Ali Adil Shah II (; reigned 4 November 1656 – 24 November 1672) was the 8th Sultan of Bijapur. He succeeded to the throne of Bijapur through the efforts of the Prime Minister Khan Muhammad and the Queen, Badi Sahiba, sister of Qutb Shah of Golkonda on the death of Mohammed Adil Shah of Bijapur on 4 November 1656. His accession signaled disasters to the Kingdom and his reign marked the decline of the Bijapur Kingdom.

Reign

Shah Jahan Shah Jahan I, (Shahab-ud-Din Muhammad Khurram; 5 January 1592 – 22 January 1666), also called Shah Jahan the Magnificent, was the Emperor of Hindustan from 1628 until his deposition in 1658. As the fifth Mughal emperor, his reign marked the ...

, anxious to annex Bijapur to his empire, found a pretext in the legitimacy of Ali’s parents. On

Aurangzeb Alamgir I (Muhi al-Din Muhammad; 3 November 1618 – 3 March 1707), commonly known by the title Aurangzeb, also called Aurangzeb the Conqueror, was the sixth Mughal emperors, Mughal emperor, reigning from 1658 until his death in 1707, becomi ...

’s plea,

sanctioned the invasion of Bijapur and gave him a free hand to deal with the situation. This sanction of such a war was wholly unrighteous. Bijapur was not a vassal state of the

Mughals The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of pre ...

, but an independent and equal ally of the Mughal Emperor, and the latter had no lawful right to confirm or question the succession to the Bijapur Sultanate. However, Aurangzeb had to raise the siege and rush north for the war of succession to the Mughal throne. With Muhammad's death and Ali's accession, disorder had begun in the

Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...

. The Nayaks tried to recover their former lands. (

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

, the capital of

, was Bijapur's administrative headquarters for controlling these feudatories by Kempegouda.) Meanwhile,

Shivaji Shivaji I (Shivaji Shahaji Bhonsale, ; 19 February 1630 – 3 April 1680) was an Indian ruler and a member of the Bhonsle dynasty. Shivaji carved out his own independent kingdom from the Sultanate of Bijapur that formed the genesis of the ...

increased the momentum of acquiring more and more Bijapur territory and carved an independent

Maratha The Marathi people (; Marathi: , ''Marāṭhī lōk'') or Marathis (Marathi: मराठी, ''Marāṭhī'') are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are native to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-A ...

state, while his diplomacy prevented any Mughal- Bijapur coalition against him. At the court, things were even worse. With the coming of a young and weak ruler, the party factions and struggle for supremacy was at its zenith. To aggravate them,

intrigued with Bijapur nobles and succeeded in winning over most of them. Throughout his reign of 16 years, Ali struggled desperately both against the

and the

s. He thrice repulsed Mughal invasions. But when he died in 1672, the Bijapur kingdom was deprived of most of its important territorial possessions. With the expansion of

’s kingdom, there was a corresponding shrinkage in the Bijapur territory.

Literary activity

The reign of ʿAlī ʿĀdil Shāh II was marked by developments in Persian and Deccani literature and fine arts. Nusrati served as his poet-laureate. A history known as the ''Taʾrīkh-i ʿAlī ʿĀdil Shāh'' by Nūrullāh ibn Qāḍī Sayyid ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī al-Qadirī was also produced under his patronage.Charles Rieu, ''Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum'', volume 1 (London: British Museum, 1879), 318.

Tomb

ʿAlī ʿĀdil Shāh II was buried in Ali Ka Rouza, the well-known Bara Kaman in Bijapur.

References

Bibliography

* Dehlavi, Basheeruddin: ''Wāqīyāt-i mamlakat-i Bījāpūr'', Bangalore (Karnatak Urdu Academy) 2003. * Firishta, Muḥammad Qāsim Hindū-Shāh Astarābādī: ''History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year 1612'', translated by John Briggs, Calcutta (Editions Indian) 1829, rep. 1966. * Nayeem, Muhammad: ''External Relations of the Bijapur Kingdom'', Hyderabad A.P. (Bright Publishers) 1974. * Verma, Dinesh Chandra: ''Social, economic, and cultural history of Bijapur'', Delhi (Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli) 1990. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ali Adil Shah 02 1672 deaths 17th-century Indian Muslims 17th-century Indian monarchs Sultans of Bijapur Year of birth unknown

Reign

Literary activity

Tomb

See also

References

Bibliography