Deccan and regional kingdoms, c.1206-1565, contemporaries of and successors to the Delhi Sultanate
Foundation of the Vijayanagara Empire
The Basics
By the 1330s, Delhi's control over the far south had collapsed. Muhammad bin Tughlaq's army was shattered by plague during his southern campaigns. Local powers such as the Kakatiyas of Warangal and the Hoysalas of Mysore were already weakening. Into this vacuum stepped two brothers, Harihara and Bukka, part of a family of five brothers. According to tradition, they had earlier served as feudatories of the Kakatiyas. They later became ministers in the small state of Kampili, in modern Karnataka.
The Bahmani kingdom was founded in 1347 by Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah, an Afghan adventurer also called Hasan Gangu after his patron, the Brahman Gangu. Its capital was first at Gulbarga. Vijayanagara now controlled the south up to the Krishna-Tungabhadra region. The two kingdoms shared a long, undefined border, and conflict followed almost at once.
By the later fifteenth century, the Sangama dynasty that had founded Vijayanagara was weakening from within. There was no fixed rule of succession, so each king's death set off disputes among claimants. Ministers grew powerful and extracted heavy taxes from the people. Many feudatories declared independence. The Raya's real authority shrank to Karnataka and parts of western Andhra.
When Krishnadeva Raya became king in 1509, Vijayanagara had only recently been stabilised by the Saluva usurpation and the new Tuluva line. But old threats remained. The successor states of the Bahmani kingdom, now separate Deccan Sultanates, still contested the fertile Tungabhadra doab (the land between the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers). The Gajapati kings of Orissa had also seized Vijayanagara territory during the years of confusion. On the coast, the Portuguese were using their naval strength to pressure Vijayanagara's smaller vassal rulers for trading concessions. The Portuguese also offered to help him recover Goa from Bijapur. They promised him a monopoly on horse supply in return for his neutrality.
Vijayanagara Administration: Kingship and the Nayaka System
The Basics
At the top of the Vijayanagara state stood the Raya, the king. He held absolute executive, judicial and legislative power. He was also the highest court of appeal. Succession was usually hereditary. But it was not always smooth. Saluva Narasimha, for example, seized the throne by ending the Sangama dynasty. A council of ministers assisted the king in daily administration. Real power over territory, however, depended on how the kingdom was organised below him.
Nayaka Kingdoms after Vijayanagara: Madurai, Thanjavur and Ikkeri
The Basics
After Hampi was sacked in 1565, the Vijayanagara court moved first to Penukonda, then to Chandragiri. Its hold over the far south weakened with each decade. Telugu-speaking nayakas governed Madurai, Thanjavur and Ikkeri on its behalf. They paid nominal tribute for a while. By the late 1500s and early 1600s, each had become a separate kingdom. Each kept its own territory and army, loosely acknowledging Vijayanagara overlordship.
Vijayanagara Economy: Agriculture, Trade and Hampi
The Basics
The Vijayanagara empire sat on the dry, rocky plateau of the Deccan. It was watered mainly by the Tungabhadra river. Farming here depended heavily on controlling water. From the start, the kings invested in irrigation to support a growing population and capital.
Vijayanagara society was organised on a four-varna framework. The poet Allasani Peddanna, in his work Manucharitam, names Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras as its social orders. In practice, social life was far more layered than this scheme suggests.
Foreign Travellers to Vijayanagara: Conti, Abdur Razzaq, Paes and Nuniz
The Basics
By the 15th century, Vijayanagara had become one of the richest kingdoms in the world. Several foreign travellers visited and left detailed written accounts.
By 1498, Vijayanagara was a rich and admired kingdom. Its ports were busy with Arab and Gujarati traders carrying pepper, textiles and horses. A new arrival from the sea was about to reshape this trading world.
Muhammad bin Tughlaq had tried to govern the distant Deccan through officers called amiran-i-sada, meaning administrative heads placed over groups of a hundred villages. But Delhi's control over this region was weak and resented. From around 1337 the officers in the Deccan began resisting the Sultanate's authority.
After Alauddin Bahman Shah, later Bahmani sultans kept extending the kingdom. Firuz Shah Bahmani had brought Deccani Hindus into the administration in large numbers, especially in revenue work, to balance the growing influence of foreign-born nobles. This created two rival groups inside the nobility: the Deccanis, who were older settlers including both Muslims and Hindus of the region, and the Afaqis, meaning newcomers, who were foreign-born Muslims from Iran, Iraq and Central Asia. This rivalry was already simmering when Mahmud Gawan rose to power.
Decline of the Bahmani Kingdom into the Deccan Sultanates
The Basics
After Mahmud Gawan's execution, Bahmani central authority weakened. Provincial governors, already resentful of central control, began asserting independence. Between about 1490 and 1518, the Bahmani kingdom broke into five Deccan sultanates: Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Berar, Bidar and Golconda. The last Bahmani sultans survived only as puppets, and the dynasty ended around 1527-38.
Bengal had broken away from Delhi before. Governors like Bughra Khan rebelled after Balban's death. Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq even split Bengal into three divisions, Lakhnauti, Satgaon and Sonargaon, to ease control. The underlying problem never went away. Bengal's distance from Delhi, its humid climate, and its dependence on river communication made sustained control very difficult.
Gujarat had long been one of the richest provinces of the Delhi Sultanate, prized for its handicrafts, fertile soil and busy seaports. Alauddin Khalji had annexed it around 1297, and it was later governed for Delhi by Turkish officers.
After Alauddin Khalji's capture of Chittor, Mewar had become a minor power, no longer the seat of the old Guhila glory. The Sisodia branch of the Guhilot clan, who had been feudatories of the earlier Guhila rulers, gradually took control of Chittor. By the late fourteenth century, under Rao Lakha and Mokal, Mewar began recovering strength, but it was still only one of several competing Rajput and Muslim states in Rajasthan, alongside Marwar (capital Jodhpur, founded 1465), the Muslim principality of Nagaur, and contested Ajmer.
Kashmir had long been a closed valley, known since the time of the scholar al-Biruni as a stronghold of Shaivism, where even outside Hindus were not easily let in. This isolation broke down violently in 1320, when the Turkic-Mongol chief Dalucha (Zulju) raided the valley, massacring people and destroying towns. The last Lohara dynasty king, Suhadeva, fled, and the discredited Kashmiri government lost all public support, opening the door to a new order.
Orissa, called Kalinga in older texts, was ruled by the eastern Ganga dynasty. The Gangas built the Jagannatha temple at Puri and the Sun temple at Konark. Outside attacks badly weakened Ganga power. In 1338, Ilyas Shah of Bengal raided Jajnagar and reached Chilka Lake with rich plunder. In 1360, Firuz Tughlaq, returning from his own Bengal campaign, sacked the Orissa capital and desecrated the Puri temple. These two raids destroyed Ganga prestige and opened the way for a new ruling house.
The Ahoms were a Mongoloid tribe of Tai stock from north Burma. Led by a chief named Sukaphaa, they crossed the Patkai hills into the upper Brahmaputra valley in 1228, the traditional founding date of the Ahom kingdom in Assam.