Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/233

 THE DECCAN 187 empire of Vijayanagar, the last bulwark of Hindu power in the Deccan, which, gathering together the fragments scattered by the tumultuous assaults of Mo- hammad Taghlak, formed a mighty state, able to parry every onslaught of the Moslems for two centuries to come. Hasan G-angu Zafar Khan fixed his capital at Kul- barga, near the Bhima, and gave it the name of " the fairest city/' Ahsanabad; and here his descendants ruled till 1526 over most of what is now called the Bom- bay Presidency and the Nizam's Territory. On the north, beyond an occasional dispute with Gujarat, there was little trouble; but the kingdom of Warangal or Telingana, supported by the raja of Orissa, was a stand- ing menace to the Moslem power, though Mohammad I reduced it to tributary submission, varied by inter- mittent hostilities. In 1422 Ahmad Shah I invaded Warangal, captured its prince, and shot him from a catapult on the walls into a flaming wood-pile which he had prepared below. The heavy loss he suffered on his march back did not discourage him, and three years later he extinguished the native dynasty and annexed their territory; but the fact that the Hindus of Waran- gal ventured to retaliate in 1461, and even marched as far as Bidar, shows that the annexation soon became little more than nominal. The power of the Bahmanid dynasty must have been overwhelming to have reduced the empire of the Car- natic to even occasional subjection. The raja of Vija- yanagar ruled not only what was afterwards known as