A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.15

c6.15

The Bāhmani kingdom of Gulbarga was a Muslim state which spread its sway from sea to sea in the northern Deccan, and was no less opposed to its Muslim neighbours in the north than to the Hindu empire to its south. The annals of the Bāhmani kings make no pleasant reading; fourteen sultans occupied the throne between 1347 and 1518; of these, four were murdered, two others were deposed and blinded, and all were cruel and bloodthirsty fanatics addicted to drink and debauchery. ‘It would be difficult,’ says a modern historian, ‘to specify any definite benefit conferred upon India by the dynasty.’ This harsh, but not altogether unjust, judgement may be mitigated by the recollection of the patronage extended by the rulers to authors and architects from Persia, and of their particular regard on some occasions, as in time of famine, for the well-being of their Muslim subjects. In the sixteenth century the Bāhmani kingdom split up into five separate sultanates which kept up the feud with Vijayanagar though they quarrelled not less among themselves. Bijapur and Golconda were the most prominent among them; all were absorbed in the Mogul empire at different dates in the seventeenth century.