Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

by Manu S. Pillai

Paribhuta Suratrana (Vanquisher of Sultans).

Jagadeva Rao.

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The Qutb Shah was, besides, a lover of Telugu. ‘His court was thronged by local poets of note, and he identified himself so much with indigenous culture that his name was affectionately Teluguised as Malkibharama and Abhirama.’24 In the tradition of Hindu kings of the past, Ibrahim also patronized retellings of the ancient epics – a poet named Addanki Gangadhara was commissioned by him to expand a chapter from the Mahabharata that tells the tale of two lovers, Tapati and Samvarana.

Masulipatam, for instance, emerged during Ibrahim’s long reign as an important centre of economic activity, integral to the welfare of Golconda’s rulers.

chintz

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Elluru’

Carpets in elluru

Such was the splendour associated with the very word Golconda that in as late as 1813 an American city in Illinois would change its name from Sarahsville to Golconda, to evoke a vision of the legendary wealth which was believed to have existed in the original city of that name.39

But the crowning jewel of the Qutb Shahs was the city of Hyderabad, built by his heir, Muhammad-Quli, who is described in one manuscript as nothing less than a ‘Solomonic royal highness’.

virahini style, i.e. in the voice of a woman longing for her lover, who is essentially god himself.

(Char-su-ka-hauz),

Pictures

Haidar Mahal,

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The Hope Diamond is believed to have emerged from Golconda, from where it found its way to the French court, as is the Daria-i-Noor, now part of the Iranian crown collection in Tehran. As the centuries passed, massive gems like the Shah Diamond, the Regent Diamond and the Orlov Diamond (now in Russia) were thrown up by Qutb Shahi miners.

the poet laureate of the court was a Hindu, Pattametta Somayaju Kavi, while the chief pandit of the Qutb Shah was a certain Ganesha Panditulu.

pokhari phu).

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Hayat Baksh Begum,

Her story

Sultanu Muhammadu Padusa Rajyana,

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In 1643, to manage affairs of the state, Abdullah appointed as mir jumla (chief minister) a man called Mir Muhammad Said.

Mir Muhammad Said

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While Hindus had always served the state, never before had a position of such seniority been held by someone as clever and ambitious as Madanna, who began his career ‘as a clerk and wormed his way to the highest office through talent, guile, and intrigue’.

‘You yourself can imagine which government serves the king best, ours or that of the Muslims; ours being fullheartedly devoted to the welfare of the country, [since] we are not people who have or seek other countries, [whereas] that of the Muslims is only to the end of becoming rich and then to leave for those places which they consider to be either their fatherland or holy.’106 This was an extraordinary statement for its times, expressing perhaps a kind of proto-nationalism, though Muslims in this context seemed to mean the Persians rather than the Dakhni faction.

Rayavacakamu (Tidings of the King)

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Ain al-Mulk Gilani

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Indeed, even a century before, in the reign of Devaraya II, there were prominent Muslims resident at court – Fath Khan, for instance, was a descendant of Firoz Shah Tughluq, and among the messages the Shah of Iran sent to Devaraya II was a request that he assist this northern prince in seizing the throne of Delhi.

In Bijapur at one time there was a noble, Haibat Khan, who held half a dozen ranks at court, but whose actual name and religious identity might come as a surprise – he was a Brahmin called Daso Pandit.

Sant Muntoji,

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‘Marathas were’, we are told, ‘Marathi-speaking units in the armies of the Muslim kingdoms’ of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar, and over time the term came to signify a community of sorts, extracted from the soil and local peasantry, and gaining an upward mobility through service in the Sultanates.

Shivaji’s father, for one, was named to honour a Muslim saint called Shah Sharif – while Shahji bore the first part of the pir’s name, his brother took the second and was called Sharifji.21 His grandfather, Maloji, was not only a loyal officer of the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, but his samadhi is, evidently, ‘a completely Islamicate’ structure that still stands in Ellora.22 In the Sivabharata,

Persian, for instance, was to be replaced by Sanskrit as the language of diplomacy: As the Rajyavyavaharakosa commissioned by Shivaji notes, ‘Having completely uprooted the barbarians . . . a learned man was appointed to replace the overvalued Yavana words with educated speech.’27

They were merely being loyal, instead, to the local deity, whose blessings, Shivaji hoped, would ‘fulfill the desire of creating a Hindavi kingdom’.29 All this was certainly a rejection of an existing system of power built on Islamic ideals, but it does not appear to be a mark of hatred for that religion itself. It was also, simultaneously, the invention of a new court culture, derived from classical Hindu texts, something that came to be broadly encompassed in the term Maharashtra Dharma.

Mavale,

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Tuljapur

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Pandharpur

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