History of the Bahmani Sultanate
The Bahmani Sultanate, or Bahmani Empire, was a Muslim state of the Deccan Plateau in southern India between 1347 and 1527 and was one of the great medieval kingdoms. It occupied the North Deccan region to the river Krishna. Beginning
Zafar Khan, the founder of the Bahmani Sultanate, was an Afghan, or Turk. According to the historian Ferishta, he was of Afghan birth. According to an unverified founding myth, Zafar Khan had earlier been a servant or slave of a Brahmin ruler named Gangu (hence the name Hasan Gangu), who had educated Zafar in Hinduism and made him a general in his army. Before the establishment of his kingdom, he was Governor of Deccan and a commander on behalf of Tughlaq. On 3 August 1347, the elderly Afghan, Nazir Uddin Ismail Shah (Ismail Mukh) who had revolted against the Delhi Sultanate, voluntarily stepped down in favour of Zafar Khan, a native of Delhi. His revolt was successful, and he established an independent state on the Deccan within the Delhi Sultanate's southern provinces with its headquarters at Hasanabad (Gulbarga) and all his coins were minted at Hasanabad. The new sultanate included parts of the modern states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Telangana. It vied for control of the Deccan with the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire to the south. The Bahmani capital was Ahsanabad (Gulbarga) between 1347 and 1425, when it was moved to Muhammadabad (Bidar). The sultanate reached the peak of its power during the vizierate (1466–1481) of Mahmud Gawan. 