The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c28: Chapter XVI. The Decline and Fall of the Kingdom of the Deccan. A.D. 1436–1490
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c28
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Chapter XVI. The Decline and Fall of the Kingdom of the Deccan. A.D. 1436–1490
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Ahmad the Saint was succeeded by his eldest son, ‘Alā-ud-dīn Ahmad, who surrounded himself with Foreigners and provided for his brother Muhammad by sending him to recover five years’ arrears of tribute due from Devarāya II of Vijayanagar. Muhammad recovered the arrears but his head was turned by his success, and he was led astray by evil counsellors who persuaded him that his father had intended to give him a share of the kingdom and demanded that his brother should either admit him to an equal share in the government, and the honours of royalty, or divide the kingdom, giving him half. His demands were rejected and his brother defeated him, but pardoned him and, on the death of their younger brother, Dāūd, appointed him to the government of the Rāichūr Doāb, where he remained faithful until his death.
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Early in March, 1437, Dilāvar Khān was sent into the Konkan to establish the king’s authority, and reduced the Hindu chieftains of that region to obedience. The raja of Sangameshwar, besides paying tribute, surrendered his beautiful and accomplished daughter to ‘Alā-ud-dīn, who married her and bestowed on her the name of Zībā Chihra (‘Beautiful Face’). After this expedition Dilāvar Khān resigned the lieutenancy of the kingdom and was succeeded by the eunuch Dastūr-ul-Mulk.
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The new minister, who had the faults of his unfortunate class, alienated the nobles by his arrogance, which led to his ruin. Humāyūn, the king’s eldest son, a brutal youth who lived to become the disgrace of his house, desired him to attend to some particular business and when the eunuch procrastinated took him to task for his negligence. He insolently replied that he would not tolerate the prince’s interference in affairs of state and Humāyūn employed one of the king’s esquires to assassinate him, and protected the murderer. ‘Alā-ud-dīn, who in the early days of his reign was averse from taking life, was content, at his son’s intercession, to leave the assassin to his care.
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The king’s preference for his Hindu wife aroused the bitter jealousy of Āghā Zainab, who complained to her father, Nasīr Khān of Khāndesh, of the indignity to which she was subjected, and he invaded Berar to avenge his daughter’s wrongs, and succeeded in seducing from their allegiance many of the officers serving in that province, whose fidelity to their master was not proof against their veneration for the descendant of the Caliph ‘Umar.
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Khān Jahān, governor of Berar, withdrew into the fortress of Narnāla, and was there besieged by the troops of Khāndesh; and the Deccani faction, which had risen to power in the capital after the assassination of Dastūr-ul-Mulk and, as Sunnis, respected the descendant of the second Caliph, advised caution in dealing with the aggressor, lest he should be joined by the kings of Gujarāt and Mālwa, but Malik-ut-Tujjār, governor of Daulatābād and leader of the Foreigners, volunteered to take the field, provided that all the Foreign troops were placed at his disposal and that he was not hampered by native troops, to whose pusillanimity he attributed the mishap at Bombay. The Deccanis, resenting these aspersions, agreed that all the Foreign troops should be sent forward as an advanced guard, hoping that they would be destroyed, and that the king should follow with the rest of the army.
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Malik-ut-Tujjār left Daulatābād with 7000 Foreign horse, and, leaving the Deccani troops to guard the frontier, entered Berar. He was joined at Mehkar by Khān Jahān, who had escaped from Narnāla and was sent to Ellichpur and Bālāpur to check the incursions of the Korkus, who were in alliance with Nasīr Khān, while Malik-ut-Tujjār marched northward to Rohankhed, where the hills of southern Berar descend into the valley of the northern Pūrna, and there attacked and defeated Nasīr Khān, who fled to Burhānpur and thence to Laling, where he took refuge. Malik-ut-Tujjār laid waste the rich plain of Khāndesh, destroyed the public buildings of Burhānpur, and followed Nasīr Khān to Laling. He had now no more than 4000 horse with him, and Nasīr Khān, who had assembled 12,000, attacked him, but was defeated with heavy loss. Malik-ut-Tujjār returned with the spoils of victory to Bīdar, where his success assured the supremacy of his party and gained for it the place of honour at court, on the right hand of the throne, the Deccanis and Africans being relegated to the left.
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Devarāya II of Vijayanagar now reorganised his army by recruiting a large number of Muslims, to whom he gave special privileges, and by discarding the useless and ill-trained troops which had formerly swelled its numbers. It had consisted of 200,000 inferior cavalry and 800,000 worse infantry, but after its reorganisation it consisted of 10,000 mounted foreign archers, and 60,000 Hindu horse, trained to the use of the bow, and 300,000 tolerably well-trained infantry, and the pay of all arms was greatly improved.
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With this force Devarāya, in 1443, invaded the Rāichūr Doāb, captured Mudgal, besieged Rāichūr and Bankāpur, encamped on the Krishna and laid waste the country as far as Bījāpur and Sāgar. On the approach of ‘Alā-ud-dīn he withdrew to Mudgal, and Malik-ut-Tujjār, having compelled the raja’s two sons to raise the sieges of Rāichūr and Bankāpur, rejoined ‘Alā-ud-dīn before Mudgal, where, within a period of three months, as many battles were fought, the Hindus being victorious in the first and the Muslims in the second. In the third Devarāya’s elder son was killed and his troops were driven headlong into the fortress, whither two Muslim officers, Fakhr-ul-Mulk of Delhi and his brother, followed them and were captured and imprisoned, but a message from their master to the effect that the lives of 200,000 Hindus would be required as the price of theirs, so alarmed Devarāya that he sued for peace, which was granted on his promising to make no default in future remittances of tribute.
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‘Alā-ud-dīn, though generally pious and benevolent, gradually overcame his repugnance to taking life. He used wine himself, but prohibited its use by his subjects, and gamblers and wine-bibbers had iron collars riveted on their necks and were compelled to work as scavengers or set to hard labour on the public works; and those who persisted, despite this discipline, in the use of wine, had molten lead poured down their throats. A grandson of the saint Gīsū Darāz, convicted of brawling with a woman of the town, received the bastinado in the market place, and his companion was expelled from the city. The king’s benevolence was displayed in the establishment and endowment at Bīdar of a hospital where food, drugs, and medical treatment were supplied free of charge, and his piety in his love of long sermons and the destruction of idol-temples, from the materials of which mosques were built. He prided himself also on his love of justice, and added *al-‘Ādil* (‘the Just’) to his titles. At the end of his reign an Arab merchant who had been unable to obtain payment for some horses sold to officers of the court, and had also been scandalised by the massacre of the Sayyids and other Foreigners at Chākan, sprang up on hearing the king thus described, and cried, ‘No, by God! Thou art not just, generous, clement, or compassionate. O tyrant and liar! Thou hast slain the pure seed of the prophet and in the pulpit of the Muslims takest to thyself such titles as these!’ The king, weeping bitterly, replied, ‘They will hardly escape from the fire of God’s wrath who give me, in this world and the next, a name as ill as Yazīd’s.’ He then retired to his chamber and left it no more until he was borne forth to the grave. Against his virtues must be set that gross sensuality which his religion permitted, and which he carried to such excess that most of his time was spent among the thousand women collected in his harem, and he so neglected business as to hold a public audience no oftener than once in four or five months.
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During this seclusion the Decanis regained most of the power which they had lost, and Miyān Minullāh, in order to compass the destruction of the Foreigners, organised an expedition for the subjugation of the northern Konkan. Malik-ut-Tujjār, who was appointed to the command, fortified Chākan, which he selected as his base, dispatched expeditions against several minor chieftains, who were reduced to obedience, and personally led a force against one Sirka, whose stronghold was in the neighbourhood, and who was defeated and captured. Malik-ut-Tujjār offered him the choice between Islam and death, and Sirka professed his readiness to change his faith but declared that he could not make an open profession so long as his enemy the raja of Sangameshwar, near Kondhāna, was in a position to punish him. He promised to act as guide and to lead the royal troops to Sangameshwar, and in 1446 Malik-ut-Tujjār set forth on the enterprise.
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The march through the dense forest and over the precipitous slopes of the Ghāts was intensely laborious and the climate was deadly. Malik-ut-Tujjār himself suffered from a severe attack of dysentery, and the army was entirely demoralised. Sirka treacherously informed the raja of Sangameshwar of its plight, and he, with 30,000 men well skilled in mountain warfare, fell upon it at night and slew seven or eight thousand men besides its leader.
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The remnant of the army contrived, with infinite difficulty, to extricate itself from the hills and jungles, and joined those Decanis who had refused to accompany the expedition to Sangameshwar. They advised the fugitives to return to their fiefs and collect fresh troops for the renewal of the war, but the Foreigners returned to Chākan. Some of them had incautiously avowed their intention of informing the king that the disaster had been due to the refusal of the Decanis to support Malik-ut-Tujjār, whereupon the Decanis at once concocted a dispatch attributing it to Malik-ut-Tujjār's own rashness and imputing to the survivors the intention of transferring their allegiance to the enemy. The dispatch was delivered to the king, when he was drunk, by Mushīr-ul-Mulk, the bitterest of the Foreigners' enemies, who persuaded him to give him the command of a force wherewith to punish the fugitives in Chākan. He intercepted all messages which the Foreigners attempted to transmit to the court, lured them from Chākan by means of a forged decree granting them a free pardon and murdered their officers at a banquet. At the same time 4000 Deccani horse fell upon their camp, put to the sword 1200 Sayyids, 1000 other foreigners, and five or six thousand children, and appropriated the wives, daughters, and goods of their victims. Qāsim Beg and two other Foreign officers, whose suspicions had led them to encamp at a distance from the rest, contrived to escape, and, after undergoing great difficulties and hardships, succeeded in conveying to the king a true report of all that had passed. 'Alā-ud-dīn, overcome by remorse, avenged the wrongs of the Foreigners by executing the leaders of the Deccani party and reducing their families to beggary, Qāsim Beg was appointed to the government of Daulatābād, vacant since the death of Malik-ut-Tujjār, and his two companions were promoted to high rank. The Foreign party completely regained its former ascendancy, and in 1451 the king received from the poet Āzarī, in Isfarāyīn, a letter urging him to abandon the use of wine and to dismiss all Deccani officials. He obeyed both injunctions, and henceforth attended personally to affairs of state.
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In 1453 the king received an injury to his leg which confined him to his palace, and rumours of his death were circulated and credited. Jalāl Khān, a Sayyid who had married a daughter of Ahmad Shāh, rose in rebellion in Telingāna, with the object of establishing the independence of his son, Sikandar, in that province. He learned too late that the king yet lived, but might still have been recalled to his allegiance by his promise of forgiveness but for Sikandar, who, having been deeply implicated in the revolt of Muhammad Khān at the beginning of the reign, despaired of pardon for a second act of rebellion. He sought aid, therefore, of Mahmūd I of Mālwa, assuring him that 'Alā-ud-dīn was dead, that the courtiers were concealing his death for their own ends, and that Berar and Telingāna might be annexed to Mālwa without difficulty or opposition. Mahmūd responded to the appeal, and in 1456 invaded Berar, where Sikandar joined him with a thousand horse.
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'Alā-ud-dīn marched against Mahmūd I who, indignant at the deception of which he had been the victim, hastily returned to Mālwa, while Sikandar joined his father at Bālkonda, where both were besieged by Khvāja Mahmūd Gāvān of Gīlān, a foreigner who afterwards rose to the highest rank in the state. They were compelled to surrender and 'Alā-ud-dīn not only pardoned them, but injudiciously permitted them to retain Bālkonda.
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‘Alā-ud-dīn died in 1458, having some time before designated as his heir his eldest son Humāyūn, who bore a reputation so evil that his father had been urged to reconsider his decision, which, however, had never been revoked. On the king’s death a party among the courtiers, headed by Saif Khān, Mallū Khān, and Shāh Habībullāh, the soldier son of Khalīlullah the Iconoclast, enthroned his younger son, Hasan Khān, and the populace assembled for the purpose of attacking Humāyūn in his house and putting him to death, but cowardice was not among the prince’s many faults, and he came forth with his personal guard of eighty horsemen, and cut his way through the crowd to the palace, where the royal troops joined him. He secured his brother’s person, caused Saif Khān to be tied to the leg of an elephant and dragged through the streets until he perished, and imprisoned Habībullāh, but Mallū Khān fled into the Carnatic.
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Humāyūn bestowed his favours chiefly upon the Foreign faction, and appointed Mahmūd Gāvān lieutenant of the kingdom and governor of Bījāpur, conferring on him the title of Malik-ut-Tujjār, but the Deccanis were not entirely excluded from office, and received some appointments.
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Sikandar Khān, who had been with Humāyūn when the mob threatened to overwhelm him, and had contributed materially to his success, was so disappointed at not receiving the government of Telingāna that he joined his father at Bālkonda, again rebelled, and defeated the army of Berar, under Khān Jahān, which was sent against him. Humāyūn marched in person to Bālkonda where Sikandar, on being summoned to surrender, insolently replied that if Humāyūn was son’s son to Ahmad the Saint he was daughter’s son, and demanded the cession of the eastern half of the kingdom. To this there could be but one reply, and Humāyūn sounded the attack. Sikandar was on the point of defeating the royal troops when he was thrown to the ground by an elephant and trampled to death by his own cavalry. His army broke and fled and Humāyūn captured Bālkonda after a week’s siege and imprisoned Jalāl Khān.
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The Hindus of Telingāna, and especially those of the district of Deūrkonda, had generally supported Sikandar, and early in 1459 Humāyūn marched to Warangal and sent a force to reduce Deūrkonda. The garrison obtained assistance from one of the rajas of southern Orissa and Khvāja Jahān the Turk and Nizām-ul-Mulk Ghūrī, who commanded the Muslims, were attacked simultaneously by the garrison and the relieving force, and were utterly defeated, and fled to Warangal. Here Khvāja Jahān basely attributed the disaster to his colleague, who had in fact recommended that the siege should be raised in order that the relieving force might be dealt with singly, and Humāyūn, without investigating the facts, put Nizām-ul-Mulk to death, and the family of the unfortunate officer fled to Mālwa and threw themselves on the protection of Mahmūd I¹. Khvāja Jahān was imprisoned and the king was preparing to march to Deūrkonda when he learned of a rising in his capital. Scald-headed Yūsuf, the Turk, had released the king's brothers, Hasan Khān and Yahyā Khān, Shāh Habībullāh, and Jalāl Khān. The *Kotwāl* had put to death the younger prince, and the aged Jalāl Khān, but the rest of the party, after an abortive attempt to seize the citadel, had fled to Bīr, where Hasan assumed the royal title and appointed Habībullāh and Yūsuf his ministers. Humāyūn left Mahmūd Gāvān in charge of affairs in Telingāna, and returned by forced marches to Bīdar, where he displayed the ferocity which brands his memory. The *Kotwāl*, who had done his best to suppress the rising, was confined in an iron cage and exhibited daily in the city for the remainder of his life, which was not of long duration, for the tyrant caused portions of his body to be cut off daily, and presented to him as his only food. The three or four thousand infantry to whom the defence of the city had been entrusted were put to death with various tortures, and a force was sent to Bīr to suppress the rebellion. The royal troops were defeated, but a second and larger army defeated Hasan, who fled with his adherents towards Vijayanagar. Sirāj Khān Junaidī, governor of Bījāpur, lured them into that fortress by professions of attachment to the prince's cause, and attacked them. Habībullāh was so fortunate as to fall fighting, but the rest were taken and sent to meet their fate at Bīdar, where all suffered in public. The prince was thrown to a tiger, some of his followers were beheaded, their wives and families were dragged from their houses and tortured to death, and seven hundred innocent persons who were connected with Hasan or had been dependent on his bounty were impaled, thrown to beasts, boiled to death, or slowly cut to pieces, joint by joint, and nearly all the descendants of Bahman Shāh were put to death.
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¹ See Chapter xiv.
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Humāyūn's behaviour for the rest of his reign was that of a homicidal maniac. 'The torchbearer of his wrath ever consumed both Hindu and Muslim alike, the broker of his fury sold at one price the guilty and the innocent, and the executioner of his punishment slew whole families for a single fault.' Nobles summoned to court made their wills and bade their families farewell before leaving them, and the inmates of the harem were butchered in mere sportive brutality, but the most hideous of all his acts of oppression were the forcible abduction of the wives and children of his subjects and his exercise of the *droit du seigneur*. He earned the name of *Zālim*, ‘the Oppressor,’ by which he is still remembered by the Deccan, and tormented his subjects until ‘God the Most High, the Most Merciful, and the Succourer of them that seek aid answered the prayerful cries of his people’ and stretched the monster on a bed of sickness. On September 4, 1461, the tyrant died and his people were ‘freed from the talons of his tortures.’ It was understood that he had succumbed to his illness, but the best authority for his reign relates the true story of his death. He recovered, but the inmates of the harem could no longer endure his barbarity, and the eunuch Shihāb Khān suborned an African maid-servant to stab him to death when he was helpless with drink.
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The dome of the Tyrant’s tomb at Bīdar is split, and half of it has fallen away. It is locally believed that this occurred when the monster’s body was placed in it, and that the Almighty refused his remains protection. The accident happened when the building was struck by lightning forty or fifty years ago, but the currency of the legend proves at least that his memory is still execrated.
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He was succeeded by his infant son Nizām Shāh, whose mother, with the assistance of Khvāja Jahān and Mahmūd Gāvān, managed the affairs of the kingdom, but the neighbouring rulers regarded the reign of a child as their opportunity, and the Hindus of Orissa, who were joined by those of Telingāna, invaded the kingdom and advanced to within twenty miles of Bīdar, where they were met by the royal army. Their advanced guard, driven in on to the main body of their army threw them into a panic, and they fled headlong, but the raja of southern Orissa was compelled to pay half a million of silver *tangas* in order to secure his retreat from molestation. The young king had hardly been borne back to the capital when news was received that Mahmūd I of Mālwa, instigated by the family of the murdered Nizām-ul-Mulk, had invaded the kingdom with 28,000 horse¹ and that the Hindus of Orissa and Telingāna had reassembled their forces and were menacing the capital from the east and north-east.
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¹ See p. 357.
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The local troops in Telingāna were instructed to deal with the Hindus while the ministers with the rest of the royal army, carrying with them the young king, met the army of Mālwa in the neighbourhood of Kandhār. The wings of the invading army were put to flight and the day would have been won for the Deccan had not Mahmūd I of Mālwa happened to hit the elephant of Sikandar Khān, the young king’s tutor, in the forehead with an arrow. The beast, maddened with pain, turned and fled, trampling down many in its flight, and Sikandar Khān bore the young king with him from the field. The army of the Deccan, no longer perceiving the royal elephant, began to retire in confusion, and, overtaking the king and Sikandar Khān, bore them back with them to Bīdar. Here Khvāja Jahān threw Sikandar Khān into prison, but his incarceration, owing to the number and influence of his supporters, created dissensions which encouraged Mahmūd of Mālwa to advance on the capital, and the queen-mother carried her son to Fīrūzābād, where he was out of danger. Mahmūd of Mālwa captured the town of Bīdar after a siege of seventeen days, but the citadel held out, and Mahmūd Begarha, in response to an appeal from the young king’s ministers, appeared on the frontier with 80,000 horse, and was joined by Mahmūd Gāvān who, with 20,000 horse placed at his disposal by the king of Gujarāt and a force of equal strength assembled by himself threatened the communications of the army of Mālwa. Mahmūd of Mālwa, thus menaced, retreated, and was much harassed by Mahmūd Gāvān. His troops also suffered severely in their passage through the hills of the Melghāt, into which he plunged in order to shake off his pursuers.
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This discomfiture failed to deter him from invading the Deccan in the following year with 90,000 horse, and he advanced as far as Daulatābād, but the reappearance of Mahmūd Begarha on the northern frontier compelled him to retire to Māndū without having effected anything.
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The youthful Nizām Shāh died suddenly on July 30, 1463, and was succeeded by his brother, aged nine, who ascended the throne as Muhammad III.
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The Foreign party retained its predominance in the state, and the kingdom was administered, as in the preceding reign, by the queen-mother, Khvāja Jahān, and Mahmūd Gāvān, but the ambition of Khvāja Jahān disturbed the harmony which had hitherto prevailed. He aimed at the chief power in the state, and undermined Mahmūd Gāvān’s influence at the capital by employing him continually on the frontier. The queen-mother became suspicious of his designs and persuaded her son to put him to death. When he entered his master’s presence two maidservants of the harem appeared and cried aloud, in accordance with preconcerted arrangements, ‘The matter which was spoken of yesterday should now be taken in hand.’ Muhammad turned to Nizām-ul-Mulk and, pointing to Khvāja Jahān said, ‘This man is a traitor. Slay him.’ Nizām-ul-Mulk seized Khvāja Jahān by the hand, dragged him forth, and cut him to pieces.
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Mahmūd Gāvān, who had devoted such care to the young king’s education that he was the most accomplished monarch who had sat on the throne since the days of Fīrūz, was summoned to the capital and received the titles of Khvāja Jahān and *Amīr-ul-Umarā*. The queen-mother wisely retired from the management of public affairs when her son reached the age of fifteen, and left him in the hands of his advisers, but retained his respect, and was consulted by him throughout her life.
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In 1467 Nizām-ul-Mulk was appointed to the command of the army of Berar and was sent against Kherla, which was in the possession of Mahmūd I of Mālwa. He induced or compelled the governor to surrender the place, but was himself murdered by two Rājputs of the garrison, and Muhammad gained nothing by the campaign, which was terminated by a treaty acknowledging Kherla to be a fief of Mālwa, as in the reign of Ahmad the Saint. The treaty was preceded by protracted negotiations, in the course of which Mahmūd taxed Muhammad with bad faith in violating the treaty which had secured Kherla to Mālwa, but was forced to admit the justice of the retort that he had first violated the treaty of peace between the two countries by twice invading the Deccan during the reign of Nizām Shāh.
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Mahmūd Gāvān yet retained the government of Bījāpur, and in 1469 was sent into the Konkan to reduce to obedience the rajas of Khelna (Vishālgarh), Sangameshwar, and other districts, whose pirate fleets had inflicted much loss on Muslim merchants and pilgrims. The two leading rajas entered into a close alliance and fortified the Western Ghāts, but Mahmūd Gāvān went patiently to work and forced and occupied the passes one by one. He dismissed his cavalry, useless in mountain warfare, and assembled corps of infantry from Junnār, Dābhol, and Karhād. The jungle was burnt and the siege of Khelna was opened and continued for five months, when Mahmūd, wisely shunning the dangers of a campaign in the hills during the rainy season, withdrew into quarters at Kolhāpur, leaving garrisons to hold the passes.
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When the rainy season was past he returned to Khelna and, by tampering with the fidelity of the garrison, succeeded in capturing and occupying the fortress. As the rainy season approached he again retired above the Ghāts, leaving a garrison in Khelna, and, returning when the rains were abated, took Sangameshwar, avenging, as Firishta says, the sufferings of Khalaf Hasan of Basrah. Leaving officers to carry on the administration of his conquests he marched to Goa, then one of the best ports of the raja of Vijayanagar, attacked it by land and sea, and took it. The exploit was celebrated with great rejoicings at Bīdar, both as an important victory over the hereditary enemies of the kingdom and as a boon to Muslim pilgrims and merchants, for the western ports, which might be dominated from Goa, harboured pirates whom their nominal sovereigns might disown at will, while profiting by their depredations.
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Mahmūd Gāvān returned to Bīdar, after more than two years' absence, in the early summer of 1472, and was received with the highest honours by the king and the queen-mother. His slave Khushqadam, who had ably seconded his efforts during the arduous campaign in the Konkan, received the title of Kishvar Khān and was manumitted and ennobled.
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Before the great minister's return news had been received at the capital that the Hindu chieftain of southern Orissa who had vexed the kingdom during the reigns of Humāyūn and Nizām had died and had been succeeded by an adopted son, Mangal, whose title to the throne was contested by the deceased raja's cousin, Hambar. Hambar, having been defeated by Mangal and driven into the mountains, sought aid of Muhammad III, in return for which he promised, on attaining to the throne, to pay tribute. Malik Hasan, surnamed Bahrī¹, the Brāhman of Pāthrī who had been captured during the invasion of Vijayanagar by Ahmad the Saint and brought up as a Muslim, received the title of Nizām-ul-Mulk, and was sent to the assistance of Hambar. The expedition was successful. Mangal was defeated and put to flight and Hambar was placed on the throne and assisted Hasan to reduce Rajamundry (Rājamahendri), the Hindu ruler of which had maintained his independence and had assisted the rajas of southern Orissa in their campaigns against the Muslims. Kondavīr also was captured, and the kingdom of the Bahmanids for the first time extended from sea to sea.
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¹ The origin and meaning of this epithet, which is applied both to Hasan and to his descendants, the Nizām Shāhī kings of Ahmadnagar, are obscure. As written by Muslim historians it is an Arabic adjective signifying 'of, or connected with, the sea,' but Hasan was in no way connected with the sea and the word is never explained as bearing its obvious etymological signification. It is said to be connected with a Hindi word for a falcon, and to have been given to Hasan owing to his having at one time kept the favourite falcon of Muhammad III, but the derivation is unconvincing and fanciful, and the story lacks confirmation. I believe it to be a corruption of an adjective *Bhairavī*, regularly formed from Bhairav, the name of Hasan's father, and Arabicized in accordance with a custom not uncommon in India.
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Malik Hasan, on his return to the capital with his spoils, was received with every mark of distinction and was made governor of Telingāna, now the most extensive of the four provinces. At the same time Fathullāh ‘Imād-ul-Mulk, the other Brāhman who had been captured in Ahmad Shāh’s campaign, was made governor of Berār, and Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān Savāī¹, a Turk², received the government of Daulatābād.
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¹ The meaning of this title, corrupted by the Portuguese into *Sabaio* or *Çabaio*, is also obscure. It has been explained as *Sawāi*, ‘the one and a quarter man,’ i.e. he who is better by one quarter than others—a conceit common enough in northern India, where the Mahārāja of Alwar still bears the title, but peculiar to Hindus, and unusual, if not unknown, in the Deccan. It is otherwise explained as an adjective formed from Sāva, the town in northern Persia where Yūsuf’s youth was spent, but the first syllable of *Sawāi* is short and the second long, whereas in Sāva the first is long and the second short. Moreover, the adjective formed from Sāva takes the form *Sāvaji*.
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² Yūsuf claimed to be a son of Murād II, of Turkey, saved from the customary massacre of the males of the imperial house by the affection of his mother, who caused him to be secretly conveyed from the palace on the accession of his elder brother, Muhammad II, and delivered to a Turkish or Persian merchant of Sāva, who brought him up as his adopted son. There is little or no evidence in support of this legend, and the most that can be said of it is that it involves no impossibilities and may be true; but it is at least equally probable that Yūsuf was a Turk of Sāva. The principal objection to the legend that he was a scion of the imperial house of Turkey is that he was a bigoted Shiah, and was the first Muslim ruler in India to attempt to establish that faith as the state religion in his kingdom.
v3.c28.39
Honours were now fairly evenly divided between the Foreigners and the Deccanis. Of the four great provincial governments two, Gulbarga (with Bījāpur) and Daulatābād, were held by Mahmūd Gāvān and Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān, foreigners, and two, Telingāna and Berar, by Malik Hasan and Fathullāh ‘Imād-ul-Mulk, Deccanis. The leaders of the Foreigners were well disposed towards the Deccanis, and of the latter Fathullāh was a lifelong friend of Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān and was on terms of intimacy with many of the Foreigners, but the crafty, unscrupulous, and ambitious Malik Hasan could not tolerate a Foreigner’s tenure of the first post in the kingdom, and never rested till he had destroyed Mahmūd Gāvān. His ambition was purely selfish, for Mahmūd was free from party spirit, and it was Yūsuf that became the leader of the Foreigners, who flocked around him in Daulatābād and enabled him to complete the subjugation of the northern Konkan, which earned him higher honours than those which had been accorded to Hasan, and the bitter hostility of the latter and of his followers.
v3.c28.40
At the end of the same year the rajas of Belgaum and Bankāpur, instigated by Virupaksha of Vijayanagar, attempted to recover Goa and Muhammad III marched, with Mahmūd Gāvān, to punish them. Birkāna, raja of Belgaum, was besieged in his stronghold and, when the outer defences had been carried and only the citadel remained to him, escaped in disguise and appeared in the Muslim camp in the character of an envoy. It was not until he was in the royal presence that he disclosed his identity and begged for mercy. His life was spared, but Belgaum was annexed and granted to Mahmūd Gāvān, whose fiefs it adjoined, and Muhammad III on entering the fortress, assumed the title of *Lashkarī*, 'the Soldier,' by which he is known in history. After the fall of Belgaum his mother, who had served the state so well, died, and her body was sent to Bīdar for burial while he halted at Bījāpur as the guest of Mahmūd Gāvān.
v3.c28.41
The Deccan now suffered from a terrible famine, the result of the failure of the rains for two successive years. Large numbers died of hunger and of an epidemic of cholera, which usually accompanies or follows a famine in India, and the kingdom was further depopulated by the flight of a large proportion of its inhabitants to Gujarāt and Mālwa, which escaped the visitation. The land lay untilled and cultivation was not resumed until, in the third year, the rain once more fell in abundance.
v3.c28.42
As soon as this calamity was past news was received that the people of Kondavīr had risen against their Muslim governor, an oppressor belonging to the school of Humāyūn, had put him to death, and had delivered the town to Hambar, who, forgetful of his obligations to Muhammad, had accepted the offering and, doubtful of his ability to retain it, had sought help of the raja of Jājpur in Orissa, who invaded Telingāna and besieged Malik Hasan in Rajamundry.
v3.c28.43
Muhammad marched to Rajamundry and relieved Malik Hasan, while Hambar shut himself up in Kondavīr and the raja withdrew to the northern bank of the Godavari, secured his position there by seizing all the boats which could be found, and, finding that nothing was to be gained by lingering in the neighbourhood, retired to Orissa. Muhammad followed him, invaded Orissa in February, 1478, and spent six months in the country, which he laid waste. He was contemplating its annexation when envoys arrived from the raja, bringing numbers of elephants and other rich gifts and charged with expressions of contrition, but Muhammad refused to retreat until the raja, most unwillingly, had surrendered other twenty-five elephants, the best which his father's stables had contained. On his return he besieged Hambar in Kondavīr, and on his surrendering granted him his life, but destroyed the great temple of Kondavīr, built a mosque on its site, and earned the title of *Ghāzī* by slaying with his own hand some of the attendant Brāhmans.
v3.c28.44
He made Rajamundry his headquarters for nearly three years and, having completely subjugated Telingāna, prepared to invade the eastern Carnatic, but, before setting out, provided for the efficient administration of Telingāna by dividing it into two provinces, and appointed Malik Hasan to the eastern, or Rajamundry, division and A‘zam Khān, son of the rebel Sikandar, to Warangal, which became the capital of the western division. The kingdom had outgrown the old provincial system established by the first two kings of the dynasty. Its extension to the sea coast on the west and on the east had doubled the area of the old provinces of Gulbarga and Daulatābād, and very much more than doubled that of Telingāna, the partition of which was part of a scheme for the division of the other provinces; but Malik Hasan, who had hoped to assume the government of the whole vast province, bitterly resented its dismemberment, and resolved to destroy Mahmūd Gāvān, the author of the scheme. He begged that he might be permitted to accompany the king on his expedition into the Carnatic and to leave his son Ahmad as the deputy at Rajamundry. Ahmad bore a higher reputation as a soldier than his father and had been provided with a fief in the Māhūr district of Berar because it had been considered dangerous to employ father and son in the same province, but Hasan’s prayer was granted, and his son was summoned from Māhūr and installed in Rajamundry.
v3.c28.45
Narasimha, whose territory Muhammad invaded, was probably a viceroy or the descendant of a viceroy of the rajas of Vijayanagar, who had extended his power at the expense of his former masters until his territories included the eastern districts of their kingdom and extended on the north to Machchhlīpatan (Masulipatam). Muhammad made Kondapalli his headquarters, and leaving his son Mahmūd, with Mahmūd Gāvān, in that town led a raid to the famous temple of Kānchī (Conjeveram). He rode so hard that of 6000 horse who had set out with him no more than forty, among whom were Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān and Malik Hasan, were with him when he arrived at his destination. Nothing daunted he rode towards the temple, from which emerged ‘many Hindus of devilish appearance, among them a black-faced giant of the seed of demons, mounted on a powerful horse, who, having regarded them fixedly, urged his horse straight at the king.’ While his companions were occupied with other Hindus Muhammad slew this champion and another, and entered the temple, plundered it, and slew the attendant Brāhmans.
v3.c28.46
After resting for a week in Conjeveram Muhammad sent 15,000 horse against Narasimha and, having captured Masulipatam, returned to Kondapalli, where Malik Hasan, Zarīf-ul-Mulk, and the Deccani party lost no opportunity of slandering Mahmūd Gāvān to him.
v3.c28.47
It was at Kondapalli that Mahmūd Gāvān's plan for the partition of the four great *tarafs* or provinces of the kingdom was completed. As Telingāna had been divided into the two provinces of Rajamundry and Warangal, so Berar was divided into those of Gāwīl, or northern, and Māhūr, or southern Berar; Daulatābād into those of Daulatābād on the east, and Junnār on the west; and Gulbarga into those of Belgaum on the west and Gulbarga on the east. At the same time the powers of the *tarafdārs* or provincial governors were curtailed in many ways. Many of the *parganas*, or sub-districts, in the provinces were appropriated as crown lands and removed from the jurisdiction of the governor, and all military appointments which had formerly been part of the governor's patronage, were, with the exception of the command of the principal fortress in each province, resumed by the king. Allowances for the maintenance of troops, whether in cash or in grants of land, had hitherto been calculated at the rate of 100,000 huns for five hundred and 200,000 for 1000 horse. These sums were now raised to 125,000 and 250,000, but on the other hand a system of inspection and control was introduced, and deductions were made on account of men not regularly maintained and mustered. These reforms were most unpopular. The older nobles disliked them because they curtailed the power and diminished the wealth of the provincial governors, and all resented the curtailment of opportunities for peculation. They rendered their author more odious than ever to the Deccani faction, headed by Malik Hasan, who had been the first to suffer by them.
v3.c28.48
The new governments were fairly divided. Fathullāh ‘Imād-ul-Mulk retained Gāwīl, Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān Daulatābād, Malik Hasan Rajamundry, and Mahmūd Gāvān Belgaum, and to the four provinces of Māhūr, Junnār, Gulbarga, and Warangal Khudāvand Khān the African, Fakhr-ul-Mulk the Turk, Dastūr Dīnār the African, and A‘zam Khān the Deccani were appointed. The Deccani faction thus held five of the eight provincial governments, but this advantagew as neutralised by Malik Hasan's hostility to the interloper, A‘zam Khān.
v3.c28.49
The absence of Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān with the field force encouraged Malik Hasan, Zarīf-ul-Mulk, and Miftāh the African, the leaders of the Deccani party, to prosecute their designs against Mahmūd Gāvān. They induced the keeper of his seals, an African, to affix his private seal to a blank paper, on which they wrote, above the seal, a letter to the raja of Orissa, informing him that the people of the Deccan were weary of the tyranny and perpetual drunkenness of their king and urging him to invade the country. The paper was read to the king when he was drunk, and he at once sent for Mahmūd Gāvān, who insisted on obeying the summons, notwithstanding the protests of his friends, who warned him that mischief was brewing. The king made no inquiries and did not even require the production of the messenger with whom the letter was said to have been found, but when Mahmūd appeared roughly demanded what was the punishment due to a traitor. ‘Death by the sword,’ replied the minister, confident in his innocence. The king then showed him the letter, and, having read it, he exclaimed, ‘By God, this is a manifest forgery! The seal is mine, but the writing is none of mine, and I know nothing of the matter.’ The king, disregarding his protestations of innocence, rose to leave the hall and, as he did so, ordered an African named Jauhar to put him to death. The minister knelt down and recited the short symbol of his faith, and cried, as the sword fell, ‘Praise be to God for the blessing of martyrdom!’
v3.c28.50
He was seventy-eight years of age when, on April 5, 1481, he was unjustly put to death, and had served the Bahmanī dynasty with conspicuous ability and unwavering loyalty for thirty-five years. He was generous, charitable, learned, accomplished, and blameless in his private life. His attitude towards the Deccanis might have healed the disastrous feud between them and the Foreigners, but for the inappeasable rancour of Malik Hasan, and his death deprived his master of the only counsellor who united fidelity to ability.
v3.c28.51
The troops and the mob were permitted to plunder his camp, but his own Foreigners rode with all speed to the field force, where they took refuge with Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān, who was also joined by most of the Foreign nobles in the royal camp.
v3.c28.52
The king sent for Nizām-ud-dīn Hasan Gīlānī, the murdered man’s treasurer, and discovered, to his chagrin, that Mahmūd, with all his opportunities for acquiring wealth, had left no hoard, having distributed his income, as he received it, in charity. The faithful servant boldly taxed the king with having shed innocent blood and challenged him to prove his minister’s guilt. Muhammad, too late, commanded his betrayers to produce the messenger with whom the letter had been found, and on receiving no answer hurriedly left the hall of audience, leaving the courtiers trembling with apprehension. On reaching his chamber he gave way to paroxysms of grief and remorse. The body was sent to Bīdar for burial, escorted by the young prince Mahmūd, the king himself being unable to accompany it owing to the refusal of the nobles to march with him. Fathullāh and Khudāvand Khān, both members of the Deccani party, refused even to see him for the purpose of discussing the punishment of the conspirators, and bluntly replied to his summons that they would not trust the murderer of such a minister as Mahmūd, but would shape their conduct by the advice of Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān. Muhammad recalled Yūsuf, but he would not join the royal camp, and encamped apart, with Fathullāh and Khudāvand Khān.
v3.c28.53
The wretched king, thus deserted by the Foreigners and by the respectable portion of the Deccani party, was thrown into the arms of the late minister’s betrayers and compelled to accede to their demands. Malik Hasan became lieutenant of the kingdom and was henceforth known as Malik Nāib, his son Ahmad received his father’s title of Nizām-ul-Mulk and the province of Daulatābād, vacated by Yūsuf, who had decided to take possession of Mahmūd Gāvān’s fiefs of Belgaum and Bījāpur, and Qivām-ul-Mulk the elder and Qivām-ul-Mulk the younger, two Turks who, from selfish motives, had attached themselves to Malik Nāib’s faction, were appointed to Warangal and Rajamundry.
v3.c28.54
The king set out for his capital, but the great nobles, except Malik Nāib and his friends, marched and encamped at a distance from the royal troops and, on reaching Bīdar, refused to enter the city and were dismissed to their provinces. Shortly afterwards he commanded Fathullāh ‘Imād-ul-Mulk and Khudāvand Khān to accompany him to Belgaum, where he hoped to conciliate Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān, but they, though they obeyed the summons, would neither march with the royal troops nor enter his presence, but saluted him always from a distance and chose their own road. From Belgaum he proposed to visit Goa, but the nobles refused to accompany him and when news was received that Vīra Nrisimha of Vijayanagar was preparing to attack the port, Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān was sent to its relief. Fathullāh ‘Imād-ul-Mulk and Khudāvand Khān returned to Berar without permission, and the king withdrew to Fīrūzābād, where he endeavoured to drown his humiliation and grief in drink, and formally designated the young Mahmūd heir to the throne. Thence he returned to Bīdar where, on March 22, 1482, he died at the age of twenty-eight from the effects of incessant drinking, crying out in his last moments that Mahmūd Gāvān was slaying him.
v3.c28.55
He was an accomplished and high-spirited prince of great energy and possessed considerable military ability. He was better served than any of his predecessors, and might have been the greatest prince of his house but for his addiction to drink, which destroyed first his reputation and then his life. He may be considered the last king of his line, for though five of his descendants followed him on the throne none was more than a state prisoner in the hands of ambitious and unscrupulous ministers.
v3.c28.56
On the death of Muhammad his son Mahmūd, a boy of twelve years of age, was seated on the throne by Malik Nāib, Qivām-ul-Mulk the younger, and Qāsim, Barīd-ul-Mamālik, another Turk who for selfish reasons had allied himself to Malik Nāib’s faction. None of the Foreign Party or of the more respectable section of the Deccani Party was present at his enthronement, which was a mean spectacle, shorn of the magnificence to which courtiers and people were accustomed, and a superstitious populace augured ill of a reign thus ushered in.
v3.c28.57
Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān, with most of the Foreign and many Deccani officers, had been absent at Goa at the time of Muhammad’s unexpected death, and on his return he marched to Bīdar to make his obeisance to the new king. Disregarding the rule which prohibited the attendance of armed retainers at court he entered the palace with 200 picked troops. Malik Nāib had drawn up 500 of the royal guards at the gate, but none ventured to oppose Yūsuf, who, as a precaution against assassination, compelled Malik Nāib and Qāsim Barīd-ul-Mamālik to precede him into the royal presence, where he took his place above them, notwithstanding Malik Nāib’s high office. On leaving the palace Yūsuf took Malik Nāib by the hand and compelled him to accompany him as far as the gate. He lodged in the city with a guard of a thousand men while Daryā Khān, with the rest of his army, remained on the alert without the walls. He resisted all Malik Nāib’s attempts to induce him to bring his troops into the city, where the Deccanis might have surprised them, and when the nobles met for the purpose of apportioning the great offices of state acquiesced in the retention of the principal places in the capital by the Deccani faction. Malik Nāib remained lieutenant of the kingdom, Qivām-ul-Mulk the elder became minister, Qivām-ul-Mulk the younger master of the ceremonies, and Dilāvar Khān the African assistant minister of finance.
v3.c28.58
This concession did not blind Malik Nāib to the necessity for removing Yūsuf, his most formidable enemy, and to this end he summoned from Warangal ‘Abdullāh ‘Ādil Khān the Deccani, the deputy of Qivām-ul-Mulk the elder in that province. It had become customary to confer the same title on two men, usually a Deccani and a Foreigner, though the two bearing the title of Qivām-ul-Mulk were both Turks, and there was commonly much jealousy between two bearers of the same title. ‘Abdullāh ‘Ādil Khān's opportunities were, however, curtailed by the simultaneous arrival in the capital of Yūsuf's friend, Fathullāh ‘Imād-ul-Mulk of Berar.
v3.c28.59
Malik Nāib first arranged that the troops of Bījāpur and Berar should be reviewed by the king and that at the review the Deccanis should fall upon the Foreigners. On the day appointed he seated the king on one of the bastions of the citadel while the troops paraded below. Yūsuf and Fathullāh were summoned to the royal presence and the young Mahmūd, tutored by Malik Nāib, ordered the Deccanis to punish the Foreigners for their insolence and insubordination. Yūsuf would have rejoined his men, but Fathullāh, to save his life, detained him in the palace. Matters went ill with the Foreign troops until Daryā Khān marched into the city with the whole of the army of Bījāpur, when street fighting continued for twenty days, and 4000 fell on both sides before the *‘Ulamā* could restore peace. Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān then returned with his troops to Bījāpur, leaving Malik Nāib supreme in the capital. He associated Fathullāh ‘Imād-ul-Mulk with himself as minister, and Qāsim Barīd, who, though a Turk, had borne arms against the Foreigners, was rewarded with the post of *Kotwāl* of the city, and the three carried on the administration for the next four years. Dilāvar Khān the African, resenting his exclusion from the highest offices, attempted, in obedience to the secret orders of the young king, who chafed under the restraint to which he was subjected, to assassinate the ministers, but failed and was obliged to flee to Khāndesh, while the king was guarded more closely than before.
v3.c28.60
Fathullāh ‘Imād-ul-Mulk grew weary of the atmosphere of treachery and intrigue which pervaded the capital, and returned to Berar, leaving Malik Nāib supreme in the capital, and he, in order to extend his influence in the provinces appointed two Deccanis, Wahīd-ud-dīn and Sharaf-ud-dīn, as deputies for his son Ahmad, to Daulatābād, conferred the government of Sholāpur and Parenda on Fakhr-ud-dīn the Deccani, whom he had entitled Khvāja Jahān, and sent Ahmad to Junnār. These measures were necessitated by the virtual detachment of all other provinces, where the royal seal no longer commanded respect, the governors being well aware that all orders issued in the king's name were in fact the decrees of the justly detested Malik Nāib. In 1486 Qivām-ul-Mulk the younger rebelled in Telingāna, and when Malik Nāib marched against him complained to the king of the oppressive conduct of his minister, but the complaint was fruitless, for it was handed by the king to the minister. Najm-ud-dīn Gīlānī, governor of Goa, died, and his servant, Bahādur Gīlānī, seized the fortress and repudiated his allegiance to Mahmūd Shāh. Malik Nāib's son Ahmad accused Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān of countenancing and abetting the rebel, and thus further estranged the Foreigners. Zain-ud-dīn ‘Alī, governor of Chākan, refused, on the ground that the king was not master in his own kingdom, to recognise Ahmad as governor of Junnār, and when Malik Nāib ordered Khvāja Jahān of Parenda and Wajīh-ud-dīn of Daulatābād to assist Ahmad in asserting his authority, Yūsuf ‘Ādil Khān sent five or six thousand horse to the assistance of Zain-ud-dīn ‘Alī. The news of this act of defiance reached Warangal, where Malik Nāib and the king were endeavouring to suppress Qivām-ul-Mulk's rebellion, and undermined the authority of the regent, whose arrogance had left him friendless. Qāsim Barīd, the African eunuch Dastūr Dīnār, and other nobles complained of his behaviour to the king, who replied that none could be more disgusted than he with his minister, and besought them to seek occasion to put him to death. Malik Nāib was informed of the conference and fled from the camp, but instead of following the prudent course of joining his son without delay made for Bīdar where Dilpasand Khān, one of his own creatures, commanded the citadel. He and Dilpasand Khān broke into the treasury and began to raise troops, and the king, on receiving this news, set out at once from Warangal. Malik Nāib, not being strong enough to meet him in the field, prepared to carry off the treasure to Junnār, and join his son, but Dilpasand Khān deceitfully dissuaded him from this course and secretly sent a message to the king, assuring him of his loyalty and his readiness to obey any orders that he might receive. The king replied that he would best show his loyalty by sending to him Malik Nāib's head. Dilpasand Khān accordingly strangled the regent at a private interview and sent his head to the king, who entered the city and plunged into debauchery, neglecting all public business.
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