Malik Hasan Bahri

Statesman and general in the Bahmani Sultanate

Malik Hasan Bahri
Malik
Prime Minister of the Bahmani Sultanate
Reign1481 – 1486
PredecessorMahmud Gawan
SuccessorQasim Barid I
Died1486
IssueMalik Ahmad Nizam Shah I

Malik Hasan Bahri or Nizam-ul-Mulk Bahri was a noble of the Bahmani Sultanate who served as the prime minister following the death of Mahmud Gawan on 5 April 1481 until his murder in 1486. He was the leader of the Deccani faction in the conflict between them and the foreigners. In his role, he was the chief coordinator of the plan to topple from power and execute Mahmud Gawan, the foreigner prime minister at the time and Malik Hasan's predecessor.

Biography

According to the contemporary Ferishta, Malik Hasan was originally a Brahmin from Pathri, a town in the Vijayanagara Empire. He originally bore the name of Tima Bhat, and his father was named Bhario. Varying accounts of his true origin explain why his family was in the region; one claims that they were escaping persecution perpetrated by Muslims, while another purports they were fleeing their native land from a famine. In 1422–23, during one of Ahmad Shah I Wali's campaigns against Vijayanagara, he was taken captive by the sultan and brought up to Islam, being given his name Malik Hasan Bahri.[1][2][3] Conscripted as a military slave of the Bahmani Sultanate, he was simultaneously given additional education to complement his prior schooling, where he was, at the behest of Sultan Alau'd-din Ahmad Shah, sent to an institution with then prince Humayun Shah, and taught Persian.[1][3] Humayun Shah's reported inability to properly pronounce Malik Hasan's surname led to his adoption of the surname "Bahri".[3] He was, during the reign of Muhammad Shah III starting in 1463, made a servant of the sultan and later an amir with a rank giving him charge of 2,000 horses.[4]

In 1471, Malik Hasan led conquests in Orissa as a commander of the Bahmani army;[5] he had been sent by the sultan to sway the succession conflict in the Gajapati Empire between Hamvira Deva and Purushottama Deva in the sultanate's favour, seeking to support the former, and while in the country seized control of and annexed the key forts of Kondaveedu and Rajahmundry.[6] Through the spoils of his conquests, he was made the tarafdar (provincial governor) of Telangana,[7][2] and his notoriety was greatly increased for his role in the campaign,[8] with him receiving the title of Nizam-ul-Mulk.[9] He would rule as the provincial governor until the taraf's division with the invasion of the Gajapatis in 1478, and was subsequently made governor of the eastern of the two new provinces, Rajamundry. The lessened significance of his new position angered him, and was the origin of his hatred for Mahmud Gawan, who he, as the leader of the opposing Deccani faction, successfully plotted to have killed in 1481.[10][11] Following his execution, Malik Hasan adopted the role of prime minister, and the title of Peshwa was bestowed upon him.[12][13]

Bahmani sultan Muhammad III died a year later in 1482, and Malik Hasan was made the sole regent and prime minister of the Deccani-favouring Mahmood Shah, then only twelve years old.[14][15][16] Later that year, Yusuf Adil Shah was invited by him to Bidar to assist in the administration of the sultanate. Soon after his arrival however, he fled due to his sight of the massacre being committed of Turks living in the city, and a triumvirate regency council was installed, with Nizam-ul-Mulk ruling as prime minister.[17] Upon his acceptance of his new role, he became known as Malik Naib.[18] Malik Hasan's success in seizing the role of prime minister led Yusuf to take control of the taraf of Bijapur, where he would later establish a sultanate on the province's territory.[19]

In 1486, four years into Malik Hasan's ministership, in which factional relations had been relatively sound, a conspiracy akin to the one he had sown against Mahmud Gawan was developed against him: following the death of the provincial governor of Warangal, a Bahmani noble temporarily seized control of both Bahmani provinces comprising Telangana; Malik Hasan successfully made the noble relinquish control of his captured territory, but while away from Bidar, a conspiracy against him was formed, upon which the sultan was convinced to issue a decree to have Malik Hasan put to death. Days later, he was murdered by one of his own nobles at Bidar.[17][20]

Following his death, conflict among the nobles of the sultanate persisted; Malik Hasan's son Ahmad Bahri,[a] from his jagir of Junnar, took upon his father's title of Nizam-ul-Mulk in 1486 and forcibly increased his autonomy and territorial control by subduing nearby forts nominally under Bahmani control but held by Marathas. He subsequently repelled attempts by the central authority to thwart his increase in power,[25] achieving de facto independence from the Bahmani Sultanate and establishing the Ahmadnagar Sultanate.[8] Developments in Bidar occurred as well after Malik Hasan's death, where he was succeeded by the foreigner Qasim Barid I as prime minister, who further estranged Ahmad and the Deccanis.[19]

References

Notes

  1. ^ An alternative, but generally held to be false[21][22] theory states that Ahmad was rather the son of the sultan and a Hindu woman of royal lineage, who after an astrological map had predicted his future aptitude, was given into the care of Malik Hasan, then supposedly residing far from the capital in Maharashtra.[23] However, this theory is contradictory to the one presented by Ferishta, and is proved false by a contemporary letter which uses Ahmad's full name, Malik Ahmad Nizam-ul-Mulk b. Malik Naib.[24]

Citations

  1. ^ a b Fischel 2020, pp. 71–72.
  2. ^ a b Flatt 2019, p. 104.
  3. ^ a b c Shyam 1966, p. 13.
  4. ^ Shyam 1966, pp. 13–14.
  5. ^ Haig 1925, p. 415.
  6. ^ Fischel 2020, p. 51.
  7. ^ Haig 1925, p. 416.
  8. ^ a b Mitchell & Zebrowski 1999, p. 10.
  9. ^ Sherwani 1973, p. 226.
  10. ^ Haig 1925, pp. 417–418.
  11. ^ Sherwani 1973, p. 192.
  12. ^ Shyam 1966, p. 17.
  13. ^ Sherwani 1946, p. 342.
  14. ^ Sherwani 1946, pp. 361.
  15. ^ Haig 1925, pp. 421–422.
  16. ^ Sherwani 1973, p. 194.
  17. ^ a b Sherwani 1946, pp. 361–365.
  18. ^ Haig 1925, p. 421.
  19. ^ a b Fischel 2020, p. 67.
  20. ^ Sherwani 1973, p. 195.
  21. ^ Mitchell & Zebrowski 1999, p. 10 "Thereupon his [Malik Hasan] son, Ahmad Nizam al-Mulk"
  22. ^ Sherwani 1946, pp. 331–332 "Nizamu'l Mulk, therefore, with a pang in his heart, begged the king to allow him to appoint his son Malik Ahmad"
  23. ^ Fischel 2020, p. 71.
  24. ^ Fischel 2020, p. 98 n. 29.
  25. ^ Sherwani 1946, pp. 368–369.

Sources

  • Fischel, Roy S. (2020). Local States in an Imperial World: Identity, Society and Politics in the Early Modern Deccan. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474436090.
  • Flatt, Emma J. (2019). The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates: Living Well in the Persian Cosmopolis. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108481939.
  • Haig, Wolseley (1925). Cambridge History Of India Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press.
  • Mitchell, George; Zebrowski, Mark (1999). Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (The New Cambridge History of India Vol. I:7). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56321-6.
  • Sherwani, Haroon Khan (1946). The Bahmanis of the Deccan – An Objective Study. Krishnavas International Printers, Hyderabad Deccan. OCLC 3971780.
  • Sherwani, Haroon Khan (1973). History of Medieval Deccan (1295–1724) : Volume I. Government of Andhra Pradesh. p. 226.
  • Shyam, Radhey (1966). The Kingdom of Ahmadnagar. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 9788120826519.