Summary: In this paper, an adaptive sliding mode controller for a novel class of fractional-order chaotic systems with uncertainty and external disturbance is proposed to realize chaos control. The bounds of the uncertainty and external disturbance are assumed to be unknown. Appropriate adaptive laws are designed to tackle the uncertainty and external disturbance. In the adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) strategy, fractional-order derivative is introduced to obtain a novel sliding surface. The adaptive sliding mode controller is shown to guarantee asymptotical stability of the considered fractional-order chaotic systems in the presence of uncertainty and external disturbance. Some numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ASMC scheme.