The Delhi Sultanate had attained its greatest territorial extent under Muhammad Tughluq, when it stretched over virtually the entire Indian subcontinent. But it was fancy rather than earnest purpose that motivated Muhammad in his conquests, and the final consequence of the venture, as in nearly everything else he did, was the opposite of what he desired, for the mammoth expansion of its territory made the empire ungovernable, and eventually, towards the end of his reign, led to the beginning of its disintegration. Though this process was interrupted during the reign of Firuz Tughluq—who sensibly focussed his attention on governing efficiently what remained of the empire, rather than on recovering the lost provinces—the atrophying of the empire accelerated after his death, so that by the end of the Tughluq dynasty, the Sultanate had shrunk in size to a tiny state, covering just the city of Delhi and its suburbs. There was some revival of the fortunes of the Sultanate under the Sayyid and Lodi dynasties, but the fate of the kingdom was finally sealed by the invasion of Babur in 1526.
The history of India during almost the entire period of the Delhi Sultanate was one of incessant wars, rebellions and internecine conflicts. The number of these rebellions and conflicts multiplied several times during the final phase of the Delhi Sultanate, when the subcontinent fragmented into numerous kingdoms, which constantly engaged each other in war.
The story of these warring splinter kingdoms, many of them quite small and transient, is dreary. In most cases what we know of their history is a bare list of their kings, the rebellions they faced, and the battles they fought. And even the veracity of these incidents is in many cases uncertain, as their accounts vary from chronicler to chronicler, depending on their partisan affiliation. No worthwhile story can be told of them. The process of the fragmentation of the Sultanate, and the perpetual clashes between these fragments that went on during this period, are, as historical trends, very significant, but the details of the history of the numerous individual kingdoms are of little significance. The pattern of events is important, but not the details of individual events.
THE MOST NOTABLE of the numerous successor kingdoms of the Delhi Sultanate were Sind, Multan, Rajput principalities, Gujarat, Malwa, Khandesh, Jaunpur, Kashmir, Bengal, Orissa, Telingana, Bahmani, and Vijayanagar. Some of the kings of these states were legendary characters, of varied and rich talents, and they deserve to be noticed. One of these notable kings was Rana Kumbha, the mid-fifteenth century ruler of the Rajput kingdom of Mewar. He was a celebrated playwright, an eminent literary critic who wrote an acclaimed commentary on Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda, and was a knowledgeable patron of musicians and architects. Unfortunately, he later went insane and was assassinated by his son.
Equally notable was Sultan Mahmud Begarha of Gujarat, though for entirely different reasons. A late contemporary of Rana Kumbha, Begarha’s very appearance was bizarre. He was a gigantic man, with a beard that reached down to his waist, and a moustache that was so long that it had to be pulled up over both sides of his face and tied into a coiffure. Also, he had a gargantuan appetite, to match his size. And, most curious of all, he took a swig of poison with his meals, which turned his breath, sweat, spittle, semen, urine and faeces deadly poisonous. Not surprisingly, Begarha’s sexual appetite matched his size, and he is said to have kept several thousand women in his harem—he needed so many of them, for every woman he slept with died soon after the coitus, poisoned by his deadly ejaculation.1
Among the provinces of the Delhi Sultanate, the one that occupied the most unique position was Bengal, which pulsed to a rhythm somewhat different from that of the other regions of the empire. Bengal had always enjoyed a fair amount of autonomy, because of its ethnic and cultural distinctiveness, and its great distance from Delhi. And it invariably broke free from the Sultanate at the first sign of political debility in Delhi. The region also went through some very peculiar political convulsions during the medieval period. And it has the distinction of being the only medieval Muslim state ever to be ruled by a Hindu. According to Ferishta, the de facto ruler of Bengal in the early fifteenth century was a Hindu zamindar named Ganesa.
Ganesa exercised regal powers for about seven years, but apparently without assuming the royal title. But his son, who became a Muslim, did ascend the throne, and the dynasty remained in power for nearly a quarter century, but was eventually ousted by a member of the resurgent old dynasty. After this, in the late fifteenth century, Bengal was ruled by Ethiopians for a few years, and then by an Arab.
As in Bengal, the politics of Kashmir too did not quite conform to the Indo-Gangetic Plain pattern. Buddhism had been the dominant religion of Kashmir for many centuries, but it virtually disappeared from there in early medieval times. The state however came under a Buddhist king briefly in the early fourteenth century, when Rinchana, an invader from western Tibet, established his rule there. Rinchana was however a Buddhist only nominally, and was quite savage in his conduct—once, while suppressing a rebellion, he not only impaled the rebels but ‘ripped open with sword the wombs of the wives of his enemies’ and tore out the foetuses in them. But at the other end of the political spectrum, Kashmir in the fifteenth century had the distinction of having had one of the most liberal and tolerant Muslim rulers of medieval India, Zaynul Abidin, who rebuilt some of the Hindu temples demolished by his predecessor, prohibited cow slaughter, permitted sati, allowed the Hindus who had been forcibly converted to Islam to revert to their ancestral faith, and encouraged Brahmins to occupy high official positions.
OF ALL THE many independent kingdoms that emerged out of the fragmented Delhi Sultanate, the most important were two peninsular kingdoms, Bahmani and Vijayanagar, both founded at around the same time: Vijayanagar in 1336 and Bahmani a decade later, in 1347. The histories of these two kingdoms, like that of most other Indian kingdoms of this age, are marked by periodic internal turmoils, internecine conflicts, and endless wars with their neighbours. But unlike the histories of most other kingdoms of the age, which are bare lists of events, there is a good amount of detailed information about these two states and their rulers, in the accounts of Muslim chroniclers, as well as of foreign travellers who visited the region at this time, so their stories can be told in some detail.
Of these two kingdoms, the Bahmani Sultanate endured as a unified state for only about a century and a half, till 1490, and then gradually broke up into five independent kingdoms. However, titular Bahmani sultans continued to occupy their throne till 1527, so that the Sultanate may be said to have endured nominally for 180 years. Vijayanagar endured longer as a unified state, for 229 years, till 1565, when the armies of a league of Deccani sultans in a joint campaign routed the Vijayanagar army in a decisive battle and reduced the kingdom to the status of a minor state. Eventually, even this truncated kingdom fragmented into a number of independent principalities. However, the last reigning dynasty of Vijayanagar survived till the mid-seventeenth century, ruling over Chandragiri, a small realm in South India, so the history of Vijayanagar may be said to have lasted in all for 300-odd years. In the end nearly all the peninsular kingdoms, of rajas as well as of sultans, were obliterated during the tidal sweep of the Mughal empire into the peninsula in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The primary activity of the Bahmani and Vijayanagar kings, as well as of the kings of their successor states, was to wage war against each other, and this went on all through their history. These were singularly savage wars, involving the slaughter of very many thousands of people, soldiers as well as civilians. According to Ferishta, during the reign of the mid-fourteenth century Bahmani sultan Muhammad Shah ‘nearly 500,000 unbelievers fell by the swords of the warriors of Islam, by which the population of the Carnatic was so reduced that it did not recover for several ages.’
Curiously, these wars were fought not to exterminate the enemy, but to gather plunder and to collect tribute—and, most importantly, to vaingloriously demonstrate the military prowess of kings. It was a game, but a savage game. Some districts of the enemy territory were sometimes annexed by the victor, but there was hardly ever any annexation of the whole enemy kingdom. For instance, the only major territory that changed hands back and forth, again and again, during the numerous wars between Vijayanagar and Bahmani kingdoms was the fertile and mineral rich Raichur Doab between Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers. And, although the warring peninsular kings usually belonged to rival religions, Hinduism and Islam, this divergence was hardly ever a decisive factor in their relationships, though a religious colouration was sometimes given to their wars, to rouse the zeal of the soldiers, and to justify the brutal reprisals that the adversaries inflicted on each other. Indeed, Hindu and Muslim rulers at times allied with each other to wage wars against the states ruled by kings of their own religion.
THE BAHMANI KINGDOM had in all eighteen sultans in its 180-year long history, though its last five sultans were mere figureheads. The kingdom was founded during the political turmoil of the closing years of the reign of Muhammad Tughluq, when several of his provincial chieftains rebelled against him and founded independent kingdoms. One such chieftain was Hasan Gangu, who seized control of Daulatabad and set himself up as an independent ruler there. On his investiture he took the title Ab’ul Muzaffar Ala-ud-din Bahman Shah, so the kingdom he founded came to be known as the Bahmani Sultanate.
There is considerable uncertainty about Hasan’s background. According to a fascinating but improbable story told by Ferishta, Hasan was originally a farm labourer, who one day, while ploughing his master’s field on the outskirts of Delhi, dug up a copper pot full of gold coins, and he dutifully took it to the landlord, a Brahmin named Gangu. And Gangu, awestruck by Hasan’s probity, took him to the sultan, who then rewarded him by appointing him a captain in his army. The Brahmin then predicted, on the basis of the astrological calculations he made, that Hasan would one day become a king. And this destiny Hasan eventually fulfilled.
Other medieval sources tell a less romantic but more vaunting story, and trace Hasan’s ancestry to the ancient Persian king Bahman. Ferishta however dismisses this story as a fabrication by the sycophantic courtiers of the sultan. ‘I believe his origin was too obscure to be traced,’ Ferishta states, and goes on to assert that Hasan took the appellation Bahman as a ‘compliment to his former master . . . the Brahmin, a word often pronounced as Bahman. The king himself was by birth an Afghan.’
Hasan ascended the throne in August 1347 and ruled for eleven years. A short while after his accession he shifted his capital from Daulatabad to the southern city of Gulbarga, presumably to be further away from Delhi. Over the next few years he consolidated his position by launching a number of military campaigns, to subdue refractory chieftains, to expand his territory, to exact tribute, and to seize plunder and war materials. The perennial conflict between the Bahmani Sultanate and the Vijayanagar kingdom also began during the reign of Hasan, in the very second year of his reign. This was followed by another clash five years later. The results of these campaigns are given differently by the two kingdoms, each claiming victory over the other. However that may be, by the end of Hasan’s reign the Bahmani Sultanate covered a fairly large area in central Deccan, from the Tungabhadra northward up to the Penganga, and from the Telingana Plateau westward up to the Arabian Sea, covering parts of Marathi, Kannada and Telugu linguistic regions. Hasan regarded his military achievements to be grand enough for him to assume the title Second Alexander and stamp it on his coins, probably in imitation of Ala-ud-din Khalji.
HASAN DIED IN 1358, aged 67, after a prolonged illness, and was succeeded by his eldest son Muhammad Shah I. Muhammad’s mettle was tested right at the beginning of his reign by the Hindu kingdoms of Warangal and Vijayanagar, each impudently demanding that he should surrender certain territories to it. Muhammad met that insolence with an even greater insolence on his part, by treating the two rajas as his vassals, and accusing them of neglecting to send him, their overlord, the customary presents on his accession. He then demanded that they should therefore send to him, in reparation for their discourtesy, all their elephants loaded with treasures. Warangal’s response to this was to send an army to seize the territory it demanded from the sultan. But the raja was defeated in the ensuing battle, and he had to purchase peace by sending to the sultan a large quantity of gold coins and several war elephants. The peace between them did not however last long, and hostilities between the two kingdoms broke out again and again in the following years. The raja was the loser in all those battles, and he had to surrender to the sultan the fortress of Golconda, and even his treasured turquoise throne, which thereafter became the throne of the Bahmani kings.
Bukka, the Vijayanagar king, too had no success against Muhammad. The raja invaded the Raichur Doab soon after Muhammad’s accession, hoping to annex that rich region to his kingdom. But on Muhammad’s impetuous advance against him, Bukka, ‘not withstanding his vast army consisting of 30,000 cavalry, besides infantry,’ hastily retreated, reports Ferishta. But the raja left behind a good part of his camp, presumably to entice the enemy soldiers to plunder the camp, and thus distract them from pouncing on him. The Bahmani army then, according to Ferishta, swept into the defenceless camp, and ‘put to death, without distinction, men, women, children, free and slave, to the number of 70,000 souls.’
The sultan then crossed the Tungabhadra into Vijayanagar territory. Meanwhile Bukka reassembled his scattered forces and turned to confront Muhammad. The ensuing battle was hard-fought and lasted from dawn till evening, in which the Bahmani army suffered heavy losses. Its wings were routed early on and their commanders killed, but its centre held, and in the end it prevailed over the Vijayanagar army by the effective use of its artillery— manned by European and Middle Eastern gunners—and by the headlong charge of its cavalry. Bukka then retreated into the fortified city of Vijayanagar. Muhammad did not have the means to storm the city, so he turned to ravage the countryside, indulging in unconscionable, indiscriminate slaughter of thousands and thousands of people.
This carnage forced Bukka to sue for peace. During the ensuing peace negotiations, the Vijayanagar envoys expostulated with the sultan about the slaughter of civilians by his army. ‘No religion requires the innocent to be punished for the crimes of the guilty, more especially helpless women and children,’ they submitted. They then suggested that since Bahmani and Vijayanagar kingdoms were likely to remain neighbours for many generations, it would be desirable that ‘a treaty should be made between them not to slaughter helpless and unarmed inhabitants in future battles.’ Muhammad, according to Ferishta, was ‘struck with the good sense of this proposal, [and he] took an oath that he would not thereafter put to death a single enemy after a victory, and would also bind his successors to observe the same line of conduct. From that time to this, it has been the general custom in the Deccan to spare the lives of prisoners of war, and not to shed the blood of an enemy’s unarmed subjects.’
Unfortunately, this humane undertaking was not kept up by Muhammad’s successors, or by the Vijayanagar rajas. Pillaging and slaughtering the common people wantonly was the routine rather than the exception in medieval Indian wars, and neither Bahmani nor Vijayanagar would ever altogether cease committing such excesses.
Muhammad himself however maintained peace in the latter years of his reign. His focus during this period was on improving the administration of the Sultanate and on promoting culture. He made several changes in the administrative system of the Sultanate, and gave his provincial governors a great amount of autonomy, but ensured their discipline and subordination by regularly touring through the provinces. He also took care to improve the law and order in the state, and is said to have secured its roads by executing some 20,000 brigands. In the field of culture, Muhammad’s patronage turned Gulbarga into a major centre of culture and learning in India. And it was under his patronage that Deccani architecture acquired its distinctive style, as in the great mosque he built in Gulbarga.
Muhammad died in 1375, and was buried beside his father. ‘He was,’ comments Ferishta, ‘respected in his life, and after his death remembered on account of his virtues.’ And on his tomb was engraved this solacing aphorism: ‘All is vanity!’
MUHAMMAD WAS SUCCEEDED by his son Ala-ud-din Mujahid, a handsome man of awesome physical prowess. But he was ill-fated, for after a brief reign of three years he was assassinated by his cousin Daud, who then ascended the throne. But Daud himself was assassinated within a few weeks by Ala-ud-din’s partisans, who then raised Daud’s brother, Muhammad, to the throne. The reign of Muhammad II was largely peaceful and lasted nineteen years. He was a rather unusual ruler for that age and place, for he was a learned man—lauded as an Aristotle by his courtiers—and a man of peace and culture, who showed a genuine concern for the welfare of his subjects, such as providing famine relief—though only for Muslims—and by establishing several orphanages and free schools.
Muhammad II was succeeded by his eldest son Ghiyas-ud-din, a seventeen-year-old youth, but he was blinded and overthrown within two months by Tughalchin, the chief of the Turkish slaves in the royal service, who then raised the sultan’s younger brother Shams-ud-din to the throne. But the arrangement lasted only five months, as the new sultan in turn was blinded and overthrown by his cousin Firuz Shah, who then ascended the throne.
The quarter-century-long reign of Firuz was the most engaging period in the history of the Bahmani Sultanate. Firuz, like his uncle Muhammad II, was a highly cultured, talented and liberal monarch. He was a linguist and a gifted calligrapher, and a keen and knowledgeable patron of literature, art and music, who delighted in the company of writers and intellectuals. A keen student of astronomy, he had to his credit the building of a major observatory near Daulatabad.
According to medieval chronicler Tabataba, Firuz was ‘a good, just, generous king, who supported himself by copying the Koran, and the ladies of whose harem used to support themselves by embroidering garments and selling them.’ This is quite probably an idealized account. The reality would not have been quite so edifying. Still, there is no doubt that Firuz was a highly successful monarch, who had substantial accomplishments to his credit in nearly every sphere of government. Ferishta describes him as the greatest of the Bahmani kings.
In administration, Firuz had the wisdom and broadmindedness to appoint a good number of Hindus, particularly Brahmins, to high positions in government, and that no doubt improved the efficiency of his administration. Firuz was equally successful in his military campaigns. For three decades since Muhammad Shah’s invasion of Vijayanagar in 1367, there had been no major military conflict between the two Deccani kingdoms, but the wars resumed in earnest during the reign of Firuz. The aggressor this time was king Harihara II of Vijayanagar, who in 1398 invaded the Raichur Doab with a mammoth army of about 30,000 cavalry and 900,000 infantry. Advancing north through the Doab, he deployed his forces along the southern bank of the Krishna, his army covering a vast area measuring roughly 27-by-27 kilometres, according to medieval Muslim chroniclers. The size of the Vijayanagar army, and the land area it covered, are no doubt vastly exaggerated by these writers, to glorify the victory of their hero over such immense odds. In contrast to the vast Vijayanagar horde, the Bahmani army deployed against it is said to have been a cavalry force of just 12,000.
WHATEVER THE ACTUAL strength of the rival forces, Firuz would have had only a much smaller army than that of Harihara. In the face of the massive deployment of the Vijayanagar army along the Krishna riverbank it would have been suicidal for the Sultanate army to cross the river and engage the enemy. Some means therefore had to be found to divert the attention of the Vijayanagar forces, to enable the Sultanate army to cross the river safely. In that predicament one of Firuz’s officers suggested a clever stratagem to him. This officer, Siraj-ud-din, was an expert juggler, and was also proficient in music and dance, and he offered to infiltrate into the Vijayanagar camp with a small troupe of followers in the guise of wandering minstrels, and cause some turmoil there, taking advantage of which Firuz could then cross the river and surprise the enemy, it was suggested.
The plan worked out perfectly. Siraj-ud-din and a band of two dozen companions entered the periphery of the Vijayanagar camp one day, and gradually, over several days, gained such a high esteem as entertainers that they were summoned to perform before Harihara’s son in the army camp. That the entertainers were Muslims roused no suspicion, for the Vijayanagar army itself had a good many Muslim soldiers and officers in it. On receiving the prince’s invitation, Siraj-ud-din sent a secret message to Firuz informing him of the developments and requesting him to be ready to cross the river and attack the Vijayanagar army during the chaos he would cause in their camp.
As usual, Siraj-ud-din’s performance was given at night, and it involved, among several other items, a display of startling skills with sword and dagger. As the prince and his cohorts relaxed watching the show, Siraj-ud-din and his comrades suddenly pounced on them and cut them down, then killed the royal bodyguards, and, in the ensuing confusion, escaped from the camp. Soon, as the news of the incident spread, and along with it several fantastic rumours, the Vijayanagar camp was thrown into utter turmoil. Taking advantage of this, the Bahmani army crossed the Krishna, and at dawn stormed into the Vijayanagar camp. Harihara, grieving over the death of his son, and faced with the disorder in his camp, was in no position to stand and fight, so he quickly withdrew to Vijayanagar, his capital, carrying his son’s body with him. Firuz chased him in hot pursuit, plundering the countryside all along the way, and this forced Harihara to purchase peace from Firuz by paying him a very substantial indemnity.
After this, Firuz was for a while engaged in campaigns in the north of his kingdom, to consolidate his power. Then he once again turned against Vijayanagar. There is an engaging romantic legend associated with this campaign. The story centres on Parthal, the stunningly beautiful daughter of a poor goldsmith in Mudgal, a town in the Raichur Doab. On hearing about her great beauty, Devaraya I, who had succeeded Harihara to the throne of Vijayanagar, demanded her for his harem. But the girl declined the proposal. So Devaraya, enraged, swept into the Doab with a small contingent of 5000 horse, and sent a band of his soldiers to abduct the girl. But by the time the soldiers reached Mudgal, the girl and her parents had fled north across the Krishna, so the contingent vented its frustration by pillaging the region before returning to Vijayanagar. Parthal was eventually married to Firuz’s son, Hasan Khan.
FIRUZ USED DEVARAYA’S intrusion into the Raichur Doab as an excuse to mount a fresh invasion into Vijayanagar. In the ensuing battle, fought beside the city of Vijayanagar, Firuz was defeated by Devaraya, and he himself was wounded. He then fell back to his fortified camp some distance away from the city, where he was able to defend himself successfully against Devaraya’s repeated attacks. He in turn then sent his soldiers to ravage and despoil the countryside all around. Devaraya then, to protect his people, sent envoys to Firuz to arrange peace, and it was concluded on the terms dictated by Firuz, under which Devaraya agreed to pay a huge sum as indemnity to the sultan, and also to give him a daughter in marriage with suitable endowments.
Ferishta offers a detailed account of the marriage, which throws interesting sidelights on the social practices of the age. According to Ferishta, ‘though the rajas of Carnatic had never yet married their daughters except to persons of their own caste, and giving them to strangers was highly disgraceful, yet Devaraya, out of necessity, complied [with the demand of Firuz], and preparations for celebrating the nuptials were made by both parties . . . [By then] both sides of the road between [Vijayanagar] city and the sultan’s camp . . . were lined with shops and booths, in which jugglers, buffoons, dancers, and mimics of Carnatic displayed their feats and skill to amuse passengers.’
The princess was then ceremoniously taken to the sultan’s camp, where presumably a Muslim marriage ceremony was performed. A few days after the marriage, the sultan along with his bride set out for Vijayanagar, to visit the raja. On the way the couple were formally received by the raja, and he escorted them to the city with great pomp. ‘From the gate of the city to the palace, a distance of six miles, the road was spread with cloth of gold, velvet, satin, and other rich stuffs. The two kings rode on horseback together, between ranks of beautiful boys and girls, who waved plates of gold filled with incense and silver flowers . . . Upon their arrival at the palace gate, the sultan and the raja dismounted from their horses and moved into a splendid palanquin, set with valuable jewels, and in it they were carried together to the apartments prepared for the reception of the bride and bridegroom . . . The sultan, after being treated with royal magnificence for three days, took his leave of the raja, who pressed upon him richer presents than given previously, and accompanied him for four miles on his way, and then returned to the city.’ Firuz had expected the raja to accompany him all the way to his camp, and was upset that he did not do this, so the enmity between the two persisted.
FIRUZ WAS IN many ways an admirable ruler, sagacious, spirited and enterprising. But he was also addicted to carnal indulgences. He drank heavily, perhaps for relief from his many onerous duties, and he is said to have maintained a harem of 800 women of different nationalities. This self-indulgent lifestyle eventually ruined his health and he became, as Wolseley Haig puts it, ‘a jaded and feeble voluptuary.’ In the end, being no longer able to function effectively as a ruler, he was forced to abdicate the throne in favour of his brother Ahmad. This was in September 1422. Firuz died the following month—or was probably strangled or poisoned, according to some sources.
Ahmad was in every respect quite unlike his suave brother, and was rather rustic in his outlook and lifestyle. But he was considered a saint—he was in fact called vali (saint) by the common people—and was given to ostentatious displays of his saintly powers. Thus, when the kingdom was once ravaged by a severe drought, he devoutly climbed to the top of a hill near his capital, and there, before the awed eyes of the assembled multitudes, prayed for rain—and indeed rain clouds presently appeared scudding over the horizon, and there was a heavy downpour.
Saint or not, Ahmad was as aggressive and brutal towards his neighbours as any other Bahmani sultan, and he waged several successful wars against them—against Warangal, Malwa, Gujarat, and, as usual, against Vijayanagar, which was the perennial adversary of Bahmani sultans. Ahmad’s very first military campaign, right after his accession, was against Vijayanagar. For this, he led an army of 40,000 cavalry, and encamped on the northern bank of the Tungabhadra at his chosen ford, preparing to invade Vijayanagar. Devaraya II, the king of Vijayanagar, countered that move by assembling, on the southern bank of the river, an immense force of about a million soldiers, consisting of cavalry, infantry and gunners. That blocking deployment of the Vijayanagar army made it far too risky for the sultan to attempt to cross the river there. He therefore sent a contingent of his army at night some distance upstream, to cross the river secretly and suddenly fall on the rear of the Vijayanagar army. This surprise attack threw the Vijayanagar army into disarray, taking advantage of which the main body of the Bahmani army crossed the river, engaged the enemy in battle, and routed it.
What followed was unprecedented even in the history of the savage wars between these two kingdoms. ‘Ahmad Shah . . . overran the open country, and wherever he went, he put to death men, women and children, without mercy,’ writes Ferishta. ‘Wherever the number of the slain amounted to 20,000, he halted for three days, and made a festival in celebration of the bloody event.’ It was as if Ahmad meant to exterminate a whole people. He also destroyed the Hindu temples he came across along the way, and deliberately slaughtered very many cows, to outrage and mortify Hindus. Leaving thus a trail of wanton destruction and senseless carnage, Ahmad advanced on Vijayanagar city. There the raja, Devaraya II, appalled by the woes of his subjects, purchased peace by paying a substantial tribute to the sultan. And Ahmad, to heap on the raja an abject humiliation on top of his shame of military rout, insisted that he should be escorted part of the way into the Sultanate by the raja’s son. The raja had no alternative but to comply. Fortunately for Vijayanagar, this was the only war that Ahmad waged against it.
There was substantial expansion in the territory of the Bahmani Sultanate during Ahmad’s reign, particularly towards the east, through his annexation of Warangal. This eastward expansion prompted the sultan to shift his capital north-eastwards, from Gulbarga to Bidar. The charm of Bidar’s environment and its relatively salubrious climate also attracted the sultan.
The last years of Ahmad were spent whirling around, engaged in several futile wars, mainly against Gujarat and Malwa, in none of which he was particularly successful, and in some cases he had to accept humiliating terms for peace. At last, in April 1436, when the sultan was around 64 years old, death relieved him of his miseries and frustrations. His son and successor, Ala-ud-din Ahmad, built, over the sultan’s grave in the outskirts of Bidar, a magnificent tomb richly adorned with elegant calligraphic inscriptions.
THE ACCESSION OF Ala-ud-din to the throne was contested by his brother Muhammad, who demanded that he should be given an equal share in the honours and privileges of the sultan, or, alternately, that the kingdom should be divided between them. Ala-ud-din could not possibly concede those extravagant demands, so the dispute had to be settled in the battlefield. In the ensuing battle the sultan defeated his brother, but generously pardoned him, restored him to favour, and assigned to him the governorship of the critically important Raichur Doab. The brothers lived amicably thereafter.
The war between Bahmani and Vijayanagar resumed during the reign of Ala-ud-din with the usual savagery. Typical of the brutality of these conflicts was the warning that, according to Ferishta, Ala-ud-din once issued to Devaraya II, the king of Vijayanagar, that if the raja executed the two Muslim officers whom he had captured in a battle, he (the raja) would have to pay a heavy price for it, ‘as it was a rule of the princes of his family to slay a 100,000 Hindus in revenge for the death of a single Muslim.’
Ala-ud-din’s character was a curious mixture benevolence and tyranny, and he was cavalier and mercurial in his policies and actions. Equally, he was indifferent in observing the routine formalities expected of a sultan; he even relegated the public audience—which royal custom required him to hold every day—to just once in four or five months. And he spent a good amount of his time in the harem, where he had collected some thousand women.
Ala-ud-din preened himself as a just ruler, and he took the title Al-adil: The Just. Yet he allowed himself to be manipulated, perhaps while in an inebriated state, by a group of Deccani nobles to cause the murder of several foreign nobles, of whose growing prominence the Deccani nobles were envious. Characteristically the sultan then swung around in contrition and summarily executed the leaders of the Deccani party.
There were various other similar oddities in the reign of Ala-ud-din. For instance, he had to his credit the building of a large hospital in his capital where free treatment and medicines, even free food, were provided to poor patients. At the same time he was, according to Ferishta, very harsh in his treatment of vagrants, whom he punished ‘by employing them in removing filth from the streets, in dragging heavy stones, and in performing all manner of laborious work, in order that they might reform, and either earn their livelihood by industry, or quit the country altogether.’ Similarly, though Ala-ud-din presented to the public a sternly orthodox Muslim persona, his private life did not quite match that image. He drank wine himself, but severely punished others for drinking. ‘If any person, after admonition and moderate correction, was convicted of drinking wine, it was decreed that molten lead should be poured down his throat, whatever might be the rank of the offender,’ records Ferishta.
For some mysterious reason Ala-ud-din was always reluctant to hold durbar, and he finally had an excuse for dispensing with it altogether. This was related to his execution of a number of foreigners in his service. Some of these officers were Sayyids, the presumed descendants of prophet Muhammad, and their execution greatly scandalised many. And one day an Arab trader, hearing that the sultan had taken the title Al-adil, shouted at him in the open court: ‘No, by god! Thou art not just, generous, clement, or compassionate, O tyrant and liar! Thou hast slain the pure seed of the prophet!’ The sultan is said to have wept in humiliation at the charge, and retired to his private chambers, never again to emerge from there.
ALA-UD-DIN DIED IN 1458, and was succeeded by his eldest son Humayun, who turned out to be a vicious, sadistic monster. There were several rebellions during his brief reign of three years, but they were all suppressed by him with revolting brutality. The first of these rebellions was by Hasan Khan, one of Humayun’s brothers, who escaped from the prison where he was confined, and attempted to take over Bidar, the capital, when Humayun was away on a campaign. The kotwal (chief police officer of the city) repulsed the attack, but Hasan managed to escape. Meanwhile Humayun stormed back into the capital, where he vented his wrath on the kotwal, for allowing Hasan to escape. The officer was locked up in an iron cage in public view, and there bits of his flesh were cut off every day and offered to him to eat as the only food he could have during the few days he lived under the torture.
Meanwhile Hasan was captured and brought to Bidar, where he, along with his family members, dependants and followers were put to death in various barbarous ways. ‘Humayun Shah, now abandoning himself to the full indulgence of his cruel propensities, and mad with rage, directed stakes to be set up on both sides of the king’s chowk (square), and caused vicious elephants and wild beasts to be placed in different parts of the square,’ writes Ferishta. ‘In other places cauldrons of scalding oil and boiling water were also prepared as instruments of torture. The king, ascending a balcony in order to glut his eyes on the spectacle, first cast his brother, Hasan Khan, before a ferocious tiger, which soon tore the wretched prince to pieces and devoured him on the spot . . . [Several of Hasan’s] associates were then beheaded in the king’s presence, and the women of their families, innocent and helpless, were dragged from their houses and were violated and ill-treated in the palace square by ruffians, in a manner too indecent to relate . . . About seven thousand persons, including women and servants, none of whom had even the most remote involvement in this rebellion, besides menials, such as cooks, scullions, and others, were put to death, some being stabbed with dagger, others hewn in pieces with hatchets, and the rest flayed by [pouring on them] scalding oil or boiling water.’
‘From this moment Humayun threw off all restraint, and seized at will the children of his subjects, tearing them from their parents to gratify his passions,’ continues Ferishta. ‘He would frequently stop nuptial processions in the street and seize the bride, and then send her to the groom’s house after enjoying her. He was in the habit of putting the females of his own house to death for the most trivial offences. When any of the nobles were obliged to attend him, so great was their dread that they took leave of their families, as if preparing for death.’ Fittingly, he himself was stabbed to death by one of his African maidservants when he was in a drunken stupor.
The only commendable act of Humayun was his appointment of Mahmud Gawan as his chief minister. Gawan, an Iranian migrant of exceptional ability and prudence, had arrived in Deccan during Ala-ud-din’s reign, and he would serve the Sultanate most creditably in top administrative and military positions for well over three decades, through the reigns of four sultans, exerting a mature, stabilising influence on the turbulent politics of the Bahmani kingdom.
HUMAYUN WAS SUCCEEDED by his son Nizam Shah, a boy just eight years old. The accession of the boy king was seen by some of Bahmani’s neighbours—Orissa, Warangal and Malwa—as an opportunity for making inroads into its territory, but they were all easily repulsed by the Bahmani army. Nizam had the advantage of being under the tutelage of his sagacious and resourceful mother, who, along with Mahmud Gawan as the chief minister of the state, efficiently managed the affairs of the state at this time.
Nizam unexpectedly died after a reign of just two years—he died on the very day of his marriage. He was then succeeded by his nine-year-old younger brother, Muhammad Shah III, who ruled the kingdom for nearly two decades. During almost his entire reign Muhammad had the benefit of having Gawan as his chief minister, who introduced several essential administrative reforms in the state, and also considerably expanded its territory through effective military action against its neighbours. Unfortunately, the very success of Gawan damned him in the eyes of his envious rivals in the government, and they instigated the sultan to execute him by levelling a false charge of treason against him.
The tragedy was the culmination of the long-festering strife between Deccani and Paradesi (foreign) officers of the kingdom, involving professional rivalry compounded by racial and sectarian hostility. This rivalry had a long history going back to the time well before the arrival of Gawan in the kingdom, and it would persist long after his death. Bahmani sultans generally tended to favour foreigners—Turks, Arabs, Mughals, and Persians—for appointment in top administrative and military positions, because they were generally more cultured and efficient than Deccanis, who were rather crude, and were often unlettered. Typically, Ala-ud-din Ahmad, the mid-fifteenth century sultan of the kingdom, had a large number of foreigners in his service, and they were assigned the place of honour in the court, on the right side of the throne, while the native officers were kept on the left side. The antagonism between the two groups was also fuelled by their sectarian differences—while most of the foreigners were Shias, Deccanis were predominantly Sunnis. The Deccani faction also had the support of Abyssinians in the royal service.
The rivalry between the two groups often led to riots. Once, during the reign of Nizam Shah, ‘the Deccani troops, the Abyssinians, and the mob, entered the fort and put to death every foreigner they found within, amounting to nearly 300, among whom were several persons of high rank and eminent character,’ reports Ferishta. Later, during the reign of Mahmud, Muhammad III’s successor, there was a 20 day long riot in Bidar between Deccanis and Paradesis. And on a subsequent occasion, the foreigner group set about, with the Sultan’s connivance, slaughtering the Deccanis for three whole days.
Gawan was a victim of this long-festering tussle for power between Paradesis and Deccanis, although he personally remained fair and neutral in this conflict, and occupied himself solely with the task of running the government efficiently. But his very success rankled Deccanis, who saw him as an obstacle to their rise to the top echelons of the government. Moreover, the administrative reforms that Gawan introduced, though they improved the efficiency of the government, curtailed the powers of the provincial chiefs, who were mostly Deccanis. They then forged a letter to implicate Gawan in a conspiracy against the sultan, and showed it to him. And the sultan—who himself was probably squirming under Gawan’s dominance—immediately, without any proper enquiry, summoned Gawan to him, and peremptorily asked him what the proper punishment for a traitor was. To this Gawan replied: ‘Death by the sword.’ The sultan then flung the forged letter at Gawan. On reading it, Gawan said: ‘This is manifest forgery. The seal is mine, but not the writing.’ But the sultan, angrily disregarding this protest, peremptorily ordered him to be executed right away. Gawan then knelt down and recited a short prayer, and, as the sword fell, he exclaimed: ‘Praise be to god for the blessing of martyrdom!’’
This was in April 1481. Gawan was then 78 years old, and probably did not have very many more years to live, so he could die without regrets. But his execution portended ill for the Sultanate, for several of the foreign nobles, who were the strongest pillars of the state, then left for their provinces, and so did several of the conscientious Deccani nobles, and this presaged the disintegration of the Sultanate. Muhammad himself presently realised the dreadfulness of what he had done, and, overcome with grief and remorse, soon drank himself to death, screaming in his dying moment that Gawan was rending his heart.
MUHAMMAD DIED IN March 1482, aged just 28. After him, five of his descendants followed him on the throne of Bidar, but they were kings only in name, being mere puppets in the hands of domineering nobles. Besides, the Sultanate during this period gradually broke up into four independent kingdoms: Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Berar and Golconda. The rulers of these kingdoms continued to profess allegiance to the Sultan in Bidar, but that was only a formality, and involved no real subservience. And though the sultan continued to sit on the throne, he had virtually no power at all even in Bidar, the royal capital. The last of these titular sultans was Kalimullah, and when he died in 1528, Bidar lost even its nominal overlordship, and it became just another kingdom, like the other four kingdoms into which the Bahmani state had split.
This splintering of the Sultanate multiplied by several times the points of friction and conflict in the peninsula, and the scene became quite chaotic, as endless wars now raged between these splinter kingdoms, as well as between them and the other peninsular kingdoms, all confusedly slithering over each other in ever-shifting alliances and hostilities, like a bunch of rat-snakes in a snake-pit. Religion played hardly any role in this—Muslim kingdoms often allied with Vijayanagar against fellow Muslim kingdoms; and sometimes Vijayanagar factions sought the help of Muslim kingdoms in their internal conflicts.
There was however one decisive battle in this seemingly never-ending melee, when four of the successor states of the fragmented Bahmani Sultanate— Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda and Berar—united to give a virtual deathblow to Vijayanagar in a battle fought at Talikota in January 1565. 1 But after the Talikota battle, the Muslim states once again turned snarling on each other. And so it went on for several more decades, till the seventeenth century, when the Mughals, who had been pushing into the peninsula for some years, finally obliterated most of the kingdoms in the region.
Such is the story of the Bahmani Sultanate. It is not an edifying tale. However, the Deccan sultanates did make some noteworthy contributions in the field of culture, by blending Indian and Persian streams in art and architecture, and by giving a strong local flavour to their rule. For instance, Ali Adil Shah, the late-sixteenth-century sultan of Bijapur, integrated his rule with the life of the local people by patronising Telugu culture, and by giving land grants to Brahmins and Hindu temples, and by not enforcing the collection of jizya. He was also an ardent patron of learning, who maintained a large library of books on various subjects, and was so avid about books that he carried several of them with him in boxes even when he travelled.
In administration the Deccan sultanates followed the usual pattern of Muslim states, the only notable developments being the reforms introduced by Gawan. Even these were not radical reforms, but meant only to tighten the prevailing system, so as to curb the power of provincial governors who often functioned as virtual potentates. Gawan divided the existing four provinces of the Bahmani Sultanate into eight provinces so as to reduce the area under the rule of each governor, and to make the administration of the provinces more manageable. He also placed some districts in the provinces directly under central administration, which collected for itself the revenue from them. Further, Gawan sought to curtail the military power of the governors by allowing them to occupy only one fort in their territory, the other forts being kept under the direct control of the sultan. And the royal officers who were given land assignments as pay were made accountable to the sultan for their income and expenditure.
AN EVENT OF critical historical importance of this age was the arrival of European naval fleets in the Indian seas. A Portuguese fleet under the command of Vasco-da-Gama arrived at the Kerala port city of Calicut (Kozhikode) in 1498, nearly three decades before the invasion of India by Mughals under Babur. Then gradually, over the next few decades, the Portuguese entrenched themselves in a few enclaves on the coast of peninsular India. Their main interest was in overseas trade, and this brought them into conflict with Arabs, who had till then dominated the Arabian Sea trade. In a series of naval campaigns in the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese broke the Arab sea power, and that enabled them to virtually monopolise the sea trade around India.
This development made it imperative for the peninsular kingdoms to maintain good relationship with the Portuguese, to ensure that the critically important overseas supply of horses from the Middle East and Central Asia for their armies was not disrupted. And this in turn enabled the Portuguese to play a role, though only a minor role, in local political affairs. They also did some missionary work at this time, converting a number of local Hindu families to Christianity, and even inducing some families of the ancient Syrian Christian community of Kerala to shift their affiliation from the Syrian Orthodox Church to the Roman Catholic Church, which the Portuguese claimed was the only true Christian church.
None of this particularly bothered Indian kings. But when the Portuguese intruded into the Vijayanagar kingdom and took to temple looting, it became imperative for Ramaraya, the king of Vijayanagar, to chastise them. He then launched a dual attack on their settlements, in Goa (on the west coast) and in San Thome (on the east coast), plundering the residents there and exacting punitive tribute. That apparently taught the Portuguese a lesson, for they desisted from giving any more trouble to the raja. The Portuguese in any case had no future in India. Though they dominated the Indian seas for about a century, they made no notable territorial gains in the subcontinent, and in the late sixteenth century, as the Portuguese power declined in Europe, so did their politico-economic role everywhere in the world, including India.