







The Himalayas




The Outer Himalayas (the Shiwālik HillsShiwalik Range)


The Lesser Himalayas


The Great Himalayas


Associated ranges and hills



The Indo-Gangetic Plain





The Deccan Plateau



The Western GhātsGhats


The Eastern GhātsGhats


Inland regions






Coastal areas








Drainage into the Bay of Bengal
The Ganges-Brahmaputra river system





Peninsular rivers



Drainage into the Arabian Sea




Lakes and inland drainage






Alluvial soils



In situ soils
Red-to-yellow soils




for brick



Ghats, the western


Kathiawar Peninsula, eastern


Rajasthan, the Eastern


Ghats, the Chota




Ghats in the dry interior of the Deccan



Black soils




Much of the country’s cotton is grown in black soils.


Alluvial soils





The monsoons


The southwest monsoon




Rainfall during the retreating monsoon



Tropical cyclones


Importance to agriculture




Plant and animal life
Plant lifeVegetation









Animal life














Reptiles, fish, and insects







The Indian subcontinent, the great landmass of South Asia, is the home of one of the world’s oldest and most influential civilizations. In the present this article, the subcontinent, which for historical purposes is usually called simply “India,” is understood to comprise the areas of not only the modern present-day Republic of India but also the republics of Pakistan (partitioned from India in 1947) and Bangladesh (which formed the eastern part of Pakistan until its independence in 1971). For the histories of these latter two nations countries since their creation, see Pakistan , history of and Bangladesh, history of.

Since early times the Indian subcontinent appears to have provided an attractive habitat for human occupation. Toward the south it is effectively sheltered by wide expanses of ocean, which tended in ancient times to isolate it culturally in ancient times, while to the north it is protected by the massive Himalayan ranges of the Himalayas, which also sheltered it from the Arctic winds and the air currents of Central Asia. Only in the northwest and northeast is there an easier access by land, and it was through these those two sectors that most of the early contacts with the outside world took place.

Within the framework of hills and mountains represented by the Indo-Iranian borderlands on the west, the Indo-Myanmar borderlands in the east, and the Himalayas to the north, the subcontinent may in broadest terms be divided into two major divisions: in the north, the basins of the Indus and Ganges (Ganga) rivers (the Indo-Gangetic Plain) and, to the south, the block of Archean rocks that forms the Deccan Plateauplateau region. The expansive alluvial plain of the river basins provided the environment and focus for the rise of two great phases of city life: the civilization of the Indus (Sindhu) Valley valley, known as the Indus civilization, during the 3rd millennium BC BCE; and, during the 1st millennium BC BCE, that of the Ganges (Gaṅgā). To the south of this zone, and separating it from the peninsula proper, is a belt of hills and forests, running generally from west to east and to this day largely inhabited by tribal people. This belt has played mainly a negative role throughout Indian history in that it remained relatively thinly populated and did not form the focal point of any of the principal regional cultural developments of South Asia. However, it is traversed by various routes linking the more-attractive areas north and south of it. The Narmada (Narbada) River flows through this belt toward the west, mostly along the Vindhya Range, which has long been regarded as the symbolic boundary between North northern and South southern India.

The northern parts of India represent a series of contrasting regions, each with its own distinctive cultural history and its own distinctive modern population. In the northwest , the valleys of the Baluchistān uplands Baluchistan uplands (now largely in Balochistan, Pak.) are a low-rainfall area, producing mainly wheat and barley and having a low density of population. These Its residents, mainly tribal people, are in many respects closely akin to their Iranian neighbours. The adjacent Indus plains are also an area of extremely low rainfall, but the annual flooding of the river in ancient times and the exploitation of its waters by canal irrigation in the modern period have enhanced agricultural productivity, and the population is correspondingly denser than that of BaluchistānBaluchistan. The Indus Valley valley may be divided into three parts: in the north are the plains of the five tributary rivers of the Punjab (Persian: Panjāb, “Five Waters”); in the centre the consolidated waters of the Indus and its tributaries flow through the alluvial plains of Sindh Sind; and in the south the waters pass naturally into the Indus delta. East of the latter is the Great Indian, or Thar, Desert, which is in turn bounded on the east by the Arāvali Hillsa hill system known as the Aravali Range, the northernmost extent of the Deccan Plateauplateau region. Beyond them is the hilly region of Rājasthān Rajasthan and the Mālwa Malwa Plateau. To the south is the Kāthiāwār Kathiawar Peninsula, forming both geographically and culturally an extension of RājasthānRajasthan. All of these regions have a relatively denser population than the preceding group, but for topographical reasons they have tended to be somewhat isolated, at least during historical times.

East of the Punjab and RājasthānRajasthan, North northern India develops into a series of belts running broadly west to east to west and following the line of the foothills of the Himalayan ranges in the north. The southern belt consists of a hilly, forested area broken by the numerous escarpments of in close association with the Vindhya Range, which includes including the BhāndrerBhander, Rewa, and Kaimur plateaus. Between the hills of central India and the Himalayas lies the Ganges Valley River valley proper, constituting an area of high-density population, moderate rainfall, and high agricultural productivity. Archaeology suggests that, from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC BCE, rice cultivation has played a large part in supporting this population. The Ganges Valley valley divides into three major parts: to the west is the doab, or “mesopotamia,” of the Yamuna (Jumna) and Ganges riversGanges-Yamuna Doab (the land area that is formed by the confluence of the two rivers); east of the confluence of these rivers lies the middle Ganges Valleyvalley, in which population tends to increase and cultivation of rice predominates; and to the southeast lies the extensive delta of the combined Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. The Brahmaputra flows from the northeast, rising from the Tibetan Himalayas and emerging from the mountains into the Assam valley, being bounded on the east by the Pātkai Patkai Bum Range and Nāga the Naga Hills and on the south by the MīkīrMikir, Khāsi-Khasi, Jaintia, and Gāro Garo hills. There is plenty of evidence that influences reached India from the northeast in ancient times, even if they are less prominent than those that arrived from the northwest.

Along the Deccan Plateau plateau there is a gradual eastward declivity, which dispenses its major river systems—the MahānadiMahanadi, GodāvariGodavari, Krishna, and Kāverī Kaveri (Cauvery)—into the Bay of Bengal. Rising some 3,000 feet (1,000 metres) or more along the western edge of the Deccan, the escarpment known as the Western Ghāts Ghats traps the moisture of westerly winds from the Arabian Sea, most notably during the southwest monsoon, creating a tropical rain-forest monsoon climate along the narrow western littoral and depriving the Deccan of significant precipitation. The absence of snowpack in the South south Indian uplands makes the region dependent entirely on rainfall for its streamflow. The arrival of the southwest monsoon in June is thus a pivotal annual event in peninsular culture.

India from the Paleolithic Period to the decline of the Indus Civilizationcivilization

The earliest periods of Indian history are known only through reconstructions from archaeological evidence. In Since the late 20th century, much new data has emerged, allowing a far fuller reconstruction than was formerly possible. This section will discuss five major periods: (1) the early prehistoric period (before the 8th millennium BC BCE), (2) the period of the prehistoric agriculturalists and pastoralists (approximately the 8th to the mid-4th millennium BC BCE), (3) the Early Indus, or Early Harappan, Period (so called after named for the excavated city of HarappāHarappa in eastern Pakistan), witnessing the emergence of the first cities in the Indus River system (c. 3500–2600 BC BCE), (4) the Indus, or Harappan, Civilization civilization (c. 2600–2000 BC BCE, or perhaps ending as late as 1750 BC BCE), and (5) the Post-Urban Period, which follows the Indus Civilization civilization and precedes the rise of cities in northern India during the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC BCE (c. 1750–750 BC BCE).

The materials available for a reconstruction of the history of India prior to the 3rd century BC BCE are almost entirely the products of archaeological research. Traditional and textual sources, transmitted orally for many centuries, are available from the closing centuries of the 2nd millennium BC BCE, but their use depends largely upon on the extent to which any passage can be dated or associated with archaeological evidence. For the rise of civilization in the Indus Valley valley and for contemporary events in other parts of the subcontinent, the evidence of archaeology is still the principal source of information. Even when it becomes possible to read the short inscriptions of the Harappan seals, it is unlikely that they will provide much information to supplement other sources. In these those circumstances it is necessary to approach the early history of India largely through the eyes of the archaeologists, and it will be wise to retain a balance between an objective assessment of archaeological data and its synthetic interpretation.

The early prehistoric period


Most outlines of Indian prehistory have employed nomenclature once thought to reflect a worldwide sequence of human cultural evolution. The European concept of the Old Stone Age, or Paleolithic Period (comprising Lower, Middle, and Upper stages), remains useful with regard to South Asia in identifying levels of technology, apart from any universal time line. Similarly, what has been called the Indian Mesolithic Period (Middle Stone Age) corresponds in general typological terms with to that of Europe. For the subsequent periods, the designations Neolithic Period (New Stone Age) and Chalcolithic Age (Copper-Stone Age) also are applied, but increasingly, as archaeology has yielded more-detailed cultural profiles for these those periods, scholars have come to emphasize the subsistence bases of early societies—e.g., hunting and gathering, pastoralism, and agriculture. The terms Early Harappan and Harappan (after the village in eastern Pakistan from the site where remains of a major city of the Indus Civilization civilization were discovered in 1921) are used primarily in a chronological way but also loosely in a cultural sense, relating respectively to periods or cultures that preceded the appearance of city life in the Indus Valley valley and to the Indus Civilization civilization itself.

The Indian Paleolithic

The oldest artifacts yet found on the subcontinent, marking what may be called the beginning of the Indian Lower Paleolithic, come from the western end of the Shiwālik HillsShiwalik Range, near Rāwalpindi Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan. These quartzite pebble tools and flakes date to about two million years ago, according to paleomagnetic analysis. They , and represent a pre-hand-ax industry of a type that appears to have persisted for a very long an extensive period thereafter. The artifacts are associated with extremely rich sedimentary evidence and fossil fauna, but thus far no correlative hominid hominin (i.e., members of the human lineage) remains have been found. In the same region , the earliest hand axes (of the type commonly called Acheulian, after an early find in Franceassociated with Acheulean industry) have been dated paleomagnetically to about 500,000 years ago.

The Great Indian (Thar) Desert, straddling what is now the southern half of the India-Pakistan border, supplied significant archaeological materials in the late 20th century. Hand axes found at DīdwānaDidwana, RājasthānRajasthan, similar to those from the Shiwālik HillsShiwalik Range, yield slightly younger dates of about 400,000 years ago. Examination of the desert soil strata and other evidence has revealed a correlation between prevailing climates and the successive levels of technology that constitute the Paleolithic. A For example, a prolonged humid phase, for example, as attested by reddish brown soil with a deep profile, appears to have commenced some 140,000 years ago and lasted until about 25,000 years ago, roughly the extent of the Middle Paleolithic Period. During this that time the area of the present desert provided a rich environment for hunting. The Rohri Hills in Jacobābād District, located at the Indus River margins of the desert, contain a group of sites associated with sources of chert, a type of stone that is a principal raw material for tool- and weapon-makingmaking tools and weapons. Evidence surrounding these chert bands—in an alluvial plain otherwise largely devoid of stone—suggests their development as a major factory centre during the Middle Paleolithic. The transition in this same region to a drier climate during the period from about 40,000 to about 25,000 years ago coincides with the onset of the Upper Paleolithic, which lasted until about 15,000 years ago. The basic innovation marking this stage is the production of parallel-sided blades from a prepared core. Also, tools of the Upper Paleolithic exhibit adaptations for working particular materials, such as leather, wood, and bone. The earliest rock paintings yet discovered in the region date to the Upper Paleolithic.

Other important Paleolithic sites under excavation in the 1990s included ones that have been excavated include those at Hunsgi in Karnātaka Karnataka state, at Sanghao cave in North-West Frontier Province, Pak., and in the Vindhya Range separating the Ganges basin from the Deccan Plateauplateau. At the latter, local workers readily identified a weathered , Upper Paleolithic limestone carving as a representation of a mother goddess.

Mesolithic hunters


Thus, chronologically, the Mesolithic cultures cover an enormous span. In Sri Lanka , several Mesolithic sites have been dated to as early as about 30,000 years ago, the oldest yet recorded for the period in South Asia. At the other end of the subcontinent, in caves of the Hindu Kush in northern Afghanistan, evidence of occupation dating to between 15,000 and 10,000 BC BCE represents the so-called Epipaleolithic Stage, which may be considered to fall within the Mesolithic. The domestication of sheep and goats is thought to have begun in this region and period.


The earliest agriculturalists and pastoralists
Neolithic agriculture in the Indus Valley valley and BaluchistānBaluchistan

The Indo-Iranian borderlands form the eastern extension of the Iranian Plateau plateau and in some ways mirror the environment of the Fertile Crescent (the arc of agricultural lands extending from the Tigris-Euphrates river system to the Nile valley) in the Middle East. Across the plateau, lines of communication existed from early antiquity, which would suggest a broad parallelism of developments at both the eastern and western extremities. During the late 20th century, knowledge of early settlements on the borders of the Indus system and Baluchistān Baluchistan was revolutionized by excavations at Mehrgarh and elsewhere.

The group of sites at Mehrgarh provides evidence of some five or six thousand years of occupation comprising two major periods, the first from the 8th through the 6th millennium BC BCE and the second from the 5th through the 4th (and possibly the 3rd) millennium. The earliest evidence occurs in a 23-foot-deep mound mound 23 feet (7 metres) deep discovered beneath massive alluvial deposits. Two subphases of Period I are apparent from the mound artifacts.



The Period I evidence at Mehrgarh provides a clear picture of an early agricultural settlement exhibiting domestic architecture and a variety of well-established crafts. The use of sea shells seashells and of various semiprecious stones, including turquoise and lapis lazuli, indicates the existence of trade networks extending from the coast and perhaps also from Central Asia.


While the settlement at Mehrgarh merits extensive consideration, it should not be perceived as a unique site. There are indications (not yet fully explored) that other equally early sites may exist in other parts of Baluchistān Baluchistan and elsewhere on the Indo-Iranian borderlands.


Developments in the Ganges basin


Earliest settlements in peninsular India

The earliest dates recorded for settlements in peninsular India belong to the opening centuries of the 3rd millennium. A pastoral character dominates the evidence. In the northern parts of KarnātakaKarnataka, the nucleus from which stone-ax-using pastoralists appear to have spread to many parts of the southern peninsula has been located. The earliest radiocarbon dates obtained in this area are from ash mounds formed by the burning on these sites of great masses of cow dung inside cattle pens. These indicate that the first settlers were seminomadic and that they had large herds of Brahman (zebu) cattle. The earliest known settlements, which were located at Kodekal and UtnūrUtnur, date to about 2900 BC BCE. Other important sites are Brahmagiri and Tekkaḷkotā Tekkalkota in Karnātaka, Karnataka and Utnūr Utnur and Nāgārajunikonda Nagarajunikonda in Andhra Pradesh. At Tekkaḷkotā Tekkalkota three gold ornaments were excavated, indicating exploitation of local gold ore deposits, but no other metal objects have been found, suggesting a relative scarcity of metals. These early sites produced distinctive burnished gray pottery, smaller quantities of black-on-red painted pottery, stone axes, and bone points, and in some instances evidence of a stone-blade industry. The axes have a generally oval section and triangular form with pointed butts. Cattle bones Among bone remains, those of cattle are in the majority; , while those of sheep or goats are less common but are also certainly present. Other settlements have been excavated in recent years in this region, but so far they have produced dates from the 2nd millennium, suggesting that the culture continued with little change for many centuries. Stone axes of a generally similar form have been found widely throughout the southern peninsula and may be taken as indications of the spread of pastoralists throughout the region during the 2nd millennium BC BCE.

Earliest settlements in eastern India

Archaeologists have long postulated the existence of Neolithic settlements in the eastern border regions of South Asia on the basis of widespread collections of ground stone axes and adzes, often of distinctive forms, comparable to those of Southeast Asia and South south China. There is, however, little substantial evidence for the date of these collections or for the culture of the people who made them. Excavations at one site, Sarutaru, near Guwāhātithe city of Guwahati, revealed stone axes and shouldered celts (one of the distinctive tool types of the Neolithic) in association with cord- or basket-marked pottery.

The rise of urbanism in the Indus Valleyvalley


At a somewhat later date, probably toward the middle of the 4th millennium BC BCE, agricultural settlements began to spread more widely in the Indus Valley valley itself. The earliest of these provide clear links with the cultures along or beyond the western margins of the Indus Valleyvalley. In the course of time, a remarkable change took place in the form of the Indus settlements, suggesting that some kind of closer interaction was developing, often over considerable distances, and that a process of convergence was under way. This continued for approximately 500 years and can now be identified as marking a transition toward the full urban society that emerged at Harappā Harappa and similar sites around about 2600 BC BCE. For this reason, this stage has been named the Early Harappan, or Early Indus, culture.

Extent and chronology of Early Harappan culture

It is now clear that sites assignable to the Early Harappan Period extend over an immense area: from the Indus delta in the south, eastward southeastward into SaurāshtraSaurashtra; up the Indus Valley valley to western Punjab in the northwest; southeastward eastward past Harappā Harappa to the Bahāwalpur Bahawalpur region of Pakistan; and across the Indian frontier into east Punjab and Haryāna, in the northeast, into the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. In short, the area of the Early Harappan culture was nearly coextensive with that of the mature Indus Civilization itselfcivilization.

Radiocarbon dating of artifacts from a number of the excavated sites provides a fairly consistent chronological picture. The Early Harappan Period began in the early 3rd millennium BC mid-4th millennium BCE and continued until the mid-3rd millennium, when the mature Indus Civilization civilization displaced it in many regions. Thus, narrowly speaking, the period lasted for only four or at most five centuries. In some regions, notably in Punjab, the mature urban style seems never to have been fully established, and in these areas the Early Harappan style continued with little or no outward sign of mature Harappan contact until about 2000 BC BCE.

Principal sites

One of the most significant features of the Early Harappan settlements is the evidence for a hierarchy among the sites, culminating in a number of substantial walled towns. The first site to be recognized as belonging to the Early Harappan Period was Amri in 1929. In 1948 the British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler discovered a small deposit of pottery stratified below the remains of the mature Indus city at HarappāHarappa. The next site to be excavated with a view to uncovering the Early Harappan Period was Kot Diji in Sindh(in present-day Sind province, Pakistan). A stone rubble wall surrounded this settlement, which appears to date to about 3000 BC BCE. An even earlier example is Rehman Dheri, near Dera Ismāīl KhānIsmail Khan, which appears to have achieved its walled status during the last centuries of the 4th millennium. Here There the roughly rectangular, grid-patterned settlement was surrounded by a massive wall of mud brick. Early Harappan Kalibangan (Kāli Kali Banga) in Rājasthān Rajasthan resembled Rehman Dheri in form. It later served as the basis for an expanded settlement of the mature Indus Civilizationcivilization. Still farther east in Haryāna and the eastern Punjab and in Haryana are many other Early Harappan sites. Among them several have been excavated, notably Banawali and Mitathal. Another example of a walled settlement of the period is Tharro in southern SindhSind. This was probably originally a coastal site, although it is now many miles from the sea. Here There the surrounding wall and the extant traces of houses are of local stone.

Subsistence and technology

Many of the excavated sites mentioned above have yet to be fully studied and the findings published, and knowledge of the various features of the life and economy of their inhabitants remains somewhat scanty. All the evidence indicates that the subsistence base of Early Harappan economy remained much as it had already developed at Mehrgarh some two millennia earlier; cattle, sheep, and goats constituted the principal domestic animals, and wheat and barley formed the staple crops. From Kalibangan and several other sites in Bahāwalpur Bahawalpur and Punjab comes interesting intriguing evidence concerning the use of the plow. At the former site, excavators discovered what appeared to be a plowed field surface preserved beneath buildings from the mature Indus period. The pattern of criss-crossed crisscrossed furrows was virtually identical to that still employed in the region, the wider furrows in one direction being used for taller crops, such as peas, and the narrow perpendicular rows being used for sessamum and other oil-seed plantsoilseed plants such as those of the genus Sesamum (sesame). From Banawali and sites in the desiccated Sarasvatī Sarasvati River valley came terra-cotta models of plows, supporting the earlier interpretation of the field pattern.


Culture and religion



The remains discussed above, considered collectively, suggest that four or five millennia of uninterrupted agricultural life in the Indus region set the stage for the final emergence of an indigenous Indus Civilization civilization about 2600 BC BCE. It could also be argued, however, that the substantial Early Harappan walled towns constituted cities. Much research, excavation, and comparative analysis are required before this fertile and provocative period can be understood.

The Indus Civilizationcivilization
Character and significance

While the Indus (or Harappan) Civilization civilization may be considered the culmination of a long process indigenous to the Indus Valleyvalley, a number of parallels exist between developments on the Indus River and the rise of civilization in Mesopotamia. It is striking to compare the Indus with this better-known and more fully documented region and to see how closely the two coincide with respect to the emergence of cities and of such major concomitants of civilization as writing, standardized weights and measures, and monumental architecture. Yet , nearly all the earlier writers have sensed the Indianness Indian-ness of the civilization, even when they were largely unable to articulate it. Thus, historian V. Gordon Childe wrote that:


The force of Childe’s words can be appreciated even without an examination of the Indus Valley valley script found on seals; the attention paid to domestic bathrooms, the drains, and the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro can all be compared with to elements in the later Indian civilization. The bullock carts with a framed canopy, called ikkā ikkas, and boats are little changed to this day. The absence of pins and the love of bangles and of elaborate nose ornaments are all peculiarly IndianSouth Asian. The religion of the Indus also is replete with suggestions of traits known from later India. The significance of the bull, the tiger, and the elephant; the composite animals; the seated yogi god of the seals; the tree spirits and the objects resembling the Śiva liṅga Shiva linga (a phallus , symbolic of the god ŚivaShiva) of later times—all these are suggestive of enduring forms in later Indian civilization.

It is still impossible to do more than guess at the social organization or the political and administrative control implied by this vast area of cultural uniformity. The evidence of widespread trade in many commodities, the apparent uniformity of weights and measures, the common script, and the uniformity—almost common currency—of the seals all indicate some measure of political and economic control and point to the great cities Mohenjo-daro and Harappā Harappa as their centres. The presence of the great granaries on the citadel mounds in these cities and of the “citadels” citadels themselves suggests—partly on the analogies of the cities of Mesopotamia—the existence of priest-kings, or at least of a priestly oligarchy, that controlled the economy and civil government. The intellectual mechanism of this government and the striking degree of control implicit in it are still matters of speculation. Nor can scholars yet speak with any certainty regarding relations between the cities and surrounding villages. Much more research needs to be done, on many such topics, before the full character of the Indus Civilization civilization can be revealed.


The first serious attempt at establishing a chronology for the Indus Civilization civilization relied on cross-dating with Mesopotamia. In this way, Cyril John Gadd cited the period of Sargon of Akkad (2371–16 BC2334–2279 BCE) and the subsequent Isin-Larsa Period (c. 2020–1763 BC2017–1794 BCE) as the time when trade between ancient India and Mesopotamia was at its height. Calibration of the ever-growing number of radiocarbon dates provides a reasonably consistent series from site to site. The broad picture thus obtained suggests that the mature Indus Civilization civilization emerged between 2600 and 2500 BC BCE and continued in full glory to about 2000 BC BCE. Thereafter the evidence is still somewhat unclear, but the late stage of the mature culture probably continued until about 1700 BC BCE, by which time it is probably accurate to speak of the Post-Urban, or Post-Harappan, stage.


All the earlier writers have stressed the remarkable uniformity of the products of the Harappan civilization, and for this reason they provide a definite hallmark for its settlements. The present more-recent evidence suggests that, if the outermost sites are joined by lines, the area enclosed will be a little less than about 500,000 square miles—considerably miles (1,300,000 square km)—considerably larger than modern present-day Pakistan—and if, as is generally inferred, this cultural uniformity coincided with some sort of political and administrative unity, the size of the resulting “empire” is truly vast. Within this area, several hundred sites have been identified, the great majority of which are on the plains of the Indus or its tributaries or on the now dry course of the ancient Sarasvatī Saraswati River, which flowed south of the Sutlej River and then, perhaps, southward to the Indian Ocean, east of the main course of the Indus itself. Outside the Indus system a few sites occur on the Makrān Makran Coast, the westernmost of which is at Sutkāgen Sutkagen Dor, near the modern present-day frontier with Iran. These sites were probably ports or trading posts, supporting the sea trade with the Persian Gulf, and were established in what otherwise remained a largely separate cultural region. The uplands of BaluchistānBaluchistan, while showing clear evidence of trade and contact with the Indus Civilizationcivilization, appear to have remained outside the direct Harappan rule.

To the east of the Indus delta, other coastal sites are found beyond the marshes of marshy salt flats of the Rann of Kachchh (Kutch) and in the interior of the Kāthiāwār Kathiawar Peninsula (SaurāstraSaurashtra). These include the estuarine trading post at Lothal on the Gulf of Khambhāt Khambhat (Cambay), as well as many other sites, some of which are major. West of the Indus River a number of important sites are situated on the alluvial Kacchi desert region of Balochistan, Pak., toward Sibi and Quetta. East of the Indus system, toward the north, a number of sites occur right up to the edge of the Himalayan foothills, where at ĀlamgīrpurAlamgirpur, east north of Delhi, the easternmost Harappan (or perhaps, more properly, Late Harappan) settlement has been discovered and partly excavated. If the area covered by these sites is compared with that of the Early Harappan settlements, it will be seen that there is an expansion in several directions, along the coast to both the west and the east , and eastward through the Punjab toward the Ganges-Yamuna doabDoab.

Planning and architecture

The Harappan sites range from extensive cities to small villages or outposts. The two largest are Mohenjo-daro and HarappāHarappa, each perhaps originally about a mile square in overall dimensions. Each shares a characteristic layout, oriented roughly north-south with a great fortified “citadel” mound to the west and a larger “lower city” to the east. A similar layout is also discernible in the somewhat smaller town of Kalibangan (originally perhaps about 1, 300 feet [400 metres] square), and several other major settlements appear to have shared this scheme. Other major sites include Dholavira and Surkotada in near the Rann of Kachchh; Nausharo Fīroz in BaluchistānFiroz in Balochistan, Pak.; Shortughai in northern Afghanistan; Amri, Chanhu-daro, and Judeirjo-daro in SindhSind; and Sandhanawala in BahāwalpurBahawalpur. Among the smaller sites, special interest attaches to Lothal, where a number of unique and problematic features were discovered in excavations. Of all the sites, HarappāHarappa, Mohenjo-daro, Kalibangan, and Lothal have been most extensively excavated, and more can be said of their original layout and planning. Thus, they are considered in greater detail below.




Important sites

The mounds of Mohenjo-daro lie near the right bank of the Indus in the Lārkāna Larkana district of SindhSind province. The excavations revealed that occupation continued the lowest level of former occupation was covered by deposits of alluvial silt to a depth of about 30 feet below the modern level of the plain, because of the annual deposition of alluvial silt during the floods(10 metres), attributable to annual flooding. The lowest levels are thus below the modern present-day water table and are still largely unexcavated. The As noted above, the main features of the layout of Mohenjo-daro , with are a citadel to the west and a lower city and grid of streets to the east, have already been alluded to above. Enough has been said of the general features of the lower city to make it unnecessary to say more of the considerable areas excavated in that part. The citadel, however, demands further attention. In the citadel the English archaeologist Sir John Hubert Marshall discovered a massive platform of mud brick and clay approximately 20 feet (6 metres) in depth, above which were six main building levels. Under this platform lay the remains of the early period. It is probable, but by no means certain, that the platform was raised as protection against floods. Both it and the great brick defensive wall around the perimeter were built at the beginning of the intermediate period.



The vast mounds at Harappā Harappa stand on the left bank of the now dry course of the Rāvi Ravi River in the Punjab. They were excavated between 1920 and 1934 by the Archaeological Survey of India, in 1946 by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, and in the late 20th century by an American and Pakistani team. When first discovered, the extensive surviving brick ramparts led to the site’s being described as a ruined brick castle. The lower city is partly occupied by a modern village, and it has been seriously disturbed by erosion and brick robbers. The citadel, to the west, is roughly a parallelogram on plan, measuring approximately 1,300 by 650 feet (400 by 200 metres). Excavation here there revealed a great platform of mud brick about 20 feet (6 metres) in thickness, with a massive brick wall around the perimeter. Below the defenses were discovered traces of the Early Harappan Period. The excavations were not extensive enough to reveal the layout of the interior, but about six building periods were discovered above the platform. The most interesting remains were discovered immediately north of the citadel, close to the bed of the river. Here : there were a series of circular platforms evidently intended to hold mortars for pounding grain; a remarkable series of brick plinths, which are inferred to have formed the podium for two rows of six granary buildings, each of 50 by 20 feet (15 by 6 metres) and of a different design from those at Mohenjo-daro; a series of pear-shaped furnaces, apparently used for metallurgy; and two rows of single-roomed barracks, which are generally thought to have generally been assigned to a coolie or “slave” communitybeen occupied by servants. Two other discoveries at Harappā Harappa were made to the south of the citadel. Here There two cemeteries were found—“R. 37,” belonging to the Harappan Period, and “H,” dating from the late Late or even Post-Harappan periodPeriod. These contained different styles of burial and will be discussed below.


Third in importance among excavated Harappān Harappan sites is Kalibangan. Excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India are still largely unpublished. Kalibangan , which stands on the left bank of the dry bed of the Sarasvatī Saraswati River in northern RājasthānRajasthan. As mentioned above, an Early Harappan settlement lies beneath the later remains, and the main Harappan township has a layout strikingly similar to that of Mohenjo-daro and HarappāHarappa. In the lower town, excavation has revealed as many as nine building phases. The citadel mound is a parallelogram on a plan of about 430 feet (130 metres) on the east-west axis and 850 feet (260 metres) on the north-south. The whole site has been drastically reduced by brick robbers, but careful excavation has revealed the foundation courses of an accurately laid rhomboid central section with oblong bastions at each corner and smaller bastions on the north and south walls. The principal access was from the south via a flight of steps. Access from the north was via a narrow postern reached by a stairway, beyond which was a further rhomboid section, having an inset gateway in the northwest corner, near the riverbank. Traces of a brick wall around the lower town were also encountered. The central sector of the citadel contained a series of high brick platforms divided by narrow passages. The upper parts of these platforms had been very seriously damaged, and their function is at present mysterious, but they do not appear to have been the foundation for a granary. The northern sector contained normal domestic housing. A cemetery was discovered a short distance to the west of the town. It may be expected that, when the excavation of this site is published, it will add greatly to knowledge of the Indus Civilizationcivilization.



The most unexpected discovery at Lothal, however, was a great brick basin measuring some 718 by 121 feet (219 by 37 metres) with extant brick walls of 15 feet (4.5 metres) in height. This lay east of the settlement, alongside the platform on which the granary block stood. At one end of the basin was a small sluice or spillway with a locking device. The excavator has inferred that the basin was a dock to which ships could be brought from the nearby estuary via an artificial channel that would have been kept clear of silt by controlling the controlled flow of water from the spillway. This view has not been universally accepted; another view is that it provided a source of sweet fresh water for drinking or agriculture. A cemetery was found outside the perimeter of the wall, west of the site. The final report on this excavation also is not yet published.

Other important sites

A growing number of other sites have been excavated, each important in its own way. On the coast near Las Bela in BaluchistānBalochistan, materials suggesting a substantial shell-working industry have been found at Balakot. Not far from Mehrgarh, at the head of the Kacchi desert region in Balochistan, the small settlement of Naushahro Fīroz Firoz provides valuable evidence of the actual transformation of Early Harappan into Mature mature Harappan. In Near the Rann of Kachchh, Surkotada is a small settlement with an oblong fortification wall of stone. Also in Kachchh is Dholavira, which appears to be among the largest Harappan settlements so far identified; its excavation began in 1989. a nine-year excavation at the site completed in 2001 yielded a walled Indus valley city that dated to the mid-3rd millennium BCE and covered some 3.5 acres (1.4 hectares). The Archaeological Survey of India team uncovered a sophisticated water-management system with a series of giant reservoirs—the largest 265 by 40 feet (80 by 12 metres) wide and 23 feet (7 metres) deep—used to conserve rainwater. Of excavated sites in Punjab, Banawali is an important major settlement, surrounded by massive brick defenses. One of the most surprising discoveries, far outside the central area of the Indus Civilizationcivilization, is Shortughai in the Oxus ( Amu Darya (Oxus River) Valleyvalley, in northern Afghanistan. Here There the remains of a small Harappan colony, presumably sited so as to provide control of the lapis lazuli export trade from originating in neighbouring BadakhshānBadakhshan, have been excavated by a French team.


There have been two independent estimates of the population of Mohenjo-daro. Both are based on an estimation of the original area covered and the density of the people living there, using traditional settlements in the region in recent times the present day for comparison. H.T. Hugh Trevor Lambrick proposed a figure of 35,000 for Mohenjo-daro and a roughly similar figure for HarappāHarappa, while W.Walter A. Fairservis estimated the former at around about 41,250 and the latter around about 23,500. These figures are probably conservative. It would be possible to produce estimates of the population for other sites along similar lines—notably for Kalibangan, of which the lower city has an area about one-fifth that of Mohenjo-daro.

Agriculture and animal husbandry





Craft and technology

The Indus Civilization civilization exhibits a wide range of crafts and technical skills. As Childe remarked, these depended on the same basic discoveries as those exploited in Egypt or Mesopotamia, but in each case the crafts acquired a significance of their own. Recent More-recent research at Mohenjo-daro has shown that different quarters of the lower city appeared to house the families who specialized in different crafts; such evidence strengthens the view that occupational specialization was firmly established.





Although little has survived, very great interest attaches to the fragments of cotton textiles recovered at MohenjodaroMohenjo-daro. These provide the earliest evidence of a crop and industry for which India has long been famous. It is assumed that the raw cotton must have been brought in bales to the cities to be spun, woven, and perhaps dyed, as the presence of dyers’ vats would seem to indicate.


Trade and external contacts

It has been seen above that the area covered by the Indus Civilization civilization had a remarkably uniform level of material culture. This suggests a closely knit and integrated administration and implies internal trade within the state. Evidence of the actual exportation of objects is not always easy to find, but the wide diffusion of chert blades made of the characteristic Sukkur stone and the enormous scale of the factory at the Sukkur site strongly suggest trade. Other items also appear to indicate trade, such as the almost identical bronze carts discovered at Chanhu-daro and HarappāHarappa, for which a common origin must be postulated.

The wide range of crafts and special materials employed must also have caused the establishment of economic relations with peoples living outside the Harappan state. Such trade may be considered to be of two kinds: first, the obtaining of raw materials and other goods from the village communities or forest tribes in regions adjoining the Indus culture area; and second, trade with the cities and empires of Mesopotamia. There is ample indication of the former type, even if the regions from which specific materials were derived are not easy to pinpoint. Gold was almost certainly imported from the group of settlements that sprang up in the vicinity of the goldfields of northern KarnātakaKarnataka, and copper could have come from several sources—principally from RājasthānRajasthan. Lead may have come from Rājasthān Rajasthan or elsewhere in India. Lapis lazuli was probably imported from Iran rather than directly from the mines at Badakhshān. Turquoise probably Badakhshan, and turquoise probably also came from Iran; fuchsite from Karnātaka; . Among others were fuchsite (a chromium-rich variety of muscovite) from Karnataka, alabaster from Iran; , amethyst from Mahārāshtra; Maharashtra, and jade from Central Asia. There is unfortunately little evidence of what the Harappans gave in exchange for these materials—possibly nondurable goods such as cotton textiles and probably various types of beads. They may have also bartered tools or weapons of copper.

For the trade with Mesopotamia there is both literary and archaeological evidence. The Harappan seals were evidently used to seal bundles of merchandise, as clay seal impressions with cord or sack marks on the reverse side testify. The presence of a number of Indus seals at Ur and other Mesopotamian cities and the discovery of a “Persian Gulf” type of seal at Lothal—otherwise known from the Persian Gulf ports of Bahrain (ancient Dilmun, or TelmunDilmun (present-day Bahrain) and FaylahkahFaylakah, as well as from Mesopotamia—provide convincing corroboration of the sea trade suggested by the Lothal dock. Timber and precious woods, ivory, lapis lazuli, gold, and luxury goods such as carnelian beads, pearls, and shell and bone inlays, including the distinctly Indian kidney shape, were among the goods sent to Mesopotamia in exchange for silver, tin, woolen textiles, and grains and other foods. Copper ingots appear to have been imported to Lothal from a place known as Magan (possibly Oman, the Mahran region, or southeastern Iranin present-day Oman). Other possible probable trade items include products originating exclusively in each respective region, such as bitumen, occurring naturally in Mesopotamia; , and cotton textiles and chickens, major products of the Indus region not native to Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamian trade documents, lists of goods, and official inscriptions mentioning Meluhha (the ancient Akkadian name for the Indus region) supplement Harappan seals and archaeological finds. Literary references to Meluhhan trade date from the Akkadian, Ur III, and Isin-Larsa Periods periods (i.e., c. 2350–1800 BC 2350–1794 BCE), but, as texts and archaeological data indicate, the trade probably started in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2600 BC BCE). During the Akkadian Period, Meluhhan vessels sailed directly to Mesopotamian ports, but by the Isin-Larsa Period, Dilmun (modern Bahrain) was the entrepôt for Meluhhan and Mesopotamian traders. By the subsequent Old Babylonian periodPeriod, trade between the two cultures evidently had ceased entirely.

Language and scripts, weights and measures

The maintenance of so extensive a set of relations as those implicit in the size and uniformity of the Harappan state and the extent of trade contacts must have called for a well-developed means of communication. The Harappan script has long defied attempts to read it, and therefore the language remains unknown. Recent Relatively recent analyses of the order of the signs on the inscriptions have led several scholars to the view that the language is not of the Indo-European family, nor is it close to Sumerian, Hurrian, or Elamite. If it is related to any modern language family, it appears to be the Dravidian, presently spoken throughout the southern part of the Indian Peninsulapeninsula; an isolated member of this group, the Brahui language, is spoken in western Pakistan, an area closer to those regions of Harappan culture. The script, which was written from right to left, is known from the 2,000-odd short inscriptions so far recovered, ranging from single characters to inscriptions of around about 20 characters. There are more than 500 signs, many appearing to be compounds of two or more other signs, but it is not yet clear whether these signs are ideographic, logographic, or other. Numerous studies of the inscriptions have been made during the past decades, including those by a Russian team under Yuri Yury Valentinovich Knorozov and a Scandinavian Finnish group led by Asko Parpola. Despite various claims to have read the script, there is still no general agreement.



Social and political system



The excavations of the Indus cities have produced much evidence of artistic activity. Such finds are important, because they provide an insight into the minds, lives, and religious beliefs of their creators. Stone sculpture is extremely rare, and much of it is very quite crude. The total repertoire cannot compare with to the work done in Mesopotamia during the same periods. The figures are apparently all intended as images for worship. Such figures include seated men, recumbent composite animals, or—in unique instances (from HarappāHarappa)—a standing nude male and a dancing figure. The finest pieces are of excellent quality. There is also a small but impressive notable repertoire of cast-bronze figures, including several fragments and complete examples of dancing girls, small chariots, carts, and animals. The technical excellence of the bronzes suggests a highly developed art, but the number of examples is still very small. Nevertheless, they They appear to be Indian workmanship rather than imports.



Religion and burial customs


Many burials have been discovered, giving clear indication of belief in an afterlife. The cemeteries excavated at HarappāHarappa, Lothal, and Kalibangan are clearly separated from the settlement and show that the predominant rite was extended inhumation, with the body lying on its back and the head generally positioned to the north. Quantities of pottery were placed in the graves, and sometimes personal ornaments adorned the bodies. Some graves took the form of brick chambers within which the body was placed. At Lothal several pairs of skeletons were found in the same grave, and it has been suggested that this is an indication of some form of suttee (satī; a later Hindu custom in which the wife ends her life wives end their lives after the death of her the husband).

The end of the Indus Civilizationcivilization

There is no general agreement regarding the causes of the breakdown of Harappan urban society. Broadly speaking, the principal theories thus far proposed fall under four headings. The first is gradual environmental change, such as a shift in climatic patterns and consequent agricultural disaster, perhaps coinciding with rapid resulting from excessive environmental stress caused by population growth and overexploitation of resources. Second, some scholars have postulated more-precipitous environmental changes, such as tectonic events leading to the flooding of Mohenjo-daro, the drying up of the Saravatī Sarawati River, or other such calamities. Third, it is conceivable that human activities, such as invasions of tribespeople from the hills to the west of the Indus Valleyvalley, perhaps even Indo-Aryans, contributed to the breakdown of Indus external trade links or more directly disrupted the cities. The fourth theory posits the occurrence of an epidemic or a similar agent of devastation. It appears likely that some complex of natural forces compromised the fabric of society and that subsequent human intervention hastened its complete breakdown.

Post-Harappan developments
The Post-Urban Period in northwestern India

It is still far from certain at what date the urban society broke down. The decline probably occurred in several stages, perhaps over a century or more; the period between about 2000 and 1750 BC BCE is a reasonable estimation. The collapse of the urban system does not necessarily imply a complete breakdown in the life-style lifestyle of the population in all parts of the Indus region, but it seems to have involved the end of whatever system of social and political control had preceded it. After this that date the cities, as such, and many of their distinctively urban traits—the use of writing and of seals and a number of the specialized urban crafts—disappear. The succeeding era, which lasted until about 750 BC BCE, may be considered as postPost-Harappan or, perhaps better, as “post“Post-urbanUrban.”

In Sindh, Pakistan’s Sind province the Post-Urban phase is recognizable in the Jhukar culture at Chanhu-daro and other sites. Here There certain copper or bronze weapons and tools appear to be of “foreign” type and may be compared with to examples from farther west (Iran and Central Asia); a different , but parallel , change is seen at Pirak, not far from Mehrgarh. In the Rann of Kachchh and Saurāshtra Saurashtra regions there appears to have been a steady increase in the number of settlements, but all are small and none can compare with such undoubtedly Harappan cities as Dholavira. In this region, however, the distinctive “foreign” foreign metal elements are less prominent.

In the Sarasvatī valley there is a very interesting development: here, An intriguing development occurs along the Saraswati valley: there the early Post-Urban stage is associated with the pottery known from the so-called Cemetery H at HarappāHarappa. This coincides with a major reduction in both the number and size of settlements, suggesting a deterioration in the environment. In the eastern Punjab , too , there is a disappearance of the larger, urban sites but no comparable reduction in the number of smaller settlements. This is also true of the settlements farther east in the Ganges-Yamuna valleys. It is probably correct to conclude that, in each of these areas during the Post-Urban Period, material culture exhibited some tendency to develop regional variations, sometimes showing continuations of features already present during the Pre-Urban and Urban phases.

The arrival and spread appearance of Indo-Aryan speakers

Scholars generally agree that the arrival and spread of have traditionally agreed that a people speaking Old Indo-Aryan dialects of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family took place arrived in the Indian subcontinent during the late 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. Probably these people BCE. These newcomers purportedly came from the steppes to the north and east of the Caspian Sea, moving first southward into the southern parts of Central Asia and from there fanning out across the Iranian Plateau. This movement may already have begun during the life span of the Indus Civilizationplateau and spreading throughout northern India, disrupting the established sedentary culture and driving its Dravidian-speaking inhabitants of the Indus civilization southward. The movement itself remains hypothetical, but evidence from cemeteries at Sibri and south of Mehrgarh, near the mouth of the Bolān Bolan Pass, shows striking parallels—including “foreign” foreign copper and bronze tools and weapons and typical pottery forms—with that from cemeteries of the Sapalli-Tepe group in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. This correspondence suggests a date of about 2000 BC BCE for the presence of these people on the borders of the Indus system. It

However, it is even more difficult to identify traces that may be associated with the movement of Indo-Aryan speakers into the central Indus plains or to determine whether the occasional copper or bronze weapons of “foreign” foreign type found in late contexts at Mohenjo-daro or Chanhu-daro are evidence of their presence there. It is possible that Moreover, even if Indo-Aryans actually conquered some of the Indus cities and established hegemony over the local population; if so, it has to be explained why they appear to have given up many of their distinctive material products while presumably retaining their distinctive speech.



The late 2nd millennium and the reemergence of urbanism

Toward the end of the 2nd millennium there appears to have been a further deterioration in the environment throughout the Indus system. Many of the Post-Urban settlements seem to have been abandoned, and traces are found of temporary settlements that were probably associated with nomadic pastoral groups and distinguished by the poverty of their material culture. In Along the Sarasvatī valley Saraswati there is further evidence of the drying up of the Derawar oasis, with a further decline in the number and size of settlements. As yet, these events are not properly dated, but they may tentatively be assigned to a period from about 1200–800 BC BCE. In Saurāshtra Saurashtra a similar , if less extreme , decline in the number of settlements is also evident. Even much farther south, in MahārāshtraMaharashtra, the opening of the 1st millennium seems to have coincided with a period of desiccation, in which the flourishing agricultural settlements at sites such as Inamgaon declined; temporary encampments of pastoral nomads indicate a general deterioration in the standard of living.

To the north, in Punjab, HaryānaHaryana, and the upper Ganges ValleyGangetic plain, such deterioration is less apparent, perhaps because the proximity of the Himalayas produced a more consistent higher level of rainfall. It is in this area that a new tendency emerges—the expansion of settlements associated with the pottery known as Painted Gray Ware. This characteristic ceramic accompanied a spread of settlements toward the east into the upper Ganges-Yamuna valleys and constitutes a distinguishing feature of the process of development that, by the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC BCE, gave rise to the first cities of the Ganges system. (The previous wave of urbanization appears not to have penetrated below the upper Ganges ValleyGangetic plain.)

Another factor that coincided with, if not actually contributed to, the new process of change is the beginning and spread of iron working. The earliest dated occurrence of iron is probably that from about 1200 to 1100 BC BCE at Pirak in the Kacchi plainregion. Comparably early dates are suggested at other widely scattered sites, but it probably took many years for the use of iron in almost all types of toolmaking to become common in all regions. During this period , an increasingly marked contrast may be observed between the growing number of cities across the north and the relatively less-developed settlement pattern of peninsular India, where a mixture of small-scale agriculture and pastoralism coincided with the appearance of the various types of “Megalithic” graves and monuments.

Peninsular India in the aftermath of the Indus Civilization civilization (c. 2000–1000 BC BCE)

It was stated above that the earliest known settlements in peninsular India appeared early in the 3rd millennium and showed either a mixed agricultural or strongly pastoral character. From about 2000 BC BCE there appears to have been a general expansion of these settlements. It is sometimes suggested that this expansion may have been in some way a result of the end of the Indus Civilization civilization and that large numbers of “Harappans” migrated to the south. There is very little solid evidence to support this view, and it appears rather that the development was primarily indigenous.What is particularly interesting noteworthy is the way in which regional cultural variants occurred throughout peninsular India and often seem to be ancestral to the major cultural regions known from later historical times. In Mahārāshtra Maharashtra the excavations at Inamgaon have provided the clearest picture so far of the developments and changes that took place in one of these regions. Here There can be seen the variety of crops and domestic animals, the changing house types, suggestions of tribal chiefdoms, limited craft specialization, and trade. Copper and bronze artifacts, though still relatively scarce, appear alongside stone blades and axes. This mixed technology continued until the time when iron became common. Farther south, in Karnātaka Karnataka and Tamil NāduNadu, there is similar evidence, although the staple crop here appears to have been millet, and wheat and barley are absent.

The early Muslim period
North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 1200–1526

The first Muslim raids in the subcontinent were made by Arabs on the western coast and in Sindh Sind during the 7th and 8th centuries, and there had been Muslim trading communities in India at least since that time. The significant and permanent military movement of Muslims into North northern India, however, dates from the late 12th century and was carried out by a Turkish dynasty that arose indirectly from the ruins of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate. The road to conquest was prepared by Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna (modern Ghaznī in Afghanistannow Ghaznī, Afg.), who conducted more than 20 raids into North north India between 1001 and 1027 and established in the Punjab the easternmost province of his large but short-lived empire. Maḥmūd’s raids, though militarily successful, primarily had as their object the taking of plunder rather than conquestconquering territory.

The Delhi sultanate

The decline of the Ghaznavids after 1100 was accentuated by the sack of Ghazna by the rival Shansabānīs of Ghūr in 1150–51. The Ghūrids, who inhabited the region between Ghazna and Herāt, rose rapidly in power during the last half of the 12th century, partly because of the changing balance of power that resulted from the westward movement of the non-Muslim Qara Khiṭāy (Karakitai) Turks into the area dominated by the Seljuq Turks, who had been the principal power in Iran and parts of Afghanistan during the previous 50 years. The Seljuq defeat in 1141 led to a struggle for power among the KarakitaiQara Khiṭāy, the Khwārezm-ShāhsShahs, and the Ghūrids for control of parts of Central Asia and Iran. By 1152 Ghazna had been captured again by the Ghūrid ruler, ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn. After his death the Ghūrid territory was partitioned principally between his two nephews, GhiyāṣGhiyāth al-ud-Dīn Muḥammad and Muʿizz al-ud-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Sām, commonly called Muḥammad of Ghūr. GhiyāṣGhiyāth al-ud-Dīn ruled over Ghūr from Fīrūz-Kūh and looked toward Khorāsān, while Muḥammad of Ghūr was established in Ghazna and began to try his luck in India for expansion. The Ghūrid invasions of North north India were thus part extensions of a Central Asian struggle.

Almost all of North north India was, however, already in contact with Ghūr through an extensive trade, particularly in horses. The Ghūrids were well known as horse breeders. Ghūr also had a reputation for supplying Indian and Turkish slaves to the markets of Central Asia. Muslim merchants and saints had settled much beyond Sindh Sind and the Punjab in a number of towns in what is are now Uttar Pradesh and BihārBihar. The Ghūrids also were familiar with the fabulous wealth of western and central India. They therefore followed first the southern a route into India through the Gumal Pass, with an eye set eventually on GujarātGujarat. It was only after suffering a severe defeat at the hands of the Caulukya army of Gujarāt Gujarat that they turned to the northern a more northerly route through the Khyber Pass.

The Turkish conquest

By 1186 the Ghūrids had destroyed the remnants of Ghaznavid power in the northwest and were in a favourable military position to move against the North northern Indian Rājpūt Rajput powers. The conquest of the Rājpūts Rajputs was not easy, however. The Cauhāns Cauhans (Cāhamānasā Cahamanasa) under Pṛthvīrāja Prithviraja defeated Muḥammad of Ghūr in 1191 at Tarain (Tarāorī)Taraori, northwest of Delhi, but his forces returned the following year to defeat and kill the Rājpūt Rajput king on the same battlefield. The victory opened the road to Delhi, which was conquered in 1193 but left in the hands of a tributary Hindu king. Muḥammad of Ghūr completed his conquests with the occupation of the military outposts of HānsiHansi, Kuhram, Sursuti, and Sirhind and then returned to Ghazna with a large hoard of treasure, leaving his slave and lieutenant, Quṭb al-ud-Dīn Aybak, in charge of consolidation and further expansion.

Quṭb al-ud-Dīn displaced the Cauhān Cauhan chief and made his headquarters at Delhi in 1193, when he began a campaign of expansion. He By 1202 he was soon in control of Vārānasi (Benares; 1194)Varanasi, Badaun, Kannauj (1198–99), and Kālinjar (1202)Kalinjar.

In the meantime, an obscure adventurer, Ikhtiyār al-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Bakhtiyār Khaljī of the Ghūrid army, conquered Nadia, the capital of the Sena kings of Bengal (1202). Within two years Bakhtiyār embarked upon on a campaign to conquer Tibet in order to plunder the treasure of its Buddhist monasteries as well as , and in 1206 he attacked Kamarupa (Assam) to gain control of Bengal’s traditional trade route leading to Southeast Asian gold and silver mines. The attempt, however, proved disastrous. Bakhtiyār managed to return to Bengal with a few hundred men, and there he died in 1206.

The availability of a large number of military adventurers from Central Asia who would follow commanders with reputations for success was one of the important elements in the rapid Ghūrid conquest of the major cities and forces of the North north Indian plain. Other factors were important as well; better horses contributed to the success of mobile tactics, and the Ghūrids also made better use of metal for weapons, armour, and stirrups than did most of their adversaries. Perhaps most important was the tradition of centralized organization and planning, which was conducive to large-scale military campaigns and to the effective organization of postcampaign occupation forces. While the Rājpūts Rajputs probably saw the Ghūrids as an equal force competing for paramount power in North north India, the Ghūrids had in mind the model of the successor states to the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, the old Iranian Sāsānid empire, and particularly the vast centralized empire of Maḥmūd of Ghazna.

Soon, however, the Ghūrid possessions were insecure everywhere. In 1205 Sultan Muḥammad of Ghūr suffered a severe defeat at Andkhvoy (Andkhui) at the hands of the Khwārezm-ShāhShah dynasty. News of the defeat precipitated a rebellion by some of the sultan’s followers in the Punjab, and, although the rebellion was put down, Muḥammad of Ghūr was assassinated at Lahore in 1206. The Ghūrids at the time held the major towns of the Punjab, of SindhSind, and of much of the Gangetic Plain, but almost all the land outside the cities still was subject to some form of control by Hindu chiefs. Even in the Doab (the land between the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers, near Delhi) the Gāhaḍavālas Ganges–Yamuna Doab, the Gahadavalas held out against the Turks. Most significantly, the chiefs of Rājasthān Rajasthan had not been permanently subdued.

The early Turkish sultans

When Quṭb al-ud-Dīn Aybak assumed authority over the Ghūrid possessions in India, he moved from the neighbourhood of Delhi to Lahore. There he set up guard against another of Muḥammad of Ghūr’s slaves, Tāj al-ud-Dīn Yildiz of Ghazna, who also claimed his former master’s Indian possessions. In 1208 Quṭb al-ud-Dīn defeated his rival and captured Ghazna but soon was driven out again. He died in 1210 in a polo accident, having made no effort to extend his Indian conquests, but he had managed to establish the foundation of an Indian Muslim state.


The sultans thus not only kept a close watch over the slave market but also commissioned slave merchants as state agents. Sultan Shams al-ud-Dīn Iltutmish (reigned 1211–36), son-in-law and successor to Aybak, who was himself a mamlūk, sent a merchant to Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tirmiz to purchase young slaves on his behalf.

Consolidation of Turkish rule

During his reign, Iltutmish was faced with three problems: defense of his western frontier, control over the Muslim nobles within India, and subjugation of the many Hindu chiefs who still exercised a large measure of independent rule. His relative success in all three areas gives him claim to the title of founder of the independent Delhi sultanate of Delhi. His reign opened with a factional dispute in which he and his Delhi-based supporters defeated and killed the rival claimant to the throne, Quṭb al-ud-Dīn’s son, and put down a revolt by a portion of the Delhi guards. In the west Iltutmish was passive at first and even accepted investiture from his old rival, Yildiz, but, when Yildiz was driven from Ghazna into the Punjab by the Khwārezm-Shāh Shah ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad in 1215, Iltutmish was able to defeat and capture him at TarainTaraori. Iltutmish might have faced a threat himself from the Khwārezm-Shāh Shah had it not been for Genghis Khan’s attack upon the latterthe latter’s conflict with the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan. Again Iltutmish waited while refugees, including the heir to the Khwārezm-Shāhī Shahī throne, poured into the Punjab and while Nāṣir al-ud-Dīn Qabācha, another of Muḥammad of Ghūr’s former slaves, maintained a perilous hold on Lahore and MultānMultan. Iltutmish’s political talents were pushed to the maximum as he tried desperately to avoid a direct confrontation with the armies of Genghis Khan. He refused aid to the Khwārezm-Shah heir against the Mongols and yet would not attempt to capture him. Fortunately, the Mongols were content to send raiding parties into no further than the Salt Range (in the northern Punjab region), which Iltutmish wisely ignored, and eventually the Khwārezm-Shāh Shah prince fled from India after causing enormous destruction within Qabācha’s domains. Thus, Iltutmish’s cause was advanced, and in 1228 he was able to drive Qabācha from Multān the Punjabi cities of Multan and Uch and, by establishing his frontier east of the Beās Beas River, to avoid a direct confrontation with the Mongols. He was not able to gain effective control of the western Punjab, however, largely because the area was subject to raids by hill tribes.

In the east in 1225, Iltutmish launched a successful campaign against GhiyāṣGhiyāth al-ud-Dīn ʿIwāz Khaljī, one of Bhaktiyār Khaljī’s lieutenants, who had assumed sovereign authority in Lakhnautī Lakhnauti (northern Bengal) and was encroaching upon on the province of BihārBihar. ʿIwāz Khaljī was defeated and slain in 1226, and in 1229 Iltutmish invaded Bengal and slew Balka, the last of the Khaljī chiefs to claim independent power. Iltutmish’s campaigns in Rājasthān Rajasthan and central and western India were ultimately less successful, although he temporarily captured Ranthambhor (1226), Mandor (MandāwarMandawar; 1227), and Gwalior (1231) and plundered Bhīlsa Bhilsa and Ujjain in Mālwa Malwa (1234–35). His generals suffered defeats, however, at the hands of the Cauhāns Cauhans of BūndiBundi, the Caulukyas of GujarātGujarat, and the Candellas (ChandelāsChandelas) of Narwar.

By 1236, the year Iltutmish died, the Delhi sultanate of Delhi was established as clearly the largest and most powerful of a number of competing states in North north India. Owing to Iltutmish’s able leadership, Delhi was no longer subordinate to Ghazna, nor was it to remain simply a frontier outpost; it was to become, rather, a proud centre of Muslim power and culture in India. Iltutmish made clear, however, to what extent Islām Islam and Islāmic Islamic law (Sharīʿah) could determine the contour of politics and culture in the overwhelmingly non-Islāmic Muslim Indian environment. Early in his reign, a party of theologians approached him with the plea that the infidel Hindus be forced, in accordance with Islāmic Islamic law, to accept Islām Islam or face death. On behalf of the sultan, his wazīr (vizier) told the divines that this was impractical, since the Muslims were as few as grains of salt in a dish of food. Despite the Islāmic Islamic proscription against women rulers, Iltutmish nominated his daughter Raziyya Raziyyah (Raziyyat al-ud-Dīn) to be his successor. By refusing shelter to the Muslim Jalāl adal-Dīn Mingburnu (the last Khwārezm-ShāhShah) against the pagan Genghis KhānKhan, he politely asserted that the Turkish power in Delhi, even though a sequel to a Central Asian social and political struggle, was no longer to involve itself in the power politics of countries of the Islāmic Islamic East. Iltutmish legitimated his ambition by obtaining a letter of investiture from the ʿAbbāsid caliph in Baghdad, whose name appeared in Hindi on the bullion currency so that the people on the streets might perceive the nature of the new regime.

Iltutmish seems to have enjoyed support among his nobles and advisers for his assertion that the legal structure of the state in India should not be based strictly on Islāmic Islamic law. Gradually, a judicious balance between the dictates of Sharīʿah and the needs of the time emerged as a distinctive feature of the Turkish rule. The Muslim constituency, however, could not adjust to the idea of being ruled by a woman, and Raziyya Raziyyah (reigned 1236–40) fairly quickly succumbed to powerful nobles (the Shamsī), who once had been Iltutmish’s slaves.


The political situation had changed by 1246, when GhiyāṣGhiyāth al-ud-Dīn Balban, a junior member of the Forty, had gained enough power to attain a controlling position within the administration of the newest sultan, Nāṣir al-ud-Dīn Maḥmūd (reigned 1246–66). Balban, acting first as nāʾib (“deputy”) to the sultan and later as sultan (reigned 1266–87), was the most important political figure of his time. The period was characterized by almost continuous struggles to maintain Delhi’s position against the revived power of the Hindu chiefs (principally RājpūtsRajputs) and by vigilance against the strife-ridden but still dangerous Mongols in the west. Even in the central regions of the state, sultanate rule was sometimes challenged by discontented Muslim nobles.

During the first 10 years of Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd’s reign, Balban’s campaigns against the Hindu chiefs were only partially successful. By 1266, when he assumed the sultanate, his military strategy was to work outward from the capital. First, he cleared the forests of MewātīsMewatis (Mina); then he restored order in the Doab and at Oudh (present-day Ayodhya) and suppressed a revolt in the region of the cities of Badaun and Amroha districts with particular viciousness. Having established the security of his home territory, Balban then chose to consolidate his rule over the provincial governors rather than to embark upon expeditions against Hindu territories. Thus, he reacted vigorously and effectively against an attempt to establish an independent state in Bengal in the 1280s.


The Khaljīs

Balban’s immediate successors, however, were unable to manage either the administration or the factional conflicts between the old Turkish nobility and the new forces, led by the Khaljīs; after a struggle between the two factions, Jalāl al-ud-Dīn Fīrūz Khaljī assumed the sultanate in 1290. During his short reign (1290–96), Jalāl al-ud-Dīn suppressed a revolt by some of Balban’s officers, led an unsuccessful expedition against Ranthambhor, and defeated a substantial Mongol force on the banks of the Sind River in central India. In 1296 he was assassinated by his ambitious nephew and successor, ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn Khaljī (reigned 1296–1316).


In large measure, the dislocation in the regions beyond the northwest assured the establishment of an independent Delhi sultanate and its subsequent consolidation. The eastern steppe tribes’ movements to the west not only ended the threat to Delhi from the rival Turks in Ghazna and Ghūr but also forced a number of the Central Asian Muslims to migrate to Hindustānnorthern India, a land that came to be known as Hindustan. Almost all the high nobles, including the famous Forty in the 13th century, were of Central Asian origin; many of them were slaves purchased from the Central Asian bazaars. The same phenomenon also led to the destabilization of the core of the Turkish Mamlūks mamlūks. With the Mongol plunder of Central Asia and eastern Iran, many more members of the political and religious elite of these regions were thrown into North north India, where they were admitted into various levels of the military and administrative cadre by the early Delhi sultans.

Centralization and expansion

During the reign of ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn Khaljī (1296–1316), the sultanate briefly assumed the status of an empire. In order to achieve his goals of centralization and expansion, ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn needed money, a loyal and reasonably subservient nobility, and an efficient army under his personal control. He had earlier, in 1292, partly solved the problem of money when he conducted a lucrative raid into Bhīlsa Bhilsa in central India. Using that success to build his position and a fresh army, he led a brilliant and unauthorized raid on the fabulously wealthy Devagiri (modern Daulatābādpresent-day Daulatabad), the capital of the YādavasYadavas, in the Deccan early in 1296. The wealth of Devagiri not only financed his usurpation but provided a good foundation for his state-building plans. ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn already had the support of many of the disaffected Turkish nobles, and now he was able to purchase the support of more with both money and promotion.

Taxation and distribution of revenue resources




Expansion and conquests

The result of ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn’s reforms and his energetic rule was that the sultanate expanded rapidly and was subject to a more unified and efficient direction than during any other period. ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn began his expansionist activities with the subjugation of Gujarāt Gujarat in 1299. Next he moved against Rājasthān Rajasthan and then captured Ranthambhor (1301), Chitor (1303), and Māndu Mandu (1305), later adding Siwān Siwan (1308) and Jālor Jalor (1312). The campaigns in Rājasthān Rajasthan opened the road for further raids into South south India.

These raids were intended to result not in occupation of the land but rather in the formal recognition by Hindu kings of ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn’s supremacy and in the collection of huge amounts of tribute and booty, which were used to finance his centralizing activities in the north. ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn’s lieutenant Malik Kāfūr again subdued the Yādava Yadava kingdom of Devagiri in 1307 and two years later added the Kākatīya Kakatiya kingdom of TelingānaTelingana. In 1310–11 Malik Kāfūr plundered the Pāṇḍya Pandya kingdom in the far south, and in 1313 Devagiri was again defeated and finally annexed to the sultanate.

ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn also managed to fend off a series of Mongol attacks—at least five during the decade 1297–1306. After 1306 the invasions subsided, probably as much because of an intensification of internal Mongal rivalries as of the lack of Mongol their success in India.

Ambition, a talent for ruling, and the gold of South southern India carried ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn a long way, but it is also significant that he was one of the first rulers to deliberately expand political participation within the sultanate government. Not only did he partly open the gates to power for the non-Turkish Muslim nobility—some of whom were even converted Hindus—but he also at least made gestures toward the inclusion of Hindus within the political world he viewed as legitimate. Both ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn and his son married into the families of important Hindu rulers, and several such rulers were received at court and treated with respect.

The urban economy

The expansion and centralization of the Khaljī sultanate paralleled economic and technological developments of the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Delhi in the 13th century became one of the largest cities in the whole of the Islāmic Islamic world, and MultānMultan, Lahore, Anhilwara, Kar), Cambay (Khambhat), and Lakhnautī Lakhnauti emerged as major urban centres. The repeated Mongol invasions certainly affected the fortunes of some northwestern cities, but on the whole the period was marked by a flourishing urban economy and corresponding expansion in craft production and commerce. Advancements in the textile industry included the introduction of the wooden cotton - gin and the spinning wheel and, reportedly, of the treadle loom and sericulture (the raising of silkworms). In construction technology, cementing lime and vaulted roofing radically changed the face of the city. The production of paper gave rise to increased record keeping in government offices and to widespread use of bills of exchange (hundīhundis).

An expanding trade in textiles and horses provided constant nourishment to the economies of these towns. Bengal and Gujarāt Gujarat were the production centres for both coarse cloths and fine fabrics. Since cavalry came to be the mainstay of the political and military system of the Delhi sultans, horses were imported in large numbers beginning in the early years of the 13th century. Earlier in the 12th century the Hindu kings also kept large standing armies that included cavalry. The Turks, however, had far superior horsemen. Iron stirrups and heavy armour, for both horses and horsemen, also came into common use during the period, with significant impact on warfare and military organization. The Battles of TarainTaraori, between Pṛthvīrāja Prithviraja III Cauhān Cauhan and Muḥammad of Ghūr, were mainly engagements of cavalrymen armed with bows and spears; superior Ghūrid tactics were decisive.

The Multānīs Multanis and Khorāsānīs, in the main, controlled the long-distance overland trade. Trade between the coastal ports and North northern India was in the hands of Marwārīs Marwaris and GujarātīsGujaratis, many of whom were JainasJains. A measure of commercial expansion was the emergence and increasing role of the dallāl dallals, or brokers, who acted as middlemen in transactions for which expert knowledge was required, such as in the sale of horses, slaves, and cattle. ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn Khaljī extended a large loan to the Multānīs Multanis for bringing goods from afar into Delhi. By the mid-13th century , a stable equation between gold and silver was also attained, resulting in a coinage impressive in both quality and volume. North Northern Indian merchants now benefited from the unification of the Central Asian steppes, which , from 1250 until about 1350 (following an initially quite destructive Mongol impact) , opened up a new and secure trade route from India to China and the Black Sea. Further, there arose a chain of sea emporia all along the Indian Ocean coast. It was, however, plunder and tribute from GujarātGujarat, the Deccan, eastern and central India, and Rājasthān, combined Rajasthan—combined with regular taxation in the Indo-Gangetic plain, that Plain—that sustained the economy and the centralizing regime of Delhi.

The Tughluqs

Within five years after of ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn’s death (1316), the Khaljīs lost their power. The succession dispute resulted in the murder of Malik Kāfūr by the palace guards and in the blinding of ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn’s six-year-old son by Quṭb al-ud-Dīn Mubārak ShāhShah, the sultan’s third son, who assumed the sultanate (reigned 1316–20). Quṭb al-ud-Dīn suppressed revolts in Gujarāt Gujarat and Devagiri and conducted another raid on TelingānaTelingana. He was murdered by his favourite general, a Hindu convert named Khusraw KhānKhan, who had built substantial support among a group of Hindus outside the traditional nobility. Opposition to Khusraw’s rule arose immediately, led by Ghāzī Malik, the warden of the western marches at Deopalpur, and Khusraw was defeated and slain after four months.

Ghāzī Malik, who ascended the throne as GhiyāṣGhiyāth al-ud-Dīn Tughluq (reigned 1320–25), had distinguished himself prior to his accession by his successful defense of the frontier against the Mongols. His reign was brief but eventful. He captured TelingānaTelingana, conducted raids in JājnagarJajnagar, and reconquered Bengal, which had been independent under Muslim kings since the death of Balban. While returning from the Bengal campaign, the sultan was killed when a wooden shelter collapsed on him at AfghānpurAfghanpur, near Delhi. Although some historians have argued that Muḥammad ibn Tughluq plotted his father’s death, the case never has been proved.


Reversal and rebellion

Muḥammad ibn Tughluq faced serious problems resulting from expansion into South southern India. Eschewing the Khaljī policy of maintaining Hindu tributary states in the Southsouth, Muḥammad ibn Tughluq, while still a prince, had brought two of the three remaining begun to bring southern Hindu powers under the direct control of the sultanate, and in 1326–27 he subdued the third (Kampili)a policy he continued as sultan. Direct Muslim rule in the Southsouth, however, did not necessarily signify control from Delhi. In an effort both to settle other Muslim nobles in the South south and to maintain his control over them, the sultan made Daulatābād Daulatabad (Devagiri) his second capital in 1327.

Muḥammad ibn Tughluq moved to Daulatābād Daulatabad to ensure an effective control over the wealthy and fertile Deccan and Gujarāt Gujarat and possibly also to gain access to the western and southern ports. GujarātGujarat, the Coromandel Coast, and Bengal were the core areas of India’s overseas trade. Huge supplies of textiles and other goods, including glass and metal objects manufactured in these regions, were exported to the Middle East, Africa, and East and Southeast Asia in exchange for horses, precious metals, extracted goods, and raw materials. Muḥammad ibn Tughluq also planned to face the Mongols by positioning and equipping himself at a safe distance from the northwest.

However, no sooner was the sultan established at Daulatābād Daulatabad than trouble broke out in the Northnorth, on the western border, and in Bengal. Muḥammad ibn Tughluq had to move back to Delhi to crush the rebellions by his nobles. He also was less successful against an invasion by the Mongols, who had come almost to the gates of Delhi. On the other hand, by 1335 the Muslim governor of Maʿbar, the southernmost province of the sultanate, declared his independence and founded the sultanate of Madura while Muḥammad ibn Tughluq was busy quelling a rebellion in Lahore. Soon rebellions by Hindu chiefs had resulted in the formation of several new states, the most important of which was Vijayanagar. During the next few years, while the sultan shuttled to and fro in an attempt to put down rebellions in practically every province, he lost control of the rest of his South south Indian possessions after successful rebellions in Gulbarga (1339), Warangal (1345–46), and DaulatābādDaulatabad, which led to the founding of the Bahmanī kingdom Bahmani sultanate (1347). Muḥammad ibn Tughluq spent the last five years of his life trying to suppress yet another rebellion in Gujarāt Gujarat and thus could not make an attempt to regain DaulatābādDaulatabad.

Muḥammad ibn Tughluq’s successor, his cousin Fīrūz Shāh Shah (reigned 1351–88), campaigned in Bengal (1353–54 and 1359), Orissa (1360), Nagarkot (1361), Sindh Sind (1362 and 1366–67), Etāwah Etawah (1377), and Katehr (1380). Fīrūz was unable to recover Bengal for the sultanate, and Sindh Sind was no more than a tribute-paying vassal during his reign. Fīrūz also showed no interest in reconquering the southern provinces. He refused to accept an invitation (c. 1365) from a Bahmanī Bahmani prince to intervene in the politics of the Deccan.

Fīrūz has been noted , in particular , for his conciliatory attitude toward the two main influential Muslim groups of the period—the religious leaders and the nobility. While ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn Khaljī had kept religion and religious leaders apart from his political plans and Muḥammad ibn Tughluq had incurred the enmity of at least some Ṣūfīs Sufis because of his refusal to give them what they regarded as proper support, Fīrūz rewarded Ṣūfis Sufis and other religious leaders generously and listened to their counsel. He also created charities to aid poor Muslims, built colleges and mosques, and abolished taxes not recognized by Muslim law.


Society and the state under the Tughluqs

The Tughluq rule roughly coincided with an important and interesting development in the Hindu countryside, which, to a degree, was a reaction to ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn Khaljī’s harsh measures. If, on the one hand, his new policy of taxation cut into the power of the erstwhile ruling chiefs who had escaped regular payment by offering tribute only under military pressure, it meant, on the other hand, a heavy loss of revenue for the small landlords and village headmen. The latter were also often subjected to severe corporal torture. The power of the Delhi regime, however, suffered an obvious setback after that. The former rural elite began to reappear, consolidated into the great Rājpūt Rajput caste spread over a very large part much of northern India. Incorporating such groups as the Cauhāns Cauhans and the Gahaḍawālas Gahadawalas as subcastes and clans, the Rājpūts Rajputs claimed power and perquisites, at least at the local level. The first appearance of the generic term zamīndār zamindar, which denoted first superior rights over land and its produce and later came to represent the local power-mongers themselves, dates to this period. The new caste cohesion also created a sense of unity between the village elite and the peasantry, which in turn added to their strength; at certain levels, the two classes became virtually undifferentiated.

The Tughluqs thus had to handle the rural classes with care and diplomatic skill. GhiyāṣGhiyāth al-ud-Dīn Tughluq modified ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn Khaljī’s system by exempting the village headmen from paying tax taxes on their cultivation and cattle, but he confirmed the Khaljī sultan’s injunctions that the headmen were not to levy anything in addition to the existing land tax on the peasantry.


The desire of the Tughluq sultans for warmer relations with society as a whole was further illustrated by a generally appreciative approach to local social and religious practices. A few Hindus and Jainas Jains had held state positions under the Khaljīs; under the Tughluqs , the non-Muslim Indians rose to high and extremely responsible offices, including the governorships of provinces. Muḥammad ibn Tughluq was the first Muslim ruler to make planned efforts to induct Hindus into administration. He also conducted several discourses with Indian scholars and saints. Fīrūz showed keen interest in Indian culture, commissioning Persian translations (Persian being the court language) of some important Sanskrit texts and placing an Aśokan Ashokan pillar in a prominent position on the roof of his palace.

While all these developments indicated the sultans’ broadly tolerant and catholic policies, they demonstrated at the same time the strength of the locality. What was then emerging was a kind of tacit sharing of power between the local Hindu magnates and the essentially town-based Muslim aristocracy as a crucial source of political stability. Significantly, by the time of the Tughluqs, a theory of Islāmic Islamic power, different from the universal Islāmic Islamic theory of state, had also begun to emerge. The Turkish state was, in a formal sense, IslāmicIslamic. The sultans could not allow open violation of Sharīʿah. They appointed Muslim divines (ʿulamāʾʿulamāʾ) to profitable offices and granted revenue-free lands to many of them. But the policy of the state was based increasingly upon the opinion of the sultans and their advisers and not on any religious texts as interpreted by the ʿulamāʾ. In view of practical needs and worldly considerations (jahāndārī), the sultans supplemented Sharīʿah by framing their own state laws (zawābitthawābit). These regulations in cases of conflict overrode the universal Muslim law.

Accommodation and tolerance afforded a most secure course in such a situation; however, the threat from the locality, as well as from the Muslim nobles in control of the provinces, sometimes compelled the sultans to assert their Islāmic Islamic connections rather forcefully. By doing so, the sultans also intended to strike a balance between the demands of orthodoxy and the needs of the state. GhiyāṣGhiyth al-ud-Dīn Tughluq’s success against Khusraw Khān Khan was presented as the regeneration of Islām Islam in India. Muḥammad ibn Tughluq had removed the name of the ʾAbbāsid ʿAbbāsid caliph from his coins, but, when he faced rebellion from every side, he searched for a caliph who could give him some moral authority to deal , at least , with his refractory Muslim officers. Fīrūz inherited a more difficult situation. Like his predecessor, he obtained a letter of investiture from the caliph. Further, he took several measures to align the state with Sunnite orthodoxy. In addition to giving important concessions to the ʿulamāʾ, he banned unorthodox practices, persecuted heretical sects, and refused to exempt the Brahmans from the payment of jizya jizyah, or poll tax on non-Muslims, on the ground that this was not provided for in the Sharīʿah. Muḥammad ibn Tughluq’s largess largesse toward the Muslim foreigners was legendary. Fīrūz generously funded pious works within his territory and in other parts of the Islāmic Islamic world.

The Tughluqs did not fare well in the face of an imminent crisis of the central treasury. With the loss of Bengal and the southern provinces, Delhi was disconnected with from the important supply lines of its gold and silver. This in turn affected its capacity to import horses and soldiers. Cavalry, the backbone of the sultanate army, was thus severely crippled. Good war horses warhorses were extremely expensive; in the mid-14th century an ordinary Central Asian steed cost 100 silver tangas, an exceptional one , 500 silver tangas, while a fine Arabian or Persian racehorse would cost as much as 1,000 to 4,000 silver tangas. The sultans’ liberal support of the various holy centres and eminent individuals of the Islāmic Islamic East also contributed to the shortage of precious metals. In response, Muḥammad ibn Tughluq attempted to reduce the weight of his coins and experimented with token currencymoney. His proposed expeditions to Khorāsān and the Himalayas were possibly aimed at locating new sources of horses and precious metals. Fīrūz Tughluq addressed the crisis by withdrawing the practice of cash payment to the soldiers and by building an army from among the huge corps of slaves (mamlūks) plundered from throughout the sultanate. The slaves were, however, no match for the mounted archers from the countries beyond northwest of the northwestsubcontinent.


Decline of the sultanate

By 1388, when Fīrūz Tughluq died, the decline of the sultanate was imminent; subsequent succession disputes and palace intrigues only accelerated its pace. The sons and grandsons of Fīrūz, supported by various groups of nobles, began a struggle for the throne that rapidly diminished the authority of Delhi and provided opportunities for Muslim nobles and Hindu chiefs to enhance their autonomy. By 1390 the governor of Gujarāt Gujarat had declared his independence, and between 1391 and 1394 the important Rājpūt Rajput chiefs of Etāwah Etawah rebelled and were defeated four times. By 1394 there were two sultans, both residing in or near Delhi. The result was bitter civil war for three years; meanwhile, the disastrous invasion of Timur (the Tamerlane of Western literature) drew nearer.



The rise of regional states

During the 15th and early 16th centuries, no paramount power enjoyed effective control over most of North north India and Bengal. Delhi became merely one of the regional principalities of North north India, competing with the emerging Rājpūt Rajput and Muslim states. GujarātGujarat, MālwaMalwa, and Jaunpur soon became powerful independent states; old and new Rājpūt Rajput states rapidly emerged; and Lahore, DīpālpurDipalpur, MultānMultan, and parts of Sindh Sind were held by Khizr Khān Khan Sayyid for Timur (and later for himself). Khizr Khān Khan also took over Delhi and a small area surrounding it after the last of the Tughluqs died in 1413, and he founded the dynasty known as the Sayyid. The Sayyids ruled the territory of Delhi until 1451, trying to obtain tribute and recognition of suzerainty from the nearby Rājpūt Rajput rulers and fighting almost continuously against neighbouring states to preserve their kingdom intact. The last Sayyid ruler, ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn ʿĀlam Shāh Shah (reigned 1445–51), peacefully surrendered Delhi to his nominal vassal, the Afghan Bahlūl Lodī (reigned 1451–89), and retired to the Badaun district, which he retained until his death in 1478. Before he moved to Delhi, Bahlūl Lodī had already carved out a kingdom in the Punjab that was larger than that of the Sayyid sultans. (See Lodī dynasty.)


The lack of unified rule has led some historians to describe the period as one of political anarchy and confusion, in which the inhabitants suffered because there was no strong guiding hand. Such a conclusion is far from certain, however, even for the central areas of the Gangetic Plain, where many battles were fought. In areas where effective regional rule was either restored or developed—as in RājasthānRajasthan, Orissa, Bengal, GujarātGujarat, MālwaMalwa, Jaunpur, and various smaller states in the Northnorth, as well as in the large and small states of the Deccan—the quality of life may well have been comparable or superior to that of earlier centuries for cultivators, townspeople, landholders, and nobles. Although contemporary sources are scarce, the information available does not indicate a significant decline in total cultivation or trade (despite some alteration of trade routes). To the contrary, Gujarāt Gujarat and Bengal, in addition to their fertile tracts and rich handicrafts, carried on a brisk overseas trade. The Gujarāti Gujarati traders had a big role in the trade of the Middle East and Africa; the Chittagong port in Bengal was a flourishing port for trade with China and for the reexport of Chinese goods to other parts of the world.

Struggle for supremacy in North northern India

These regional states had enough vigour and strength to balance and check the growth of each other’s power. With the Lodī conquest of Jaunpur, however, Delhi appeared to reestablish its hegemony over North northern India. Bahlūl (reigned 1451–89) and his two successors, Sikandar (reigned 1489–1517) and Ibrāhīm (reigned 1517–26), continued intermittently to expand their control over the surrounding territory. Bahlūl pacified the Ganges-Yamuna Ganges–Yamuna Doab and subdued EtāwahEtawah, Chandwar, and RewāriRewari. Sikandar completed the pacification of Jaunpur (1493), campaigned into BihārBihar, and founded the city of Āgra Agra in 1504 as a base from which to launch his attempt to control Mālwa Malwa and RājasthānRajasthan.

By the time of Sikandar’s death, the Afghans could claim a somewhat uneven control over the Punjab and most of the Gangetic Plain down to BihārBihar. Still, the question of Lodī hegemony in North north India was far from settled. Rānā Sāngā Rana Sanga of Mewār Mewar did not simply check the Lodī encroachments into central India but also repulsed a Lodī attempt to invade Mewār Mewar and threatened to move toward Bayana and 0graAgra. Eastern MālwaMalwa, including Chanderi (at that time in possession of a Rājpūt Rajput leader, Medinī RāiMedini Rai), passed under his overlordship. Rānā Sāngā Rana Sanga defeated the Khaljī Khalji sultan of Mālwa Malwa and took him prisoner in Chitor. The rānā rana was thus emerging as another formidable Rājpūt Rajput contender for supremacy in North north India. Meanwhile, Bābur, a descendant of Timur, was knocking at the gates of India.

Ibrāhīm Lodī was more autocratic than his predecessor, and he was ultimately less able to control his skittish nobility, which had swelled significantly following the immigration into India of a considerable number of Afghans. They tended to see the Lodī sultans as merely first among equals. Ibrāhīm soon faced an Afghan rebellion in the east under the leadership of his brother Jalāl KhānKhan, and, while Ibrāhīm put down this and other Afghan revolts in the region, the groundwork for the final disaster was laid in the west. Dawlat Khān Khan Lodī, governor of the Punjab, and ʿĀlam Khān Khan Lodī, Ibrāhīm’s uncle, appealed to Bābur, the Mughal ruler of KabulKābul, to aid them in their attempt to overthrow the sultan. The adventurous Bābur was at that time probably thinking only of annexing the Punjab, but, as his previous history had demonstrated, he was quick to take advantage of political opportunities. In 1524 he led an expedition to Lahore and defeated Ibrāhīm’s army. Bābur then passed over his Afghan allies and appointed his own officials in the Punjab. After his allies had indignantly left him, he went on to defeat and kill Ibrāhīm at Pānīpatthe first of three important battles at Panipat, near Delhi, in 1526 (see below The Mughal Empire). The Afghan sultanate underwent a short revival under the Sūrs in 1540–55, only to be replaced by the Mughals again under Humāyūn and then Akbar the Great.

The Muslim states of South southern India, c. 1350–1680

Sultanate rule in most of South southern India existed for only a few years and was firmly established only in the northern Deccan, with Daulatābād Daulatabad as its centre. The forced withdrawal of the sultanate forces from the Deccan between 1330 and 1347 was partly the result of resistance offered by Hindu chiefs and some Muslim nobles. Members of those two groups established several rebel principalities and the two strongest states of the South—the south—the Muslim-ruled Bahmanī Bahmani kingdom and the Hindu-ruled Vijayanagar empire.

Maʿbar, the first among the rebel states to emerge in South south India, was founded at Madurai by the erstwhile Tughluq general Jalāl al-ud-Dīn Ahsan Shāh Aḥsan Shah in 1335. Lasting barely 45 only 43 years, with seven rulers in quick succession, Maʿbar covered the mainly Tamil region between Nellore and Quilon and contributed to the commercial importance of South south India by encouraging Muslim traders from the Middle East and even attempting to sponsor an expedition to the Maldives. The Maʿbar wars with the Hoysaḷas Hoysala dynasty of Karnātaka Karnataka took place in the lower Kāverī Kaveri region and were fought for control over a series of fortified trading stations between the coast and the interior. The Vijayanagar invasion under Prince Kumara Kampana dealt a severe blow to Maʿbar’s commercial importance in 1347; Vijayanagar completed the conquest in 1377–78 under Harihara II.

The Bahmanī dynastyBahmani sultanate

A revolt by a group of Muslim nobles against Muḥammad ibn Tughluq that began in Daulatābād Daulatabad in 1345 culminated in the foundation of the Bahmanī Bahmani sultanate by Ḥasan Gaṅgū, who ascended the throne of Daulatābād Daulatabad as ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn Bahman Shāh Shah in 1347 and soon moved his capital to the more centrally located Gulbarga on the Deccan Plateauplateau. Much of the political and military history of the Bahmanī sultanate can be described as a generally effective attempt to gain control of the Deccan and a less successful effort to expand outward from it. The initial period of consolidation was followed by a much longer period of intermittent warfare against Mālwa Malwa and Gujarāt Gujarat in the Northnorth, Orissa and the Reddi kingdoms of Andhra in the east, and Vijayanagar in the Southsouth.

The rise of Bahmanī, Vijayanagar, and other subregional kingdoms signified a new trend in the political and military history of the regionsouthern India, with the emergence of fortified warrior strongholds under Muslim and Hindu chiefs and of advanced military technology, including artillery and heavy cavalry. Control over such strongholds was thus essential to Bahmanī’s military supremacy.

Bahmanī consolidation of the Deccan

Bahman Shāh Shah spent most of his reign consolidating a kingdom in the Deccan and strengthening his hold over those Muslim nobles who chose to remain there rather than to join Muḥammad ibn Tughluq in North northern India. He adopted the four territorial divisions (ṭarafs) established by Muḥammad ibn Tughluq for his own administration and established departments and appointed functionaries similar to those of the Delhi sultanate. Working outward from his capital, he was able to establish his authority over the western half of the Deccan Plateau plateau and to impose an annual tribute upon the Hindu state of Warangal, which had also emerged from the breakup of the Deccan portion of the Tughluq empire. Often, however, the tribute was not paid, and a number of wars were fought over the question of whether the Bahmanīs could maintain a superior position in relation to their eastern neighbourneighbours, including also the Reddi kingdoms of Rajahmundry and KoṇḍavīḍuKondavidu, in the following years.

Muḥammad Shāh Shah I (reigned 1358–75), son and successor of Bahman ShāhShah, began the struggle with Vijayanagar that was to outlast the Bahmanī sultanate and continue, as a many-sided conflict, into the 17th century. The period 1350–1500 saw There were at least 10 wars during the period 1350–1500, most of which were concerned with control over the Tungabhadra-Krishna doabDoab. The doab had been an area of contention long before the foundation of either the Bahmanī kingdom or Vijayanagar. Claims and counterclaims of victory show that neither side gained effective and lasting control over the doab, and the struggle extended eventually into the Konkan and Andhra regions. In his wars against Vijayanagar and Telingāna Telingana (Warangal), Muḥammad Shāh Shah made use of newly organized artillery to defeat an army much larger than his own. His two wars with Vijayanagar gained him little, but his attack on Telingāna Telingana in 1363 brought him a large indemnity, including the turquoise throne and the town of Golconda with its dependencies; in 1365 his rapid response to a rebellion by the governor of Daulatābād Daulatabad and some Marāṭhā Maratha and other chieftains of Berār Berar and Bāglanā Baglana led to a quick victory. The sultan devoted the last 10 years decade of his reign to consolidating his hold over the territories in his possession. Institutional and geographic consolidation under Muḥammad Shāh Shah laid a solid foundation for the kingdom. His legacy was soon disturbed, however, when his son and successor, ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn Mujāhid (reigned 1375–78), was assassinated by his cousin Dāʾūd while returning from a campaign in Vijayanagar. Dāʾūd was in turn murdered by ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn’s partisans, who then set C̣āʾūd’s Dāʾūd’s brother Muḥammad II (reigned 1378–97) on the throne and blinded Dāʾūd’s son. These political difficulties enabled Vijayanagar to take away part of Goa and other territory along the western coast, but the rest of Muḥammad II’s reign was peaceful, and the sultan spent much of his time building his court as a centre of culture and learning.


Muḥammad II’s peaceful reign was followed by a year of succession disputes caused both by party conflicts and by dynastic rivalries. When Muḥammad’s cousins Aḥmad and Fīrūz finally gained control, Fīrūz succeeded as Fīrūz Shāh Shah Bahmanī. His reign (1397–1422) was a period of notable cultural activity in the Bahmanī sultanate, as well as one of continued development of the trend toward wider political participation. Noted for his intelligence and learning, Fīrūz established on the Bhīma Bhima River his new capital, FīrūzābādFiruzabad, as the greatest centre of Muslim culture in India at a time when the Delhi sultanate was rapidly dissolving. Perhaps in an effort to balance the continuing influx of Persians, as well as to strengthen his own position as a ruler who was above all the nobles and who recognized the realities of political power, Fīrūz gave a number of high offices to Hindus (BrāhmaṇsBrahmans) and married several Hindu women, including the daughter of the king of Vijayanagar. Thus, the parallel with the earlier development of the Delhi sultanate nobility continued. The fact that Hindus were becoming politically more significant at a time when the military rivalry with Vijayanagar was renewed suggests a political rather than a religious motivation for that rivalry.


One of the first acts of the new sultan, Shihāb al-ud-Dīn Aḥmad I (reigned 1422–36), was to move the capital from Gulbarga to BīdarBidar, which was surrounded by more fertile ground and had become more centrally located now that some territory had been gained to the southeast, in TelingānaTelingana. Perhaps, also, the move signified Aḥmad’s expansionist ambitions, for in 1425 he defeated and killed the Velama ruler of Warangal and finally annexed most of TelingānaTelingana, bringing his eastern border to the edge of Orissa. During the next decade, however, rebellions forced Aḥmad to allow local chieftains to rule as tributaries throughout much of the area.

External and internal rivalries

Although the Bahmanī state had been threatened from the north earlier, it was during Aḥmad’s reign that conflicts first broke out with the northern neighbours , Mālwa Malwa and GujarātGujarat. The breakdown of centralized authority within the Delhi sultanate and the consequent rise of provincial kingdoms meant that new rivalries could develop on a regional basis, and the Bahmanī sultans found themselves contending with two of the successor states of the Delhi sultanate in an arena where their expansionist ambitions had some chance of success. A border dispute with Mālwa Malwa led to a Bahmanī victory and a short-lived recognition of the chieftainship of Kherla as a Bahmanī protectorate. Aḥmad I then forged an alliance with another northern neighbour, KhāndeshKhandesh, which acted as a buffer between Bahmanī and the kingdoms of Māīwa Malwa and GujarātGujarat. On the pretext of giving aid to a Hindu chieftain who had revolted against GujarātGujarat, he sent unsuccessful expeditions into Gujarāt Gujarat in 1429 and 1430. The latter defeat was especially significant, as it partly stemmed from rivalries between the Deccani officers and the newcomers from the Middle East, a friction that appears to have become gradually more intense from this point until the decline of the Bahmanī sultanate.


Aḥmad II proved to be a weaker ruler than his father had been, and during his reign the conflicts among the nobles intensified. Two short wars with Vijayanagar in 1436 and 1443–44 were confined to Tungabhadra-Krishna -Tungabhadra doab Doab and signified little except the arrival of a new power, the Hindu Gajapati king of Orissa, who allied himself with the Bahmanī ruler in the second campaign. Perhaps more significant in its ultimate effect was the Bahmanī victory over Khāndesh Khandesh in 1438. The force in that campaign was composed exclusively of newcomers, who had convinced the sultan that Deccani treachery had been responsible for the defeat in Gujarāt Gujarat in 1430. The newcomers thereby gained considerable influence with the sultan but at the same time intensified the resentment of the Deccanis, who retaliated in 1446 by massacring a large number of them, with the malleable sultan’s tacit permission. Later, when the sultan was convinced that the newcomers had been unjustly killed, he punished many of the responsible Deccanis and promoted the surviving newcomers. During the last years of his reign, Aḥmad had to face a rebellion in Telingāna Telingana led by his son-in-law and supported by the sultan of MālwaMalwa. It was at this time that Maḥmūd Gāwān, a newly arrived noble from PersisPersia, displayed his military and diplomatic skills by persuading the rebels to desist and the sultan to pardon them.

Under the successors of Aḥmad II, Bahmanī faced continuous disturbances, such as further rebellion in Telingāna Telingana and three serious onslaughts by Maḥmūd Khaljī of Mālwa, Malwa; the Gajapati king of Orissa joining joined the fray by making inroads into the heart of the Bahmanī kingdom. Humāyūn (reigned 1458–61) and Niẓām al-ud-Dīn Aḥmad III (reigned 1461–63) sought the help of Muḥammad Begaṛā Begarā of Gujarāt Gujarat against Mālwa Malwa and warded off the invasions.

Vizierate of Maḥmūd Gāwān


After Maḥmūd Gāwān’s installation as wazīr vizier in 1463, a series of Bahmanī campaigns resulted in the subjugation in the west of most of the Konkan, including several forts (e.g., Khelna, Belgaum, and Kolhapur) and the important port of Goa, which was then under Vijayanagar control. This not only guaranteed the safety of Muslim merchants and pilgrims from piratical attacks but also gave Bahmanī virtual command over the west coast trade, at least until the arrival of the Portuguese. In the north the frontier with Mālwa Malwa was maintained more or less as it was, although Bahmanī agreed to return Kherla’s status as a fief of MālwaMalwa. An alliance with Vijayanagar proved effective in defeating Orissa in 1470. Later, campaigns in the east brought some advantages against the rival claimants to the Orissa throne, who sought Bahmanī’s help against one another. In 1481 Muḥammad III, with Maḥmūd Gāwān, succeeded in taking Koṇḍapalli Kondapalli from Saluva NarasiṃhaNarasimha, the Vijayanagar general, and the sultan quickly marched south as far as Kanchipuram in a show of prowess.



Bahmanī decline

Maḥmūd’s reign hastened the disintegration of the Bahmanī kingdom. An abortive attempt to assassinate Yūsuf ʿĀdil Khān Khan resulted in the Khān’s Khan’s agreement to retire to Bijāpur Bijapur and leave Malik Nāʾib and the conspirators in charge at BīdarBidar. Now the lack of institutionalized central power brought group conflicts to the fore. Malik Nāʾib, never popular even with a number of the Deccanis, was put to death in 1486 by the Abyssinian governor of BīẖarBihar, and the sultan subsequently began to rely on the newcomers for support. An attempt on Maḥmūd’s life in 1487 by a group of Deccanis strengthened the sultan’s reliance on the newcomers and led to the slaughter of a great many Deccanis. But by this time it began to become apparent that the power of the sultan was less than that of several of his nobles, and, although he continued to be a valuable pawn for the provincial governors to try to control, his power to rule was nearly gone. The provincial governors and their followers could not be controlled, nor did they believe that maintaining the centralized Bahmanī state would any longer be in their best interests. Consequently, the governors were usually unwilling to aid the sultan when he attempted to put down rebellions by other governors or by powerful nobles.

One of the first revolts was that of the kotwāl kotwal (superintendent of police) of BīdarBidar, Qāsim Barīd, a Turkish noble who defeated the army sent against him by the sultan and then forced Maḥmūd to make him chief minister of the state. Qāsim Barīd’s attempt to reimpose central authority was opposed by most of the chief nobles, however, who defeated him once and then refused to recognize his authority. Next, Malik Aḥmad Niẓām al-ul-MulkMulk (see Niẓām Shāhī dynasty), the son of Malik Nāʾib, began to carve out a territory for himself by conquering Marāṭhā Maratha forts along the western coast. He defeated the two armies sent against him by the sultan, whom he forced to recognize his conquests, and in 1490 he assumed a practical independence and established his capital at Ahmadnagar. Yūsuf ʿĀdil Khān of Bijāpur Bijapur and Faṭh Allāh ʿImād al-ul-Mulk of Berār Berar had demonstrated their sympathy for Malik Aḥmad’s activities and soon emulated him. Although the three governors still did not assume the insignia of royalty, it was clear by the end of 1490 that Sultan Maḥmūd and the chief minister, Qāsim Barīd, could not command any of them.

Successors to the Bahmanī

During the 1490s the rivalries intensified among the former provincial governors, other high nobles, and Qāsim Barīd, who was the effective head of the government at the Bahmanī capital. Each began to form temporary alliances and to fight battles with other nobles in order to enhance his own position. Gradually the five successor states to the Bahmanī sultanate took shape, as lesser nobles were defeated and their territories were incorporated by the provincial governors or retained by BīdarBidar. Bijāpur Bijapur (1490), Ahmadnagar (1490), and later Golconda (1512) emerged as the most successful of these states. Although a Bahmanī sultan still remained as a puppet ruler until at least 1538, effective control of the Bīdar Bidar government passed into the hands of Qasīm Barīd’s son Amīr Barīd upon his father’s death in 1505, thus establishing what proved to be a dynastic claim for the Barīd Shāhīs Shāhī dynasty of BīdarBidar.


One issue that occasionally united the Bahmanī successor states was the desire to profit at the expense of Vijayanagar. Sultan Maḥmūd II proposed in 1501 that a policy of an annual jihad, or holy war, against the Hindu kingdom be adopted by the Muslim nobles. A number of relatively successful raids were undertaken during the next few years, but in 1509 the new ruler of Vijayanagar, Krishna Deva RāyaRaya, repulsed the Muslims with , who suffered substantial losses. Later , the political ambitions of Bijāpur Bijapur and Ahmadnagar prompted a series of successful interventions by Vijayanagar under Rāma RāyaRama Raya, a regent who finally usurped the Vijayanagar throne and played a significant role in Deccan politics. The excesses of Rāma RāyaRama Raya, carried out on the pretext of assisting Bijāpur Bijapur against Ahmadnagar in their wars, led to a temporary but fruitful coalition among the five successor states and the crushing defeat of Vijayanagar’s powerful forces at Tālikota (Banihaṭṭi) the Battle of Talikota in 1565, which, though it did not destroy the Hindu kingdom, ultimately helped the expansionist ambitions of Bijāpur Bijapur and Golconda (see below The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646).

During the 16th century the strongest and best-organized of the Bahmanī successor states was Ahmadnagar (Niẓām Shāhī), followed by Bijāpur Bijapur (ʿĀdil Shāhī) and then Golconda (see Quṭb Shāhī dynasty). All three were much larger and more important than Berār Berar and BīdarBidar, and all three either began with or soon came to accept the Shīʿite form of Islām Islam (the religion of the Persian newcomers) as the official faith of their rulers. During the 16th century the three major states formed shifting patterns of alliances, which sometimes (both before and after 1565) also included Vijayanagar, while the two smaller Muslim states ranged themselves on one side or the other in order to protect their independence. The goal of military campaigns normally was to humble the adversary without doing irreparable harm, for all three major Muslim states feared the supremacy of any one state, and a tripartite division of territory seemed more likely to insure ensure the continued independence of all.

Bijāpur Bijapur and Ahmadnagar were drawn into a series of conflicts over the forts in the Marāṭhā Maratha region and the Konkan coast. A treaty between the two in 1571, however, reveals their interest in restoring a balance in the political situation by recognizing the right of Ahmadnagar to annex Berār Berar and Bīdar Bidar in return for recognition of Bijāpur’s Bijapur’s right to occupy extensive territories in the south, particularly portions of Vijayanagar. Ahmadnagar did not annex BīdarBidar, owing to intervention by Ibrāhīm Quṭb Shāh Shah of Golconda, but it did acquire Berār Berar in 1574. Bijāpur Bijapur was unable to take full advantage of the opportunities for expansion to the south during the 1570s because of factional disputes among the nobles, as well as Golconda’s interests in the Vijayanagar-controlled areas. Thus, Ahmadnagar managed to retain a slightly superior position.

The tide began to turn in the 1580s, however, with the establishment of a stable regency at BijāpurBijapur, fortified by a series of marriage alliances with other royal lines in the Deccan and by the political deterioration of Ahmadnagar under the rule of the slightly mad Murtaḍā Niẓām ShāhShah. Murtaḍā’s murder in 1588, by a son who was more insane than he, set off a chain of events that resulted in simultaneous invasions by Bijāpur Bijapur from the south and by Murtaḍā’s brother Burhān, who had the support of the Mughal emperor Akbar, from the north, . Burhān defeated the army of Ahmadnagar, recalled the foreign nobles (as the newcomers of Bahmanī times were now by then designated) who had been expelled from the kingdom, and assumed the throne in 1591. Campaigns against Bijāpur Bijapur and against the Portuguese at Chaul (just south of present-day Mumbai [Bombay]), as well as a bitter rivalry between the Deccani and foreign nobles, further weakened Ahmadnagar at a time when Akbar’s growing interest indicated grave danger. The death deaths of both Burhān and his son in 1595 was were followed by increased factionalism and eventually by civil war as rival claimants to the throne were put forward. When one party appealed for aid to the governor of GujarātGujarat, Akbar had an excuse to launch the campaign he had already been planning. The two wars that followed resulted in the Mughal acquisition of BerārBerar, the capture of the ruler of Ahmadnagar, and the defeat and annexation of KhāndeshKhandesh. A group of nobles, however, led by the Abyssinian Malik ʿAmbār, raised a member of the royal family to the throne at Daulatābād Daulatabad and continued to fight the Mughals.

Golconda, which whose area by the mid-17th century coincided with approximated that of the Telugu linguistic and cultural region, was built up as a strong state by the Quṭb Shāhīs from 1512. It developed a distinct regional culture with the foundation founding of Hyderābād Hyderabad in 1590–91 by Muḥammad Qulī Quṭb Shāh Shah and evolved a political system to suit the indigenous sociopolitical structure. Golconda enjoyed a high level of economic prosperity owing to the productive agricultural plains of Andhra and the busy trade of such ports as Masulipatam, as well as to the diamond mines near VijayawādaVijayawada.

The Quṭb Shāhīs steadily expanded the area under their control during the 16th century at the expense of the politically fragmented Telugu kings and Nāyakas Nayakas and held their own against the Vijayanagar rulers and the Gajapatīs Gajapatis of Orissa. Vijayanagar interests in Andhra and its intervention in Golconda politics through encouragement to the rebel Nāyakas Nayakas under Krishna Deva Rāya Raya and his successors ceased after the Tālikota Talikota debacle in 1565. Consolidation was achieved by Ibrāhīm Quṭb Shāh Shah (reigned 1550–80) and enhanced under Muḥammad Qulī early in the 17th century. A conciliatory policy toward the NāyakasNayakas, as well as the regime’s desire to preserve the Telugu warrior ethos, brought Telugu warrior groups into Golconda’s service. Special attention to large-scale irrigation and agriculture, promotion of interregional trade, and administrative centralization were the basic factors in Golconda’s stability.

In the struggle for control of the Deccan after the decline of the Bahmanī sultanate, the two southernmost states, Bijāpur Bijapur and Golconda, ultimately found themselves in the most advantageous position, because they were farthest away from the growing power of the Mughal Empire in North north India. The Mughal’s southward movement, which began under Akbar (Abū-ul-Faṭh Jalāl-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Akbar; reigned 1556–1605) with a successful onslaught against Ahmadnagar, was to end with the annexation of Bijāpur Bijapur (1686) and Golconda (1687) during the reign of Aurangzeb (reigned 1658–1707). During the intervening period, the Mughal presence became increasingly important to the remaining Deccan kings, who struggled to maintain or expand their position within the Deccan while trying to fend off the advancing Mughal arms.

The Vijayanagar empire, 1336–1646

Founded in 1336 in the wake of the rebellions against Tughluq rule in the Deccan, the Hindu Vijayanagar empire lasted for more than two centuries as the dominant power in South south India. Its history and fortunes were shaped by the increasing militarization of peninsular politics after the Muslim invasions and the commercialization that made South south India a major participant in the trade network linking Europe and East Asia. Urbanization and monetization of the economy were the two other significant developments of the period that brought all the peninsular kingdoms into highly competitive political and military activities in the race for supremacy.

Development of the state

The kingdom of Vijayanagar was founded by Harihara and Bukka, two of five brothers (surnamed SaṅgamaSangama) who had served in the administrations of both Kākatīya Kakatiya and Kampili before those kingdoms were conquered by the armies of the Delhi sultanate in the 1320s. When Kampili fell in 1327, the two brothers are believed to have been captured and taken to Delhi, where they converted to IslāmIslam. They were returned to the Deccan as governors of Kampili for the sultanate with the hope that they would be able to deal with the many local revolts and invasions by neighbouring Hindu kings. They followed a conciliatory policy toward the landholders of the area, many of whom had not accepted Muslim rule, and began a process of consolidation and expansion. Their first campaign was against the neighbouring Hoysaḷa Hoysala king, Ballāla Ballala III of DōrasamudraDorasamudra, but it stagnated; after the brothers reconverted to Hinduism under the influence of the sage Vidyāraṇya Madhavacarya (Vidyaranya) and proclaimed their independence from the Delhi sultanate, however, they were able to defeat Ballāla Ballala and thereby secure their home base. Harihara I (reigned 1336–56) then established his new capital, Vijayanagar, in an easily defensible position south of the Tungabhadra River, where it came to symbolize the emerging medieval political culture of South south India. The kingdom’s expansion in the first century of its existence made it the first South south Indian state to incorporate exercise enduring control over different linguistic and cultural regions under a single regime, albeit with subregional and local chiefly powers exercising authority as its agents and subordinates.


In 1336 Harihara, with the help of his brothers, held uneasy suzerainty over lands extending from Nellore, on the southeast coast, to BādāmiBadami, south of Bijāpur Bijapur on the western side of the Deccan. All around him new Hindu kingdoms were rising, the most important of which were the Hoysaḷa Hoysala kingdom of Ballāla Ballala and the Andhra confederacy, led by Kāpaya NāyakaKapaya Nayaka. However, Ballāla’s Ballala’s kingdom was disadvantageously situated between the Maʿbar sultanate and Vijayanagar, and within two years after Ballāla Ballala was killed by the sultan in 1343–44, his kingdom had been conquered by Bukka, Harihara’s brother, and annexed to Vijayanagar. This was the most important victory of Harihara’s reign; the new state now could claim sovereignty from sea to sea, and in 1346 the five brothers attended a great celebration , at which Bukka was made joint ruler and heir.


During Harihara’s reign the administrative foundation of the Vijayanagar state was laid. Borrowing from the Kākatīya Kakatiya kings he had served, he created administrative units called stholas, nāḍu nadus, and simas and appointed officials to collect revenue and to carry on local administration, preferring Brahmans to men of other castes. The income of the state apparently was increased by the reorganization, although centralization probably did not proceed to the stage where salaried officials collected directly for the government in most areas. Rather, most land remained under the direct control of subordinate chiefs or of a hierarchy of local landholders, who paid some revenue and provided some troops for the king. Harihara also encouraged increased cultivation in some areas by allowing lower revenue payments for lands recently reclaimed from the forests.



The temporary confusion that followed the assassination of the Bahmanī sultan ʿAlāʾ al-ud-Dīn Mujāhid in 1378 gave Harihara the opportunity to recapture Goa and some other western ports and impose his authority southward along the Malabār Malabar Coast. During the next decade, pressure increased for expansion against the Reddi kingdom of Kondavīdu Kondavidu in the northeast. Prince Devarāya Devaraya captured Panagal fort and made it a base of operations in the region. The slight gains made in 1390–91 against an alliance of the Velama chieftain of Rājakonda Rajakonda and the Bahmanīs were more than offset when the Bahmanī sultan besieged Vijayanagar in 1398–99, slaughtered a large number of people, and exacted a promise to pay tribute. The tribute was withheld two years later, however, when Vijayanagar made alliances with the sultans of Mālwa Malwa and GujarātGujarat. Nevertheless, Harihara’s reign was relatively successful, because he expanded the state, maintained internal order, and managed to fend off the Bahmanī sultans. The control of ports on both coasts provided opportunities for the acquisition of increased wealth through trade.

Wars and rivalries

Harihara II’s death in 1404 was followed by a violent succession dispute among his three surviving sons. Only after two of them had been crowned and dethroned was the third, Devarāya Devaraya I (reigned 1406–22), able to emerge victorious. Continuing instability, however, coupled with the involvement of Vijayanagar and the Bahmanī sultanate as backers of different claimants to the throne of KondavīduKondavidu, led to further confrontation between the two powers (each joined by various of the rivalrous Telugu chiefs). Sultan Firūz Shāh Fīrūz Shah Bahmanī supported a Reddi attack on Udayagiri. In a related move, the sultan himself mounted another siege of Vijayanagar city, imposing tributary conditions that included his marriage to Devarāya’s Devaraya’s daughter. Despite Bahmanī successes, Vijayanagar managed to hold Panagal, Nalgonda, and other forts and to regain Udayagiri. The defeat of Firūz Shāh Fīrūz Shah in 1419 and the death of his Vema ally led to the eventual partition of Kondavīdu Kondavidu between Vijayanagar and the Velamas of RājakondaRajakonda, who had switched sides with the Vemas during the protracted struggle. This extensive involvement in Andhra and Telingāna—inspired Telingana—inspired by the ambition to expand farther up the eastern seaboard , which (an area that the Bahmanīs to the west also sought to control—brought control)—brought Vijayanagar into conflict for the first time with the kingdom of Orissa to the north. Although a war was temporarily averted, there began a rivalry that was to last more than 100 yearsa century.


The short reigns of Devarāya’s Devaraya’s two sons, Rāmcandra Ramcandra and Vijaya, were disastrous. In a war against the Bahmanīs, many temples were destroyed, and Vijaya was forced to pay a huge indemnity. A combined invasion by the king of Orissa and the Velamas of Andhra resulted in the loss of the territories newly gained in the partition of the Reddi kingdom of KondavīduKondavidu. Vijaya’s son and successor, Devarāya Devaraya II (reigned 1432–46), reconquered the lost Reddi territories and incorporated them into his kingdom, thus establishing the Krishna River as the northeastern boundary. Wars with the Bahmanīs in 1435–36 and 1443–44 over control of Rāichūr Raichur and Mudgal forts in the Tungabhadra-Krishna -Tungabhadra doab Doab ended inconclusively. Those campaigns, however, led to further improvements in Vijayanagar’s military forces when Devarāya Devaraya II proclaimed that Muslims would be welcome in his service and assigned Muslim archers already in Vijayanagar service to instruct his Hindu troops. Devarāya Devaraya also levied tribute from Ceylon Sri Lanka and campaigned successfully in the Kerala country of the far south, where his victories over local chieftains suggest a process of consolidation. His reign saw both the greatest territorial extension and the greatest centralization of the first period of the history of Vijayanagar.

Decentralization and loss of territory

During the first 40 years after Devarāya’s Devaraya’s death in 1446, the centralized power of the state declined, and a considerable amount of territory along both coasts was lost to the Bahmanī sultans and to the suddenly powerful Gajapati ruler of Orissa. In the 1450s and ’60s , Kapilendra (KapileśvaraKapileshvara), the great king of Orissa, together with his son HamvīraHamvira, conquered the Reddi kingdom of Rājahmundry Rajahmundry and the Vijayanagar province of KondavīduKondavidu, captured Warangal and Bīdar Bidar from the Bahmanīs, eventually occupied Udayagiri, and sent a victorious army down the east coast as far south as the Kāverī Kaveri (modern Cauvery) River, where he was repulsed by the able Vijayanagar general and governor of Chandragiri, Sāluva NarasiṃhaSaluva Narasimha.

The Orissan raid had a considerable effect upon Vijayanagar. It not only weakened the empire in the east but also indicated that provincial governors might have to fend for themselves if they expected to retain their territories. The fact that Devarāya’s Devaraya’s son Mallikārjuna Mallikarjuna (reigned 1446–65) was succeeded by a cousin rather than by his own son was another indication of lessened central control and of the failure of the king and his immediate family to secure their own future, as had been done by many of his ancestors when they removed their cousins from positions of power. The new ruler, Virūpāksha Virupaksha (reigned 1465–85), had been a provincial governor. His usurpation was not accepted by many of the provincial governors on the east and west coasts or by the direct descendants of MallikārjunaMallikarjuna, who retired to the banks of the Kāverī Kaveri and ruled much of the southern part of the kingdom in a semi-independent fashion.

Beginning in 1470, the Bahmanīs, under the wazīr, vizier Maḥmūd Gāwān, began a campaign that succeeded in taking much of the west coast and the northern Carnatic (Karnatic) Karnataka from Vijayanagar. The loss of Goa and other ports was especially disconcerting, because it cut off not only an important source of trade and state income but the principal source of supply of Middle Eastern horses for the military as well. The death in 1470 of Kapilendra of Orissa temporarily relieved military pressure in the east; but it was Sāluva Narasiṃha Saluva Narasimha (since transferred to Penukonda), rather than VirūpākshaVirupaksha, who took advantage of the resultant civil war in Orissa to regain lost territory. He reconquered the Tamil region and became master of the east coast up to the Godavari River. Bahmanī aid to HamvīraHamvira, in return for the surrender of all the captured forts in TelingānaTelingana, drew Narasiṃha Narasimha into a war with the sultanate. A two-pronged attack by Muḥammad Shāh Shah and Maḥmūd Gāwān on Narasiṃha’s Narasimha’s territories—Penukonda and the coastal region—and the plunder of Kānchipuram Kanchipuram in 1481 were only temporarily successful, for Īśvara NāyakaIshvara Nayaka, a Vijayanagar general, recovered the loot from the returning Bahmanī forces at Kandukur, and Narasiṃha Narasimha recaptured Penukonda after turning back the Bahmanī forces.

Later dynasties

Beginning as a small chieftain about 1456, Narasiṃha Narasimha had put together a large dominion by 1485 as a result of conquests in the south, as well as campaigns against Orissa; and, although nominally subordinate to VirūpākshaVirupaksha, he was performing more extensive military and administrative functions than was his superior. It is not surprising , that when Virūpāksha Virupaksha was murdered by one of his sons—who was in turn murdered by his brother—that Sāluva Narasiṃha brother—Saluva Narasimha (reigned 1485–90) stepped in to remove the new ruler and to begin his own dynasty. Usurpation was easier than consolidation, however, and Narasiṃha Narasimha spent his reign in relatively successful campaigns to reduce his vassals throughout the kingdom to submission and in unsuccessful attempts to stop the encroachment of the king of Orissa. Narasiṃha Narasimha also opened new ports on the west coast so that he could revive the horse trade, which had fallen into Bahmanī hands, and he generally revitalized the army. By 1490 the process of centralization was had begun again, and both internal and external political circumstances soon would combine to create better opportunities than ever before.


At his death in 1491, following the siege of Udayagiri (and his own imprisonment there) by Orissa, Sāluva Narasiṃha Narasimha left his kingdom in the hands of his chief minister, Narasa NāyakaNayaka, whom he had appointed regent for his two young sons the previous year. The minister , in effect , ruled Vijayanagar from 1490 until his own death in 1503. Court intrigues led to the murder of the elder prince by one of Narasa Nāyaka’s Narasa’s rivals and to the capture and virtual imprisonment of the younger prince (officially enthroned as Immadi NarasiṃhaNarasimha) by Narasa Nāyaka in 1492. The usurpation resulted in opposition from provincial governors and chiefs that lasted for the rest of Narasa Nāyaka’s Narasa’s life. Early in his regency, however, he had the opportunity to take advantage of the beginning of the disintegration of the Bahmanī sultanate. He invaded the disputed Tungabhadra-Krishna doab Doab in 1492–93 at the invitation of the Bahmanī minister, Qāsim Barīd, who was trying to subdue the newly independent Yūsuf ʿĀdil Khān Khan of BijāpurBijapur. Narasa Nāyaka took the strategic forts of Rāichūr Raichur and Mudgal; and, although they were lost again in 1502, the growing disunity of the emerging Muslim polities would provide many similar opportunities in the future.

Narasa Nāyaka also campaigned in the south to restore effective control, which had not existed in many areas since the raid from Orissa in 1463–64. He compelled most of the chiefs and provincial governors to recognize his suzerainty in both Tamil country and the Carnatic Karnataka and nearly restored the old boundaries of the kingdom (some eastern districts were still held by Orissa). By 1503 Narasa had practically completed the process of reconsolidation with which Sāluva Narasiṃha Saluva Narasimha had charged him, although trade restrictions and other impositions by the Portuguese had significantly compromised Vijayanagar’s prestige. He also had made virtually certain that his own line rather than that of his old master would continue to rule. It was during the reigns of his sons that Vijayanagar rose to new heights of political power and cultural eminence.

Narasa’s eldest son and successor, best known as Vīra Narasiṃha Vira Narasimha (reigned 1503–09), ended the sham of regency. After ordering the by-then grown Immadi Narasiṃha’s Narasimha’s murder in 1505, he ascended the throne and inaugurated the Tuluva dynasty, the third dynasty of Vijayanagar. The usurpation again provoked opposition, which the new king spent most of his reign attempting to quell. He was successful except in subduing the rebellious chiefs of Ummattūr Ummattur and Seringapatam in the south and in recovering Goa from the Portuguese, with whom, however, he was able to establish relations to obtain a supply of better horses. By this time the Bahmanī wars, in which the successor states had joined, had become a series of annual jihads, or holy wars, maintaining the Bahmanī’s virtual control over the doab forts.

Growth of power


In an effort to achieve centralization and effective political control, Krishna Deva Rāya Raya appointed Brahmans and capable nonkinsmen as commanders, garrisoned the forts with Portuguese and Muslim mercenary gunners, and recruited foot soldiers from local forest tribes; he also created the rank of lesser chiefs known as Poligars poligars (paḷaiyakkārarpalaiyakkarars) in the Vijayanagar service.

After decisively defeating an invading coalition of Bahmanī forces (who by this time were virtually separated into five states) and capturing Rāichūr Raichur fort, Krishna Deva took advantage of a quarrel between Bijāpur Bijapur and the Bahmanī ruler to subdue both Gulbarga and Bīdar Bidar and to restore the imprisoned Bahmanī sultan to his throne in 1512. During the same period he conducted a successful campaign to subdue Ummattūr Ummattur in the south, and a new province was established from it. From 1513 to 1520, Krishna Deva campaigned against the Gajapati ruler of Orissa, conquering all that king’s territory up to the Godāvari Godavari and raiding as far as the Orissan capital at KaṭakaKataka. Orissa then sued for peace, and its king gave his daughter in marriage to Krishna Deva, who consequently returned to Orissa all the conquered territory north of the Krishna River.

While Krishna Deva was fighting in the east, Ismāʿīl ʿĀdil Shāh Shah of Bijāpur Bijapur had retaken Rāichūr Raichur fort. In 1520 , Krishna Deva decisively defeated Ismāʿīl with some aid from Portuguese gunners and recaptured RāichūrRaichur. In 1523 he carried the attack further, invading Bijāpur Bijapur and capturing several forts. Krishna Deva razed Gulbarga and once again claimed to have restored the Bahmanī sultanate by setting one of the three sons of Maḥmūd Shāh Shah II on the throne. One result of these successful campaigns and of Krishna Deva’s subsequent haughty behaviour was to point out vividly to the Muslim rulers the dangers posed by Vijayanagar, so that in years to come they thought more and more increasingly of taking concerted action against that kingdom. Krishna Deva’s highly successful reign thus led to increased danger to his realm.

During most of his reign , Krishna Deva maintained a mutually advantageous relationship with the increasingly powerful Portuguese, whereby he retained access to trade goods, especially to horses from the Middle East, while the Portuguese were allowed to trade in his dominions. The accounts from this period by the Portuguese travelers Domingos Pais and Duarte Barbosa depict a thriving city and kingdom under a highly venerated and capable ruler. Krishna Deva Rāya’s Raya’s scholarship and patronage of Telugu and Sanskrit literature have become symbols of Telugu pride and cultural traditions.

About 1524–25 , Krishna Deva abdicated and had his young son crowned king. His son died shortly thereafter, however, reportedly poisoned by the jealous former chief minister. Krishna Deva imprisoned the minister and his family and dealt successfully with a serious rebellion three years later—when one of the minister’s sons escaped—as well as with Ismāʿīl ʿĀdil Shāh’s Shah’s attempt to take advantage of Krishna Deva’s troubles to recoup his position. Krishna Deva’s death in 1529 ended the period of the kingdom’s greatest military and administrative success.

Renewed decentralization

Krishna Deva had passed over his infant son and his young nephew and picked his half brother Achyuta Deva Rāya Raya (reigned 1529–42) to succeed him. Following a brief succession dispute, Achyuta Deva Rāya Raya was able to reach the capital from Chandragiri, where Krishna Deva had kept him and other princes confined, and to ascend the throne. Although he probably was not as dissolute a ruler as the Portuguese traveler and writer Fernão Nuniz described him to be, the severe challenges he faced made a successful reign difficult. Krishna Deva’s death had precipitated renewed attacks by BijāpurBijapur, Golconda, and Orissa and a revolt by the king’s minister, Sāluva VīranarasiṃhaSaluva Viranarasimha, and the southern chieftains of Ummattūr Ummattur and Tiruvadi. Achyuta dealt successfully with all the his enemies until the late 1530s, when he was imprisoned by Rāma RāyaRama Raya, the chief minister, with whom he had agreed to share power. Opposition by some of the nobles to Achyuta’s imprisonment, combined with a revolt in the south, led to his release and the beginnings of civil war; but the new ruler of BijāpurBijapur, Ibrāhīm ʿĀdil ShāhShah, after early attempts to create divisiveness in Vijayanagar, arbitrated a settlement between Achyuta and Rāma RāyaRama Raya. Under the settlement, Achyuta virtually handed over his sovereignty to the regent, retaining nominal kingship.

Achyuta’s reign ended with about the same external boundaries of the kingdom as in 1529, but the struggle with Rāma Rāya Rama Raya plus the activities of other nobles and chieftains weakened the hold of the centre over some of the provinces. The process of decentralization had set in again, but now the strongman who would pull the kingdom together was already on the scene. Rāma Rāya Rama Raya brought himself to the undisputed pinnacle of power in 1542–43, when he defeated his rival in the succession struggle following Achyuta’s death and crowned his own candidate, Achyuta’s nephew Sadāśiva Sadashiva (reigned 1542–76). After seven or eight years, Rāma Rāya Rama Raya also assumed royal titles, but from the first Sadāśiva Sadashiva was kept under guard, and Rāma RāyaRama Raya, together with his brothers Tirumala and VenkatādriVenkatadri, ruled the kingdom.

Rāma Rāya Rama Raya was able to control, although not to subdue entirely, rebellious nobles in the east and the extreme south. He also concluded a treaty with the Portuguese (1546), whose settlements had been expanding and who had caused no small amount of damage to indigenous settlements over the past few years. The treaty was broken in 1558, however, and Rāma Rāya Rama Raya then exacted tribute in compensation for damage to temples caused by the Portuguese.

Relations with the Muslim states

Most crucial during the period of Rāma Rāya’s Rama Raya’s rule, however, were Vijayanagar’s relations with the Muslim successor states to the Bahmanī sultanate. At least since Krishna Deva Rāya’s Raya’s time, Vijayanagar had usually competed on a more than equal basis and in the same system of state rivalries with the five Muslim states. Thus, an invasion from Bijāpur Bijapur was repulsed in 1543; in 1548 Rāma Rāya Rama Raya aided Burhān Niẓām Shāh Shah of Ahmadnagar in taking a fort from BīdarBidar, but in 1557 Rāma Rāya Rama Raya allied himself with Bijāpur Bijapur against the Niẓām Shāh Shah and Golconda. The result of the last war was a collective treaty, by which any of the four parties, attacked unjustly by another, could call upon the other allies to stop the aggressor. When Ḥusayn Niẓām Shāh Shah broke the treaty by invading Bijāpur Bijapur in 1560, Vijayanagar and Golconda responded with an attack that resulted not only in Ahmadnagar’s loss of the fort of Kalyāṇi Kalyani to Bijāpur Bijapur but also in an invasion of Bīdar Bidar and the defeat of its ruler by Rāma RāyaRama Raya. Soon, however, the ruler of Golconda, Ibrāhīm Quṭb ShāhShah, allied himself with Ahmadnagar against BijāpurBijapur, and Rāma Rāya Rama Raya allied Vijayanagar with Bijāpur Bijapur to severely defeat the aggressors.

Decline of Vijayanagar

It is likely that the sultans of Golconda and Ahmadnagar, who had lost much at the hands of Rāma RāyaRama Raya, were primarily responsible for the formation of an alliance that destroyed Vijayanagar’s power forever. By 1564 at least four of the five sultans (Berār Berar is questionable) had begun their march on Vijayanagar, which resulted early in 1565 in the disastrous defeat of the Vijayanagar forces in the Battle of Tālikota (Banihaṭṭi) Talikota and in the subsequent sack and destruction of much of the city of Vijayanagar. Rāma Rāya Rama Raya was captured and killed, but his brother Tirumala escaped to the south with the king and much of the royal treasure.

Military policies

Although Rāma Rāya’s Rama Raya’s efforts toward centralization were not entirely successful, it was his military policies that ultimately led to disaster. There were rebellions when he replaced many members of the old nobility with relatives and close associates, but they appear to have been no more serious than many another rebellion other rebellions of previous periods under similar circumstances. Indeed, judging on the basis of the number and size of the military campaigns that Rāma Rāya Rama Raya was able to launch outside Vijayanagar in later years, it would seem that his internal control was relatively secure. Rāma Rāya Rama Raya has been criticized for allowing Muslims to hold important positions within his administration, and, although his final defeat at Tālikota Talikota was at least partly attributable to the defection of two of his Muslim generals, the policy appears to have worked well up to that time. Rāma Rāya’s Rama Raya’s early experiences as an official at the court of Golconda appear to have given him ideas for improving the Vijayanagar administration and army. As early as 1535 he had hired 3,000 Muslim soldiers from BijāpurBijapur, and he later tried to make the Vijayanagar state apparatus more like that of the neighbouring Muslim states. In short, he was building a state that would be as competitive as possible in that time and place. It is likely that at first Vijayanagar’s Muslim neighbours took a similar view of state relations and that Vijayanagar was seen as just another competing state. Rāma Rāya’s Rama Raya’s military successes and his skill in diplomacy, together with his arrogance in the knowledge that Vijayanagar was stronger than any one of the sultanates, led to the Muslim alliance against him. Despite a Muslim historian’s claim that the alliance was formed because of Rāma Rāya’s Rama Raya’s bad treatment of Muslims, there is little evidence to indicate that the principal motives were other than political. Furthermore, the subsequent behaviour of the sultans suggests that, once Vijayanagar had been humbled, they were willing to return to a system of shifting alliances among all the Deccan powers.

Loss of central control

The Battle of Tālikota Talikota did not result in the destruction of the kingdom of Vijayanagar, although the capital city never fully recovered from the ravages it suffered. Rāma Rāya’s Rama Raya’s brother Tirumala established a new headquarters at Penukonda and attempted to rebuild the army. Much of the south and southeast was lost, however, as the Nāyakas Nayakas of Madura, Thanjavur (Tanjore (Thanjāvūr), and Jinjī Jinji effectively asserted their independence. Rebellions and banditry arose in many areas. Tirumala appealed to Niẓām Shāh Shah of Ahmadnagar for aid against a Bijāpurī Bijapuri invasion that reached Penukonda. He then joined with Ahmadnagar and Golconda in a campaign against BijāpurBijapur. Tirumala accepted the new states of the Nāyakas Nayakas of the south, retained the allegiance of Mysore and Keladi, and appointed his three sons as governors of the three linguistic regions of his kingdom—Telugu, KannaḍaKannada, and Tamil. In 1570 he had himself crowned and thus officially inaugurated the Āravīḍu Aravidu dynasty, the fourth and last dynasty of Vijayanagar.

When Tirumala retired, his son Śrīranga Shriranga I (reigned 1572–85) tried to continue the process of rebuilding while struggling to maintain his place among the Muslim sultanates without any support from the major Telugu houses. An invasion by Bijāpur Bijapur was repulsed with the aid of Golconda, but subsequent invasions by Golconda resulted in the loss of a substantial amount of territory in the east. The Vijayanagar government relocated from Penukonda, which had sustained two sieges, to Chandragiri. Śrīranga’s Shriranga’s difficulties stemmed partly stemmed from the lack of aid from his brothers, who ruled their separate regions, and partly from the dissensions of his nobles and the semi-independent status of some of them. Many nobles had apparently decided that it was no longer in their best interests to give full support to the larger state and that, in the absence of overwhelming power, the development of smaller , subregional states was both possible and potentially more profitable.

Śrīranga Shriranga died without issue childless and was succeeded by his younger brother Venkata II (reigned 1585–1614), whose ability and constant activity, combined with a relative dearth of interference by the Muslim sultanates, prevented the further disintegration of centralized authority over the next 28 years. A series of wars between 1580 and 1589 resulted in the reacquisition of some of the territory that had been lost to Golconda in the east and the eventual restoration of the Krishna River as Vijayanagar’s northern boundary, but Venkata spent most of his time attempting to retain his hold over his rebellious chieftains and nobles. Most of the east and the Tamil south was in rebellion at one time or another, ; the most serious threat occurring occurred in 1601, when the Nāyakas Nayakas of Madura, Tanjore, and Jinjī Jinji came to the aid of the rebellious Lingama Nāyaka Nayaka of Vellore. Venkata defeated the Nāyakas Nayakas and later made Vellore his capital, but his authority was not restored in the far south. The process of decentralization, although halted for a time, could not be reversed. In the northern areas that had been laid to waste by invading armies, Venkata undertook a program of restoration by offering lower revenue payments. His tact and firmness led to cordial relations with the Portuguese, who established a Jesuit mission in 1607. The Dutch were permitted to build a factory at Devapāṭṭaṇa Devapattana and a fort at Pulicat, notwithstanding Portuguese opposition to the latter. It would appear that by the time of his death in 1614 Venkata had accomplished enough so that a revival of imperial power and prosperity was possible, but instead rivalries among the nobility rapidly led to further decentralization and to the diminution of the state.

Breakup of the empire

Venkata’s nephew and successor, Śrīranga Shriranga II, ruled for only four months. He was murdered, along with all but one of the members of his family, by one of the two contending parties of nobles. A long civil war resulted and finally degenerated into a series of smaller wars among a number of contending parties. The surviving member of the dynasty, Rāma Rama Deva RāyaRaya, finally ascended the throne in 1617. His reign was marked by factional warfare and the constant struggle to maintain a much-truncated kingdom along the eastern coast. Although some chieftains continued to recognize his nominal suzerainty and that of his successor, Venkata III (1630–42), real political power resided at the level of chieftains or and provincial governors, who were carving out their own principalities. The fourth Vijayanagar dynasty had become little more than another competing provincial power.

Bijāpur Bijapur and Golconda took advantage of the decline in Vijayanagar’s strength to make further inroads into the south, while Venkata III’s own nephew Śrīranga Shriranga allied himself with BijāpurBijapur. Interestingly, it was Venkata who granted the Madraspatna fort to the English as the site for a factory (trading post). In 1642 an expedition from Golconda drove the king from his capital at Vellore. Hearing that his uncle was dying, Śrīranga Shriranga deserted Bijāpur Bijapur and had himself crowned. Although he was able to play off Bijāpur Bijapur and Golconda against each other for a time, he could not gain control over the provincial NāyakasNayakas, who were by then virtually independent; and, when Bijāpur Bijapur and Golconda finally struck at the same time, Śrīranga Shriranga and the handful of chieftains who came to his aid were powerless to stop them. A last appeal to his Nāyakas Nayakas to come to the defense of Hinduism resulted instead in his defeat by their combined forces in 1645. Meanwhile, Bijāpur Bijapur and Golconda advanced, with the blessings of the Mughal emperor at Delhi, who had suggested that they should partition the Carnatic Karnataka between themselves. The Nāyakas Nayakas realized the danger too late, and by 1652 the Muslim sultans had completed their conquest of the CarnaticKarnataka. Śrīranga Shriranga retired to Mysore, where he kept an exile court until his death in 1672.

Administration of the empire

Vijayanagar was the first South southern Indian state to have encompassed three major linguistic and cultural regions and to have established a high degree of political unity among them. The administration of the kingdom sporadically achieved a relatively high degree of centralization, although centrifugal tendencies regularly appeared. To the original five rājya rajyas (provinces) held by the Saṅgama Sangama brothers, new ones were added as territories were acquired. Within and among these regions, a complex mosaic of great chiefly houses exercised power to varying degrees, though not with the virtual autonomy that some historians have suggested. The central administration had both a revenue and a military side, but the actual business of raising taxes and troops was mostly the responsibility of the provincial governors and their subordinates. The central government maintained a relatively small body of troops, but it assigned a value to the lands held by the provincial governors and determined the number of troops that were to be supplied from the revenues of each province. This administrative plan led to the development of the nāyankara nayankara system, in which prominent commanders received land grants and privileged status as Nāyakas , becoming Nayakas (local lords or governors). The system, which has been characterized as a kind of military feudalism, worked well enough when the central authority was strong but provided territorial bases for the Nāyakas Nayakas to build semi-independent hereditary holdings in times of imperial weakness. The imperial rulers were aware of the power of the provinces and tried to counter it by appointing members of the royal family as governors of the militarily more important (but not necessarily more lucrative) provinces. On the whole, however, the device was not successful, because succession rivalries, as in the Muslim kingdoms to the north, tended to produce filial disloyalty to the throne and even rebellion.


Under Vijayanagar rule, temples, which exhibited such singularly imperial features as huge enclosures and entrance gateways (gopuras), emerged as major political arenas. Monastic organizations (mathas) representing various religious traditions also became focal points of local authority, often closely linked with the Nāyaka Nayaka chieftaincies. A fairly elaborate and specialized administrative infrastructure underlay these diverse local and regional religiopolitical religio-political forms.

Vijayanagar , the city , was the a symbol of vast power and wealth. It was a royal ceremonial and administrative centre and the nexus of trade routes. Foreign travelers and visitors were impressed by the variety and quality of commodities that reached the city, by the architectural grandeur of the palace complex and temples, and by the ceremonial significance of the annual Mahanavamī Mahanavami celebrations, at which the Nāyakas Nayakas and other chiefs assembled to pay tributestribute.
