Sultans of the South - Part 4

The Poet, the Tempest, and the Aristotle of the Deccan

Muhammad II - The Aristotle of Deccan

“The splendour of the sultan’s crown, though tempting, 

is dearly bought when balanced against one’s peace of mind; 

and all the pearls of the sea are not worth 

the dread of a single tempest.”

- Hafiz of Shiraz 

The Tempest at Ormuz

In CE 1388, Khwaja Shams-ud-din Muhammad—better known to the world as Hafiz of Shiraz, one of the most celebrated poets of the Persian-speaking world, had fallen on hard times. Relief seemed to arrive from across the Arabian Sea when a message reached him from the Deccan, sent through the Bahmani minister Mir Fazl-ul-lah Inju (Sadr-i-Jahan). The Bahmani Sultan wished for the master poet to grace his court at Gulbarga, and to make the invitation irresistible, he sent along a substantial sum of money to cover the journey.

Hafiz accepted. He cleared his debts, set aside funds for his maternal nephews, and distributed the rest among the poor. Setting out for India, he travelled to Lar—where he met two merchants who traded regularly with the Bahmanis—and continued down to the port of Ormuz, where a royal Bahmani vessel lay waiting to ferry him to Dabhol. Yet the moment Hafiz stepped aboard, a violent tempest struck the coast. Shaken to his core, the octogenerian poet developed cold feet, abandoned the voyage altogether, and returned to Shiraz. In place of his presence, he sent a famous ghazal to the minister explaining that no royal crown was worth the terror of a stormy sea. Far from taking offence, the Sultan was deeply moved by the verse and rewarded Hafiz with a further gift of a thousand golden tankas.

The Scholar-Prince on a Blood-Stained Throne

The monarch capable of rewarding a poet who had turned down his invitation was Muhammad Shah II (r. 1378–1397 CE), grandson of the dynasty’s founder, Bahman Shah. Ironically, this gentlest of Sultans owed his crown to a ruthless palace coup orchestrated by Princess Ruh Parwar Agha, who had avenged her brother Mujahid Shah by having the usurper Dawud I assassinated in May 1378.

Once crowned, Muhammad II moved swiftly to secure the realm. He imprisoned Khan Muhammad, the noble implicated in the turbulent conspiracies of the preceding years, while retaining the seasoned and capable Saif-ud-din Ghori as his Prime Minister. Unlike the early Bahmani monarchs who measured their reigns in sieges and cavalry charges, Muhammad II was a dedicated man of letters. Fluent in both Persian and Arabic, he established free schools for orphans and turned Gulbarga into a magnet for scholars, earning himself the enduring title "Aristotle of the Deccan" from the historian Ferishta.

Peace, Famine, and a Fleet of Ten Thousand Bullocks

For nearly two decades, Muhammad II gave the Bahmani kingdom one of the longest stretches of peace in its history. While Vijayanagara forces under Harihara II managed to wrest Goa on the western coast, Persian and Deccani chroniclers record that Bahmani defenses firmly repulsed Harihara’s advances into the Raichur Doab and Telangana. Internal peace held steady too, broken only near the end of his reign by a brief rebellion at Sagar led by Baha-ud-din Daulatabadi, which collapsed quickly when his own officers assassinated him.

Yet the defining test of Muhammad II’s reign was not a rival army, but nature itself. Between 1387 and 1395, repeated monsoon failures plunged the Deccan into a devastating, multi-year famine. Muhammad II’s response set a remarkable benchmark for medieval Indian governance: it is said that he mobilized a transport fleet of 10,000 bullocks to continuously import grain from Malwa and Gujarat, selling it to the public at heavily subsidized, state-fixed rates. Simultaneously, he threw open state granaries and established public kitchens across the realm, preventing mass starvation and earning the enduring loyalty of his subjects regardless of faith.

The Fault Line Beneath the Throne: Dakhnis vs. Afaqis

Behind the scholarly calm of Muhammad II’s court, a structural fault line was quietly widening — one that would eventually prove far more lethal to the Bahmani Sultanate than any war with Vijayanagar. The kingdom had originally been carved out by Muslim nobles who had rebelled against the Tughlaqs of Delhi — the Dakhnis (or Mulki, the "old-comers"). Over time, however, the deliberate recruitment of talent from across the Persian Gulf brought a steady influx of immigrants from Persia, Iraq, and Central Asia — bearing names such as Sistani, Kirmani, and Tabrizi. Known as the Afaqis (literally "cosmopolitans" or "newcomers"), they arrived as soldiers, administrators, merchants, and Sufi saints, rapidly rising to the highest offices of the state.

While strong, balanced rulers could harness the energy of both groups, court politics gradually hardened into a bitter rivalry between the entrenched Dakhni aristocracy and the ambitious Afaqi newcomers. Over the next century, this internal polarization would poison the Bahmani court from within.

Grooming Heirs and a Quiet Farewell

For much of his reign, Muhammad II had no son of his own. Displaying rare familial generosity, he raised his uncle's sons — Firoz and Ahmad, as his own children, married them to his daughters, and carefully groomed Firoz as his heir presumptive. Late in life, however, the Sultan fathered a son, Ghiyas-ud-din, whom he subsequently named as his successor. Knowing the dangers of a contested throne, the dying Sultan summoned Firoz and Ahmad to his bedside and extracted solemn oaths of allegiance to the young prince.

On 20 April 1397, Muhammad Shah II succumbed to typhoid. In a poignant coda to an era of remarkable administrative harmony, his trusted Prime Minister, Malik Saif-ud-din Ghori, who had served the dynasty since its very inception, passed away the very next day.

Blood in the Banquet Hall: The Fall of Ghiyas-ud-din

The first casualties of the Dakhni-Afaqi factional divide appeared within months of Muhammad II’s death. Young Ghiyas-ud-din ascended the throne as a teenager and quickly alienated the Dakhni old guard by leaning heavily toward the Afaqis. The backlash was spearheaded by Taghalchin, an ambitious Turkish noble who coveted the vacant post of Prime Minister and resented the Sultan’s open humiliation of him in court.

Taghalchin chose treachery over open rebellion. He invited the young Sultan to a private banquet, dangling the prospect of introducing him to his accomplished daughter, renowned for her grace in music and arts. At the feast, Taghalchin instructed his attendant, Tarab, to ply the Sultan with wine until he was thoroughly intoxicated. Once Ghiyas-ud-din was incapacitated, Taghalchin declared that the Sultan could meet his daughter only if he dismissed his royal guards. Left alone and defenseless, Ghiyas-ud-din waited—only for Taghalchin to return with a drawn dagger. While Tarab pinned the young monarch down, Taghalchin gouged out his eyes. The Sultan’s attendants were then summoned into the chamber one by one, and twenty-four of them were slaughtered on the spot. Taghalchin installed Ghiyas-ud-din’s half-brother, Shams-ud-din, as a puppet ruler on the throne and appointed himself Malik Naib (Regent).

A Legacy Beyond the Battlefield

History has occasionally judged Muhammad Shah II harshly as a passive ruler who favoured poetry and philosophy over territorial conquest. Yet in a dynasty otherwise defined by relentless bloodshed, his two decades of relative peace allowed trade, architecture, and scholarship to flourish across the Deccan. Nor did his political foresight fail entirely. Though his son Ghiyas-ud-din perished in the crossfire of court intrigue for failing to balance the Dakhni and Afaqi factions, the two sons-in-law Muhammad II had raised and mentored, Firoz and Ahmad would soon topple Taghalchin, stabilize the kingdom, and usher in the golden age of the Bahmani Sultanate.

Heads up: The text in this post was embellished with a little AI polish, and the images are AI-generated.

India and the First Sultan

Islam made its premiere appearance in the Indian Subcontinent when Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, the Umayyad governor of Iraq, sent an army under his son-in-law, Mohammed-bin-Qasim to punish Dhar - the ruler of Sindh, for his failure to deal effectively with the sea pirates who had captured the presents sent by the king of Sri Lanka to Hajjaj. Although Qasim managed to establish the Umayyad rule in Sindh (AD 712) and Multan (AD 713), his pre mature death, the division of Multan and Sindh into two separate Arab kingdoms, the administrative incapacity of the Arabs and the resistance put up by the Indians put a temporary full stop on the further expansion of the Islamic rule in India. As the religion of the Prophet ventured into new territories, the baton of Islam passed from the Arabs to the Persians and then, finally, to the Turks. Once a barbaric race of Central Asia, the Turks, transformed themselves into an extremely cultured people after their contact with Islam but retained their war-like spirit. It was this lethal combination that helped them defend many elements of their new religion from the onslaught of the Mongols, in the later period.

It was in this tribe that the first Sultan of the Islamic world, Mahmud of Ghazni was born on 1st November, 971. Although he had participated in many battles along with his father, King Sabuktigin, the throne, after the latter’s death, went to Mahmud’s younger brother, Ismail. However, destiny played its part and Mahmud deposed his brother and ascended the throne in 998 AD. Legend has it that, an year later, when the Khalifa, Al Qadir Billah recognized him as the ruler of the present day Southern Afghanistan and conferred on him the titles of ‘Yamin-ud-Daulah’ and ‘Amin-ul-Millah’, Mahmud took an oath to invade India, the ‘Land of the Kafirs’ every year. True to his word, in his reign exceeding three decades, Mahmud is said to have invaded India at least on twelve different occasions.  

From 1000 to 1014 AD, his invasions were mostly concentrated in regions that fall in modern day Pakistan, where he humbled the mighty Hindushahi kings and the Shia rulers of Multan. The relatively easy victories and the immense booty that he took to Ghazni by plundering cities like the Hindushahi capitals of Waihind (Peshawar) and Nandana in this part of the Subcontinent, made him expand his horizon and fuelled his desire to lay waste the Gangetic valley which, like today, was doted with temples whose riches, he was well aware of. Beginning with the sacking of Thaneswar (AD 1014), Mahmud is said to have looted Hindu religious centres like Mathura, Vrindavan, Kannauj (AD 1018) and finally, he razed the famed temple of Somanath (AD 1024) to the ground. Infact when Mahmud went to his grave, his empire extended from Kurdistan in the west to Samarkand in the north-east and from the Caspian Sea to the Yamuna and was even bigger than that of the Khalifa. Owing to the unprecedented success that he achieved in Central Asia and India, Muslim chronicles regard him as the first Sultan of the Islamic World, a title he deserves more than any of his contemporaries

Mahmud of Ghazni, beyond any doubt, is one of the most controversial figures in history of the Subcontinent, with his character being viewed through the spectrum of region and religion. In Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, Mahmud is celebrated as a hero and a great patron of the arts, architecture, literature, and Persian revivalism as well as a vanguard of Islam and a paragon of virtue and piety who established the standard of Islam upon heathen land. In fact, Pakistan, a state formed for the 'welfare of Indian Muslims', has christened one of its short range ballistic missile, Ghaznavi, in the honor of Mahmud. However, in the Hindu dominated India, Mahmud is depicted as a Muslim villain and barbarian, who looted whatever he could, destroyed whatever he could not, took along with him the wealth of Hindu temples, forced lakhs of people to accept the faith of the Prophet, otherwise killed them, took thousands of beautiful women to Ghazni while countless others were dishonored here, burnt hundreds of villages and beautiful cities and destroyed pieces of arts.

Although there is little doubt that the one of the motives behind Mahmud’s repeated invasions into India was the propagation of Islam, new evidence unearthed from the medieval sources seem to indicate that there was more to Mahmud’s invasion than the spreading of the teachings of the Prophet. The following is a list of potential reasons that may have led the Sultan of Ghazni to invade India:

(1) Establishment of the Glory of Islam: Many modern Muslim historians argue that while Mahmud destroyed and plundered Hindu kingdoms of India, he repeated the same story with the Muslim rulers of Central Asia. Professor Havell believes that Mahmud would have also looted Baghdad the same way he looted Indian cities if he could get wealth there. As such, a sizeable portion of modern day historians believe that Mahmud’s raids were to acquire the wealth of India, so as to finance his ambitions of expansions in Central Asia.

There is considerable evidence from writings of Al Beruni, Soghidan, Uyghur and Manichean texts that after the initial destruction and pillage, Buddhists, Jains and Hindus were granted protected subject status as Dhimmis. By that time, however, most of the centres of Buddhist and Hindu learning were already destroyed. Besides, a large number of Hindus were employed as soldiers in Mahmud’s multi-national army.

However, Utbi, the court historian of Mahmud claims that his master’s invasions were jihads to destroy the idolaters, their religion and temples. Contemporary Muslim sources regard Mahmud as a Ghazi (Slayer of the Infidels) and the destroyer of idols. Thus, while religion might have not been the only reason to invade India, yet it was one of the motives behind Mahmud’s raids into the Subcontinent.

(2) Wealth of India: The Indian Society in the early days of the second millennium AD presents a very sorry state and was a reason, tempting enough for any aggressive foreign ruler to aspire the riches of India. Politically, North India was fragmented into several strong and extensive kingdoms, whose rich resources were often wasted in internal conflicts. The caste system had become rigid and Hadis, Doms, Chandalas, Badhatu etc were forced to live in pathetic conditions on the outskirts of the villages. Social evils like Sati, child marriage and polygamy became the norm of the day whereas window re-marriages were not permitted. Deterioration in morals and religion can be concluded from the fact that the practice of keeping devadasis in temples was prevalent. However, the one thing that India possessed in abundance was wealth. The economy, unlike the society and religion was doing well and the wealth was concentrated in the hands of the rich and adorned the temples of India.

Meanwhile, Mahmud was an ambitious ruler and patronized arts. He aimed to use the spoils he amassed from India to sponsor his Central Asian campaigns and to make his capital, Ghazni, an important centre of Islamic learning in the eleventh century. Al beruni - the scholar of Sanskrit, Turki and Sciences, Firdausi – the author of Shahnameh, Utbi, Farabi, and Ujari etc endowed his court. It was from the money that he got from his Indian campaigns that Mahmud constructed several mosques, tombs, a university, a library and a museum in his capital, which made Ghazni, one of the most beautiful cities of this period and a hub of fine arts and culture.

(3) The Isolation of India and the Ignorance of the Hindus: The attitude of the Hindus of this era is captured by Al Beruni when he says 

“The Hindus believe that there is no country like theirs, no nation like theirs,
no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, and no science like theirs.”

As such the Hindus were completely cut off from the events that unfolded in the rest of the Old World and this led to the development of a false pride in them. The Indians had lost the vigour and intelligence that they were once known for and were not in a position to improve themselves or to absorb new things from the rest of the world. Over the last few centuries, the Indians failed to make much progress in the spheres of combat and strategic planning. The sword continued to remain their chief fighting weapon and the north-west frontier was not sufficiently fortified.

As such the Turkish forces with their superior fighting skills and weaponry, coupled by their fast moving cavalry routed the slow moving Rajputs in more than one occasion. In fact, Rajyapala, - the Prathihara ruler of Kannauj, Vidhyadhar – the Chandela king of Kalinjar and Bhima I – the ruler of Gujarat seem to have fled at the sight of Mahmud’s mighty forces without offering any resistance. After the collapse of the Hindushahis, Mahmud found no real challenge in rest of the Subcontinent and invaded and looted it at his will as the people, from the common man on the streets to the ineffective Rajput kings of the North looked on helplessly and prayed that the man who had tormented them, destroyed their temples and looted their wealth would not come back to haunt them again.

(4) The Aggressive Policy of the Hindushahis: The rivalry between the Hindushahi kings of North Western India and the Ghaznavis dates back to the days of Mahmud’s father, Sabuktigin. When the Hindushahi king Jayapala invaded Ghazni during the reign of the cruel king Pirai, it was Sabuktigin in his capacity as the commander of the Ghazni forces who defeated him. On his ascend to the throne, Sabuktigin repulsed another two invasions by the Hindushahi kings. Thus, it was the kings of India who first took an aggressive stance against the growth of Islam in Afghanistan region. But the strength of the Turks and the military incapacity of the Hindus meant that the latter were beaten back and they ended up giving enough excuses for the Turks to try out their luck in India.

When he came to the throne, Mahmud pursued an aggressive policy against the Hindushahis. The defeat that he inflicted on Jayapala (AD 1001) was so humiliating that he is said to have committed suicide by walking into the funeral pyre, unable to come in terms with magnitude of his loss. His successors, Anandapala and Trilochanapala tried to defeat the Ghaznavis by enlisting the support of various other chiefs but failed on more than one occasion. During one of the battles (AD 1009), the confederacy formed by Anandapala faced an unfortunate defeat as his elephant turned back from the battle in a crucial moment, turning the tide into Mahmud's favour. Thus Mahmud was single handedly responsible of extinguishing the once powerful Hindushahi dynasty and its last ruler is said to have died as petty chieftain.

Also some of Mahmud’s invasions were to quell the revolts that had taken place in his absence or to prevent Rajput states from forming alliances against him. He raided and annexed Multan (AD 1008) after its ruler Abu-i-Fath Daud and Mahmud’s governor, Nawasa Shah rebelled against the Turks when the Sultan was busy fighting the Seljuk-Turks. The primary motive of his invasion of Chandela territories (AD 1019) was to break up the alliance that the Chandelas, the Prathihras and the Hindushahis had formed against him. Mahmud came back to India for the last time (AD 1027) to punish the Jats who had troubled him o his way to Ghazni after sacking the temple of Somnath.

(5) Elephants: Dr A. B. Pandey has opined that the search for the great pachyderms may have been one of the reasons for Mahmud to invade India. In fact, all throughout the medieval period, elephants were used in wars. A herd of well trained elephants was enough to put the enemy army in a state of utter confusion and chaos. Mahmud is said to have released Jayapala (AD 1001), the Hindushahi ruler after he agreed to a humiliating treaty that included a clause by which the Sultan got 25 elephants. He said to have got a further 300 elephants from the Chandela ruler, Vidhyadhar (AD 1020-21) as a tribute in return of the right of governing 15 fortresses. Hence, there is enough historic evidence to support Mahmud wanted Indian elephants so that they could be utilized in wars against his enemies in the west.

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru once said, “Civilizations, like empires, fall, not so much because of the strength of the enemy outside as through the weakness and decay within.” In fact, the sharp social differences and corruption that plagued contemporary India had made the society hollow and it was in no position to resist its powerful invaders. The arrogance of the Hindus and their inability to make breakthroughs in the fields of combat and weaponry added to the miseries already present in the society. On the contrary, the Turkish armies, inspired by their new religion, were more determined than ever to establish the glory of Islam and routed the Rajput armies by their fast moving cavalry. As such, the wealth of India was like the wealth of a weak person which could tempt any strong man, like Mahmud to possess it.

SOURCES

(1) History of Medieval India 1000 - 1740 AD by L. P. Sharma (3rd Edition)

(2) Wikipedia – Mahmud of Ghazni (Link)