Bijapur Sultanate

The Bijapur Sultanate was a Muslim kingdom in the south-western Deccan of India, ruled by the Adil Shahi dynasty from 1490 until its conquest by the Mughals in 1686. Born as a province of the Bahmani Sultanate, it became one of the five Deccan sultanates and, at its height, one of the strongest powers in the subcontinent after the Mughal Empire. Its capital, Bijapur (today Vijayapura in Karnataka), is famous for buildings such as the Gol Gumbaz.

The founder, Yusuf Adil Shah, is a figure of uncertain background. Some historians describe him as a Georgian slave bought by the Bahmani minister Mahmud Gawan; others give him a Persian or Turkoman origin. The chronicler Firishta traced his descent to the Ottoman sultan Murad II, making him that ruler's son, though modern historians doubt it. Appointed governor of Bijapur by the Bahmani sultan, Yusuf made himself effectively independent in 1490, and his state became formally independent when the Bahmani line collapsed in 1518. In 1503 he declared Shia Islam the official faith, following the example of the Safavid ruler Ismail I.

The sultanate fought almost constantly with its neighbours. In 1510 the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque seized the port of Goa; Yusuf retook it, but he died that year and the Portuguese captured it again. Under his son Ismail, Bijapur lost the fortress of Raichur to Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara in 1520, though it recovered the area after the emperor's death. Later sultans switched the state religion back and forth between Sunni and Shia Islam, and fought repeated wars with Ahmadnagar, their chief rival to the north.

Ali Adil Shah I, who came to the throne in 1558, first allied with Vijayanagara, then joined Golconda, Ahmadnagar and Bidar against it. At the Battle of Talikota in 1565 the allies defeated Vijayanagara; its regent Rama Raya was beheaded and the imperial city was sacked. Bijapur regained the fertile Raichur Doab and, by campaigns lasting to 1575, took Adoni and much of the Carnatic. According to the historian Richard Eaton, these campaigns saw his armies destroy between two and three hundred Hindu temples. By 1576 Ali had doubled his kingdom's territory, and he walled the capital and built its great congregational mosque.

Ibrahim Adil Shah II, who reigned from 1580 to 1627, presided over Bijapur's cultural peak. A musician and poet, he wrote the Kitab-i Nauras in Deccani, patronised Sufis and artists, and encouraged a blending of Hindu and Muslim traditions. Estimates of the capital's population in his later years run as high as one million. Firishta wrote his history of the Deccan at his court, and the Bijapur school of miniature painting flourished. Bijapur annexed the neighbouring Bidar Sultanate in 1619, and Ibrahim's tomb complex, the Ibrahim Rauza, was completed in 1626.

Under Muhammad Adil Shah (1627–1656) the kingdom stretched further than ever, reaching from coast to coast between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, but at a price. After a Mughal attack in 1631, it agreed in 1636 to pay tribute to Shah Jahan and accept Mughal authority. His mausoleum, the Gol Gumbaz, nearly finished when he died in 1656, was crowned by what was then the largest dome in the Islamic world. Strained relations with the nobility and the rebellion of Shivaji, whose father served the sultan, weakened the state. In 1659 the Bijapuri general Afzal Khan was killed in a confrontation with Shivaji, who went on to found the independent Maratha kingdom in 1674.

The last sultan, Sikandar Adil Shah, came to the throne at the age of four and reigned amid factional strife. In April 1685 Aurangzeb laid siege to Bijapur, and on 12 September 1686 the city fell. Sikandar was taken into Mughal captivity, and the kingdom became a Mughal province.

Our maps for 1492, 1500, 1530, 1600 and 1650 label the kingdom "Bijapur", beside the Golconda Sultanate to the east; by 1700 the region lies within the Mughal Empire.