Page:Historic Landmarks of the Deccan.djvu/16

 ludes in the long period of warfare with the great Hindu empire which, though frequently defeated, was never entirely crushed by the Bahmanis. That task was reserved for a confederation of the rulers of the independent Muhammadan states which sprung into existence on the disintegration of the Bahmani Kingdom.

Ala-ud-din Bahman Shah divided his kingdom into four tarafs or provinces, Gulbarga, Daulatabad, Berar, and Bidar, appointing to each a governor whose powers were almost regal. Each maintained an army and made all civil and military appointments in his province, and it is strange that rebellion was not more frequent. This was checked by frequent royal tours in the provinces and by the regular employment of the provincial armies, under the king's command, in the campaigns against Vijayanagar.

In 1428 Ahmad Shah Wali, the ninth king of the Bahmani dynasty moved the capital of the kingdom from Gulbarga to Bidar.

One of the principal features of politics in the reigns of the later Bahmani kings was the perpetual strife between the Deccani and the " Foreign" nobles, which first became acute about the middle of the fifteenth century in the reign of Ala-ud-din Ahmad Shah II, the tenth king of the dynasty, and continued as long as any independent kingdom existed in the Deccan. It was the custom of the Bahmani kings to employ adventurers freely in their army. These strangers were chiefly fair-skinned foreigners from Persia, Arabia, and Central Asia, bold, energetic, and enterprising, who brought with them followers of their own race. They were employed as a rule, in preference to the less active and hardy Deccanis, in all difficult enterprises, and seldom failed to acquit themselves well. Many rose to the highest offices in the state, to the prejudice of the native Deccani, who found himself outstripped by the stranger at the council board as well as in the field. The success of the foreigners was, naturally enough, distasteful to the native-born Indians, and led to recriminations and quarrels, and at length to bloodshed, the Deccanis, as the aggrieved party, being the first aggressors. The ill-feeling between the parties was accentuated by religious differences, for large numbers of the foreigners were of the Shiah sect, while the Deccanis were generally orthodox Sunnis. It was probably for this reason that one class of