Sagar District is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. The town of Sagar serves as its administrative center. Sagar is bounded by Lalitpur District of Uttar Pradesh state to the north, and the Madhya Pradesh districts of Chhatarpur to the northeast, Damoh to the east, Narsinghpur to the south, Raisen to the southwest, Vidisha to the west, and Ashoknagar to the northwest. As of 2011 it is the third most populous district of Madhya Pradesh, after Indore and Jabalpur.
 
Sagar District is an extensive, elevated and in parts tolerably level plain, broken in places by low hills of the Vindhyan sandstone. It is traversed by numerous streams, chief of which are the Sunar, Beas, Dhasan and Bina rivers, all flowing in a northerly direction towards the valley of the Ganges. In the southern and central parts the soil is black, formed by decaying trap; to the north and east it is a reddish-brown alluvium. Iron ore of excellent quality is found and worked at Hirapur, a small village in the extreme north-east. The district contains several densely wooded tracts, the largest of which is the Ramna teak forest preserve in the north.

Sagar History

Sagar owes its importance to having been made the capital of the Maratha governor Govind Pant Bundele who established himself here in 1735. By a treaty concluded with the Maratha Peshwa in 1818, at the conclusion of the Third Anglo-Maratha War, the greater part of the present district was made over to the British. The town became the capital of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories, and then attached to the North-Western Provinces. The Saugor and Nerbudda Territories later became part of the Central Provinces and Sagar District was added to Jabalpur Division. During the Revolt of 1857 the whole district was in the possession of the rebels, except the town and fort, in which the British were shut up for eight months, until relieved by Sir Hugh Rose. The rebels were totally defeated and British rule restored by March, 1858. In the early 20th century Sagar had a British cantonment, which contained a battery of artillery, a detachment of a European regiment, a native cavalry and a native infantry regiment. Upon India's independence in 1947, the former Central Provinces and Berar became the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.