Bahmani Sultanate - History

History

Soon after Muhammad Tughlaq left Daulatabad, the city was conquered by Zafar Khan in 1345. Independence from Delhi was immediately declared and Khan established a sultanate of his own. Zafar Khan, a Turkish or Afghan officer of unknown descent, had earlier participated in a mutiny of troops in Gujarat. He probably did not feel too safe in Daulatabad, so he shifted his capital two years later to Gulbarga (Karnataka). This town is located in a fertile basin surrounded by hills. The mighty citadel of the sultan exists to this day. Not far from this place was the capital of the Rashtrakutas, Malkhed or Manyakheta, which shows that this area was ideally suited as a nuclear region of a great realm.

Zafar Khan, also known as Bahman Shah, became the founder of an important dynasty which ruled the Deccan for nearly two centuries. He had to fight various remnants of Muhammad Tughlaq’s troops, as well as the Hindu rulers of Orissa and Warangal who had also expanded their spheres of influence as soon as Muhammad had left the Deccan. The rajas of Vijayanagar had established their empire almost at the same time as Bahman Shah had founded his sultanate; they now emerged as his most formidable enemies. The Bahmani sultans were as cruel and ferocious as the Delhi sultans, at least according to contemporary chronicles. Bahman Shah’s successor, Muhammad Shah (1358–73), killed about half a million people in his incessant campaigns until he and his adversaries came to some agreement to spare prisoners-of-war as well as the civilian population. Despite their many wars, Sultan Muhammad Shah and his successors could not expand the sultanate very much: they just about managed to maintain the status quo. Around 1400 the rulers of Vijayanagar, in good old Rajamandala style, even established an alliance with the Bahmani sultans’ northern neighbours – the sultans of Gujarat and Malwa – so as to check his expansionist policy. But in 1425 the Bahmani sultan subjected Warangal and thus reached the east coast. However, only a few years later the new Suryavamsha dynasty of Orissa challenged the sultanate and contributed to its downfall.

In the fifteenth century the capital of the Bahmani sultanate was moved from Gulbarga to Bidar. The new capital, Bidar, was at a much higher level (about 3,000 feet) than Gulbarga and had a better climate in the rainy season, but it was also nearly 100 miles further to the northeast and thus much closer to Warangal. Bidar soon was as impressive a capital as Gulbarga had been. Anastasy Nikitin, a Russian traveller who spent four years in the sultanate from 1470 to 1474, left us a report which is one of the most important European accounts of life in medieval India. He highlighted the great contrast between the enormous wealth of the nobility and the grinding poverty of the rural population.

The most important personality of this Bidar period of the Bahmani sultanate was Mahmud Gawan, who served several sultans as prime minister and general from 1461 to 1481. He reconquered Goa, which had been captured by the rulers of Vijayanagar. The sultanate then extended from coast to coast. Gawan also introduced remarkable administrative reforms and controlled many districts directly. State finance was thus very much improved. But his competent organisation ended with his execution, ordered by the sultan as the result of a court intrigue. After realising his mistake the sultan drank himself to death within the year, thus marking the beginning of the end of the Bahmani sultanate.

After Gawan’s death the various factions at the sultan’s court started a struggle for power that was to end only with the dynasty itself: indigenous Muslim courtiers and generals were ranged against the ‘aliens’ – Arabs, Turks and Persians. The last sultan, Mahmud Shah (1482–1518) no longer had any authority and presided over the dissolution of his realm. The governors of the four most important provinces declared their independence from him one after another: Bijapur (1489), Ahmadnagar and Berar (1491), Bidar (1492) and Golconda (1512). Although the Bahmani sultans lived on in Bidar until 1527, they were mere puppets in the hands of the real rulers of Bidar, the Barid Shahis, who used them so as to put pressure on the other usurpers of Bahmani rule.

Bijapur proved to be the most expansive of the successor states and annexed Berar and Bidar. Ahmadnagar and Golconda retained their independence and finally joined hands with Bijapur in the great struggle against Vijayanagar. Embroiled in incessant fighting on the Deccan, Bijapur lost Goa to the Portuguese in 1510 and was unable to regain this port, even though attempts at capturing it were made up to 1570. The armies of Vijayanagar were a match for the armies of Bijapur. However, when all the Deccan sultanates pooled their resources Vijayanagar suffered a crucial defeat in 1565. Subsequently the Deccan sultanates succumbed to the Great Mughals: Ahmadnagar, being the northernmost, was annexed first; Bijapur and Golconda survived for some time, but were finally vanquished by Aurangzeb in 1686–7.

The Deccan sultanates owed their origin to the withdrawal of the sultanate of Delhi from southern India and they were finally eliminated by the Great Mughals who had wiped out the sultanate of Delhi some time earlier. The role which these Deccan sultanates played in Indian history has been the subject of great debate. Early European historians, as well as later Hindu scholars, have highlighted the destructive role of these sultanates which were literally established on the ruins of flourishing Hindu kingdoms. Muslim historians, by contrast, have drawn attention to the fact that in art and architecture – indeed, Anastasy Nikitin’s report praised Bijapur as the most magnificent city of India.