The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c27.115

v3.c27.115

The employment of foreign troops in the Deccan, already mentioned, raised a question which shortly after this time became acute, and remained a source of strife as long as any independent Muslim state existed in the south. This was the feud between the Decanis and the Foreigners. The climate of India is undoubtedly injurious to the natives of more temperate climes who adopt the country as a permanent domicile, and the degeneracy of their descendants is, as a rule, rather accelerated than retarded by unions with the natives of the soil. In northern India such degeneracy was retarded by the influx of successive waves of conquest and immigration from the north-west, and the country, from the time of its first conquest by the Muslims, seldom acknowledged for long rulers who could be regarded as genuine natives of India; but the Deccan was more isolated, and though a domiciled race of kings succeeded in maintaining their power for more than a century and a half they looked abroad for their ablest and most active servants and their bravest soldiers. Most of Bahman Shāh’s nobles were foreigners. His Afghān minister was succeeded by a Persian from Shīrāz, and he again by a native of Basrah. As the descendants of foreigners became identified with the country they coalesced with the natives, and acquired their manners, the process being sometimes retarded by the avoidance of intermarriage with them; and their places were taken by fresh immigrants, who were usually employed, in preference to the less virile and energetic natives, in difficult and perilous enterprises, in which they generally acquitted themselves well, and the Deccanis found themselves outstripped at the council board as well as in the field, and naturally resented their supersession; but it was not until the reign of Ahmad, who was the first to enlist large numbers of foreigners in the rank and file of his army, that the line between them was clearly drawn. War was openly declared between them when Malik-ut-Tujjār attributed his defeat by the troops of Gujarāt to the cowardice of the Deccanis, and the feud thus begun was not confined to intrigues for place and power, but frequently found expression in pitched battles and bloody massacres, of which last the Foreigners were usually the victims, and contributed in no small measure, first to the disintegration of the kingdom of the Bahmanids, and ultimately to the downfall of the states which rose on its ruins.