A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c16.72

c16.72

The hostile party carried to the sultan many tales against Mahmud Gawan, and as proof of their allegations, they contrived to get his seal affixed to a blank sheet of paper on which they wrote a letter purporting to be from Mahmud Gawan to the king of Orissa telling him that the people of the Deccan were weary of Muhammad's tyranny and perpetual drunkenness and urging him to invade the country. They placed the letter in the sultan's hands pretending that they had intercepted the messenger who was carrying it. Mahmud Gawan was sent for at once; disregarding the remonstrances of friends who sought to dissuade him from obeying this unusual call and advised him to flee to Gujarat, the minister presented himself before the king. Muhammad Shah sternly asked him what punishment was proper for one whose treason against his sovereign was proved. ‘Death’ was the unhesitating answer. The sultan showed him the forged letter; the minister admitted that the seal was indeed his, but protested that he had not written the letter. The sultan paid no attention but ‘ordered his Abyssinian slave Jowhur to put the minister to death on the spot’, and so it was done (5 April 1481). Thus died the only counsellor of the Bāhmanīs who combined loyalty with an ability which entitled him to the rank of a statesman, and who served his masters with unswerving devotion for thirty-five years. In private life, Mahmud Gawan was simple, generous, charitable, learned and blameless, and he might have healed the feud between the ‘foreigners’ and ‘Deccanis’ but for the implacable rancour of Malik Hasan.