South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c12.18

c12.18

*Rebellion in Ma’bar.*—What happened in Bengal happened also in distant Ma’bar. An army sent to punish the rebels remained there and did not return, and Jalalu-d-din Ahsan Khan set up independently there.¹ We have coins of Muhammad bin Tughlak of dates A.D. 1330 and 1333; but those of date A.D. 1335 and after, are issued in the name of the rebel, so that this rebellion in South India must have taken place in or a little before A.D. 1335. According to Ibn Batuta, Muhammad himself marched to put down this rebel. At Badrakot (Bider) pestilence broke out in camp, he himself having had an attack of the disease. A rumour got abroad he was dead and even Deogir broke out in rebellion. When he reached Daulatabad, the rebel fled to Konkan. These rebellions followed, according to Ibn Batuta that of the king's cousin Bahau-d-din Gushtasp the muster-master under Ghyasu-d-din,¹ now Governor of Sagar near Gulbarga as otherwise the friendly hospitality of the Raja of Kampili at such a great cost would be difficult to understand. Ferishta actually notes that the place was in the ‘Carnatic’ and that Bahau-d-din was defeated before Deogir.² Muhammad bin Tughlak set forward to suppress the rebellion, defeated the rebel at Deogir and sent forward an army to lay siege to Kampili, where Bahau-d-din had fled for shelter. The fugitive was given asylum, and the Rajah resolved to stand the siege and take the consequences rather than surrender the fugitive. When the siege was prosecuted with vigour and had reached the last stage, the Raja sent forward Bahau-d-din to his neighbour Ballāḷa Rāja of Dvārasamudra, and killing his women and younger children, rushed upon the besiegers and died fighting. Eleven of the sons of the late Raja were among the prisoners taken who were compelled to become Muhammadans. Some among them rose to important positions in the service of Muhammad.³ Before the army set forward on the march to Dvārasamudra, the Hoysala king found it prudent to surrender the fugitive Bahau-d-din who was brought before the Sultan, and by his orders was flayed alive. His skin was stuffed and sent to the various provinces, in the same manner as was done in the case of the rebellious Governor of Bengal. The Sultan perpetrated the atrocity of even cooking the flesh of the cousin and serving it to the wife and children of the victim. These incidents are ascribed to the date equal to A.D. 1342 by Ferishta. He is wrong by over seven years, as the coins of Madura Sultans prove beyond a doubt. Ibn Batuta appears to place the rebellion of Bahau-d-din quite early in the reign, if he meant any sequence in his narrative.¹ It was during his stay in Deogir while on this campaign that the thought struck the Sultan that Deogir would be much more centrally situated for the capital of his vast empire than Delhi, according to Ferishta ² who seems to make Muhammad’s invasion of A.D. 1327-28 the same as the one against Bahau-d-din.