Iranian Diaspora and the Deccan Sultanates in India: A Study of Sixteenth Century Portuguese Sources

Concepts and Terminology

The Portuguese texts of the sixteenth century normally designate the whole of the Iranian people as persas, parses, pársios or persianos, since such was the tradition inherited from the Graeco-Roman classics and also the existing usage in the East; moreover, all of them used Persian or Farsi as the cultural and vehicular language. Only a few authors, such as Tomé Pires, ¹ speak, for example, of guilanes (i.e., Gîlânîs) as a distinct people, certainly because they, like Mazandarânîs, spoke in their own dialect, while using Persian in writing. Nevertheless, generally the Portuguese authors carefully distinguish coraçones (i.e., Khurasânîs) from Persians, maybe due to a religious reason, since, at least before the conquest of Khurasân by Shâh Ismâ‘il (r. 1502–24), the majority of Khurasânîs were Sunnites, unlike Persians, who were mainly Shiites; perhaps also for a historical and political reason, because Khurasân had been a famous independent kingdom under the Timurid princes, chiefly Shârukh bin Timur (1397–1447) and Husain-i Baiqara (1470–1506).

It is important to note that for the Portuguese writers, such as for the ancient Arab geographers—Ibn al-Faqîh (ninth century AD), Ibn Hauqal (tenth century), etc—Khurasân is not restricted to Northwest Iran, but includes most of Transoxiana or Turkestan, till the Sirdarya or Jaxartes River; thus, coraçones often meant individuals of Turanian origin, albeit more or less Persianized with respect to the culture.

It is also important to remark that the use of parse or párseo, in sixteenth century Portuguese is not restricted to mean ‘Parsee, Guebre, sectary of Mazdaism’. Mazdaism or Zoroastrian religion is seldom referred to before the seventeenth century. Apparently the reason for such lack of notice is that, as Garcia de Orta explains in his Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas da Índia, ² printed in Goa in 1562, the Portuguese usually took them to be Jews, because they were white in colour, lived in small and closed communities and were often traders. Therefore, Armando Cortesão, in his edition of the Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, incorrectly though systematically translates parse or pársio into ‘Parsee’, a term reserved for Guebres in modern English, which may induce one to err.

Finally, it should be noted that in Portuguese authors’ lei dos pársios or seita dos pársios ‘law of the Persians’ or ‘Persian sect’ are expressions most commonly used to refer to Shiah Islam, the Sunni being called ‘creed of the Arabs’ or ‘Turkish law’. Normally they do not seem aware that Shiah only became the official religion of Iran after the advent of the Safavids in 1501.

The Portuguese were quite acquainted with Islam, since the whole country had been under Arab domination for at least three centuries, from 711 onwards, and its southern parts for more than 500 years, until 1249. Moreover, they had settled in some Moroccan ports since 1415. Portuguese chronicles incorporate Arab tawârîkh, ‘histories, chronicles’, translated into Portuguese by the order of King Denis (1279–1325), and the first Portuguese code of laws, promulgated in 1438, contain a full section on inheritance rules for Muslims, according to the Malikite school. Nonetheless, they only discovered the existence of other Islamic rites or sects after their arrival in Asia.

As far as we know, the first reference to Shiite Islam, though still obscure, appears in a letter by Alphonse d’Albuquerque to Viceroy Dom Francisco de Almeida, written at Hormuz at the beginning of the year 1508, where he states: ‘People say they do not believe in Mohammad, but in ‘Alî, his son-in-law.’ ³ It was perhaps then that he began to think about an alliance between the Portuguese and the Persians against the Turks and the Mamelukes, their common foes, who were Sunnis.

It is curious to note that, six or seven years later, Duarte Barbosa, ⁴ who wrote in India and regarded the things from the point of view of Kerala, where he lived for almost half a century, hardly goes further than merely explain that Shâh Ismâ‘il, the founder of the Safavid dynasty, was ‘neither king nor son of a king, but only a sheik the generation of ‘Alî, brother-in-law (sic) of Muhammad, who took the habits of yoga (sic) and determined to always shout for ‘Alî, regardless of Muhammad, thus founding the sect of the Red Berets’, that is to say, the Kızılbash.

Tomé Pires ⁵ had a more clear idea: he already knew the existence of the four legal schools or rites of Sunni Islam, attributing the foundation of each to one of the four Caliphs Râshidûn (‘rightly guided’), recognized by the Sunnis. At the same time he states that Shiism goes back to Ali, whom he sometimes calls Hacabar, that is to say, akbar, ‘the greatest’, which appears to denote some Shiite influence. He dwells long on the Christian influences he guesses among the latter, which is not entirely wrong in the case of some extremist currents (ghulat) of esoteric and syncretistic tendencies, including that of the Kızılbash Kurds, who in fact have traces of Armenian influences; ⁶ but he goes too far while imagining that they wear the red beret with twelve folds in the honour of the twelve apostles of Christ, instead of the twelve imams. The sympathy Tomé Pires displays towards Shiites is, at least in part, politically motivated: it suffices to note that he wrote around 1515, when Afonso de Albuquerque, of whom he was a partisan, sent an embassy to Iran, to try and tie an alliance with Shâh Ismâ‘îl against the Turks and the Mameluk Empire. Nevertheless, he sometimes called the Shiites rafadis, which is a transcription of the Arabic term râfidî, ‘deserter, rebel, sectary, heretic’, thus assuming the Sunni point of view. ⁷

Anyway, the same sympathy towards Shi‘ah reappear more or less clearly in later writers, even when, with the death of Albuquerque (1515) and, chiefly, that of King Emmanuel (1521), the projects of the Crusade fell into oblivion. At the end of the century, Diogo do Couto, ⁸ while relating the sack of Tabriz by the Turks in 1584, does not conceal his bias towards the Persians, insisting on the cruelty of the Ottoman forces. This is, no doubt, related to the fact that the main rival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean were the Arabs, and the greatest enemies of Christian Europe in general were the Ottoman or Osmanli Turks, who were Sunnis.

The word suni, ‘sunni, sunnite’, is recorded in Portuguese at the earliest since 1529, ⁹ but the word xia, ‘shi‘ah, shiite’ only since 1553. It appears in the most accurate sixteenth century account of the origins of Islam, that of the chronicler João de Barros, ¹⁰ who knew Arabic and Persian and translated some local chronicles into Portuguese. ¹¹ He notes that the epithet of râfidî, given by sunnites to shiites, is considered an insult by the latter.

Diogo do Couto, ¹² who wrote from about the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth, is the first Portuguese author to give the names of the twelve imams of the Ithnā’ashariyyah or Twelver Shiism; but he supposes that they were twelve brothers, all of them sons of Husain.

The Persians in Muslim India

In the sixteenth century India remained a chosen land for Iranians who left their country, either to engage in trade, or to be at the service of some local potentate. A short poem of the time, probably attributed to Ghazali Mashhadi (ca. 1530–73) expresses beautifully ¹³ : Jâneb-e Hend mîravam k’ânjâ kâr-e ahl-e honar neku raftè kè sakhâ o karam ze ahl-e zamân be zamin-e siyah foru raftè

that is to say: ‘I go to the country of India, because there/the deeds of industrious people work beautifully;/since the munificence and generosity of the men of this time/came to that dark land’.

Of course, this applies especially to the Muslim states of the northern part of the subcontinent, rather than the south of the Peninsula, held by Hindu kingdoms. In the latter we normally find Persian merchants established only in the ports. In the former, conversely, the foreign immigrants formed the majority of the ruling class. They played an important role in the armies: ‘Most of their soldiers—notes Ludovico di Varthema in Deccan, c. 1504—are foreigners and are white, whereas the natives of the kingdom are tawny.’ ¹⁴ Persians certainly benefited by the fact that their own tongue had become the cultural and administrative language of all the Muslim states of the subcontinent. At least in India, the Turkish proverb ‘when a Turkish dog comes to the city, he barks in Persian’ proved to be true.

In 1546, Sultan Mahmud Shâh III of Gujarat (r. 1537–53), in a letter to the Zamorin of Calicut, proposed an alliance against the Portuguese, and tried to convince him by displaying the power he had at his disposal. In addition to a treasure of four crores of tankas, he possessed ‘many Rumis with many arquebuses, and many powerful Persians, and many powerful Moguls, and many powerful Gîlânîs, and many people of Habshi and Arabian race, uncountable, with many devices of war of every kind, and much artillery’. ¹⁵

The Portuguese, who, on the one hand, still clung to the tradition of the Crusade, and on the other hand looked upon the Arabs as their main competitors for the spice trade, did everything they could to hinder the strengthening of the Muslim rule in India. This is why in the cartazes or safe-conducts they issued to local vessels, in order to prevent them from being plundered by Portuguese privateers, it is normally specified that the safe-conduct is granted on condition that no gente branca (‘white people’), Habshis ¹⁶ or horses, regarded as kinds of warlike implements, be conveyed in the ship. ¹⁷

Portuguese authors seldom speak of the Delhi Sultanate, which they hardly knew; ¹⁸ but our sources provide some information about the Mogul Empire, which succeeded after 1526. They are especially interesting 1580 onwards, when the Portuguese Jesuits settled in the court of Akbar. ¹⁹ Portuguese chronicles, in general, only refer to the Moguls when they got involved in the coastal states neighbouring Portuguese settlements: during the wars of Bâbar and Humayun with Gujarat (1534–36) ²⁰ and its conquest by Akbar (1572–73), ²¹ during the campaigns against Bengal, still held by the Pathans (1578), ²² or against Gujarat, that rebelled in 1583. ²³

As might be expected, the information is more abundant on the coastal states, such as Gujarat, Bengal and the sultanates of Deccan, chiefly Bijapur and Ahmadnagar, neighbours of the Portuguese.

In the Bahmanid sultanate and, thereafter, in the epigone sultanates, white mercenaries played a central role, and the Persians were apparently more numerous than elsewhere, as Tomé Pires ²⁴ states ca. 1515:

The kingdom of Dakhin [i.e., Deccan] is a land of chivalry. It must have about thirty thousand mounted men, besides countless foot soldiers. Those white people, whom we call Rumis ²⁵ , used generally to come to the kingdom and to Goa to earn wages and honour. The king used to bestow names like so-and-so malik […]; and the most honoured name is khân. There must be in the kingdom of Dakhin about two hundred Turks, Rumis and Arabs, and from ten to twelve thousand Persian man-at-arms. The man who has the most white men in this kingdom is the most powerful.

Indeed, this preference of white people over natives did not lie on the ground of race, a concept that hardly existed then, but on the fact that such mercenaries —as well as Habshis, who were rather blackish—were universally recognized as good soldiers; therefore, they were particularly cherished in these unstable frontiers of the Muslim realm. As in other frontier societies, people appear to have lived rather in the short time, and social mobility was huge. Over a man’s life, a slave could become a great lord or even a sultan, as was the case with Yûsuf ‘Âdil Khân, the first sultan of Bijapur, that of ‘Imâdu-l-Mulk’, whom we will meet again in Gujarat, and many others. Jacques de Coutre, a Flemish subject of the Spanish Crown who went to Portuguese India during the union of both Crowns (1580–1640), noted it on his first trip to Bijapur in 1604. In a remarkable chapter, which synthesizes, in two pages, the socio-political conditions of the Deccan under Muslim rule, he states inter alia: ²⁶

The lords and grandees of the kingdom are very rich, and their form of government is noteworthy, since they are not lords of land, towns and castles, as the lords of Spain: they are only captains and governors, to whom the king grants the rents he has, in the following form: the king often ennobles his slave or his stable-boy, if he falls in his good graces. To start he gives him the government of a city with jurisdiction, and then increases him with similar offices, until he makes him his private, with the title of Nawab, which is among them such as Duke for us. And with the time, he comes to have a revenue of a million or one and a half million a year, on condition that he maintain a certain number of horses, according to his pension. And when he dies, there die with him all the annuities he had, and even though he has sons, the king comes to inherit, as by birthright, the whole patrimony; and for this reason he has always much to give…

The chances of fast social ascent that so often were offered in Deccan certainly acted as a powerful attraction for foreign adventurers.

The Sultanate of Bijapur

In Bijapur the Pardeshîs or resident aliens, also known as âfâqîs, ‘remote’, were quite numerous, since they were better paid than elsewhere, certainly thanks to the frontier character of the realm, bordering upon the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar. Portuguese sources mention the presence of 9,000 foreign troopers in Goa in 1510, when Afonso de Albuquerque conquered the city, ²⁷ stressing upon the death of 2,000 white men, viz., Turks, Rumis and Khurasânis. ²⁸ Then, in 1512, when Albuquerque seized the neighbouring stronghold of Banastarim, they specify that the latter was defended by 6,000 Turks, Rumis, Persians and Khurasânis, in addition to 3,000 other soldiers. ²⁹

A chronic rivalry put them in opposition to the Deccanies or native Muslims, who were partly converted Hindus, partly descendants of immigrants of yore, mostly of Turkish origin. This ethnic division was paralleled by a religious discord, the Deccanies being generally Sunnite, while the Pardeshis, with the exception of the Habshis, were mostly Shiite.

Although Portuguese sources hardly refer to it, Persians played in Bijapur a more important role in the civil and religious administration, ³⁰ probably because of the origins of the dynasty’s founder, Abu-l Muzaffar Yûsuf ‘Âdil Khân (r. 1489–1510). The Portuguese called him o Sabaio, which transcribes approximately Sâva’î, nisba which, as explains Barros ³¹ as well as Ferishta, ³² shows he was from Sâva, a town south of Tehran, on the old road from Qazvîn to Qom. The town being rather inconspicuous, many authors misunderstood this nisba: Tomé Pires ³³ thinks that it was rather a title. Garcia de Orta ³⁴ opines that it was but a deformation of sahib, and even Nizâmuddîn ³⁵ imagines that it came from sawâ, ‘one and a quarter’, alluding to the dimension of his realm as compared with the neighbouring sultanates. Most of the Indo-Muslim chronicles purport that he was the youngest son of the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, saved by his mother from being killed by his brother Muhammed II and entrusted to a merchant of Sâva to be raised. ³⁶ This story is unknown to Portuguese as well as Ottoman sources, and also to Nizâmuddin; if it were already current during the first half of the sixteenth century Portuguese writers, who always emphasized the presence of Turks at Goa, ³⁷ would not fail to mention it. In fact, Albuquerque’s pretext for seizing Goa (which was not included in the instructions given to him by the King) was exactly the fact that Yûsuf ‘Âdil Khân sheltered there many survivors belonging to the fleet discomfited by Dom Francisco de Almeida, his predecessor, at the naval battle of Diu, in the beginning of 1509. We think, therefore, that the legend of the caliphal origin of Yûsuf was rather forged during the reign of his grandson, Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh (1535–58), who ruled with the support of the Deccanies; unlike his predecessors, he professed the Sunnite creed and, consequently, cleaved to the Ottoman Caliph. Indeed many Portuguese sources, though not crediting him with such a pedigree, affirm he was a Turk; but Turk does not necessarily mean Ottoman, since in Iran, as well as in Turkestan, there were, and still are, millions of Turkish speaking people. In his general history, the Jâmi‘ al-Duwal, the Turkish historian Münejjim Bâshî (d. 1702) states that Yûsuf ‘Âdil Khân was of Turkmen origin, and this seems quite plausible.

When he surfaces in the chronicles he still was the slave of Mahmûd Gâwân Gîlânî, a powerful Iranian minister of the Bahmanids. Appointed to important positions, he received the title of ‘Âdil Khân (‘the just Khan’) and became the leader of the Pardeshi party at the court of Bidar. It is clear that, profiting by the enfeeblement of the central government during the reign of Mahmûd Shâh (1482–1518), he gradually began to act as an independent sovereign. On the faith of Ferishta, it is generally accepted that he proclaimed himself king in Bijapur in 1489, ordering the khutbah to be done thenceforth in his own name. Nevertheless, contemporary Portuguese sources do not mention it. Ludovico di Varthema, ³⁸ who visited Goa around 1504, still depicts him as a Mameluke, though particularly fond of white mercenaries in order to increase his power:

In this island [Goa] there is on the seaside a fortress, walled after our manner, in which sometimes resides a captain called Savain, who commands 400 Mamelukes, and is himself a Mameluke. When this captain can engage any white man, he offers him excellent conditions, and gives him at least fifteen or twenty pardaos per month. But before he puts him in the list of his chosen men, he orders two leather armours to be brought, one for him and one for that who wants to be engaged. Each one puts on his, and they come to blows. If he deems him strong, he puts him on his list of élite men, otherwise he reserves him for a service other than combat. This captain, with 400 Mamelukes carries on a tough war against the king of Narsinga [i.e., Vijayanagar]…

Duarte Barbosa and Tomé Pires, who wrote their geographical accounts by 1515, still refer to the lord of Bijapur (then already Ismâ‘îl, son of Yûsuf) as a governor rather than a sovereign; they note that the Bahmanid Sultan Mahmûd Shâh (r. 1482–1518), although deprived of any effective power, still was acknowledged as overlord by the captains that ruled the different provinces of the kingdom.

Roughly along the first half of the sixteenth century, Portuguese records, as well as chronicles, invariably call the ruler of Bijapur Hidalcão, that is to say, ‘Âdil Khân, the ruler of Ahmadnagar Nizamaluco, i.e., Nizâmu-l-Mulk, and so forth. Even the chroniclers Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, who lived in Goa from 1528 to 1538, and Gaspar Correia, who came to India ca. 1512 and remained there till his death in 1561, entirely ignore the titles of ‘Âdil Shâh, Qutb Shâh, etc.; but we may assume that this is due to inveterate habit. Also Nizâmuddîn and Abû-l-Fazl, the chroniclers of Akbar, refuse to give the title of shâh to the sultans of Deccan, but they certainly do it on other grounds, namely to minimize them before their master, who had taken the title of Khalifat-i-Allâhî, ‘vicar of God’, and claimed a universal jurisdiction.

Diogo do Couto ³⁹ pretends that the title of shâh was only bestowed upon the sultans of Deccan by the legates of Shâh Tahmâsp of Persia (r. 1524–1578) who came to India in 1557; the same assertion appears in the anonymous political treatise Primor e Honra da Vida Soldadesca no Estado da Índia, written in India around 1576. ⁴⁰ Nevertheless, the treaties between the Portuguese and the sultan of Ahmadnagar signed in 1539 and 1542, already refer to him as ‘the Nizâm Shâh, who was formerly called Nizâmu-l-Mulk’, and that of 1546 with Bijapur is similarly signed in the name of ‘the ‘Âdil Shâh, formely called ‘Âdil Khân’. ⁴¹

Ferishta ⁴² says that Ismâ‘îl ‘Âdil Shâh (r. 1510–35) used to boast himself of having been granted the title of shâh by the King of Persia, descendant of the Prophet, and not by the Sultan of Gujarat, as the other sultans of Deccan. If this statement is correct, we can venture that he received it through the embassy sent by Shâh Ismâ‘îl (r. 1502–24), that, as testified by Portuguese sources, landed at Goa in 1513. According to Brás de Albuquerque ⁴³ (Afonso de Albuquerque’s son, who wrote on the basis of his father’s papers), this legation was sent to persuade the sultans of Deccan to embrace the Shiite faith, as well as to confirm them as independent rulers. At any rate, Portuguese sources bear witness to the intensity of the relations between the courts of Bijapur and Tabriz, for they record the passage at Goa of several embassies in both senses. ⁴⁴

As regards the 1557 legation, upon which other sources, as we have seen, lay stress, we can admit that, at least, it encouraged the claims of the rulers of Deccan to full sovereignty. It seems noteworthy that the sultans of Bijapur only minted coins from ‘Alî ‘Âdil Shâh (r. 1558–80) onwards, and those of Ahmadnagar from Murtazâ Nizâm Shâh (r. 1565–88). Only in Golkonda have there been found a few copper coins minted in the name of Jamshîd Qutb Shâh (r. 1543–50), with the inscription Sultân Janbshîd [sic] Qutbshâh. ⁴⁵ As for the ‘Âdil Shâ’s conversion to the Shiite creed, the witness of Portuguese writers is not so trustworthy, since they were always more heedful to political and military events than to religious ones, at least among the Muslims, and often confounded the things; Brás de Albuquerque’s statement, that Ismâ‘îl ‘Âdil Khân politely declined Shâh Ismâ‘îl’s invitation to adhere to the ‘Persian sect’ does not seem credible, since it is in contradiction with the facts that had taken place in 1510, when Yûsuf ‘Âdil Khân died.

In one of his letters to the Portuguese King, ⁴⁶ Afonso de Albuquerque, whom his son repeats in his Comentários, ⁴⁷ refers to riots in Bijapur after the death of Yûsuf ‘Âdil Shâh in 1510. He correctly mentions the attempts of Kamâl Khân, his main minister, to usurp the throne, and finally his murder and that of his son Safdar Khân. Nevertheless, though catching a glimpse of the social forces that lay behind the struggle, he inverts the things, imagining that Kamâl Khân was a Persian, supported by the Persians and the Khurasânis, and that the young Ismâ‘îl, son of Yûsuf and legitimate heir of the crown, was backed by the Turks and the Rumis. In fact, all the other sources agree that Kamâl Khân, a Dekhnî, was furthered by the Sunni party, mainly formed by native Muslims and Habshis, whilst the other Pardeshis, mainly Shiite, seconded the young prince. It was by this reason that the victory of the latter entailed the exodus of the Sunnis, who massively fled to the neighbouring sultanates of Ahmadnagar and Berar.

It is during the reign of Ismâ‘îl ‘Âdil Khân that appears one of the personalities most documented by Portuguese records, Yûsuf Lârî, entitled Asad Khân, ‘lion khan’. Portuguese texts, which normally call him Çufo Larim, ⁴⁸ note his presence in Goa in 1510, at the moment of the conquest of the city by Albuquerque, then in 1512, trying to relieve Banastarim that was besieged by the Portuguese, and again in 1517, at the head of an army of 2,000 knights and 20,000 foot soldiers to recover Goa, which the sultan had promised to annex to his jâgîr of Belgaum, ⁴⁹ if he succeeded in seizing her. ⁵⁰ Diogo do Couto ⁵¹ is clear about his origins: ‘He was native of the Moorish kingdom of Lara [i.e., Lâr, in south Persia], neighbour of that of Hormuz, and his name was Çufo [i.e., Yûsuf]; and because he was from Lara, taking the name of the country, was called Çufo Larim.’ In one of his letters, Afonso de Albuquerque describes him as a Turk, which is possible, since in Lârestân there are, even nowadays, Turkish or Turkmen tribes, mostly nomadic. ⁵² Anyway, he was a Shiite. While Ferishta ⁵³ says that he received both the jâgîr and the title of Asad Khân from Ismâ‘îl, when he took full power, ca. 1513; Portuguese chronicles ⁵⁴ prefer to date from that year the grant of Belgaum as a jâgîr, and that of the title from his campaign against Vijayanagar in 1520; but such details are not very significant. It is nevertheless interesting to note that Portuguese sources emphasize that, though having exerted important functions, such as those of prime minister (wakîl al-saltanat), chancellor of the exchequer (amîr-i jumla) and finally regent of the kingdom after the death of Ismâ‘îl in 1534, he was never well accepted, owing to his humble origins, as a slave of Yûsuf ‘Âdil Khân.

We cannot dwell on his career and his adventures, abundantly documented by the Portuguese sources, ⁵⁵ to which João de Barros consecrates sixteen chapters of his chronicle. ⁵⁶ His pages, quite detailed, are often confused, and only partly agree with those of Ferishta; they contain the names of some two dozens captains and notables of Bijapur, but say nothing as to their origins.

To discuss the particulars of Asad Khân’s quarrels and battles, as well as their chronology, would lead us too far from our subject; we shall, therefore, confine ourselves to some significant points.

It is curious to note that the function of sar nabaut or sari naubat already existed in Bijapur in 1530s, for its creation is normally ascribed to Afzal Khân Shirâzî, vizier of the sultanate about 1577; Mu‘tabar Khân, former peshwâ of ‘Alî ‘Âdil Shâh, then appointed, was thus not its first titular. ⁵⁷

More important is to note the position of Asad Khân in the succession problem that burst upon Ismâ‘îl’s death in 1534. Asad Khân appears to have initially supported Malu Khân, the eldest son of the late Sultan, who was backed by the shiite Pardeshis, and to have then shifted his allegiance to Miyã ‘Alî Khân, brother of Ismâ‘îl, the Mealcão of Portuguese texts. It was probably then that he approached the Portuguese, promising them the dry lands of Bardez and Salsete, adjacent to the island of Goa, in exchange for their neutrality or eventual support. ⁵⁸ However, his candidate for the throne revealed himself too shy, and was finally forced into exile in Gujarat and then in Goa, where he lived from 1543 to his death in 1567. ⁵⁹ Ferishta, whom most modern historians follow, seems unaware of his existence, ascribing the exile in Goa to his nephew ‘Abdu-l-Lâh, son of Ismâ‘îl and brother of Malu and Ibrâhîm; nonetheless, he is well known through the Portuguese records, including his own letters to the king of Portugal.

João de Barros records the destitution of Malu Khân upon six months of reign, ⁶⁰ in 1535, his blinding, the liberation of his brother Ibrâhîm, prisoner at Panhâla, by Corgetechan (i.e., Khurshîd Khân, the leader of the Sunni party) and his ascent to the throne; but was unable to guess the significance of these troubles. In fact, they meant the revenge of the Dekhânis and the Habshis over the Persians and a sort of cultural revolution that led to the replacement of Persian by Dakhni in the administration, to the abolition of the red beret of the Kızılbash and to the suppression of the names of the twelve imams from the khutbah. It also entailed the dismissal of hundreds of Pardeshi mercenaries, and the confinement of Asad Khân to his jâgîr of Belgaum, where, nevertheless, he continued to play his political game with the Portuguese, the kingdom of Vijayanagar and the sultanates of Deccan. ⁶¹

As testified by Ferishta as well as by Portuguese sources, Asad Khân had become fabulously rich. Portuguese records clearly indicate that he died, nonagenarian, in Belgaum, on 13 December 1543 ⁶² (and not in 656 A. H., i.e., 1549 AD, as mistakenly stated by Ferishta). He had made Miyã ‘Alî Khân his heir; but fearing Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh, he had entrusted a part of his treasure to an Iranian merchant settled in Cannanore, Khwâja Shamsu-d-Dîn Gîlânî, about whom we shall speak later. The rest remained in Bijapur, and was offered to the Portuguese authorities in Goa by an embassy sent by Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh, on the condition that Miyã ‘Alî Khân would be exiled to the Moluccas, which the Portuguese viceroy did not accept.

Another Iranian captain of Bijapur about whom the Portuguese sources provide much information is Anel Maluco, that is to say, ‘Ainu-l-Mulk Gîlânî. As in 1554 he was still commanding troops, it does not seem very probable that he was the same person as the ‘Ainu-l-Mulk Gîlânî whose deeds, ca. 1493–94 and in the subsequent years, are referred to by Nizâmuddîn and Ferishta. It seems, therefore, that they were at least two different individuals, perhaps father and son. Anyway, while Ibrâhîm came to the throne, our Anel Maluco (whom Said ‘Alî Tabâtabâ’i normally calls Saif ‘Ainu-l-Mulk) ⁶³ had his jâgîr at Mirâj ⁶⁴ and was the governor of Konkan. In the words of Diogo do Couto, ⁶⁵ he was, ‘in authority and power, a second Asad Khân’. Whilst the latter preferred to manoeuvre the narrow line between cooperation and rebellion, ‘Ainu-l-Mulk, as well as other Pardeshis of Bijapur, definitely took the path of revolt. Diogo do Couto reports that in 1554 he rebelled against Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh, trying to raise Miyã ‘Alî Khân to the throne of Bijapur. He made agreements with Râmarâja Âravîdu, regent of Vijayanagar, and with the Portuguese, to whom he promised the whole Konkan. ⁶⁶ Miyã ‘Alî Khân was then proclaimed in Goa sultan of Bijapur. ⁶⁷ Nevertheless, an assembly of Portuguese notables decided to prescind from the help of Vijayanagar and Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh managed to turn it to his profit. The rebels were then overthrown by the joint forces of Bijapur and Vijayanagar and compelled to take shelter in Ahmadnagar. ‘Ainu-l-Mulk and his nephew and fellow leader Çalâbat Khân were treacherously murdered, whilst Miyã ‘Alî Khân only was handed over by Murtazâ ‘Nizâm Shâh to the Portuguese ambassador in 1557, for a ransom of 30,000 gold pagodas. Ferishta ⁶⁸ splits this rebellion into two, ascribing the one to ‘Ainu-l-Mulk and the other to ‘Alî Khân, though confusing him with his nephew ‘Abdu-l-Lâh, as he always does. The witness of Diogo do Couto, who arrived in 1559 at Goa, where he met personally the exiled prince of Bijapur, seems this time surer. Miyã ‘Alî Khân remained in Goa with his family till his death in 1567; one of his daughters converted to Catholicism and was baptized with the name of Dona Maria de Além-Mar, ‘Lady Mary of Overseas’. ⁶⁹

Meanwhile, in 1557, Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh passed away, and his son ‘Alî, supported by the Pardeshi party, hastened to pierce the eyes of his brother Tahmâsp and to sit on the throne. Under his reign (1558–80) the Persian influence in Bijapur appears to have reached its zenith. As we have seen, Diogo do Couto dates the conversion of the ‘Âdil Shâhs and their fellow sultans to the shiite faith and their change of title, from khân to shâh, which does not seem correct.

In Bijapur Keshwar Khân Lârî, the son of our friend Yûsuf Lârî, alias Asad Khân, became the strong man of the new regime. It was he who in 1561 received the three Portuguese Jesuits invited by ‘Alî ‘Âdil Khân to visit his court. ⁷⁰ Couto ⁷¹ says that he was vizier for fifteen years, but he seems to exaggerate, since according to Ferishta ⁷² he died fighting against the forces of Ahmadnagar in 1567, thus, ten years after ‘Alî’s advent.

Portuguese chronicles appear to ignore the other Persian favourites of ‘Alî ‘Adil Shâh enumerated by Ferishta, such as Shâh Abû Turâb Shirâzî, Pîr Khân Isfahânî, Maulâ Fathu-l-Lâh Shirâzî or Said Mustafâ Khân Ardistânî. Only the latter left traces in Portuguese sources, which record that, when still at the service of Golconda, he was sent to the court of Shâh Tahmâsp of Persia (r. 1524–76) as an ambassador of the Qutbu-l-Mulk; ⁷³ later on he appears as signatory of the treaty of 1579 between Portugal and Bijapur. ⁷⁴ Conversely, while reporting the conflicts that meanwhile occurred around Goa, they record the names of many Muslim captains unrecorded elsewhere, and other interesting details.

In fact, after the famous battle of Talikota ⁷⁵ (1565), while the remnants of the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar tried to reorganize in the south, around Penagonda, the Portuguese took advantage of the void created in the north to occupy the ports of Honawar, Basrur and Mangalore, on the Canara coast. Thereupon the victor sultans joined hands to chase them from the Indian Ocean. The Zamorin of Calicut, Chengiz Khân, lord of Broach, the king of Seitavaka, in Ceylon, the sultan of Aceh in Sumatra and the queen of Japara in Java adhered to this second Muslim League, which also received support from the Sublime Porte and from Venice, who vied with the Portuguese for the spice trade. ⁷⁶ In 1570–71 a combined operation was carried out: while the Sultan of Aceh besieged the Portuguese stronghold of Malacca and the Nizâm Shâh that of Chaul, the Zamorin attacked the fortress of Chaliyam, nigh Calicut, and the ‘Âdil Shâh invaded the territory of Goa. It is on account of these wars that Portuguese chroniclers provide the details we referred to, chiefly on the sultanates of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar. Couto, who lived in Goa from 1559 till his death in 1616 and often travelled abroad, generally etc. seems quite well informed; but his insight lacks depth, seldom going beyond the opposition between individual characters. António Pinto Pereira seems more talented, and understands better the struggle between social groups; but unfortunately he only wrote on the first governorship of Dom Luís de Ataíde, count of Atouguia (viceroy of Portuguese India in 1568–71 and again in 1578–81).

António Pinto Pereira ⁷⁸ provides more details, but the names he mentions do not always coincide with those given by Couto or by Ferishta.

Another person ignored by Ferishta to whom, nonetheless, both Portuguese chroniclers attribute an important position is Moratecão (Murâd Khân), who about 1557 was havaldar of the Konkan. He was on good terms with the Portuguese and used to correspond with their viceroy; it was through his mediation that after the conflicts of 1568–70 the peace between Portugal and Bijapur was signed in 1571. According to Pinto Pereira ⁸⁰ he was then majordomo and chancellor of the exchequer of the sultan, that is to say hâjib and mîr jumla; but Couto ⁸¹ depicts him as ‘governor of Konkan’ and afterwards ‘governor-general of the realms of the ‘Âdil Shâh’, which rather means vakil or vizier. Anyway, it was he who appointed the two ambassadors, Melique Xaramir (Malik Shâhr Amîr) and Xá Morado (Shâh Murâd), who in 1571 signed the peace treaty with the Portuguese ⁸² —which seems to give reason to Couto. Unfortunately nothing is said about their origins.

Apparently a new treaty, this time between Mustafâ Khân Ardestânî, the Persian vakil of Bijapur between 1573 and 1577, and the viceroy count of Atouguia, was signed somewhat later, by the agency of Zarebeque (Zâhir Beg), who was sent to Lisbon in 1575–76. ⁸³ This treaty, quoted in that of 1582, puts a small problem of chronology, irrelevant for our purpose and therefore unnecessary to discuss here.

Pinto Pereira ⁸⁴ puts forward that the artificers of the peace between Portugal and Bijapur had been Nûr Khân and a Said called Xabolacem (Shâh Abû-l Hasan), ‘who preceded all the confidents of the King in favour’, and kept very good relations with the Portuguese. We think that the latter is identifiable with Shâh Abû-l Hasan, son of Shâh Tahir, a prestigious Shiite religious teacher and a friend of the Portuguese, whom we will meet again at Ahmadnagar. He was thus Persian ⁸⁵ and brother of Shâh Haidar, successor of his father at the head of the ismâ‘îlî sect Muhammadshâhî, as its thirty-second imâm. ⁸⁶ He had taken service with the sultan of Bijapur and, after the murder of ‘Alî ‘Âdil Shâh in 1580, was appointed amîr jumlaji by the Queen-Regent Chand Bibi; but he was soon blinded and then put to death by the Habshi clique that meanwhile had seized power. ⁸⁷

As for the murder of ‘Alî ‘Âdil Shâh, the testimony of Diogo do Couto ⁸⁸ agrees with those of Ferishta, Nizâmuddîn and Abû-l Fazl: ⁸⁹ he was stabbed by a handsome eunuch he brought from Bidar for carnal abuse. In fact one year before the Jesuits already accused him of sodomy, also referring that Akbar had rebuked him, but in vain. ⁹⁰

Couto also agrees to Nizzâmuddîn’s statement that it was Kâmil Khân, the leader of the Sunnite party, who decided to put on the throne the prince Ibrâhîm, nephew of ‘Alî, still minor, imprisoning his elder brother. Ferishta ascribes the choice to ‘Alî himself, in his testament, while Abû-l-Fazl imputes it to Fathu-l-Lâh Shirâzî, a Shiite Persian, leader of the Pardeshi party. As it was the opposite party that thenceforth prevailed, this seems less logical; moreover, it was Kâmil Khân that assumed the regency, whereas Fathu-l-Lâh departed for Akbar’s court. ⁹¹

As regards Kâmil Khân, the Portuguese chronicler depicts him as a Habshi, while Ferishta says he was a Deccany. Anyway, he was a Sunni, supported by the Habshis as well as by the Deccanies. As in 1535, the volte-face meant the revenge of the Sunni party; nevertheless, the reaction appears not to have been so harsh. A kind of compromise was reached, whereby Chand Bibi, the Queen Dowager, kept the education of his nephew, the young sultan Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh II (r. 1580–1626), nine years old, while Kâmil Khân, as we have seen, assumed the regency.

Notwithstanding, the first years of the reign were a troubled period, during which the sultanate almost fell into anarchy. It does not fit here to go into details thereabout; it suffices to note that the testimony of Diogo de Couto roughly agrees with that of Ferishta, much more developed, and with the brief synthesis of Nizâmuddîn. ⁹² Haji Kishwar Khân (Couto’s Quisbalcão II), who probably was the grandson of our well-known Yûsuf Lârî, alias Asad Khân, sponsored by Chand Bibi and visibly supported by the Pardeshi party, succeeded in killing Kâmil Khân, whereupon he tried to get rid of those who could put him in shade: he murdered Mustafâ Khân, vizier of the late sultan, and sequestered Chand Bibi and even the young Sultan. However, four months later, an upheaval of the Habshis forced him to flee to Ahmadnagar and thence to Golconda, where a relative of Mustafâ Khân killed him. Three Habshi captains, Calascão (Yikhlas Khân), Armiocão (Hamîd Khân) and Dilauarcão (Dilâwar Khân) usurped the effective power, though consenting that Chand Bibi, at least symbolically, appointed a Persian, Afzal Khân Shirâzî, as peshwa. Finally Dilâwar Khân succeeded in getting rid of his two fellows, whom he imprisoned in a stronghold.

It was they who, in secret, asked the Portuguese Viceroy Dom Luís de Ataíde (1578–1581) to hand over to them the son of Miyã ‘Alî Khân, Yûsuf Khân, who still lived in Goa, to put him on the throne of Bijapur. The Portuguese authorities refused, however, to deliver him, fearful of getting mixed up in the turmoil, all the more since the envoys of Ahmadnagar and Golconda also requested for him. These details were only known to Couto, for Ferishta ignored the very existence of Yûsuf Khân.

This first attempt to establish the exiled prince on the throne having failed, Dilâwar Khân could remain lord and master of the kingdom for eight years, while Sunni faith became once again the state religion. As always, Couto reports the facts, but is unable to interpret them; thus, he speaks as if the Shiite faith, once accepted in Bijapur in 1557, had remained forever the official religion of the sultanate.

A second attempt, also ignored by Ferishta, to restore the status quo ante by dint of raising Yûsuf Khân to the throne, was carried out in 1584 by Anelmaluco (‘Ainu-l-Mulk II, probably the son of ‘Ainu-l-Mulk Gîlânî), Çalâbat Khan II and Ziadaulcão (i.e., Ziyâdatu-l-Lâh Khân, character otherwise unknown). They asked the Portuguese to surrender them the exiled prince; once again the request was denied, for fear of disturbing the good relations the Portuguese had with the court of Bijapur, with which a treaty had been signed in 1582. For security reasons, Yûsuf Khân was confined to the fortress of Goa. He succeeded nonetheless in escaping, but was caught in an ambush mounted by a Portuguese horse trader bribed by Dilâwar Khân; he was then handed over to Murad Khân, governor of Konkan, who blinded him. ⁹³

New attempts to restore the Shiite faith and, with it the prevalence of the Pardeshi party, were carried on by a certain Sayyid ‘Alî, according to Couto a former Chancellor of ‘Ali ‘Âdil Shâh, very powerful at the time. Marginalized by Dilâwar Khân, he had fled to Goa with one of the wives of the late king, whom the Portuguese chronicler describes as Bibi Acila, ‘of Charkis caste’ (i.e., Circassian), a lady of great beauty in spite of her 65 years. Sayyid ‘Ali tried to have a treaty with the Portuguese authorities, betting now on Muhammad Khân, a bastard son of Yûsuf Khân, and therefore grandson of Miyã ‘Alî Khân; but the conspiracy was short lived, since after a year Sayyid ‘Alî desisted and left for the Mughal Empire, while the Bibi, accused before the Inquisition of fomenting the conversion of Christians to Islam, was exiled to Hormuz, from where she finally reached the court of Akbar. According to Couto it was at her instigation that Akbar decided, somewhat later, to make war with Bijapur. ⁹⁴

It is interesting to note that these three conspiracies are unknown to Ferishta, who conversely reports an attempt of ‘Ainu-l-Mulk (II) to put on the throne Ismâ‘îl Khân, the elder brother of Ibrâhîm II, who, as we have seen, was confined in a stronghold. This attempt failed, too, and ‘Ainu-l-Mulk paid with life for his boldness; ⁹⁵ but this took place in 1593, some eight years after the last of the conspiracies mentioned by Couto.

Meanwhile, in 1586, Ibrâhîm II, fifteen years old, was declared of age and married a sister of the sultan of Golkonda, who was of Persian origin and Shiite. Nevertheless, it was only three years later that, by means of a kind of coup-d’état, machinated with the connivance of ‘Ainu-l-Mulk (II), then amîru-l-umrâ, he succeeded in getting rid of Dilâwar Khân Habshî, who was forced to flee to Ahmadnagar. Ibrâhîm attracted him treacherously, offering him a safe-conduct; but once he came back to Bijapur, the Sultan, pretexting that the safe-conduct guaranteed him life but not sight, pierced his eyes with a pencil and confined him to a castle, where he died. ⁹⁶

The nobles expected that the Sultan then forsook the Hanafi rite to embrace Shi’ism, like his father and his uncle, but he preferred to remain faithful to the creed in which he had been educated, granting, however, his subjects the freedom to choose the faith they preferred, as in the old time Yûsuf Sâva’î. So, this long series of conflicts ended in a compromise.

In 1594 Shâh ‘Abbas, king of Persia, sent an embassy to Bijapur, in order to convince Ibrâhîm to revert to the Shiite faith; but he did not yield to his pleas. ⁹⁷ Anyway, the social and cultural hegemony of Persians declined in Bijapur; and in 1603 the Mughal ambassador Asad Beg noticed with astonishment that Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh II spoke little Persian. ⁹⁸

Nevertheless, some traces of Iranian influence remained, such as the minting of larins, pincers-shaped silver coins, imitating those minted in Lâr, in south Persia, whence their name. Another sign of Persian influence is the existence of a maliku-t-tujjâr, ‘king of merchants’ in the Sultanate. In Persia, he was chosen from the principal merchants of each town and officially appointed to act as a middleman between the government and the mercantile class, and to arbitrate conflicts between merchants, or between them and their customers. ⁹⁹ The charge existed in the Bahmanid Sultanate, at least during the reigns of Ahmad Shâh (1422–36) and Muhammad Shâh II (1463–82); under the latter’s reign the holder of the office was the well-known Mahmûd Gâwân Gîlânî. ¹⁰⁰ Portuguese sources attest to its existence in Bijapur in 1546; the name of the person who held it is unknown, but we know of his correspondence with Rui Gonçalves de Caminha, vedor da fazenda do Estado da Índia, i.e., intendant of the finances of Portuguese India. ¹⁰¹ They were trying to prevent the ‘Âdil Shâh from joining the anti-Portuguese league contrived by the Sultan of Gujarat and apparently were successful. In 1570 the maliku-t-tujjar of Bijapur was chased from Dabhul by Malabar pirates; a little later he was sent on an official mission to Persia, via Goa and Hormuz. ¹⁰²

The Ahmadnagar Sultanate

Portuguese sources provide little information about the neighbouring sultanate of Ahmadnagar. ¹⁰³

As is well known, his ruling house was not of Iranian origin, but native, descendant of a Brahmin converted to Islam and entitled Malik Naib Nizâmu-l-Mulk Bahrî by the Bahmanid Sultan Mahmûd Shâh (r. 1482–1518). As far as we know, only Tomé Pires ¹⁰⁴ assigns him a Turkish origin; but, as he says that the founder of the Qutbshâhi Dynasty, who was probably of Turkoman origin, was a local convert, we may assume that he interchanged both. The same author states that Malik Naib Nizâmu-l-Mulkm had at his service one thousand white warriors from Persia and one thousand horsemen; nevertheless, in the civil war that caused the Bahmanid sultanate to split, he led the native party against the Pardeshis headed by Yûsuf ‘Âdil Khân.

After his murder in 1490 he was succeeded by his son Ahmad, after whom Ahmadnagar was named. In his chronicle or rather a panegyric of the Nizâm Shâhî royal house, Said ‘Alî Tabâtabâ’î ¹⁰⁵ insinuates that in truth Ahmad was but Naib’s foster-son, borne by a slave woman given to him by Mahmûd Shâh, the real father of the child. This appears to be a legend invented to glorify the dynasty; anyway it was already current by 1562, when Garcia de Orta, who had been a physician of the court of Ahmadnagar, reports it in his Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas da Índia. It occurs also in Couto’s Ásia, written some thirty years later. ¹⁰⁶

Ahmad (r. 1490–1508) began to behave as an independent ruler; it is generally assumed that it was he who took the title of Nizâm Shâh instead of Nizâmu-l-Mulk. Out of paronymy between the Arabic word nizâm, ‘order, rank, collar’, and the Persian word nîza, ‘spear’, Portuguese writers normally interpret this title as ‘page of my spear’. ¹⁰⁷

Owing to his geographical position, this sultanate feared more than any other the hegemonic pretensions of Gujarat. It was seemingly to counter-balance them that Ahmad’s successor, Burhân Nizâm Shâh (r. 1508–54)—or rather his tutors, the sultan being still minor—approached the Portuguese, agreeing in 1508 to pay 2,000 ducats or pagodas a year as páreas, i.e., a tribute to their King. ¹⁰⁸ Two or three years later he welcomed twelve Portuguese merchants, who while coming from Cambay called at Chaul; he granted them a charter of privilege, a copy whereof was still kept in the archives of the sultanate at the end of the century, and was imparted to Couto by António de Aguiar, alias Islam Khân, a Portuguese renegade at the service of the sultanate. ¹⁰⁹ In 1521 Burhân Nizâm Shâh ceded the port of Revdanda, nigh Chaul, to the Portuguese Estado da Índia. Portuguese sources always call it Chaul de Baixo, ‘Chaul at below’, or simply Chaul, but the town of Chaul proper (Chaul de Cima, ‘Chaul at above’ in Portuguese texts), upstream, on the same bank of the river, always remained under the jurisdiction of the sultanate. ¹¹⁰ In exchange, the Portuguese engaged to provide him yearly with 400 Arabian horses.

This agreement was negotiated by a Persian from Khurasân called Letefican, i.e., Latif Khân, who apparently was a regional governor. It met with opposition from Malik Ayâz, governor of Diu, in Gujarat, who acted with the connivance of two local Muslims that governed Chaul, Sheikh Ahmad and Sheikh Mahmûd, a Habshi captain whose name is unknown, and a certain Sheikh Jil, captain of Gujarati troops; Mahmûd Aghâ, admiral of Gujarat, helped them with thirty foists, who, however, were defeated by the Portuguese. ¹¹¹ Most probably the local Muslims who led the opposition to the settlement of the Portuguese were naiteás, i.e., Navayats, as their preference of the title of sheikh suggests. Nowadays Navayats are concentrated in the Canara coast, but Portuguese sources clearly show that in the sixteenth century they were numerous in Konkan; their language, which is a Marathi dialect intermingled with Arabic and Persian words, appears to confirm that in fact their community originated there. Portuguese writers define them as the product of unions of Arab traders from the Persian Gulf with local women, exactly as the Moplahs or Mappilas of Kerala; they note that ‘they follow the Arabs in their sects’, and in fact they are Sunnites, following the Shafei rite. In spite of his habitual lack of perspicacity regarding group dynamics, Diogo do Couto ¹¹² notes that they were the Muslims less prone to make terms with the Portuguese. This can be explained by the fact that they were mostly engaged in horse trade, from the Persian Gulf to India, and therefore competitors of the Portuguese.

Anyway, it appears that in Ahmadnagar, as in Bijapur, the local converts and the Habshis, their allies, mainly Sunnite, had propensity to be hostile towards the Portuguese and favourable to the Gujaratis, who strove with them for the mastery of the ocean. Conversely, the Pardeshis, mostly Shiites, often seemed disposed to accept the Portuguese support against the hegemonic tendencies of Sultan Bahâdur of Gujarat (r. 1526–37). We know, in fact, that he affected to treat the sultans of Deccan as his vassals, and that in 1529, in exchange for the military aid he gave to Burhân Nizâm Shâh, he demanded that in Ahmadnagar, as well as in Berar, the khutba should be done in his name. ¹¹³ In 1531, in an interview with Burhân, he persisted calling him Nizâmu-l-Mulk, and only invited him to sit in order to avoid that Shâh Tahir (the prestigious religious master who accompanied him, whom we will meet again hereinafter) remained standing. The Mirat-i Sikandari even pretends that it was on this very occasion that Sultan Bahâdur bestowed the title of Nizâm Shâh upon the heretofore Nizâmu-l-Mulk. ¹¹⁴ A few years later he invited Ibrâhîm I, the Sunnite sultan of Bijapur, to take the title of Bahâdur Shâh, sending him several presents, including an âftâbgîr or parasol—which Ibrâhîm refused, not to tacitly acknowledge that he received the royal investiture from the Sultan of Gujarat. ¹¹⁵

In 1537 Burhân Nizâm Shâh converted to Shiism, under the influence of Shâh Tahir Jubbâ’î, the holy man we have mentioned. ¹¹⁶ He was the thirty-first imam of the Muhammad-shâhî or Mu’miniyya branch of the Nizaris, one of the Ismaili sects, and enjoyed great prestige in the region of Qazvin, in northern Iran. Shâh Ismâ‘îl (r. 1501–24), who endeavoured to repress not only the Sunnite faith but also the Shiite sects that could compete with the Twelver establishment ¹¹⁷ , had sent him as mudarrîs (religious teacher) to Kashân; but thereupon, judging that he was recruiting too many disciples there, decided to put him to death. However, Shâh Tahir, advised in time by his protector, Shâh Husain Isfahânî, Ismâ‘îl’s vizier, managed to escape and took shelter in the island of Jarûn or Hormuz, which, albeit under the Portuguese protectorate, continued to work as the main pivot of the seaborne links between India and Iran. From there, certainly aboard a Portuguese ship, he fled to India, landing at Goa in 1520. However, a part of his family remained in Hormuz. He intended to settle down in Bijapur, then ruled by the Shiite Sultan Ismâ‘îl, but met with cold reception and decided to shift to Ahmadnagar. There he converted the sultan, not to nazari Ismailism, as could be expected, but, probably by taqiyya or ‘prudent concealment’, to the Twelver faith. ¹¹⁸ In his Majâlis al-mu’minîn, written between 1585 and 1605, Nûru-l-Lâh Shûstarî pretends that he had meanwhile adhered to the official creed of Persia, but we know that Shâh Haidar, his son, succeeded him as imam of the Muhammad-shâhîs, which renders such a statement improbable.

Besides its religious meaning, this conversion also had political significance: on the one hand, it provided the Sultanate of Ahmadnagar a pretext to cease doing the khutba in the name of the Sultan of Gujarat, and thus shake his suzerainty; on the other hand it allowed him to integrate many shiite Pardeshis expelled from Bijapur by Ibrâhîm Adel Shâh in 1535. It appears that Iranians were particularly in his favour; a Portuguese document reports that when in 1546 he received an embassy from Shâh Tahmâsp of Persia he was accompanied by two Iranians, Shâh Tahir and Caçambeque, i.e., Qâsim Beg, a Khurasâni who was his personal physician. ¹¹⁹ The latter is also mentioned by Tabâtabâ’î ¹²⁰ as ‘a learned Persian physician’; afterwards he was appointed vakîl and peshvâ of the sultanate.

Diogo do Couto ¹²¹ notes the largeness of Burhân’s policy, yet without giving us the details we would wish:

He was a grandiose king and a great knight, very liberal, and so fond of good knights, that he sent for them throughout the foreign kingdoms, searching for whomsoever won himself a name; he gave them very much and granted them great boons. And so, he gathered in his kingdom all the famous foreigners who came to India in his time, men of arms and men of letters, thus surpassing all the lords of Deccan.

Portuguese records are especially abundant regarding the governorship of Dom João de Castro (1545–48), since his family kept copies of his papers. ¹²² They provide us the names of several nobles of the court of Ahmadnagar, whose identity in most cases we were not able to detect.

In 1541, profiting by the turmoil that followed the death of Sultan Bahâdur of Gujarat, the forces of Ahmadnagar had occupied two Gujarati strongholds near Bombay, called in Portuguese texts Carnalá (i.e., Karnala) and Sangaçá or Sangace (Sanksî). Their Gujarati commandants appealed to the Portuguese captain of Chaul, Dom Francisco de Meneses, who sent troops and conquered them, whereupon both governors made a deed of subjection to the King of Portugal. Burhân Nizâm Shâh managed to recover the two forts by accepting to raise the páreas or tribute he annually paid to the Portuguese King from 2,000 to 5,000 ducats. ¹²⁷

It is not impossible that this covenant was arranged by Shâh Tahir, who was the vakil or vizier of Burhân Nizâm Shâh. As a matter of fact, he continued to trade with Iran through Hormuz, where he had left a son and a daughter; he was thus linked to the Portuguese commercial network and advocated friendship with the Portuguese authorities. ¹²⁸ The latter did not fail to send him letters and embassies in order to ensure the neutrality of Ahmadnagar, when about 1546 the Sultan of Gujarat, who had besieged the Portuguese fort of Diu, tried to contrive a coalition of all the Muslim states of India against the Portuguese. And in fact, despite some warlike preparations that were already being done, an agreement had been reached. ¹²⁹

The last references to Shâh Tahir in Portuguese records date from August 1546; probably he died soon after. ‘Alî Tabâtabâ’î, ¹³⁰ who places his death in AH 953 (1546–47 AD) seems thus right, against Ferishta who dates it from AH 956 (1549 AD).

As regards the subsequent years, Portuguese sources become quite scanty, probably because in Lisbon documents began to be kept in the Casa da Índia (the royal agency for the India trade, situated in the ground floor of the Royal Palace), instead of the tower of the St Georges Castle called Torre do Tombo, as heretofore, and the Royal Palace was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1755. After this gap, documents only recommence to appear in abundance after the union of the Portuguese and the Spanish Crowns, in 1580, while they began to be kept in the Spanish archives, and chiefly from 1595 onwards, when the Torre do Tombo da Índia, or Goa archives, were organized by Diogo do Couto. ¹³¹ The absence of official documents is partly compensated by the arrival of the Jesuits, who began to produce an abundant literature from 1543 onwards; ¹³² but they mostly deal with the regions where they settled, which was not the case with the sultanates, since Muslims hardly converted to Christianity, and therefore they always preferred the Hindu kingdoms. Moreover, the chronicles of Fernão Lopes de Castanheda and Gaspar Correia finish by the middle of the century, the first in 1540, the second in 1550. Thenceforth, we only dispose of the work of Diogo do Couto, who continued the Décadas da Ásia of João de Barros up to the very end of the sixteenth century. He narrates the Portuguese exploits year upon year, but normally uses the break imposed by the rainy season to outline what was happening in the neighbouring countries.

Couto ¹³³ records, thus, the death of Burhân Nizâm Shâh, according to him from leprosy, after having tried every kind of remedy, even bathing in the blood of small children; he dates it to 1555, after a reign of 55 years. There is, therefore, a discrepancy between him and Said ‘Alî, who says that ‘according to the best known accounts’ it befell on 24 Muharram 961 A H, i.e., 30 December 1553, upon fifty years of rule. We must however note that the witness of Couto is apparently less trustworthy, since he was not yet in India, where he only arrived in 1559. Incapable, as always, of a deeper insight, he remarks the struggle for succession, without noting that this time the Habshis had aligned with the other âfâqîs who supported Husain, the eldest son of the late sultan, against the Muslim Deccanies and the Hindus of the realm, who preferred his younger brother ‘Abdu-l-Qâdir. Couto attributes the victory of the first to the help he received from a Portuguese renegade, Sancho Pires, styled Firangî Khân or Firang Khân, who served the sultan with a troop of ten or twelve thousand horsemen. He depicts him as ‘one of the greatest knights in the world’, worthy of being praised everywhere, if he had not abjured his faith, but even so remarkable for his qualities and, chiefly, for the protection he always bestowed upon the Christians who visited Ahmadnagar. Muslim chroniclers hardly refer to him; Said ‘Alî only records his participation in the defence of Sholapur, besieged by ‘Âdil Shâh, about 1543, ¹³⁴ and his death in the siege of Gulbarga, in 1558, ¹³⁵ which is confirmed by Couto.

Under Husain (r. 1554–65) the policy of Ahmadnagar appears not to have undergone significant inflexion. About 1557, there was, nonetheless, a brief conflict with the Portuguese, ¹³⁶ due to purely circumstantial factors: the Portuguese governor Francisco Barreto (1555–58), whose policy had inherent imperialistic tendencies, sent an embassy to Ahmadnagar, requesting permission to fortify the Morro de Chaul, that is to say, the steep knoll that overlooks the mouth of the river, opposite to Revdanda. He argued that the construction would turn in favour of the sultanate, since it would hinder the Turks from penetrating the river. In fact, Ottoman fleets were operating in the Arabian Sea since 1538; but they were a threat to the Portuguese mercantile network rather than to landbound states, as the Nizâm Shâhî kingdom was, even if this kept closer relations with Shiite Persia. Suspecting that the real intention of the Governor was to control the entrance of the river, so that goods passing there would be constrained to pay custom duties to the Portuguese, the sultan imprisoned the envoy and sent troops to occupy the mount. According to Said ‘Alî and Ferishta they were commanded by two Pardeshi captains, a Khurasâni and a Turk, namely, Muhammad Ustad Nishâpûrî and Chelebî Rûmî Khân; but Couto gives them the names of Faratecan (Farhâd Khân) and Rafarecan (Raf‘at Khân). The latter could be Raf‘at Khân Lârî, a Persian who a little later appears at the service of Ibrâhîm Qutb Shâh of Golconda (r. 1550–81); ¹³⁷ but we have not found any evidence that he had been previously at the service of Ahmadnagar. As regards the former, it can be a mistake of Couto, since Farhâd Khân appears indeed fighting the Portuguese at Chaul, but during the conflicts of 1571 and 1592. Anyhow, after some insignificant skirmishes, the peace was signed and everything remained in statu quo ante.

It is certainly therefore that in subsequent years no mention of Ahmadnagar is found in Portuguese chronicles. The Nizâm Shâhî kingdom only reappears in their pages after the battle of Talikota, in 1565, and the formation of the ‘Muslim league’ against the Portuguese, ca. 1570. The ruler of Ahmadnagar was then Murtazâ Nizâm Shâh (r. 1565–88), since his father Husain had died while celebrating his victory over Vijayanagar. Said ‘Alî ¹³⁸ ascribes his death to abuse of wine, but Pinto Pereira has a different story: according to him, Husain had been poisoned by his wife, a former Hindu devadasi with whom he had fallen in love, who killed him to put on the throne her own son. At any rate, even if the Queen Dowager Khûnzah Humâyûn was of Deccany origin, as the Portuguese chronicler ventures, her entourage was mainly Pardeshi, for she appointed a learned Persian, Maulana Husain Tabrîzî, as tutor of her son, and another, Qâsim Beg Tabrîzî, as vakil or peshwa of the sultanate. Anyway, four years later Murtazâ, backed by Farhâd Khân and Habsh Khân, shook off the tutelage and assumed effective power. Visibly this did not mean a deep revolution, for the young sultan’s former preceptor was then appointed vizier and granted the title of Khân-i-Khânân.

It was, thus, Murtazâ Nizâm Shâh’s forces that, as agreed with the other fellows of the league, besieged the Portuguese fort of Revdanda or Lower Chaul at the end of 1569. ¹³⁹ The details of the siege do not regard us here, but only the identity of its actors. As stated by the Indo-Muslim chroniclers, the operations were commanded by Shâh Jamâlu-d-Dîn Husain Injû, brother-in-law and one of the sultan’s favourites, who had been appointed vizier of the sultanate; but according to Portuguese writers the commander-in-chief was rather Faretecão, i.e., Farhâd Khân, whom Said ‘Alî ¹⁴⁰ also mentions, but as ‘one of the principal officers’. Pinto Pereira depicts him as a valiant Habshi who had already fought against the Portuguese at Diu, in 1546. It is interesting to note that, apparently war was, from both sides, viewed as a sort of championship of boldness, and the fights were intermingled with the exchange of messages: once Farhâd Khân sent an errand-boy to Nuno Velho Pereira, proprietor of an extramural house that he had occupied, complaining that ‘for dinner he only received delicacies of fire, which was not the treatment suited to a neighbour’; and the Portuguese answered that ‘he was indeed longing for dinner with him, as his guest, and hoped to do it quite soon, but first would forewarn him, in order to be well received’. ¹⁴¹

A certain time after the beginning of the hostilities, the Sultan himself came with his troops. Pinto Pereira, who seemingly saw him, describes him as a young man of 22 years, showing great vivacity in his visage, with a stout and warlike appearance and a swarthy aspect, which the writer ascribes to his mother’s legacy. His artillery was commanded by Rumecão, i.e., Chelebî Rûmî Khân, a ‘very ingenious Turk’, who had fought in Europe and commanded the Muslim artillery in the battle of Talikota. ¹⁴²

At the same time Sabecan and Famecão attacked the small Portuguese fort of Karanja, near Bombay. Famecão is undoubtedly Fahmî Khân, ‘the smoky khan’, a Bengali eunuch, probably of Habshi origin; Sabecan must correspond to Sâhib Khân, ‘the friendly khan’, to whom Murtazâ Nizâm Shâh increasingly developed a sickly passion. We know by the Indo-Persian chronicles that he had commenced his career as a seller of fowls to the royal kitchen, but was gradually promoted by the sultan, and finished by becoming his favourite and, at the same time, the leader of the Habshi faction. This is the earliest mention of him we have come across.

Seemingly, the strength of the army lay on the Pardeshis. Thus, the account of Couto that during the six months of the siege the Nizâm Shâh lost ‘more than three thousand men, mostly White Moorish, Persians, Khurasânis, Gîlânis, Shirâzis, Turks, Rumis, people of other Asian nations and Habshis’, agrees, at least to a certain extent, with the statement of Said ‘Alî, ¹⁴⁷ that ‘the most valiant of all were the Foreigners, the Turks, the men of Dailam, the Arabs and the Persians’.

As the Portuguese continued to resist, Murtazâ Nizâm Shâh finally decided to sign the peace, as was recommended by a few captains, including Faratecão (Farhâd Khân) and Raffarrecão (Raf‘at Khân), who had arranged the agreement of 1557. It is not necessary to suppose, as Tabâtabâ’î does, that they had been bribed by the Portuguese, for, as we have seen, a pro-Portuguese party always existed in Ahmadnagar. The treaty, which is transcribed by Pinto Pereira, was signed by Farhâd Khân and Asafacão (Âsâf Khân) on ‘the 2d of the moon Rabilaual, which is the 25th July’ 1571. Thereby, the sultan kept the revenue of the custom house of Chaul, but was bound to pay duties to the Portuguese on the 500 horses he was allowed to import annually from Hormuz. He would also receive every year a safe-conduct to send a ship to Malacca, on the condition of not carrying white people, nor any forbidden merchandise. Apparently the clauses of treaty of 1547 ¹⁴⁸ that promised him five safe-conducts for Hormuz and one for the Red Sea

remained in force; that treaty had been signed, on behalf of Burhân Nizâm Shâh, by Xeraffrecão (Sharaf Khân) and Timajy Aldeu, undoubtedly a Hindu.

For the subsequent years we run short of data, since Couto’s Decades VIII and IX reached us in an incomplete form; this is regrettable, for, as the author repeatedly states in his Decades VII and X, much information on Ahmadnagar was provided there. Pinto Pereira, as we have noted, only covers the period 1568–71. It is therefore impossible to collate the elements provided by the Indo-Persian chronicles with Portuguese sources.

The long period of internal peace that, contrary to Bijapur, Ahmadnagar had enjoyed was coming to an end, with the opposition between Shiite Pardeshis and Suniite Deccanies and Habshis became increasingly sharp. The social cleavages were thus identical to those observed in Bijapur from yore; but here things were complicated with the prospect of a Mogul intervention that was taking shape.

The ascent of Sâhib Khân, whom we already mentioned, finally brought about the dismissal of the vakil Said Qazî Beg Tehrânî, a Persian, and his replacement by Asad Khân, a Georgian renegade who had been at the service of the Sultan of Gujarat. Meanwhile Murtazâ Nizâm Shâh had become mad. Then, feeling secured by the protection of Sâhib Khân and the insanity of the sultan, 3,000 Deccanies indulged in the uttermost excesses, ravening after the Pardeshis and spreading fire and sword throughout the realm. Ferishta ¹⁴⁹ connects to this slaughter the first rebellion of Burhân Khân, brother of the sultan, ca. 1580, which is also briefly referred to by Couto in his X Decade. ¹⁵⁰

The future Burhân Nizâm Shâh II had been freed from his confinement at Junir by a group of foreign emirs who supported him. While Ferishta presents Burhân’s march on Ahmadnagar as a rebellion, Said ‘Alî, ¹⁵¹ who was Burhân’s faithful and wrote under his patronage, pretends that he only came to claim his rights to the throne, since Murtazâ, who passed most of the time in his favourite’s abode and very seldom was seen in public, was supposed to have died. To a certain extent Diogo do Couto bears out this version, for he dwells upon the sequestration of the sultan by Asad Khân and the general uncertainty about his life. However, he avows that Burhân who came at the head of 3,000 horsemen and 10,000 infantry-men, intended to oust Asad Khân. Burhân and his men were therefore astonished and confused when the vakil exhibited to them the sultan, alive, though mad and leprous, whereupon they fled and scattered, fearing the troops of Asad Khân. According to Ferishta, Burhân Khân was compelled to take shelter in the Konkan, under the protection of the ‘Âdil Shâh, while his followers fled to the neighbouring territories. Couto, who assigns these events to the year 1584 and ignores the second attempt by Burhân to seize the throne, two years after the first, marks this moment as the departure of Burhân to the Mogul court. He notes that most of the fugitives of his army took shelter near the Portuguese strongholds of Bassein and Chaul, which led the captain of the latter, Dom Paulo de Lima Pereira, who was suspicious of any elusive manoeuvre of Asad Khân, to reinforce its defenses. According to Couto many of the refugees starved in the palm groves around Chaul and Bassein, while others sought safety in Gujarat.

The Portuguese chronicler does not note that, a short time after, Sâhib Khân was slain by a group of rival emirs who had attracted him to an ambush; ¹⁵² however, he records briefly the ascent of Çalâbat Khân, whom the Indo-Persian chronicles present as a Circassian slave, called Shâh Qulî, sent as a gift to the Nizâm Shâh by Shâh Tahmâsp of Persia. He managed to supersede Asad Khân and to become peshwâ of the sultanate, and succeeded in suppressing the feuds and restoring order for a while. This is not clear from the narrative of the Diogo do Couto, who appears to concentrate the events within a very short period, seemingly no more than two or three years (1584–86). Conversely, Said ‘Alî ¹⁵³ says that Çalâbat Khân was peshwâ for some twelve years, which seems an exaggeration in the opposite sense. Anyway, both chroniclers, more or less openly, accuse him of wishing to usurp the throne, wherefore he placed his liegemen in all the important posts of the kingdom.

Meanwhile, Burhân Khân had attempted again to seize power, coming to Ahmadnagar disguised as a dervish, but he failed once more; it was then that he had to find shelter in the Mogul Empire. This episode, reported by Ferishta, is ignored both by Couto and by Said ‘Alî, the latter certainly on the grounds we already know. However, they record a related upheaval, that of the Khurasâni amîru-l-umarâ Said Murtazâ Sabzavarî, ¹⁵⁴ supported by the generality of the emirs of Berar, a kingdom that had been conquered by Murtazâ Nizâm Shâh in 1572–74. This revolt failed, too, constraining Said Murtazâ and the emirs of Berar to flee and rejoin Burhân Khân at Akbar’s court, where they were received during the feasts of Nouruz of 1585.

Finding a good pretext to intervene in the Deccan, the Padeshâh began the preparations for a military expedition. Couto records that he entrusted its command to Gecorcan, his foster-brother, and Naranchan, his first cousin, who invaded the Reino do Mirão and thence Berar. In spite of the bizarre form given to his name by Couto, Gecorcan (= Kûka Khân?) is easily identifiable with Mîrzâ Azîz Kûka, entitled Khân-i-A‘zam, who was indeed Akbar’s foster-brother ¹⁵⁵ and, according to the other sources, received the command of the campaign. Naranchan is Naurang Khân, who in fact was the first cousin of the Khân-i-A‘zam and his companion in several expeditions, ¹⁵⁶ although Mogul sources do not mention his participation in this one; he was son of Qutbu-d-Dîn Khân, younger brother of Shamsu-d-Dîn Muhammad Khân, Azîz Kuka’s father. ¹⁵⁷ Finally, Reino do Mirão, ‘realm of the Mirân’, is Khandesh, successively ruled by Mîrân Muhammad Shâh I (1520–35), Mirân Mubârak Shâh (1535–66) and Mirân Muhammad Shâh II (1566–76). Fortunately for the Nizâm Shâhî sultanate, due to divergencies among the emirs, the expedition, which according to the Mogul chronicles took place in 1586, did not advance beyond Berar.

The danger had been immediately perceived by the Portuguese captain of Chaul, Dom Paulo de Lima Pereira, who sent an embassy to alert the court of Ahmadnagar about the risks the realm incurred. He advised Çalâbat Khân to give up Berar and concentrate his defence means in the capital of the sultanate, and to contrive a general alliance of the sultans of Deccan against the Moguls. He offered him the help of 500 Portuguese soldiers, whom he would command in person; but, according to Couto, Çalâbat Khân declined the offer, asserting that ‘alone, he was able to hold the Great Mogul by his beard’. ¹⁵⁸ Beyond the anecdote, what is important to note is that thus began taking shape a policy to which the Portuguese held on for a long time: to seek the union of the Deccan sultanates against the Mogul Empire, which they looked upon as the paramount peril. ¹⁵⁹

The rest of the story would be told by Couto in his Decade XI, of which only a summary or rather a brief reconstitution, subsists. We do not therefore know whether he corroborated the accounts of Ferishta and Nizamuddin, ¹⁶⁰ according to whom Murtazâ Nizâm Shâh ended his days in 1588, suffocated by his eldest son, Mirân Husain, in the Turkish baths of his palace. We know that Husain, who was seemingly backed up by the Deccany-Habshi party, only reigned for ten months, since his Persian minister Mirzâ Khân Isfahânî, with the support of the Pardeshi mercenaries, deposed, imprisoned and finally beheaded him, seating on the throne his cousin Ismâ‘îl, son of Burhân, who remained at the Mogul court. The reaction was violent: the natives suddenly upheaved and, within a week, massacred more than thousand three hundred Pardeshis, including Mirzâ Khân. The survivors fled, most of them to the ‘Âdilshâhî kingdom; as is generally known, Ferishta, former captain of Murtazâ’s guard, was among them. Upon the 1589 carnage a new strong man emerged: Jamal Khân Gujratî, a follower of the Mahdavî sect, whose adherents were mainly Deccanies and Habshis, which he imposed as state religion. This explains why the neighbouring rulers, including the Grand Mogul, furthered the eviction of the poor Ismâ‘îl Nizâm Shâh, aged only thirteen years, who solely stayed on the throne for a few months. ¹⁶¹

As regards what befell thereupon, we dispose of a good Portuguese source, recently revealed: an anonymous history of the deeds of the viceroy Mathias de Albuquerque (1591–97). ¹⁶² Contrary to Couto, who reduces every thing to quarrels among individuals, the author has an insight comparable to that of António Pinto Pereira, and understands quite well the dynamics of social groups that lies behind the actors’ behaviour. He presents the facts as the result of a struggle between two factions, on the one hand the Pérsios, i.e., the Persians lato sensu, including the Khurasânis, and on the other hand the Abexins e Decanins; this suggests that Turks and Pathans or Afghans were not numerous, or at least, did not play a significant role.

The disorder that prevailed was particularly resented by Çalâbat Khân, whom the author presents as a Persian, which is a half-truth, since, though having come from Persia, he was of Circassian origin; he asserts that he had fought against the Portuguese at the second siege of Diu (1546), which is possible, for, according to Ferishta, he was then approximately 70 years old, and therefore born ca. 1520. He took the initiative of setting up the diplomatic contacts required, but was immediately seconded by the Portuguese governor Manuel de Sousa Coutinho (1588–91), who resorted to the diplomatic and linguistic skills of Khwâja Abraham, a well-known Jew, quite devoted to the Portuguese. Akbar consented to hand over them Burhân Khân, upon whom he had bestowed a jagîr in his states, with 6,000 men at arms, on condition that at Ahmadnagar the khutba should be thenceforth made in his own name.

Nevertheless, the imâm who, during the ‘Îd-al-Kabîr prayers, dared to do so, immediately fell, stabbed by a crowd of enraged Persians. Burhân II (r. 1590–95) restored then the Twelver faith as state religion, and summoned the political refugees who still wandered out of the realm to come back. Our author, though in general quite well informed, mistakenly presents Burhân as the brother of Ismâ‘îl Nizâm Shâh, while in fact he was his father; he also fails to note that meanwhile, seemingly at the beginning of 1590, Çalâbat Khân had died.

Notwithstanding the diplomatic support the Portuguese had given to his accession to power, Burhân II soon came into conflict with them. It seems that he had a commitment to do so with Akbar and, moreover, some grievances against them, since on the one hand the Portuguese who settled around Chaul, profiting by the turmoil, had ceased paying the rents and taxes that were due to the sultanate, and, on the other hand, their authorities refused to give him an indemnity for his ship Hussaini ¹⁶³ that had run aground near Bassein and was plundered by the Portuguese of the surrounding country. In a letter of 1599 to the King of Portugal, Dom Francisco da Gama, great-grandson of Vasco da Gama and viceroy of Portuguese India from 1597 to 1600, lays stress on the plundering of the Hussaini, blaming his predecessor, Mathias de Albuquerque, and exculpating the Nizâm Shâh. ¹⁶⁴

Anyway, urged by Fahmî Khân, whom we have already come across, but against the opinion of Asad Khân, his amîr-i-jumla, Burhân II decided to initiate the hostilities. So began the third and last conflict between the sultanate and the Portuguese. The Sultan sent an army of 6,000 to 15,000 men, including 1,500 to 5,000 horsemen, to occupy and fortify the Morro, i.e., the knoll of Khorlaî in front of the Portuguese stronghold, which thus stayed at the mercy of his artillery.

Our relation agrees with Ferishta and Said ‘Alî, who state that the commander-in-chief was Farhâd Khân, a Habshî, but add that the foreign troops were under the special command of Bahâdur Khân Gîlânî, ¹⁶⁵ a Persian, appointed beforehand commandant of the fortress that was to be built on the Morro. Its architect was the Turk Agagemecete, i.e., Aghâ Jamshîd.

Apologist of the dynasty, Said Alî leaves his narration incomplete, so evading to avow the ill success of the campaign, which, finally, left the Portuguese in possession of the Morro and of the fort built there by the Turkish engineer. It remained in their power till its conquest by the Marathas in 1725, and still exists. Moreover, Farhâd Khân, the commander-in-chief, was made prisoner by the Portuguese, along with his wife and his daughter. According to Diogo do Couto, his father had once foretold that he would finish his days at the hands of the Portuguese, and, before dying in consequence of the wounds he had received in the battle, he converted to Christianity; his wife was afterwards ransomed by a large sum, while his daughter was brought to Goa, where she also converted to Christianity, and thence went to Portugal. ¹⁶⁸ Perhaps, as most of the Habshis, Farhâd Khân (or maybe already his father) had been kidnapped in his childhood by the Muslims at a Christian village of Ethiopia and forcibly converted to Islam, and therefore decided to resume the religion of his ancestors.

For our purpose the most interesting information is that given by Ferishta: while Said ‘Alî speaks generically of an army formed by ‘Africans, Turks, Dakanîs and Khurâsânîs’, Ferishta ¹⁶⁹ specifies that Burhân II mainly engaged in this war Deccany troops, out of which 6,000 to 8,000 men died during the first reencounters and some 12,000 died later; but the sultan did not regret their loss, even feeling content at getting rid of them. Thereupon, he used the disaster of the native contingent as a pretext to appoint Pardeshis to every important post of the sultanate.

As in Bijapur, a trace of Persian influence in the Nizâmshâhî kingdom is the existence of a maliku-t-tujjâr. He dwelt at Chaul proper, the Muslim town, under the jurisdiction of the sultanate. Among the papers of the viceroy Dom Francisco da Gama there is a letter of Sadola (Sa‘du-l-Lah), malique toyar, on behalf of the other merchants of Chaul de Cima, with grievances against the new thanadâr of the district, Khwâja Fathu-d-Dîn, who had replaced Khwâja Haidar and was not very favourable to the traders; ¹⁷⁰ He praises the Portuguese captain of Chaul de Baixo, António de Sousa, but complains of the seizure of a merchant ship he made as a retaliation upon the thanadâr, who had complained against him before the viceroy. Besides its importance as an evidence of the existence of a maliku-t-tujjâr at Chaul, the story is typical of the intricate social and political relations that prevailed there.

After the conflict of 1592–93 Ahmadnagar virtually disappears from the pages of the Portuguese chronicles, but references thereto continue to be found in the documents of the archives of Goa, Lisbon and Simancas, in Spain. Almost all of them are still unedited and, without a few exceptions, have not yet been exploited. We know by local sources that after the death of Burhân II in 1595 the sultanate fell into disarray that prepared its annexation by the Mogul Empire five years later. After the death of Ibrâhîm Nizâm Shâh upon four months of reign, the sultana Chand Bibi, sister of Murtazâ and Burhân II and widow of ‘Alî ‘Âdil Shâh of Bijapur, assumed the regency in the name of his grand-nephew, the infant Bahâdur, sole son of Ibrâhîm. Contrary to what had happened during his regency in Bijapur, she was supported by the Habshi party. The shiite party, for once apparently reinforced by the Deccanies, tried then to seat on the throne a certain Ahmad, son of our famous Shâh Tâhir, presenting him as a forgotten offspring of the Nizâmshâhî dynasty; but the imposture was discovered and the power was theoretically restituted to Chand Bibi, whilst de facto the noblemen shared among them the realm, and the Moguls, under the command of prince Murad, son of Akbar, invaded it.

It was in these circumstances that Chand Bibi changed her policy and resorted to the support of the Shiite party, in order to get rid of the Habshis, her allies of the eve. She also sought the aid of the Portuguese, so reproducing the classic pattern of alignment, viz., shiites with Pardeshis, and the Portuguese in the background. She wrote to the Portuguese viceroy, Dom Francisco da Gama, entreating him to send troops from Chaul to help Faemocão (Fahîm Khân), governor of Konkan, against Abancão (Abhang Khân Zangî), a Habshi who supported another pretender to the throne, Mirân ‘Alî, presented as a son of Burhân I, exiled in Bijapur.

Nevertheless, Dom Francisco da Gama, who was more heedful to the Mogul threat than to the feuds at Ahmadnagar, preferred to sustain discreetly the rebellious Khan, who was apparently successful in containing the Mogul army; ¹⁷¹ he kept beside him an Armenian agent, who assisted him as a political adviser. In one of his letters to the King he even brags of having conceived a plan to poison Shâh Murâd, the son of Akbar who commanded the Mogul forces, ‘with many intelligences, expending a large sum, by means so hidden that nobody ever shall impute it to this State’, i.e., to the Portuguese Estado da Índia. Indeed, no one of the Indo-Persian chroniclers suspected of such contrivance, unanimously ascribing Murâd’s unexpected death, in May 1599, to drunkenness.

At any rate, the murder of Shâh Murâd did not prevent the Mogul conquest of Ahmadnagar: only postponed it, since his brother, Dâniyâl, soon reinforced by his father in person, relieved him. In August 1600, while Chand Bibi, accused by one of the factions of secret understandings with the foe, was lynched by the mob, the Mogul army entered the city, putting an end to the independence of the Sultanate. ¹⁷²

The Other Sultanates

As could be expected, Portuguese sources provide poor information on the inland kingdoms, such as Malwa, Khandesh, Berar and Bidar. Nonetheless, some data on the Reino de Mandou, i.e., Malwa, are to be found in the chronicles that narrate the wars between Gujarat and the Moguls, ¹⁷³ and on the Reino do Mirão, i.e., Khandesh, in Pinto Pereira’s chapters ¹⁷⁴ that deal with the embassy that its ruler sent to the Portuguese viceroy in 1568. The sultanate of Berar is normally called by the Portuguese Reino do Madremaluco, corruption of the dynastic title, ‘Imâdu-l-Mulk, ‘pillar of the kingship’, probably out of paronymy with the Portuguese word madre, ‘mother’, nay with the Persian mâdar, with the same meaning. The writers that narrate the split of the Bahmanid sultanate ascribe a Circassian and Christian origin to the founder of the dynasty, who according to Ferishta was a converted Hindu. ¹⁷⁵ Afterwards they only refer to Berar incidentally, on the occasion of its wars with the neighbours of the Portuguese, Bijapur and Ahmadnagar. As regards Bidar, it is normally called Reino do Verido, ‘kingdom of Barîd’, after the name of the founder of its dynasty, Qâsim Barîd Turk, whom Diogo do Couto and Garcia de Orta say was Hungarian.

Similarly, there are only fleeting mentions of Golconda, before she acquired outlets on the Bay of Bengal, what happened as an aftermath of the victory of Talikota. Even then, the references are scanty, since around the Bay of Bengal there were not official Portuguese settlements, but only informal colonies of adventurers, interlopers, privateers nay pirates, who left virtually no records. ¹⁷⁶ Portuguese texts normally call the king of Golconda Cotamaluco, which roughly transcribes the title of Qutbu-l-Mulk, ‘axle of the kingship’ or ‘Polar Star of the realty’, he originally bore. This is normally interpreted as meaning ‘fortress of the kingdom’, by confusion between the Arabic word qutb, ‘axle, pole’ and the Dravidian, and then Sanskritic, word kotta, ‘stronghold’. Almost all the sources agree that the founder of the dynasty, Sultân Qulî Qutbu-l-Mulk, later Qutb Shâh, though probably of Turcoman ancestry, was of Iranian origin, which explains both the choice of the Shiite faith as state religion from the very beginning of the sultanate and the fact that it was the most persianized kingdom of the whole of India. There is, however, a discrepancy between Portuguese and Indo-Persian writers as to his birthplace, which for the latter is Hamadân but Khurasân for the former. The sole exception is Tomé Pires, who, as we have seen, depicts him as a Deccany convert.

Prior to the battle of Talikota there are very few interesting references to Golconda in Portuguese sources: the relation of its siege by Bijapur forces in 1534, where twelve Portuguese captives fought, bought by Jamshîd Qutb Shâh (r. 1533–50) from the King of Orissa; ¹⁷⁷ some fleeting references while narrating the wars of Asad Khân Lârî; ¹⁷⁸ and two letters of 1548, sent by Tristão de Paiva, ambassador to Vijayanagar, to the viceroy Dom João de Castro, ¹⁷⁹ which show that at that moment the envoys of Golconda, Bidar, Berar, Ahmadnagar and the Portuguese Estado da Índia, fearing the increase of Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Khân’s power, met together in the court of Vijayanagar to contrive any manner of evicting him and seating Miyã ‘Alî Khân on the throne of Bijapur. Curiously, the Habshi captain Dilâwar Khân was also present and promised to further them.

The retreat of Vijayanagar after the defeat of Talikota allowed Golconda to occupy the littoral region of Talingana and to control the harbour of Masulipatnam, which very quickly developed and became a great emporium. Most of the merchants who settled there were Persians. Contemning the Portuguese pretensions, they freely sailed to the Persian Gulf and to the Red Sea without cartazes or safe-conducts. ¹⁸⁰ Thus, they spared the custom duties that the Portuguese were arrogated to exact from any ship rounding the Cape Comorin, with the sole exception of those fitted up in the Coromandel ports. This became a good pretext for Portuguese privateers to infest the adjacent waters. Ibrâhîm Qutb Shâh (r. 1550–81) was therefore compelled to negotiate with the Portuguese authorities, who agreed to grant him the safe-conducts he needed, on condition that he should provide the Portuguese stronghold of Malacca with 3,000 khandis of rice a year. ¹⁸¹ Unfortunately, Portuguese contemporary records do not say anything more about the society of Masulipatnam or of the Qutbshâhî kingdom in general.

However, they afford some data on the presence of Persians in Golconda and the relations between Golconda and Safavid Persia. In 1580 Ibrâhîm Qutb Shâh sent as ambassador to Goa a Persian, Coge Gilão Mali (Khwâja Gîlânî Malik), to plead the cause of Yûsuf Khân, Miyã ‘Alî Khân’s son, pretender to the throne of Bijapur; ¹⁸² but nothing more is said thereabout. Eight years later, a Persian embassy to the Portuguese viceroy, as well as to the three sultans of Golconda, Bijapur and Ahmadnagar, landed in Goa. According to the viceroy ¹⁸³ the envoy, who was not ‘a person of quality’, had bought the charge from the Shâh in order to do business in India; it is probably therefore that we found no other mention of his mission.

As Couto’s chronicle stops in 1599, thereafter it is necessary to go patiently through the archives, searching for documents. We cannot, thus, assure that in Portuguese sources there are no data about the passage of the Persian ambassador Oghzlu Sultân, a relative of Shâh ‘Abbâs (r. 1588–1629), sent by him to Golconda. We know by the History of the Kings of Golconda that he landed in Goa, ¹⁸⁴ where another Persian, Amîr Zainu-d-Dîn Nishapûrî, came as an envoy of Muhammad Quli Qutb Shâh (r. 1580–1611), to greet and escort him to Golconda.

As far as we know, out of the published sources only the travelogue of Jacques de Coutre ¹⁸⁵ contains a few impressions of Golconda, which the author visited in 1614:

They follow the rites of ‘Alî, as the Persians do, wherefore the Turks call them ráfazis, which means heretics, since they do not believe in Muhammad in the same way they do.

 I entered with all my servants into an inn, which they call caravanserai, according with the usage of Persia, and settled there. There are here numerous and very rich Persian merchants, and of all nations. The intramural city is beautiful, built after the Persian manner; and in the middle thereof an abundant river flows.

He notes the presence of a malique tujar, as in Bijapur, and mentions another grandee of the sultanate, whom he calls Mirsá Asmola, which may be a rough transcription of mîr-i-jûmla. We think that the person in question must be Mîr Muhammad Mu’mîn Astarabâdî, who came from Persia in 1581 and some four years later became peshwâ and mîr-i-jûmla of Muhammad Qulî Qutb Shâh, and then of his nephew, son-in-law and successor, Muhammad Qutb Shâh (r. 1611–26). He remained in Golconda till his death in 1625, distinguishing himself as an architect and a poet. ¹⁸⁶

We know by the Indo-Persian chronicles that in Golconda the social cleavages were identical with those we have observed in Bijapur and in Ahmadnagar, though apparently not so sharp; but as Portuguese do not provide information on them, we will not entertain this theme.

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In spite of the specificities of each Sultanate, the general impression that emerges from the sources we could analyze is that of a social typology roughly common to the three sultanates of Ahmadnagar, Bijapur and Golconda. Probably it was the same in Bidar and Berar, but we lack information there. It appears that in our sultanates the Persian presence was much more remarkable than in Gujarat and in Bengal, whose case will be dealt with in the second part of this study. Conversely, the almost total absence of Pathans is noteworthy.

These two facts seem correlative. Gujarat had welcomed many Pathans or Afghans after the downfall of the Afghan Lodi dynasty, discomfited by the Moguls in 1526; and Bengal, conquered by the Afghan horde of Shêr Khân Sûrî in 1539, had fallen under their yoke. Moreover, both Gujarat and, though to a lesser extent, Bengal had received the remains of the Rumi Armadas, sent by the Mameluk and then by the Ottoman Sultans to oust the Portuguese from the Indian Ocean. Therefore, they lacked western mercenaries less than the sultanates of Deccan, which were always clashing among themselves and with Vijayanagar.

It is well known that immigrants of the same origin normally tend to form clusters around some centres, as is the modern case with Hokkien Chinese in Singapore, Cantonese in Java, Italians around New York and Buenos Aires, etc.

Indeed, not all the Iranians that dwelt in Deccan were mercenaries: many were merchants, accountants, civil servants and, thanks to the adherence of the sultanates to the Shiite faith, cadis and masters of religion. As regards the relationship between adoption of Shiite creed and Persian presence, one can wonder which is the cause and which the effect, since on the one hand massive Persian presence encouraged the spread of Shiah, while on the other hand Persian immigrants certainly felt better in the countries where their faith favoured their acceptance and improved their chances of social ascent.

We can also admit that the Deccan sultanates easily accepted to approach Persia and to become her cultural clients, nay her vassals, in order to evade the jeopardy of a Sunni hegemony, effectively exerted by the Mogul Empire, which was nearer and, therefore, appeared more threatening.