Page:Historic Landmarks of the Deccan.djvu/29

Rh at Talikota, where Sadashivaraya was slain and the mighty empire of Vijayanagar was overthrown.

Berar had not joined the confederacy which overthrew the Hindu power at Talikota, and the Sultans of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar now invaded that kingdom to punish Tufal Khan, its ruler, for his defection. After ravaging the whole of south-western Berar the invaders retired in consideration of a heavy indemnity.

Tufal Khan was the minister of Burhanlmad Shah, the last king of the Imad Shahi dynasty, whom he treated as the Barids had treated the later kings of the Bahmani dynasty in Bidar. Burhan was imprisoned in the fortress of Narnala and Tufal Khan governed the kingdom with scarcely a pretence of subordination to his nominal king.

In 1572 Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar invaded Berar, nominally for the purpose of restoring Burhan Imad Shah and freeing him from the influence of Tufal Khan, but really with the object of annexing the kingdom. Tufal Khan and his son Shamshir-ul-Mulk were defeated in the field and pursued until the former took refuge in Narnala and the latter in Gawilgarh. Both fortresses fell, and Tufal Khan with Burhan Imad Shah, who had been taken in Narnala, and Shamshir-ul-Mulk, who had surrendered at Gawilgarh on receiving an assurance that his life would be spared, were sent to a fortress in the Ahmadnagar kingdom where, in a short time, all were put to death Berar now became a part of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar and the number of the independent kingdoms of the Deccan was thus reduced to four.

Very soon after the annexation of Berar by Ahmadnagar the Mughals began to appear in the Deccan, and in 1596 Chand Bibi, the queen regent of Ahmadnagar, was forced to cede the province to Sultan Murad, the fourth son of the Emperor Akbar, in order to induce him to retire from the siege of Ahmadnagar. The hold of the Mughals on the province was, for a long time, precarious, and they were harrassed for many years by the famous Malik Ambar, who, posing as the champion of the decadent Nizam Shahi dynasty, succeeded in keeping the Mughals at bay until near the end of the reign of Jahangir. The northern invaders did not succeed in establishing themselves firmly in Berar and the Ahmadnagar kingdom until early in the reign of