Where this begins
The corpus starts in the Deccan, and starts there for a structural reason rather than a sentimental one: the Deccan connects outward in four directions at once — north to Delhi through the Chishti chain, west to Persia and Central Asia through the courts, across the sea to the Horn of Africa, and south to Mysore. A seed that connects in four directions grows into a graph. One that connects in one direction grows into a list.
Method, and a warning
Entries marked Draft are unreviewed first drafts and should be read as such. Nothing here is published as settled until a subject reviewer has passed it. Sources are named at the foot of every entry; where an entry rests on a contested or late account, it says so in the text rather than in a footnote.
Essays
A third kind of entry: long-form essays — 59 so far, one per topic of the Atlas, on the made and living culture: the bahmani sultanate: the deccan's first muslim kingdom, the diamond throne of the deccan: golconda under the qutb shahs, 1518–1687, the adil shahi sultanate of bijapur: faith, nauras, and the great dome, the nizam shahs of ahmadnagar: a convert's son, a warrior queen, and an ethiopian regent, the quietest throne: berar under the imad shahis, the kingmakers of bidar: the barid shahi sultanate, the regent who was bought: malik ambar and the habshis of the deccan, the viceroy who never went back: hyderabad under the nizams, 1724–1948, the market, not the mine: golconda and the diamonds of the krishna, small heads, tall women, flat buildings: deccani painting and what it refused, rakkasagi–tangadigi: what happened at talikota, and what was made of it, regents, not consorts: the women who governed the deccan, the round dome: gol gumbaz, and the record it did not break, younger than it tastes: hyderabadi cuisine and the dating of a dish, the language that went north: dakhni before it was called urdu, shepherd's hill: golconda fort, and the slave-of-the-sultan who never claimed a crown, the horse merchant who built a university: mahmud gawan of bidar, never go to the courts of kings: the chishtis in the deccan, woven air: dhaka muslin, and how an industry was actually killed, a handful of soil: shah jalal, sylhet, and the limits of a saint's record, five unrelated dynasties: the bengal sultanate, 1352–1576, built while they lived: the qutb shahi tombs, bidriware: the black metal of bidar, the charminar: four minarets at the heart of a planned city, the sound that opens the heart: qawwali and the chishti art of listening, wootz: the deccan steel that the world called damascus, the slow fire of kannauj: attar and the art of bottling india, alauddin bahman shah: how a mutiny of centurions became a kingdom, gulbarga, then bidar: the two bahmani capitals, firoz shah bahmani: the scholar-sultan and the price of his court, muhammad shah iii, 1463-1482: the largest bahmani state and the minister it killed, malik hasan bahri: the convert who broke the bahmani kingdom, dakhani and afaqi: the faction that broke the bahmani state, fragmentation 1490s-1527: how the bahmani sultanate came apart, madanna and akkanna: the accountants who ran golconda, muhammad quli qutb shah: a city, a divan, and the first book in dakhni, abdullah qutb shah 1626-1672: tribute, diamonds and the long reign, abul hasan tana shah: the last sultan of golconda, 1672-1687, last to fall: the siege of golconda, 1687, yusuf adil shah: a founder without a verifiable origin, ibrahim adil shah ii: jagat guru, and the kingdom called nauras, fall to aurangzeb 1686: the last adil shah and the siege of bijapur, malik ahmad nizam shah i: how a slave’s son made a kingdom, fall to shah jahan 1636: the extinction of the nizam shahi sultanate, annexed by ahmadnagar 1574: the end of imad shahi berar, annexed by bijapur 1619: the extinction of the barid shahi sultanate, the khutba and the chatr: sovereignty as two acts in ferishta's deccan, standards and the naubat: the signs a subject could not carry, amber and the mughals: a marriage the primaries leave unnamed, how the gujarat throne was made: thirteen successions, three of them ordinary, nine successions, two ordinary ones: how the tughluq throne passed, six sons in eleven reigns: how the throne of awadh actually passed, 1722–1856, throne or coffin: how twenty-four mughal successions actually happened, elected admirals, murdering slaves: how the throne passed at janjira, 1618–1879, five ordinary inheritances in twenty reigns: how kashmir's throne passed, 1326–1586, six inheritances out of fourteen: how the throne passed at bhopal, 1723–1901, how the slave kings made their kings: succession at delhi, 1206–1290, how the musnud passed: succession in faruqi khandesh, 1370–1601, half by the sword: how the throne passed at mando, 1401–1562. Each carries its sources the same way the claim pages do — every line traceable to where it was read, the unopened flagged as unverified.
Collections
Entries, essays and claims each answer one question at a time. A collection answers the larger one — everything the archive holds on a single topic, gathered. The Deccan is the fullest: its sultanates, its city entries, its craft and its language, and the claims made about it. There are 46 so far. A topic earns one only when there is enough behind it to be worth the page, so the list is short on purpose — it grows as the corpus does.
Claims examined
Alongside the entities, the Codex keeps a second kind of entry: claims under examination — 8 widely repeated statements about the Deccan and about Indian Muslims, checked against the record. Each states the claim as its holders state it, concedes what is true in it, and then sets out the evidence. Where historians genuinely disagree, the disagreement is the content.