History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c58.s3: § 3. Relations among the Deccan Powers.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c58.s3
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§ 3. Relations among the Deccan Powers.
v4.c58.s3.1
Briefly put, the grouping of Powers in the Deccan was thus: The dread of Mughal aggression drove the Sultan of Golkonda whole-heartedly, and that of Bijapur distrustfully and intermittently, into the arms of Shivaji. But the Bijapuri ministers could never forget that Shivaji was their rebel subject; they always looked upon him with suspicion and took precautions lest by entering as their ally he should end by making himself their master. Hence, Bijapur's leagues with Shivaji were formed only when Mughal invasion was an insistent fact and the situation of Adil Shah was desperate; and these leagues were soon dissolved by the growing fear that Shivaji was trying to enrich himself by treacherously seizing its forts and lands. Occasionally the Adil-Shahi Government made a show of joining the Mughals in the war with Shiva, but the aid thus given was insincere and of no military value (except in 1660.) Golkonda’s friendship with the Maratha king was stronger and of longer duration, though its full extent remained a secret to the Mughals. It was finally cemented by the influence of the Brahman minister Madanna Pandit and the discovery of the earnest determination of the Mughal Emperor to annex the Deccani Sultanates.
v4.c58.s3.2
Of the three Deccani Powers, Qutb Shah may be left out of our account, as he never sought a rupture with the Mughals during this period, (his war in 1677 was purely defensive), nor refuse to pay tribute;—but his failure to clear the arrears of tribute, his attempt to retain possession of the Karnatak ceded to the Mughals in 1656, and the armed aid he gave to Bijapur during the Mughal invasion of 1666, were serious breaches of a vassal’s duty. Abdullah, who filled the throne of Golkonda from 1626, was a fool (as Aurangzib calls him in the *Adab*) and a voluptuary, and his successor, Abul Hasan, was as bad. Such a State hardly counted in the politics of the Deccan.
v4.c58.s3.3
The Bijapur Government fell into a hopeless decline[^ *] after 1666, when Ali Adil Shah II. gave
v4.c58.s3.4
[^ *]: The downward course had begun much earlier, in 1646, when Muhammad Adil Shah was prostrated by a severe and lingering illness.
v4.c58.s3.5
himself up entirely to wine, while rival nobles began to fight for the wazirship and the control over the capital and the *fainéant* king. Matters grew worse when the boy-king Sikandar succeeded in 1672, and the history of Bijapur became in effect the history of its regents. Great disorder prevailed in the administration, the country was eternally unsettled and impoverished, the State gradually became too weak to defend itself from foreign attack, or even to continue its sluggish normal course of existence. This was the opportunity which made Shivaji's rise to independent power possible, and once secure in the possession of a kingdom, a capital and an army, he was strong enough to defy all his enemies together.
v4.c58.s3.6
Shivaji could never for a moment be sure of the Delhi Government's pacific disposition or fidelity to treaty promises. Hence he lost no chance of robbing Mughal territory in the Deccan. With Bijapur his relations were somewhat different. He could raise his head or expand his dominion only at the expense of Bijapur. But when, about 1662, an understanding with him was effected by the Adil-Shahi ministers, he gave up molesting the heart of the Bijapur kingdom. With the Bijapuri nobles whose fiefs lay close to his dominions and across the path of his natural expansion (e.g., Kolhapur, Kanara and Kopal) he could not be at peace, though he did not wish to challenge the central Government of Bijapur. The death of Ali II. in 1672 and the faction-fights at the capital that ensued greatly stimulated his raiding and annexing activities at the expense of Adil Shah, though still along the fringe of that kingdom.