Page:Historic Landmarks of the Deccan.djvu/107

95 the appearance more of a gigantic traverse than of a citadel. The fort received many additions from the ^Adil Shahi kings, particularly Ali I and Ibrahim II. In the reign of the latter, in 1624, a bastion was built to accommodate the great twelve yard gun, which now lies dismounted in the decaying fort.

Legend, as well as etymology, identifies the town of Bidar with the old city of Vidarbha, the capital of a Hindu kingdom of the same name in the Deccan, whose Raja, Rukmin, rejected the demi-god Krishna as a brother-in-law and was at last forced to witness the abduction of his sister by the slighted hero and then to retire into seclusion at Bhatkuh, after the scornful refusal of the Pandavas, the heroes of the Mahabharata, to recognise his arrogant claims. Vidarbha is more pleasingly associated with the romance of Nala, Raja of Nishadha (Malwa), who loved Damayanti, the beautiful daughter of Bhima, Raja of Vidarbha. The story of their love, marriage, and subsequent misfortunes, is told at length in the great Hindu epic, and also by Faizi, Akbar's poet laureate, in his long and somewhat wearisome poem Nal u Daman. So far the legendary history of Vidarbha. Raja Vijaya Sena, one of the Valabhis of the solar line, who succeeded the Guptas in A. D. 319, is said to have founded Vidarbha, by which expression we may understand that he restored the ancient city. But Vidarbha never regained, during the Hindu period of history, its pristine importance, and remained a mere provincial town, unheard of for centuries after its restorer's reign.

In the course of the third expedition of the Musalmans to Warangal, in 1322, the town was captured by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, then heir- apparent to the empire of Delhi, and it was an important centre of the revolt which took place in the Deccan after the accession of this prince to the throne and towards the end of his reign. It was seized in 1346 by the rebel Amir Ali, recaptured by Qutlugh Khan for the emperor, and again, in 1347, captured by Z afar Khan (Ala-ud-din Hasan), who was proclaimed king of the Deccan under the title of Bahman Shah.

The new king divided his kingdom into four tarafs or provinces, of one of which Bidar was the head-quarters, its governor receiving the ex- officio title of Azam-i-Humayun.