Bahmani Sultanate

The Bahmani Sultanate was the first independent Muslim kingdom of the Deccan plateau in central and southern India, born in 1347 out of a revolt against the Delhi Sultanate. Its rulers, with capitals first at Gulbarga and later at Bidar, built a Persian-influenced court culture and fought almost constantly with the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire to the south. Weakened by feuds between rival noble factions, it broke up from 1490 into five successor states, the Deccan Sultanates.

Its founder, Hasan Gangu, also known as Zafar Khan, was of obscure birth; one contemporary placed it in Ghazni, and historians have called him Afghan or Turkic. A court chronicler in Delhi claimed he had worked as a field labourer before Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq gave him command of a hundred horsemen. He was among the Delhi settlers sent to the Deccan around Daulatabad. When the Deccan nobles rebelled, their chosen leader, Ismail Mukh, stood aside, and on 3 August 1347 Hasan was proclaimed sultan as Alauddin Bahman Shah, with Gulbarga as his base. Chishti Sufi sheikhs lent religious legitimacy to the new state.

Fighting with Vijayanagara over the Tungabhadra doab, the Godavari basin and the Marathwada country became a near-permanent feature of the kingdom. Under Mohammed Shah I, whom later chroniclers describe as waging especially savage wars, the Bahmanis used artillery at Adoni in 1368, often cited as the first recorded use of gunpowder weapons in battle in South Asia, though scholars dispute whether others already had them. Taj ud-Din Firuz Shah, sultan from 1397, won victories in 1398 and 1406 but was defeated in 1417. He also promoted Hindus to high office and is credited with being the first author in Dakhni, the Deccani form of Urdu.

His brother Ahmad Shah I moved the capital to Bidar, around 1429 by one account, and built its fortress. He campaigned against Vijayanagara, the Malwa Sultanate and the Gujarat Sultanate and took the remnants of Warangal. The sultans favoured Persian language, music and festivals such as Nowruz, inviting architects from Persia, Turkey and Arabia; their mosques, forts and tombs at Gulbarga and Bidar shaped the later Deccani style. Bidar also gave its name to bidriware, blackened metal inlaid with silver. The Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin, who travelled through the kingdom, contrasted the riches of its nobles with the poverty of its peasants.

From Ahmad Shah's time the sultans recruited many foreign newcomers, the Afaqis, mostly Shia Muslims from the west, who clashed with the Dakhanis, Sunni descendants of the earlier settlers from northern India. In 1446 Dakhani nobles carried out a massacre of Persian Shia Sayyids, though the chronicles may exaggerate the details. The foreign-born vizier Mahmud Gawan, regent from 1466, brought the kingdom to its greatest extent, doubled its provinces from four to eight and founded a celebrated madrasa at Bidar. His enemies forged a treasonous letter in his name, and Muhammad Shah III had him executed in 1481, a decision he regretted until his own death in 1482.

Under Mahmood Shah the provincial governors of Ahmednagar, Bijapur and Berar declared independence in 1490, followed by the Barid family at Bidar and the rulers of Golconda. The last sultans were puppets of their Barid Shahi ministers, and dates given for the end vary from 1518, when the five Deccan Sultanates had clearly emerged, to 1527, when the dynasty formally ended.

Shown on our maps as the Bahmani Kingdom, the sultanate appears in 1400 and 1500, north of Vijayanagara. By 1500 its leading provincial governors had already made themselves independent in practice, so the later outline overstates the sultan's real authority.