History of Medieval Deccan

Tazkiratul Muluk of Rafiuddin Shirazi is one of the important source material for the medieval history of Deccan in particular and India in general. the author was the eye witness of the most of the events of his work, hence it holds significance as a first rate work. Here the author accounted interesting details of the origin of the Vijayanagar ruling houses, the incessant battles for the control of the Raichur Doab between Vijayanagar and Bahmani and its off-shoots, particularly Bijapur. The events of Battle of Talikota (1565) prime importance in the work.

This article traces the history of the art of Bijapuri painting and illustations along with its history which happened under the Adil Shahi rule of  Bijapur during the 16th - 17th centuries. Though Bijapuri art is found in collections around the world, the landmark work done in the illustrated compendium under Sultan Ali Adil Shah in 1570 A.D, the Nujum-al-ulum is elucidated. Now housed at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin,  Ireland.  A few images from the repertoire of paintings and illustrations are highlighted with explanations wherever possible. While elucidating the art, a brief history of Bijapur art under different Sultans is traced along with some special points which makes this school unique and noteworthy. This art school captures the life and times of a Sultanate of the Deccan which came to power after the disintegration of the Bahmani kingdom. The Bijapur paintings overall includes portraits of rulers and noble-men, royal processions, yoginis, Sufi saints, fauna including images of composite animals, flora, zodiac symbols and historical moments. The paintings which have been showcased through this article represent the uniqueness of the Nujum-al-ulum and its status in 16th century Deccan painting.
Keywords: Bijapur, Bijapuri Art, Miniature painting, Nujum-al-ulum, Deecan painting, Sultans of Deccan, Adil Shahi.

Inscriptions play an important role in revealing the various activities done by the people of the past. Records engraved in temples throw a flood of light on several aspects like, the period of its construction, the gradual expansion of the components of a temple complex over a period of time, renovations made, the various donations made by its patrons, festivals and rituals, administration of the temple, etc. The Lakshmi Narasimha temple at Nira Narasimhapur, Pune district, Maharashtra is an important place of Vaishnavite pilgrimage in general and Lord Narasimha in particular. The present paper aims to examine 10 inscriptions of this temple, written in Marathi and Gujarati languagesdated between early decades of 17th to mid-19th century CE gleaning light on the construction and renovation of the temple and the patronage it received from the devotees.

The Saṅgīta‧samaya‧sāra (ca 1245 CE) by Pārśvadēva is an important source-text for the history of Indian music and dance. It is a particularly rich source of the regional (dēśya) vocabulary pertaining to vocal music, instrumental music and dance that was prevalent in the Deccan. Using this treatise as a key, this article attempts to interpret a verse describing a music performance from the twelfth century Kannada poem Hariścandra‧cāritra of Rāghavāṅka. The shared idiom of the scholarly worlds of poetry and musicology between two texts that were not too far separated in space and time is interesting, and may indicate the critical value of kāvya literature in editing and interpreting śāstra texts.

Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I (c. 1671-1748) was a pedigreed Mughal statesman who was an important stakeholder in later Mughal court politics with a family base in Mughal Deccan from the reign of Aurangzeb. In 1719-20, he was called to the imperial court by Emperor Muhammad Shah to take up the post of Vazir or Prime Minister. However, the corrupt atmosphere at Shahjahanabad with its debauched court etiquette did not suit the Nizam who turned back to Mughal Deccan in October 1724 to take up the viceroy’s post battling the newly appointed court favourite, Mubariz Khan at the Battle of Shakharkheda. Post 1724, the Nizam-ul-Mulk largely stayed in Mughal Deccan improvising its administration and protecting it from the Marathas till the end of his life. The historiography of Mughal historians have long held that the Nizam-ul-Mulk declared himself ‘independent’. The paper looks at the Nizam’s seals and other important epigraphic remains to disprove this long-held theory.

This publication is devoted to studying the history of saintly families in Central Asia and Mughal India with a focus on Ṣiddīqī khwājahs. One of the networks of Ṣiddīqīs in the region was founded by Shaykh Zayn al-Dīn Kūy-i–‘Ārifānī, who moved from Baghdad to Tashkent in the first half of the 13th century. From the 16th to 18th centuries, the family also had branches in Samarqand and Bukhara, and later in Mughal India.

This dissertation examines the itineraries of two European travelers to the Golconda kingdom in the seventeenth century, Jean Thevenot and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, to analyze how later historians have used their accounts and the implications for understanding the Golconda kingdom's political organization.  The study of road networks in the Golconda kingdom has been limited, despite their importance to any large political system.  For my research, I combined perspectives from archaeology, history, cultural geography, and architectural history to critically re-examine past use of European accounts by historians and consider new ways to understand the road networks of the Golconda kingdom.  I determined the modern locations of the places Thevenot and Tavernier visited on several routes, visited these and related sites, and documented standing architecture and other cultural features, particularly those built in the style associated with the kingdom's capital.  Combining this information with previous scholarship, I concluded that evidence for centralized elite investment in roads and facilities for travelers was irregular in its distribution and form.  There was no sign of an extensive building program that could be linked to a particular ruler suggesting imperial expansion or increased centralization.  The initial portion of the road leading from the capital in Golconda and Hyderabad toward the port of Masulipatnam showed greater evidence of such architectural features, most of which can be dated to the middle phase of the kingdom (late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries).  This same area also contained an absence of evidence for previous structures and patronage by earlier kingdoms, suggesting its development began with the Golconda kingdom.  But rather than a centralized, imperial expansion, the irregular distribution of structures along the roads more likely reflected patronage by court elites acting individually on lands in their possession.  Such actions were a part of a 'culture of building' that peaked during the middle phase of the kingdom.  These structures deserve additional study and protection, and should be included in future analyses of the kingdom in addition to the better-known structures cited in existing published works on the Golconda kingdom.

With the rapid spread of Islam towards the east and the subsequent establishment of Indo-Islamic states in South Asia from the early thirteenth century, there followed steady waves of immigration from central and west Asia into the Indian subcontinent. This movement of people such as artists, scholars, warriors, statesmen, merchants and saints took place via both land-routes (across north-west India) and the Indian Ocean. The Iranians were arguably one of the major communities who left an indelible imprint on the history of the subcontinent. Historical scholarship has focussed on the role of these Iranians in aiding the process of political formations during the medieval period. The active policy of attracting human capital from Persia followed by the Bahmani Sultanate from the fifteenth century, that was taken up by their successors—the Niẓām Shāhīs of Ahmadnagar, the ‘Ādil Shāhīs of Bijapur and the Quṭb Shāhīs of Golconda—had significant repercussions. By a close reading of Indo-Persian court chronicles, this essay seeks to locate symbols of power and sustenance that enabled the migrant Iranian community to negotiate their identity within the heterogeneous political society of the Deccan. Their contest with the different sections of the ruling elite enables the scholar to engage with certain interesting problematics. How far did sectarian differences impact the dynamics of this contest? What were the means by which they articulated their identity in the foreign land? Of what relevance is their service in the capacity of diplomats and ambassadors, that facilitated communication between the polities of medieval South Asia and Safavid Iran, in this regard? By addressing these questions, this paper attempts to complicate existing historiographical understandings of the various facets of interactions that they fostered.

Keywords: migrant, community, diaspora, identity, Iranian, medieval Deccan, political Islam, maritime trade, power contestation, diplomacy