Social History of Deccan by Eaton (Pg59-77)

 This chapter is related to Mahmud Gawan and his whole history.

 In 1453, Persian civilization carried to the South Asia and there entered a high-born
Iranian merchant named Mahmud Gawan.
 Hailing from an aristocratic family of northern Iran, Gawan himself represented the most
refined and cosmopolitan vision of contemporary Persian culture.
 Gawan oversaw the off-loading of the consignments he had brought with him from Iran
to India: silken fabrics, Turkish and Ethiopian slaves, pearls, jewels, and Arabian horses.
He knew that all of these goods, especially the last, would fetch fine prices along the
ports of the Konkan coast.
 There was a high demand of unites of mounted archers and because of the revolt of
Bahmanis against North India the horses couldn’t be brought into Deccan from Central
Asia, and hence they were imported from across the Arabian Sea, and Gawan did that for
them.
 Gawan got in touch with Sultan Ahmed II Bahmani, who welcomed the newcomer just
because of prospects of acquiring fine Arabian warhorses, but because Persian talent was
in demand after the Bahmani’s revolt.
 Persian poet couldn’t come because of a storm.
 Annually, Firuz sent ships from Konkani seaports to find and recruit to the Bahmani
court the brightest stars of the Persian world.5 The pace of immigration gathered even
more momentum during the reigns of Firuz’s two successors, his brother Ahmad and the
latter’s son Ala al-Din.
 Many Persians have given their services at prominent positions in the Bahmani Sultanate.
Some names are:
1. Dilawar Khan Afghan
2. Quli Sultan Changezi
3. Mahmud Gawan Gilani
 Mahmud Gawan’s own career exhibits the entire range of motives for mobile Iranians to
come to the Deccan. In addition to “pull” factors such as his desire to sell horses to the
Bahmani court and to take blessings from that kingdom’s leading shaikh, “push” factors
 were also involved. Born into a family of aristocrats who had served as ministers to a
small kingdom in Gilan (on the southwestern shores of the Caspian Sea)
 When he reached Dabhol’s harbor in 1453, he brought with him, in addition to his
consignment of goods and horses, a sum of 40,000 silver coins (lari) for purposes of
investment.
 The Bahmanis changed their capital from Daulatabad to Gulbarga, after the revolt. There
were murders and fights and finally Sultan Ahmad I transferred the capital to Bidar and
occupied the heart of Deccan Plateau.
 Bidar was an imposing imperial center and was an ideal capital to start off. The new
capital consisted of a city, a fort, and within the latter, a citadel.
 Architecturally, Ahmad I’s palaces clearly reflect the influence of Timur, whose capital at
Samarqand projected an image of awesome splendor and might. influenced by the more
sweeping vision of Timurid Samarqand and Herat, built structures reaching a height of
over 100 feet. Timurid influence is especially clear in the entrance to the citadel’s Royal
Chamber, whose tall arches (thirty-five feet) and graceful spandrels with lion and sun
motifs recall Timur’s own Aq Saray palace.
 Gawan was given a noble rank of 100. In 1457 the sultan placed him at the head of a
squadron of royal cavalry and sent him to the fort of Nalgonda, a Bahmani possession in
Telangana, where he successfully suppressed a minor rebellion. The following year,
Gawan’s fortunes soared higher when Ahmad II’s successor, Sultan Humayun, presented
him with a golden cap and belt and appointed him chief minister (wakil-i sultanat) with
the title Prince of Merchants (malik al-tujjar).
 He later on was promoted by the widow of the Sultan as the general supervisor of all
Bahmani provinces and a Chief Minister with 2000 Turkish troops.
 In the next 23-years he kept in touch with poets, scholars, and princes of the Persian
speaking world. He was also in touch with Sultan’s of Iraq and Egypt.
 He invited many great scholars and poets to settle in Bidar, whereas his greatest legacy is
Bidar’s college and madarsa.
 The category “Deccani” was similarly both political and socio-cultural. The term
generally referred to families descended from those Muslims – many of them of part-
 Turkish ancestry – who had migrated down to Daulatabad in 1327, when Sultan
Muhammad bin Tughluq declared that city the Tughluq empire’s new co-capital.
 Relations between the two factions reached their lowest point in 1447, when a mixed
force marched to subdue local rebels in the Sahyadri Mountains.
 When Gawan took control as the chief minister the political atmosphere was quite
poisoned. He divided governorship b/w the eight states equally and curbed the power of
both Westerners and Decani nobles by reducing the size of their states.
 Gawan’s protracted expedition, which lasted from 1469 to 1472, thus aimed at subduing
both the hill-forts and the sea forts from which local chieftains had been harassing
strategic trade routes. As he realized the importance and problems that trade entails as
being a merchant himself in the past.
 His first conquest was Raingna, located in the Savantwadi region some twenty-five miles
north of Goa (mid-July 1470), followed by Machal, a large fort near Vishalgarh further
north (January 1471), and finally, Sangameshwar (December 1471).
 The raja of Vijayanagara persuaded Parketa, the chief of Belgaum, to try to retake Goa.
In response, Gawan subjected the fort of Belgaum to a siege that was remarkable on two
counts. First, it saw the earliest recorded use of gunpowder in the Deccan. And second,
rather than punish the defeated Parketa in any way, Gawan made him an amir,
presumably leaving him in charge of the Belgaum fort.
 As Gawan became successful it was good for the westerners and the Decanis started
becoming envious and they didn’t want him to succeed. They wrote a fake letter to the
Raja of Orissa inviting him to invade the Bahmani territory and share the spoils. This was
done by the conspiratrs. When Sultan Muhammad III got to know about that he was
incited and summoned him to the court.
 When shown the document with his own seal affixed, a shocked Gawan pleaded
innocence, which the sultan merely ignored. Standing up and turning to leave, he ordered
his executioner to do his work.
 That night, April 5, 1481, a waxing quarter moon set over the Deccan skies, tracing a
kingdom that was already waning, and about to be totally eclipsed. When he realized
what he had foolishly done, Sultan Muhammad III, consumed with remorse, fell into a
 deep melancholy from which he never recovered. He let his generals disperse with their
armies, while he himself – unwilling even to reside in the capital – retired to Firuzabad.
 The Bahmani also married woman outside the sultanate of other rulers.
 Apart from horses, textile was traded vastly. Satin, taffeta, and dungaree were some of
the other woven fabrics produced in the Deccan and exported from Konkani ports. The
bulk of the Deccan’s textile goods went to Egypt.
 Yet even while these global linkages were being forged, at home the Westerner–Deccani
conflict was tearing apart the Bahmanis’ social and political fabric.
 The Decanis and Westerners had a unique refined class. They both were legitimate in
their own way hence the only way to balance them politically was placing representatives
of the two classes in the same districts or sending them on joint military expeditions.