A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c16.60

c16.60

Humayun (1458-61) had an evil reputation for cruelty and the savage deeds that marked his reign earned for him the title of zalim or ‘tyrant’. At the start of his reign, some officers made attempts to enthrone Humayun’s brother, Hasan Khan, and paid for it by death, imprisonment or flight; Hasan Khan himself was both blinded and imprisoned. Humayun favoured the foreigners and made Mahmud Gawan lieutenant of the kingdom (malik naib) and governor of Bijapur. The Deccanis, however, were not altogether excluded from office. There were two rebellions: one in Telengana led by Sikandar Khan and his father Jalal Khan, and another in the capital when the king and his minister were absent in Telengana. Both were suppressed with a maniacal ferocity unexampled even in the bloodstained annals of Bāhmani rule. Neither the able minister Mahmud Gawan nor the talented queen Makhdumah Jahan (who distinguished herself greatly during the minority of her sons after her husband’s death) seems to have been able to restrain the excesses of the sultan. His subjects heaved a sigh of relief when Humayun died in September 1461, ‘assassinated during a fit of intoxication by his own servants, who were tired out by his inhuman cruelties’.