History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c29.26

v1.c29.26

The murder of the great Musalman general and statesman Khwājah-i-Jahān Maḥmūd Gāwān Gīlānī on the 5th April 1481 caused a complete paralysis of Musalman activities in the Deccan for nearly a quarter of a century. His murder was followed by the death of the last real Bahmanī Sulṭān, Muḥammad III, on the 26th March 1482, who was succeeded by the weak and imbecile Maḥmūd Shāh Bahmanī. The real cause of the murder of Maḥmūd Gāwān was the attribution of treachery to him by his enemies of the Deccanī party at the Court of Bidar. Niẓām-ul-mulk Ḥasan Baḥrī forged a letter supposed to have been written by Maḥmūd Gāwān to Purushottamadeva, in which it was stated that he was tired of the tyranny and ill-treatment of Muhammed III and was ready to join the Hindu army. If *Firishta's* account be correct then Purushottama, shorn of the greater part of his empire was still regarded as formidable by the Musalmans of the Deccan. We do not know what happened to the Kṛṣṇā-Godāvari *doāb* after the death of Muhammad III. At that time, according to *Firishta*, Niẓām-ul-mulk Ḥasan Baḥrī had been permitted to appoint his son Mālik Aḥmad to be his deputy at Rājamahendri, as his own presence was considered necessary at Court. The old actors now retire from the political arena on the eastern coast. Niẓām-ul-mulk Ḥasan Baḥrī is murdered and his son Niẓm-ul-mulk Aḥmad retires to the south-west to carve out an independent kingdom for himself in the Mahārāṣṭra. Sulṭān Maḥmūd Bahmanī had to undertake a campaign in Telingana immediately after his accession and before the murder of Niẓām-ul-mulk Ḥasan. The silence of the *Burhān-i-Ma'āṣir* about the result of this campaign is a damning proof of its failure. Hindu records prove that, within six years of the death of Muhammad III Bahmanī, Purushottama had overrun the whole of the Godāvarī-Kṛṣṇa doāb and driven out the Musalmans from their coveted post of Koṇḍaviḍu. The reconquest of the Godāvarī-Kṛṣṇa doāb and Guntur district is proved by two inscriptions, one of which was discovered at Koṇḍaviḍu¹ and the other at some unknown place in Telingana, which was published for the first time in the Transactions of the Literary Society of Madras in 1827.²