After the death of Suhadeva and his brother, Udayanadeva, Shah Mir proposed marriage to the reigning queen, Kota Rani.

[a][8][9] Andre Wink puts forward the opinion that Shah Mir was possibly of Afghan, Turk, or even Tibetan origin.

[13][14] It has also been suggested that he belonged to a family from Swat which accompanied the sage Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani and were associated to the Kubrawiya, a Sufi group in Kashmir.

[1] Older sources and historians such as Jonaraja state that Shah Mir was the descendant of Partha (Arjuna) of Mahabharata fame.

Abu ’l-Fadl Allami, Nizam al-Din and Firishta also state that Shah Mir traced his descent to Arjuna, the basis of their account being Jonaraja’s Rajatarangini, which Mulla Abd al-Qadir Bada’uni translated into Persian at Akbar’s orders.

In the confusion Rinchan (r. 1320–1323),[15][16] sought the aid of various generals, including Shah Mir, and caused an internal uprising, seizing the throne.

He was later attacked by rebels, and was badly wounded, dying in 1323 A.D. Just before his death Sultan Sadruddin summoned his trusted minister, Shah Mir, who had since then risen to some prominence, and put his son, Haider, and wife, Kota Rani, in his care.

Kota Rani took notice of his increasing popularity, and in an effort to check him, appointed Bhatta Bhiksana, a powerful man within the kingdom, as her Prime Minister.

He had Bhiksana assassinated , and asked Kota Rani to marry him and share power, threatening to wage war on her if she was to refuse.

While this was going on, many of Kota Rani's troops, seeing the futility of the situation, deserted and joined Shah Mir, to whom most important chiefs in the kingdom had already pledged allegiance.

[18][19] With Kota Rani defeated and having already secured the allegiance of the powerful damara warlords, Shah Mir declared himself the ruler of Kashmir, taking on the title of Sultan Shams-ud-Din.