathi horse in addition to the nawab.

Saurashtra has been a flourishing region and rich in natural resources since ancient times, while having gone through several droughts especially during the 20th century.

Amri Saurashtra went through severe droughts over the years to the extent that people could no longer grow crops, nor did they have drinking water available.

[10] Significantly, the Check dam campaign from the late 1990s brought almost a drastic change resulting in raising water tables in Saurashtra.

[11] However, in 2019, the region was hit with a severe drought, affecting 20 districts in Gujarat, and water had to be brought in by tanker from the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River.