Collection · 9 essays · 6 entries
Bahmani Sultanate
Everything the archive holds on Bahmani Sultanate, gathered from across the map. The Atlas files a topic once, in one branch; a collection brings back together what that filing separates.
This page shows one hop. Bahmani Sultanate holds 9 essays, 6 entries and 0 claims in all, across 2 domains — 15 items, of which 8 are listed below. The rest sit inside the narrower collections. See everything on Bahmani Sultanate in one place →
Essays
Entries
- DynastyBahmani Sultanate — 1347 – 1527
- PersonKhwaja Bandanawaz Gesudaraz — 1321 – 1422
- PersonMahmud Gawan — 1411 – 1481
- BuildingMahmud Gawan Madrasa — 1472
- PlaceGulbarga — capital 1347 – 1424
- PlaceBidar — capital from 1424
The edge of what is written
Mapped, and begun — not yet enough behind them to stand as collections of their own:
- Alauddin Bahman Shah — founder 1347 — 1 entry so far
- Gulbarga, then Bidar — the capitals — 1 entry so far
- Firoz Shah Bahmani 1397–1422 — 1 entry so far
- Muhammad Shah III 1463–1482 — 1 entry so far
- Malik Hasan Bahri — Deccani faction — 1 entry so far
- Dakhani–Afaqi factional conflict — 1 entry so far
- Fragmentation 1490s–1527 — 1 entry so far
Mapped on the Atlas, nothing written yet:
Amiran-i Sadah — the revolt of 1345–47 · Mahmud Gawan — executed 1481
What the archive does not know
Every unresolved question the sources left open across this collection, gathered in one place rather than buried at the foot of each page.
Not one painting or illustrated manuscript survives that can be attributed to Bahmani patronage — this despite the stone, wood and tile decoration of the Bahmani forts and palaces at Daulatabad, Gulbarga and Bidar evidencing skilled court artisans. Whether any Bahmani-period wall painting survives in situ in those buildings was not established, and it is the most promising unexamined question about this court's visual culture.
What was Hasan Bahman Shah's actual origin? Barani's field-labourer, Ferishta's low-born Afghan, and the dynasty's own Sasanian genealogy (echoed in the Bidar inscription) cannot all be true, and no primary source corroborates the Gangu servitude story.
**Answered since this essay was written**, by the dedicated essay on the Bahmani capitals: the archive now dates the move to 827/1424 on an inscription of 827 in the Solah Khamba mosque and on Rajab 827 in the *Burhan-i Ma'asir*. Britannica's 1425 is the same Hijri year converted across the boundary. The question that survives is whether the sources giving 1427–1430 are dating the rebuilding rather than the move.
What became of the Mahmud Gawan madrasa's manuscript library, attested by Ferishta but lost after the Mughal-era gunpowder explosion and lightning strike?
Was the first rebel leader Ismail Mukh killed (Barani's account, per Iranica) or did he abdicate peacefully in Zafar Khan's favour (the later tradition)?
Nothing read for this essay describes what was taught at the madrasa. Its curriculum, its languages of instruction, how many students it housed, who endowed its upkeep after Gawan's execution and attainder, and whether any of its library survives are all unknown here. For the archive's first essay on scholarship, that is the gap that matters most — the building is described in metres and the teaching not at all.
The Horse Merchant Who Built a University: Mahmud Gawan of Bidar
The 'Madrasa of Khurasan' that Gawan's college is said to emulate is never named in anything read. If the model can be identified — the Nizamiyya tradition, a specific Timurid foundation at Herat or Samarkand — it would place the Bidar madrasa in a documented architectural and pedagogical lineage rather than a general Persian one.
The Horse Merchant Who Built a University: Mahmud Gawan of Bidar
The forged document that killed him is central and undescribed. What it purported to be, who produced it, to whom it was addressed, and how the forgery was later established are not stated in anything read. Firishta is the source these accounts descend from and was not opened.
The Horse Merchant Who Built a University: Mahmud Gawan of Bidar
Gawan wrote. He is described as "a poet and prose writer of repute" and is known to have left correspondence (the Riyaz al-Insha is cited in the wider literature but was not traced here). A minister's own letters would be the best evidence for the land survey, the faction fight and the college, and the archive has none of them.
The Horse Merchant Who Built a University: Mahmud Gawan of Bidar
The gunpowder explosion that destroyed a quarter of the madrasa is undated in the source that reports it — placed only after the 1656–57 capture and before the 1695/96 lightning strike. A forty-year window for the single most destructive event in the building's history is unsatisfactory and is probably resolvable from ASI records.
The Horse Merchant Who Built a University: Mahmud Gawan of Bidar
Malik Hasan Bahri's origins rest on Ferishta, and the same source notes competing accounts of why his family was at Pathri — 'escaping persecution perpetrated by Muslims' or 'fleeing their native land from famine' — and a gazetteer tradition making his father a kulkarni rather than the Brahmin Bhairo. The archive's Ahmadnagar essay already flags the Brahmin-convert origin as a chronicle tradition rather than a document; the same caution applies here, and the tradition may be a genealogical topos.
The Horse Merchant Who Built a University: Mahmud Gawan of Bidar
Two Deccan cities each claim the world's largest cannon in sources read for this archive: Kalaburagi outright, and Bijapur for the Malik-i-Maidan as 'the largest piece of cast bronze ordnance in the world'. These may be compatible (largest overall versus largest cast bronze) or not. Neither was checked.
The Horse Merchant Who Built a University: Mahmud Gawan of Bidar