Battle of Talikota

On 23 January 1565, near Talikota in what is now the Indian state of Karnataka, a coalition of Deccan sultanates defeated the army of the Vijayanagara Empire. Aliya Rama Raya, the empire's dominant figure, was captured and beheaded, and the capital, Vijayanagara, was plundered. The battle, also known as Rakshasi-Tangadi after two nearby villages, broke Vijayanagara's power and redrew the political map of the Deccan.

Rama Raya had made himself the effective ruler of Vijayanagara and, for about twenty years, profited from the quarrels among the sultanates that had succeeded the Bahmani kingdom, siding with one against another as it suited him. His repeated efforts to hold Kalyana, the old Chalukya capital, which he valued as a source of legitimacy, and his dealings with the sultans, which they found insulting, eventually drove four of them into alliance. Hussain Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar, Ali Adil Shah I of Bijapur, Ali Barid Shah I of Bidar and Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah of Golkonda, linked by a series of marriage alliances, marched against him in 1565.

Several contemporary or near-contemporary accounts survive. They include court histories written for Ahmadnagar and Bijapur, among them the work of Firishta; the chronicle of the Portuguese record-keeper Diogo do Couto and letters of the governor of Goa; and poems composed at the Ahmadnagar court. They disagree on almost everything. The battlefield is placed variously at Talikota, Rakkasagi-Tangadigi or Banahatti, all on the Krishna river. The exact dates are debated, the fighting is said to have lasted anything from hours to days, and the battle formations are described in different ways. Even allowing for bias, a reliable reconstruction may not be possible.

Two explanations of the outcome compete. One account, repeated by Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund in their history of India, holds that Vijayanagara was winning until two Muslim commanders in its army, the Gilani brothers, changed sides. Many scholars regard this story of betrayal as a later rumour first spread by the Venetian merchant Cesare de Federici, and point instead to the sultanates' superior, well-coordinated artillery and Vijayanagara's failure to adopt gunpowder weapons fully.

Rama Raya was beheaded, either by Hussain Nizam Shah himself or on his orders, reportedly against the wishes of Ali Adil Shah, who had been on friendly terms with him. In the confusion his brother Tirumala withdrew with the army, while another brother, Venkatadri, was blinded and probably killed.

The sultanate armies then plundered the capital without resistance. Older accounts describe the city's near-total destruction and a six-month occupation; its ruins are still called "Halu Hampi", ruined Hampi, in Kannada. More recent historians and archaeologists urge caution, noting that clear evidence of damage is largely confined to the Royal Centre and that the destruction seems to have targeted sites linked to royal authority. Even so, royal patronage of temples and monuments ended and the Royal Centre was never rebuilt.

Tirumala founded the Aravidu dynasty, which ruled what remained of the empire, briefly from Vijayanagara itself before moving its seat. Weakened by succession disputes, revolts by local Nayaka lords and wars with Bijapur, the state drifted south and broke up in the late 1640s. The victors' alliance also soon dissolved, with Bijapur gaining the most.

Colonial-era historians such as Robert Sewell, drawing on Firishta, and later Indian nationalist historians such as K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, portrayed the battle as a clash of civilisations in which a Hindu bulwark fell to Muslim conquerors. The historian Richard M. Eaton rejects any religious motive, pointing to Rama Raya's shifting alliances with Muslim rulers, the strong Persianate influence on Vijayanagara's court culture and later alliances between the two sides' heirs. Scholars including Romila Thapar, Burton Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam take a similar view, and note that Muslims held high posts at the Vijayanagara court. The playwright Girish Karnad based his play Crossing to Talikota on Eaton's analysis.

Our 1530 map shows Vijayanagara across the south of India, with the sultanates of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar and Golkonda to its north. Our 1600 map shows the aftermath, with Hampi and the Raichur Doab in Bijapur's hands and a smaller Vijayanagara to the south.