Bahmanid Empire

The Bahmani Sultanate, or Deccan, was a Persianate Sunni Muslim Indian Kingdom located in the Deccan region. It was the first independent Muslim kingdom of the Deccan,Ansari, N.H. "Bahmanid Dynasty"
''Encyclopaedia Iranica'' and was known for its perpetual wars with its rival Vijayanagara, which would outlast the Sultanate.

The Sultanate was founded in 1347 by Ala-ud-Din Bahman Shah. It later split into five successor states that were collectively known as the Deccan sultanates.

History

Origin

According to Ferishta, Hassan was a man from northern India. Barani, who was the court chronicler of Sultan Firuz Shah, and thus was a contemporary of Hassan, always conjoins his name with Gangu. Barani states that he was "born in very humble circumstances. For the first thirty years of his life he was nothing more than a field laborer." Zafar Khan the founder had earlier been a servant of a Brahmin ruler named Gangu (hence the name Hasan Gangu)Bhattacharya, Sachchidananada. ''A Dictionary of Indian History'' (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972) p. 100 He was made a commander of a hundred horsemen by the Sultan who was pleased with his honesty.This sudden rise in the military and socio-economic ladder was common in this era of Muslim India.

Zafar Khan was one of the inhabitants of Dehli who were forced to migrate to the Deccan, with the purpose of building a large Muslim urban centre in Daulatabad. Although the transfer was successful in spreading northern culture to the south, the Muslim nobles had long resented the Sultan for his cruelty in forcing the Muslim population to migrate to his new city of Daulatabad. Zafar Khan was a man of ambition and looked forward to adventure. He had long hoped to employ his body of horsemen in the Deccan region for slaying and plundering Hindus, as the Deccan was seen as the place of bounty in Muslim imagination at the time. He was rewarded with an Iqta for taking part in the conquest of Kampili. He made various raids against neighboring Hindus until he could gain influence and wealth and became a powerful military chief.

Rise

Before the establishment of his kingdom, he was Governor of Deccan and a commander on behalf of Tughlaq's. On 3 August 1347, the elderly Nazir Uddin Ismail Shah (Ismail Mukh) who had revolted against the Delhi Sultanate, voluntarily stepped down in favour of Bahman Shah, a native of Delhi. His revolt was successful, and he established an independent state on the Deccan within the Delhi Sultanate's southern provinces with its headquarters at Hasanabad (Gulbarga) and all his coins were minted at Hasanabad. The majority of the Bahmanid army was led by convert Muslims of Indian origin. With the support of the influential Chishti Sufi Shaikhs, he was crowned "Alauddin Bahman Shah Sultan – Founder of the Bahmani Dynasty". They bestowed upon him a robe allegedly worn by the Prophet. The extension of the Sufi's notion of spiritual sovereignty lent legitimacy to the planting of the Sultanate's political authority, where the land, people, and produce of the Deccan were merited state protection, no longer available for plunder with impunity. These Sufis legitimized the transplantation of Indo-Muslim rulership from one region in South Asia to another, converting the land of the Bahmanids into being recognized as Dar ul-Islam, while it was previously considered Dar ul-Harb.

Alauddin was succeeded by his son Mohammed Shah I. His conflicts with the Vijayangar empire were singularly savage wars, as according to the historian Ferishta, "the population of the Carnatic was so reduced that it did not recover for several ages."

Ghiyasuddin succeeded his father Muhammad II at the age of seventeen, but was blinded and imprisoned by a Turkic slave called Taghalchin, who had held a grudge on the Sultan for the latter's refusal to appoint him as a governor. He had lured the Sultan into putting himself in the former's power, using the beauty of his daughter, who was accomplished in music and arts, and had introduced her to the Sultan at a feast. He was succeeded by Shamsuddin, who was a puppet king under Taghalchin. Firuz and Ahmed, the sons of the fourth sultan Daud, marched to Gulbarga to avenge Ghiyasuddin. Firuz declared himself the sultan, and defeated Taghalchin's forces. Taghalchin was killed and Shamsuddin was blinded.

Taj ud-Din Firuz Shah became the sultan in 1397. Firuz Shah fought against the Vijayanagara Empire on many occasions and the rivalry between the two dynasties continued unabated throughout his reign, with victories in 1398 and 1406, but a defeat in 1419. One of his victories resulted in his marriage to Deva Raya's daughter. In his reign, Sufis such as Gesudaraz, a Chishti saint who had immigrated from Dehli to Daulatabad, were prominent in court and daily life. He was the first author to write in the Dakhni dialect of Urdu

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