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126 coalition which for two centuries had barred the passage of the arms of Islam to the farther south.

During this period Vijayanagar had been in Southern India what Gaur was in the north, a great trading centre and one of the most populous cities of the East, crowded with artisans of every kind, and laid out sumptuously with artificial lakes, parks, gardens, palm-groves, and orchards. Paez, a Portuguese traveller in the early sixteenth century, described it as "the best provided city in the world: stocked with provisions of every kind, with broad and beautiful streets full of fine houses. The palace of the Rājā enclosed a space greater than all the castle of Lisbon." The relations between Vijayanagar and its Musalman neighbour had by no means been always hostile. The Rājās had sometimes assisted the Bijāpūr Sultans in their quarrels with other Musalman States, and had enlisted a Muhammadan bodyguard in their service, allowing its officers to swear fealty on the Kurān, and building for them a mosque in the quarter of the city set apart for them. After the fatal battle of Talikota, in which Rām Rāj was killed, Vijayanagar was sacked by the Musalmans, and Bijāpūr, with the help of the captive Hindu craftsmen, became the chief building centre of the Dekhan.

The architecture of Bijāpūr was characterised by the fact that the Sultans who were the builders of the city were nearly all of the Shiah sect, and as tolerant towards Hinduism as the Vijayanagar Rājās had been towards Islam, admitting Brahmans into their service and using Mahratti instead of Persian as the official language for revenue administration. Ibrāhīm II (1580—1606), in whose reign most of the finest buildings of Bijāpūr were begun, was even suspected of taking part in Hindu religious ceremonies.