Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur

The sultanate

Yusuf Adil Shah, a Bahmani governor of Persian origin, declared independence at Bijapur in 1490. The sultanate that followed was the most powerful of the five Deccan successor states, holding the western plateau and, after Talikota, much of the former Vijayanagara territory.

Its politics were Shia under some rulers and Sunni under others, and its administration employed Hindus at the highest levels — Marathi was a language of revenue record, and the Maratha service gentry from which Shivaji came was formed in Bijapur's employ.

Ibrahim II and the arts

Ibrahim Adil Shah II, ruling from 1580 to 1627, is among the most unusual rulers in Indian history. He was a musician who composed a book of songs in Dakhni, the Kitab-i-Nauras, invoking Sarasvatī and the Prophet in the same work, and he was known as Jagat Guru. Under him the Deccani school of painting reached its height — dense, jewelled, dreamlike work quite unlike Mughal naturalism.

His tomb, the Ibrahim Rauza, is a pair of buildings on a single plinth of extraordinary refinement, said to have influenced the Taj Mahal.

The tomb of his successor Muhammad Adil Shah, the Gol Gumbaz, carries a dome some forty-four metres across, unsupported by piers and resting on interlocking pendentive arches. Its whispering gallery is famous; its engineering is more remarkable.

The Maratha wars and the end

Shivaji's rise took place in Bijapur's territory and largely at its expense: Afzal Khan, sent against him in 1659, was killed at their meeting near Pratapgarh, and the sultanate lost the Konkan and much of the Ghats.

Aurangzeb besieged and took Bijapur in 1686, ending the dynasty, and Golconda fell the following year. The absorption of the Deccan sultanates gave the Mughal empire its greatest extent and, in the twenty-seven-year war against the Marathas that followed, exhausted it.