Page:History of Aurangzib (based on original sources) Vol 1.djvu/245

CHAP. X.] Their raiding bands penetrated as far north as Khurda, the seat of the faineant Rajah of Orissa. The Gajapati Rajah of Ganjam was ousted by the Golkonda Sultan in 1571. Chicacole became the seat of a Qutb Shahi faujdar some time before 1641, when a handsome mosque was built there by Shir Muhammad Khan, the first faujdar. In 1652 a Rajput officer of Golkonda seized Vizagapatam and extending his conquest formed a petty Rajahship.

Bijapur advanced conquering southwards and then turned east till it occupied the coast between Jinji and Tanjore. Hemmed in the north and south by the conquests of the two Sultans, as between the two jaws of a monster, lay the kingdom of Chandragiri, the last remnant of the Vijaynagar empire, with its territory contracted to the region from Nellore to Pondicherry on the east and the Mysore frontier on the west. On the death of Rama Raja, the minister and virtual ruler of Vijaynagar, on the fatal field of Talikota (1564), and the subsequent sack of the capital by the Muslims, his brother had removed the seat of government to Pennakonda