Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/232

 186 PROVINCIAL DYNASTIES after whose time no King of Delhi had ever held au- thority south of the Vindhyas. The rebellions which embittered the last years of that too ingenious sovereign had nowhere been more successful than in his favourite province of the south. The revolt of the " new amirs ' in Sind, which hastened his end, was but a part of a larger movement, and its centre was in the Deccan. Here a brave and capable Afghan, Hasan Gangu, who had risen from menial service at Delhi to high com- mand in the southern armies, placed himself at the head of the disaffected, and defeated the royal troops near Bidar. No attempt was made to suppress the re- volt, for the king was too deeply engaged in endeavour- ing to restore order nearer home; and in 1347 Hasan Gangu became King of the Deccan. His dominions included almost all that the campaigns of Ala-ad-din and Mohammad Taghlak had won from the Hindu rajas of the great southern plateau. The valley of the Tapti was independent under the separate dynasty of the kings of Khandesh, an offshoot of Gujarat, who main- tained their distinct though limited power at their new capital, Burhanpur, from 1370 to the conquest of Akbar in 1599. But the rest of the Deccan, from Elichpur in Berar down to the Krishna and Tungabhadra Rivers, and across from the Arabian Sea to Mahur, Ramgir, and Indore on the frontier of Warangal, was under the rule of the new dynasty of the Bahmanids, founded by Hasan Gangu. On the east the Hindu kingdom of Warangal barred his access to the Bay of Bengal; and on the south, beyond the Krishna, stretched the great