Sukhothai (, ) is a province in lower northern Thailand. Neighboring provinces are Phrae, Uttaradit, Phitsanulok, Kamphaeng Phet, Tak, and Lampang. Sukhothai is located in the Yom river basin which has served as an important lifeline of the region since antiquity. The name Sukhothai comes from Sanskrit meaning 'the dawn of happiness'.
The province is home to the capital city of the namesake 13th-century Sukhothai Kingdom, which is traditionally considered the first state of the Thai people. The ruins of the historical cities of Sukhothai; its capital, and Si Satchanalai; its important city to the north, make up the group of monuments registered as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. There has been evidence of human settlement in the area dating back to the later Iron Age. The ancient city of Sukhothai can be traced back to the 12th century around the same period as the reign of Jayavarman VII, before King Si Inthrathit founded the namesake kingdom, making the city its capital.
Rice production makes up majority of the province's economy, followed by sugarcane, durian, and tangerine productions. The province is considered a "minor tourist destination", receiving more than a million visitors in 2024, generating over THB 250 million. Tourist attractions include Sukhohtai and Si Satchanalai Historical Parks; both of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, two national parks, and one wildlife sanctuary. Visitors also come for its traditional production of Sangkhalok ceramic ware, and its annual celebration of Loy Krathong festival. UNESCO included the province as a part of the Creative Cities Network for the City of Crafts and Folk Arts in 2019.
Etymology The modern-day province of Sukhothai was named after the Sukhothai Kingdom, which its capital city of the same name is located in the province. The kingdom's name comes from Sanskrit sukha ( 'happiness') + udaya ( 'rise', 'emergence'), meaning 'dawn of happiness'.
Geography
Sukhothai is located in lower Northern Thailand and shares its borders with; clockwise from north, Phrae, Uttaradit, Phitsanulok, Kamphaeng Phet, and Lampang. The provincial capital, Sukhothai Thani is north of Bangkok and south of Chiang Mai. The province covers and the total forest area is or 29.6 percent of provincial area. The province is characterized by mostly mountainous and hilly topography at 59% of the area, while the remaining 39% are lowland plains. The highest point is Khao Luang range in the Ramkhamhaeng National Park at approximately 1,200 meters above sea level. The range has four main peaks: Khao Phu Kha, Khao Phra Mae Ya, Khao Chedi, and Pha Narai.
Most of the province lies within the basin of the Yom, its main river, while some eastern parts of Si Satchanalai and Si Nakhon belong to the Nan basin. The Yom flows for through five of the province's nine districts from its source northward in Phayao, southward to Bang Rakam in Phitsanulok. The river overflows yearly causing floods during the monsoon season with only one sluice at Ban Hat Saphan Chan in Sawankhalok district being incapable of handling the massive water flow during the peak monsoon. During the monsoon season, water level in flood-prone areas can reach up to 1.20 meters, lasting 4 months. Many canals and streams arise from the Yom supplying most of the province, the majority of which are on the west bank of the river. The most important of which include the Mae Ramphan, Sarabop, Sam Phuang, and Mae Rak.
The province has a tropical savanna climate with three seasons; summer (February to May), monsoon season (Mau to October), and Winter (November to January).
History
Settlement and early centres
Earliest evidence of human settlement in modern-day Sukhothai province can be dated back to the late Iron Age with iron smelting as a main drive. Survey in the basin of the Mae Lamphan (), in the hills of Ban Dan Lan Hoi district on the Lampang border, has recorded more than thirty sites with settlement over 3,000 years old. Among them are ancient mines at Ban Wang Hat () and Ban Taling Chan (), and more than a hundred iron-smelting furnaces. Excavation at one smelting site beside the Kong Khai stream in 2018 placed production between 1128 and 1280 by thermoluminescence and radiocarbon. Graves of the late Metal Age beside the smelting grounds held iron machetes, chisels, axes and spears of the forms made there.
By the 9th century CE, the settlement expanded to the hillside of the Khao Luang mountain range and grew into bigger towns with Dvaravati cultural influences. The area came under cultural sphere of Khmer Empire by the 12th century CE, as evidenced by the construction of a Prang on Khao Pu Cha (Khiri Mat district) and (Sukhothai Historical Park). The city of Sukhothai itself can be traced back to the 12-th century CE, during the reign of Jayavarman VII of Khmer. At the time the city was built centered around the (Sukhothai Historical Park). In the north of the province, at Chaliang on the Yom, the Fine Arts Department dates the first occupation to the 3rd and early 4th centuries and reports a burial ground in use from about the mid-5th to the mid-11th century. Its grave goods include terracotta bars of a type known from Dvaravati sites and carnelian beads heat-treated by an Indian technique, which the department reads as contact with India through coastal Dvaravati towns. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit count some thirty moated sites in the plain around the town, resembling those of the Chao Phraya plain and the Isan plateau over the previous five centuries. They also note earthworks west of the town that direct water down from the hills, in what they call the characteristic style of Tai settlement. Two earth dams west of Si Satchanalai, 750 and 1,065 m long, have been read as irrigation works of the same kind. Thanon Phra Ruang, the line of some 123 km linking Si Satchanalai and Kamphaeng Phet to Sukhothai, has been read as a canal rather than a road, though Chusak notes that the question is unsettled.
How far Angkorian authority reached is disputed. Baker and Pasuk find no administrative trace of it west of the Khmer country. The plain has yielded none of the temple-endowment inscriptions characteristic of Angkorian provinces, and Jayavarman VII's hospital foundations reach no further west than Prachin Buri in eastern Thailand, which they take to show cultural influence rather than administration.
Wyatt traces the ancestry of the rulers of late-13th-century Sukhothai to people who came down the Nan from the U River valley, noting that the Sukhothai dialect stands close to the Phuan of Xiang Khouang. He reads their movement as the working of an ultimogeniture in which elder sons were sent south to find their own towns while the youngest inherited. They moved into country already held by Mōn and Khmer speakers. He also treats Sukhothai and Si Satchanalai as a paired-city polity rather than as a capital and a dependency. That Si Satchanalai and Chaliang are one place was settled only slowly. Damrong sent an officer in 1915 to look for Chaliang at Mueang Kaliang Suan Taeng in modern Si Nakhon district and accepted that identification at first. Between 1940 and 1942 he concluded that the two names belonged to one city. The Chaliang centre stands about 1.5 km downstream of the walled city, inside a loop of the Yom, and the walled city has a laterite wall on an earth bank with two further ditch-and-bank lines outside it. Mueang Bang Khlang, on the boundary of the modern Sawankhalok and Thung Saliam districts, lay between them and is named in several Sukhothai inscriptions. A brick wall called Ho Rop closes the pass on the Thung Saliam boundary with Thoen, and is read as the western checkpoint on that side.
Reporting Roxanna Brown, David K. Wyatt places the earliest unglazed wares from the Si Satchanalai kilns as early as the mid-12th century. He notes that the oldest of them are dug into the high banks of the Yom, where fuel could be brought by boat. On his reading the industry was not yet a trade of international proportions in the first half of the 13th century. It must have grown from local to regional scale between about 1150 and 1250 to reach the size it had by the 14th, when more than 100 kilns were firing at any one time. The kiln field lies at Ban Ko Noi and Ban Pa Yang on both banks of the Yom. Chusak Satienpattanodom counts not fewer than 200 kiln remains across some five to six square kilometres, the oldest of them tunnel kilns cut into the ground. He dates the earliest stoneware from them to the 10th or 11th century, and would call it Chaliang ware rather than Mon ware.
The kingdom
The kingdom is conventionally dated from the 13th century, although the town itself is older. The exact year is unknown, but according to the Fine Arts Office it was between 1238 and 1257. It has long been described as the first independent Thai kingdom, founded by Pho Khun Si Inthrathit after the defeat of the Khmers. More recent work reads the events of 1238 differently, as a victory by one local lord associated with Angkor over another holding a Khmer title. The victor, Pha Mueang, had himself received a title, a regalia sword and a princess in marriage from the ruler at Angkor. Etymological analysis of Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong's name finds no element of rank in it, and the term Khom is not a reliable ethnic marker. Sukhothai enjoyed a golden age under their third king, King Ramkhamhaeng, who was credited with creating the Khmer-derived Thai alphabet which is essentially the same as that in use today. He also laid the foundation for politics, the monarchy and religion, as well as expanding its circle of influence. Sukhothai was later ruled by many kings. The province is most known for the historic city of Sukhothai, the capital of the Sukhothai Kingdom. It is about 12 km from the modern New Sukhothai city. Not far from Sukhothai are the Si Satchanalai Historical Park and the Kamphaeng Phet Historical Park. Both were cities in the former Sukhothai kingdom and at the same time period. Sukhothai Kingdom was merged into Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1438. Srisak Vallibhotama, reading inscriptions 46 and 93, counts Sukhothai among seven modern provinces that covered the kingdom's core. The town mutinied against Ayutthaya in 1462, and Borommatrailokkanat moved his court to Phitsanulok in the following year.
Modern history The province was at first known as Sawankhalok; it was renamed to Sukhothai in 1939.
Protected areas Ramkhamhaeng National Park in the south and Si Satchanalai National Park in the northwest are the two national parks located in the province, which falls under the supervision of regional office 14 (Tak). The two national parks saw 22,767 and 13,617 visitors respectively in 2024. Tham Chao Ram Wildlife Sanctuary, comprising , is the province's only wildlife sanctuary.
Demographics Per 2020 census, Sukhothai province has a population of 587,883; consisting of 284,949 male and 302,934 female. Mueang is the biggest district making up approximately 17.5% of the population, while Si Nakhon is the least populous district comprising approximately 4% of the province. Per a 2025 report, 460 Thai citizens from Sukhothai province are working or have applied for a working visa abroad. The majority of which, 211, are in Taiwan.
In 2016, approximately 2,300 inhabitants are registered ethnic minorities, consisting of Hmong (33.9%), Karen (33.6%), Mien (27.5%), and Lisu (4.9%). All of them reside in Si Satchanalai district
Economy
The Gross Provincial Product (GPP) as of 2022 valued at THB 53,021 million. Majority of Sukhothai province's economy is made up of agriculture sector at 50% of its GPP, following by service sector at 42%. Rice production is the most important part of its economy, valued at more than THB 7,000 million as of 2020–2021. Sugarcane production follows at over THB 3,200 million, durians at THB 828 million and tangerines at THB 825 million.