The Battle of Kannanur was fought in 1342 or 1343 at Kannanur,

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. The battle was fought between the forces of the great

Hoysala The Hoysala Empire was a Kannada people, Kannadiga power originating from the Indian subcontinent that ruled most of what is now Karnataka, India, Karnataka between the 10th and the 14th centuries. The capital of the Hoysalas was initially loca ...

monarch

Veera Ballala III Veera Ballala III (r. 1292–1342) was the last great king of the Hoysala Empire. During his rule, the northern and southern branches of the Hoysala empire (which included much of modern Karnataka and northern Tamil Nadu) were consolidated and ...

and the Sultan of

Madurai Madurai ( , also , ) is a major city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Madurai District. As of the 2011 census, it was the third largest Urban agglomeration in ...

, Ghiyas-ud-Din. The brothers

Harihara I Harihara I, also called Hakka and Vira Harihara I, was the founder of the Vijayanagara Empire, which he ruled from 1336 to 1356 CE. He and his successors formed the Sangama dynasty, the first of four dynasties to rule the empire. He was the elde ...

and

Bukka Raya I Bukka Raya I (reigned 1356–1377 CE) was an emperor of the Vijayanagara Empire from the Sangama Dynasty.Phrof A V Narasimha MurthyRare Royal Brothers: Hakka and Bukka He was a son of Bhavana Sangama(Unofficial). Background The early life of Bu ...

, the founders of the famous

Vijayanagara Empire The Vijayanagara Empire, also called the Karnata Kingdom, was a Hinduism, Hindu empire based in the region of South India, which consisted the modern states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa and some parts of Telangana an ...

served the

king

as governors of the Northern Hoysala territories. They were too busy fighting battles in the north, and couldn't support the Hoysala army in the South.

Battle

Ballala made great preparations for the attack of Madura, and marched in the year A. D. 1342. The Mussalman chronicler, Ibn Batuta, who was a guest at the court of the Sultan of Madura, a little while after the battle, gives a graphic description. The then reigning Sultan was Ghias-ud-din. Ballala marched with an army of 100,000 men including 20,000 Mussulmans, with the intention of conquering the Coromandal Coast, while the army of the Mussalmans was only 6,000 strong. The battle took place near Kabban (identified by Mr. Krishnaswamy Aiyangar as Kannanur-Koppam near Srirangam) which was one of the greatest and best fortified places of the Mussalmans. The battle ended in a victory for Ballala, and the Mussalmans retired to Madura. Ballala then besieged the fort of Kabban for ten months.

Aftermath

The Sultan formed a strong army of 6,000 cavalry and marched, at the head of which was the Sultan himself. Ballala’s soldiers who were not prepared for the attack, had sent their horses to graze. When they saw that the advancing army was not a band of decoits, as they had originally suimised, but the forces of Ghias-ud-din, they fled in confusion. Ballala tried to jump on his horse though he was eighty years old; he was however, captured, and killed, This ended the rule of the great Hoysalas.Kamath (1980), p.129Chopra, Ravindran and Subrahmanian (2003), p.156

Notes

References

* * ''The Hoysalas'', J. Duncan M. Derret, Oxford University Press, 1957 * Sastri, K.A. Nilakanta (2002)

955 Year 955 ( CMLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * August 10 – Battle of Lechfeld: King Otto I ("the Great") defeats the Hungarians (also ...

''A history of South India from prehistoric times to the fall of Vijayanagar''. New Delhi: Indian Branch, Oxford University Press. . * Kamath, Suryanath U. (2001) 980 ''A concise history of Karnataka: from pre-historic times to the present''. Bangalore: Jupiter books. LCCN 80905179. OCLC 7796041. 14th century in India 1340s in Asia Hoysala Empire Tiruchirappalli district {{India-history-stub