History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c58.s1: § 1. Muslim Powers in the Deccan.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c58.s1
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§ 1. Muslim Powers in the Deccan.
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In the middle of the Fourteenth century the foundation of the Bahmani kingdom created an independent centre of Muslim power in Southern India. The conquest of the western coast-strip (Konkan) by the kings of this line also put them in possession of sea-ports like Dabhol, Chaul, Rajapur and Goa, through which they established direct intercourse with Persia, Arabia, Africa and the Malay Peninsula. Thus, the stream of recruits could flow into the Deccan from the outer Muhammadan world without being intercepted by the rulers of Delhi. At a time when the force of the first Islamic penetration of Northern India was spent, the Muslim advance there was arrested by impact on the northern and eastern natural barriers of our country, and the Delhi monarchy was seized with decay and dissolution,—Indian Islam started on a new career of expansion in the south and crushed out the great Hindu kingdoms of the Deccan which had hitherto retained their independence.
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This process went on throughout the Fifteenth century. Even when, at the end of the first quarter of the next century, the great house of Bahmani fell almost in the same year that Babur sowed the seed of a new and mightier growth of Islamic power in Northern India,—there was no eclipse of Muhammadanism in the South. The heritage of the Bahmanis passed into the worthy hands of Nizam Shah and Adil Shah. Ahmadnagar and Bijapur now became centres which fully kept up the traditions of Islamic dominion and Islamic culture founded by the Sultans of Kulbarga. The greatness of Ahmadnagar filled the 16th century; but the first quarter of the 17th century saw its final extinction. Bijapur, which had begun the race for empire in the Deccan a little later and hitherto stood second, now rushed in to fill the leadership vacated by Ahmadnagar.
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But with the commencement of the Seventeenth century a new combatant had entered the southern arena. Forty years of vigorous and successful rule by one undisputed sovereign having settled and strengthened the realm of Northern India from Bengal to Gujrat and Kashmir to Sind, the Mughal Emperor was now free to conquer the Deccan, and this fact dominated the whole history of Southern India throughout the 17th century. Adil Shah found a rival he had not reckoned with. Long and desolating wars waged against him by Shah Jahan both during his father's lifetime and in his own reign, at last convinced the ruler of Bijapur that he must give up the dream of winning the hegemony of the Deccan, as the heir of the Bahmanis and the Nizam-Shahis, and that he must find an outlet for his ambition eastwards and southwards only, so as not to cross the path of the dreaded Mughals of the north. The last of these wars for deciding the claim to supremacy in the Deccan had been fought in 1636, as we have seen in Chapter 3. By the partition-treaty of 1636, the southern boundary of Mughal Deccan had been clearly marked out, and during the following twenty years Bijapur had risen to the pinnacle of her greatness by stretching her sway from sea to sea across the Indian peninsula, while the capital city had become the mother of arts and letters, of theology and science. But the warrior-kings of an earlier poorer and ruder generation were now followed by successors who preferred the harem and the darbar to the tented field and the saddle. The great conquests of the middle Seventeenth century were all achieved by servants of the State and not by its supreme lord and master. The climax of the Adil-Shahi power was also the beginning of its rapid decline and dismemberment.
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A number of generals who had conquered kingdoms for their master with their own blood and sweat and had been long accustomed to giving the law to millions, were not likely to obey a child or a sluggard on the throne of a far off capital, nor a veiled woman or a man of their own class acting as the power behind the throne. A feudal State cannot be governed by a faineant king nor by a constitutional prime minister. When the king is no longer a hero, the military viceroys of the provinces will obey him as little as the major-generals obeyed Richard Cromwell. Only a superman,—a Henry V. or a Napoleon I.,—can control the feudal barons and hold together the military type* of State, such as all the Islamic monarchies in India were. Therefore, after the death of the last great Adil Shah (in November 1656), the dissolution of the remaining Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan and their absorption into the Mughal empire would have taken place as an inevitable, speedy and almost silent operation of Nature, but for the entrance of a new factor into Deccan politics.
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∗ The State founded by Akbar was an exception to this description to a limited extent only, as even the Mughal empire did not become a truly national and constitutional State, but remained subject to the influence of the Muslim priesthood and the personal discretion of the sovereign,—more in some reigns, less in others.