Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

The princess was then ceremoniously taken to the sultan’s camp, where presumably a Muslim marriage ceremony was performed. A few days after the marriage, the sultan along with his bride set out for Vijayanagar, to visit the raja. On the way the couple were formally received by the raja, and he escorted them to the city with great pomp. ‘From the gate of the city to the palace, a distance of six miles, the road was spread with cloth of gold, velvet, satin, and other rich stuffs. The two kings rode on horseback together, between ranks of beautiful boys and girls, who waved plates of gold filled with incense and silver flowers … Upon their arrival at the palace gate, the sultan and the raja dismounted from their horses and moved into a splendid palanquin, set with valuable jewels, and in it they were carried together to the apartments prepared for the reception of the bride and bridegroom … The sultan, after being treated with royal magnificence for three days, took his leave of the raja, who pressed upon him richer presents than given previously, and accompanied him for four miles on his way, and then returned to the city.’ Firuz had expected the raja to accompany him all the way to his camp, and was upset that he did not do this, so the enmity between the two persisted.

FIRUZ WAS IN many ways an admirable ruler, sagacious, spirited and enterprising. But he was also addicted to carnal indulgences. He drank heavily, perhaps for relief from his many onerous duties, and he is said to have maintained a harem of 800 women of different nationalities. This self-indulgent lifestyle eventually ruined his health and he became, as Wolseley Haig puts it, ‘a jaded and feeble voluptuary.’ In the end, being no longer able to function effectively as a ruler, he was forced to abdicate the throne in favour of his brother Ahmad. This was in September 1422. Firuz died the following month — or was probably strangled or poisoned, according to some sources.

Ahmad was in every respect quite unlike his suave brother, and was rather rustic in his outlook and lifestyle. But he was considered a saint — he was in fact called vali (saint) by the common people — and was given to ostentatious displays of his saintly powers. Thus, when the kingdom was once ravaged by a severe drought, he devoutly climbed to the top of a hill near his capital, and there, before the awed eyes of the assembled multitudes, prayed for rain — and indeed rain clouds presently appeared scudding over the horizon, and there was a heavy downpour.

Saint or not, Ahmad was as aggressive and brutal towards his neighbours as any other Bahmani sultan, and he waged several successful wars against them — against Warangal, Malwa, Gujarat, and, as usual, against Vijayanagar, which was the perennial adversary of Bahmani sultans. Ahmad’s very first military campaign, right after his accession, was against Vijayanagar. For this, he led an army of 40,000 cavalry, and encamped on the northern bank of the Tungabhadra at his chosen ford, preparing to invade Vijayanagar. Devaraya II, the king of Vijayanagar, countered that move by assembling, on the southern bank of the river, an immense force of about a million soldiers, consisting of cavalry, infantry and gunners. That blocking deployment of the Vijayanagar army made it far too risky for the sultan to attempt to cross the river there. He therefore sent a contingent of his army at night some distance upstream, to cross the river secretly and suddenly fall on the rear of the Vijayanagar army. This surprise attack threw the Vijayanagar army into disarray, taking advantage of which the main body of the Bahmani army crossed the river, engaged the enemy in battle, and routed it.

What followed was unprecedented even in the history of the savage wars between these two kingdoms. ‘Ahmad Shah … overran the open country, and wherever he went, he put to death men, women and children, without mercy,’ writes Ferishta. ‘Wherever the number of the slain amounted to 20,000, he halted for three days, and made a festival in celebration of the bloody event.’ It was as if Ahmad meant to exterminate a whole people. He also destroyed the Hindu temples he came across along the way, and deliberately slaughtered very many cows, to outrage and mortify Hindus. Leaving thus a trail of wanton destruction and senseless carnage, Ahmad advanced on Vijayanagar city. There the raja, Devaraya II, appalled by the woes of his subjects, purchased peace by paying a substantial tribute to the sultan. And Ahmad, to heap on the raja an abject humiliation on top of his shame of military rout, insisted that he should be escorted part of the way into the Sultanate by the raja’s son. The raja had no alternative but to comply. Fortunately for Vijayanagar, this was the only war that Ahmad waged against it.

There was substantial expansion in the territory of the Bahmani Sultanate during Ahmad’s reign, particularly towards the east, through his annexation of Warangal. This eastward expansion prompted the sultan to shift his capital north-eastwards, from Gulbarga to Bidar. The charm of Bidar’s environment and its relatively salubrious climate also attracted the sultan.

The last years of Ahmad were spent whirling around, engaged in several futile wars, mainly against Gujarat and Malwa, in none of which he was particularly successful, and in some cases he had to accept humiliating terms for peace. At last, in April 1436, when the sultan was around 64 years old, death relieved him of his miseries and frustrations. His son and successor, Ala-ud-din Ahmad, built, over the sultan’s grave in the outskirts of Bidar, a magnificent tomb richly adorned with elegant calligraphic inscriptions.

THE ACCESSION OF Ala-ud-din to the throne was contested by his brother Muhammad, who demanded that he should be given an equal share in the honours and privileges of the sultan, or, alternately, that the kingdom should be divided between them. Ala-ud-din could not possibly concede those extravagant demands, so the dispute had to be settled in the battlefield. In the ensuing battle the sultan defeated his brother, but generously pardoned him, restored him to favour, and assigned to him the governorship of the critically important Raichur Doab. The brothers lived amicably thereafter.

The war between Bahmani and Vijayanagar resumed during the reign of Ala-ud-din with the usual savagery. Typical of the brutality of these conflicts was the warning that, according to Ferishta, Ala-ud-din once issued to Devaraya II, the king of Vijayanagar, that if the raja executed the two Muslim officers whom he had captured in a battle, he (the raja) would have to pay a heavy price for it, ‘as it was a rule of the princes of his family to slay a 100,000 Hindus in revenge for the death of a single Muslim.’

Ala-ud-din’s character was a curious mixture benevolence and tyranny, and he was cavalier and mercurial in his policies and actions. Equally, he was indifferent in observing the routine formalities expected of a sultan; he even relegated the public audience — which royal custom required him to hold every day — to just once in four or five months. And he spent a good amount of his time in the harem, where he had collected some thousand women.

Ala-ud-din preened himself as a just ruler, and he took the title Al-adil : The Just. Yet he allowed himself to be manipulated, perhaps while in an inebriated state, by a group of Deccani nobles to cause the murder of several foreign nobles, of whose growing prominence the Deccani nobles were envious. Characteristically the sultan then swung around in contrition and summarily executed the leaders of the Deccani party.

There were various other similar oddities in the reign of Ala-ud-din. For instance, he had to his credit the building of a large hospital in his capital where free treatment and medicines, even free food, were provided to poor patients. At the same time he was, according to Ferishta, very harsh in his treatment of vagrants, whom he punished ‘by employing them in removing filth from the streets, in dragging heavy stones, and in performing all manner of laborious work, in order that they might reform, and either earn their livelihood by industry, or quit the country altogether.’ Similarly, though Ala-ud-din presented to the public a sternly orthodox Muslim persona, his private life did not quite match that image. He drank wine himself, but severely punished others for drinking. ‘If any person, after admonition and moderate correction, was convicted of drinking wine, it was decreed that molten lead should be poured down his throat, whatever might be the rank of the offender,’ records Ferishta.