Mahmud Gawan: Bahmani Wazir, Reforms and the Bidar Madrasa

Overview

Mahmud Gawan (1411 to 1481) was a Persian statesman who served the Bahmani Sultanate as chief minister from the reign of Humayun Shah and ruled it in fact as prime minister from 1466 until his execution on 5 April 1481. Born Imad-ud‑din Mahmud in the village of Gawan in Gilan, in northern Persia, he reached the Deccan in 1453 as a horse merchant and rose to become the most powerful man in the kingdom. Under him the Bahmani Sultanate reached its greatest extent, stretching from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal.

Bahmani Sultanate before Mahmud Gawan

Bidar, the Noble Factions and the Powerful Tarafdars

The Bahmani Sultanate was founded in 1347 in a rebellion against Muhammad bin Tughlaq, with its first capital at Gulbarga (Hasanabad). Ahmad Shah I moved the capital to Bidar, where rebuilding of the fort began in 1429. The kingdom fought Vijayanagara across the Tungabhadra for most of its life.

Two features of this inheritance shaped Gawan's years. First, later sultans recruited Persians and other foreigners to the court and the army, which produced a long rivalry with the nobles whose families had settled in the Deccan earlier. Second, the great provincial governors, the tarafdars, held large territories and armies and could act almost as independent rulers. Both features explain why Gawan's reforms were needed and why they made him enemies.

Career of Mahmud Gawan from Dabhol to the Prime Ministership

Arrival in 1453 and Rise under Humayun Shah

Mahmud left Gilan before 1440 after court intrigues undermined his family. He then travelled for more than a decade through Anatolia, Egypt and Syria as a merchant in horses and other goods, and studied in Cairo and Damascus. He declined offers of ministerial posts in Khurasan and Iraq. In 1453, aged 42, he landed at the port of Dabhol hoping to sell horses to the Bahmani court, and went on to Bidar, where Sultan Ahmad Shah II made him a high-ranking noble.

He was given command of 1,000 cavalry, and in 1457 he led an elite cavalry formation in putting down a minor rebellion. When Humayun Shah came to the throne in 1458, he made Gawan chief minister (Wakil-us-Sultanat), gave him control of military affairs and the governorship of the taraf of Bijapur, and conferred the title Malik-ut-Tujjar, "Prince of Merchants".

Timeline. 1411: Born in Gilan. 1453: Lands at Dabhol and goes to Bidar. 1458: Chief minister under Humayun Shah. 1461: Regent in a council of three. 1466: Prime minister with full control. 1469: Konkan campaign, to 1472. 1472: Goa taken and the madrasa built. 1473: Reform into eight tarafs. 1481: Executed on 5 April.

The Regency Council and the Prime Ministership of 1466

Humayun Shah died in 1461 and his eight-year-old son Nizam Shah succeeded him. A council of three regents governed: Gawan, the queen mother Makhduma-e-Jahan Nargis Begum, and a noble named Jahan Turk. Their policy of balancing both noble factions and acting together kept the kingdom stable. Nizam Shah died in 1463 and was followed by his younger brother Muhammad Shah III Lashkari, who was also a child.

The council broke up in 1466 when the queen mother had Jahan Turk killed, after he had sent Gawan away to the frontier provinces and then ruled in his absence. The queen mother withdrew from politics, and Gawan was entrusted with the supervision of all the tarafs and given the rank of prime minister. For the next 15 years the sultan reigned and Gawan governed.

Table 1. The Bahmani sultans of Gawan's career and his position under each
Sultan Reign Position of Mahmud Gawan
Ahmad Shah II 1436 to 1458 Noble with a cavalry command from 1453
Humayun Shah 1458 to 1461 Chief minister, military affairs, taraf of Bijapur
Nizam Shah 1461 to 1463 One of three regents
Muhammad Shah III Lashkari 1463 to 1482 Regent, then prime minister and de facto ruler from 1466

Campaigns and Territorial Expansion under Mahmud Gawan

Defence against the Gajapatis and Malwa

The regents faced attack as soon as a child sat on the throne. The Gajapati king of Orissa, Kapilendra Deva, invaded and came within ten miles (about 16 km) of Bidar before the regency army, with the young sultan present, drove him back. In 1462 Mahmud Khalji of Malwa, with the ruler of Khandesh, invaded and defeated the Bahmani army. The court withdrew for a time to the second capital, Firozabad, and Khalji besieged Bidar for 17 days before the approach of Gujarat's ruler Mahmud Begada forced him to withdraw. Khalji came again the following year and was again repelled.

A third Malwa invasion was expected in 1468. Gawan led forces near Khandesh in alliance with Gujarat, and the contest over Kherla ended with the fort passing to Malwa while the Bahmani kept all its former lands. The settlement ended the quarrel: Gawan and Mahmud Khalji exchanged envoys from about 1468, and Gujarat remained a close ally.

Western Conquests: Konkan, Dabhol, Goa and Belgaum

The great gains came against Vijayanagara. In 1469 Gawan began a campaign that took the whole Konkan and continued to 1472. Its aim was to take the autonomous hill and sea forts that sheltered piracy and disturbed the horse trade, on which every Deccan army depended. In February 1472 he captured Goa, one of the most prosperous ports of the Vijayanagara kingdom. A month later the Vijayanagara ruler Virupaksha tried to retake Goa and was turned back by an army led by Gawan and Muhammad Shah III.

Belgaum fell soon after. Gawan's forces breached its defences with mines and other explosives, and the raja kept his position as overseer of the fort after agreeing to annexation. With Goa added to the old Bahmani port of Dabhol, the sultanate now held the chief harbours of the western coast and a share of their sea trade.

Map of the Deccan with the Godavari, Krishna, Tungabhadra and Bhima rivers. Bahmani centres: Bidar, the capital; Gulbarga, the old capital; Bijapur, Gawan's taraf from 1458; Daulatabad, Yusuf Adil Shah's post in 1481; Ellichpur in Berar. Western ports and conquests: Chaul and Dabhol ports, Goa taken in 1472, Belgaum taken with mines. Eastern reach: Kondavidu, the revolt of 1475; Rajahmundry; Warangal. Rivals: Vijayanagara at Hampi, the Gajapati kings of Orissa at Cuttack, Malwa at Mandu, Khandesh at Burhanpur.

Eastern Coast and the Greatest Extent of the Sultanate

In the east the Bahmani annexed the easternmost portion of Andhra, so that by the 1470s the kingdom touched both coasts. On the northern frontier Gawan made Khandesh a protectorate.

Other campaigns of the same years were the sultan's own, fought while Gawan was minister. In 1475 a Bahmani officer, Bhimraj, rebelled at Kondavidu with the help of the Gajapatis and Telangana chiefs, and the sultan defeated them. In 1478 Muhammad Shah III invaded Orissa and accepted the homage of the Gajapati king Purushottama Deva, the king to whom the forged letter of 1481 was later said to be addressed.

Administrative Reforms of Mahmud Gawan in 1473

Eight Tarafs Instead of Four

The conquests created a problem of government. The territory had grown, and the old provinces, called tarafs, were governed by tarafdars (governors) who commanded troops and revenue. In 1473 Gawan reorganised the tarafs out of both old and new territory, raising their number from four to eight. Each taraf was smaller than before, so that no one governor held a large block of the kingdom. The tarafs were also shared equally between the Deccani and the foreign nobles, which was meant to remove a cause of the factional quarrel.

Table 2. The taraf reform of 1473
Feature Before the 1473 reform After the 1473 reform
Number of tarafs Four Eight
Size of a governor's charge Large Smaller, easier to supervise
Share between factions Contested Divided equally between Deccanis and foreigners
Diagram. Before 1473: Four large tarafs. After 1473: Eight smaller tarafs, shared equally between Deccani and Afaqi governors. Below, three further limits: One fort per governor, fixed payments and obligations, and measured agricultural land.

Limits on the Nobles: One Fort, Fixed Obligations and Measured Land

Gawan also changed the terms on which nobles served. The payments and obligations of the nobles were set and standardised, and a provincial governor was allowed to hold the command of only one fort in his taraf. In the same period standard measurements and valuations were introduced for agricultural land, so that revenue could be assessed on measured fields rather than estimated.

Together these steps aimed at binding the governors to the throne. They also curtailed the independence of both noble factions, and the nobles whose power was reduced did not forgive the minister. The reforms explain his political isolation in the 1470s, which ended in the plot against him.

Madrasa of Mahmud Gawan at Bidar

Plan and Architecture of the Madrasa

The Madrasa of Mahmud Gawan stands in the old town of Bidar, between the Chowbara (clock tower) and the fort. It was completed in 1472 and is said to have been built with Gawan's own money. It was planned as a residential university on the lines of the madrasas of Khurasan.

The building has three storeys of identical structure around an open courtyard, with a mosque, library, laboratories, lecture halls and dormitories. It was entered from the east by a large gateway, in front of which stood two tall minarets. Its walls were faced with glazed tiles of different colours, now seen in fragments, and a broad frieze of Quranic verses in coloured letters ran across the front. The arches and coloured tiles recall Timurid Central Asia, and the minaret and domes recall Mamluk Egypt, which makes the building a clear example of Persianate influence on the Deccan.

Schematic plan, not to scale. An open courtyard with three storeys of rooms around it: The mosque, the library, lecture halls, laboratories and dormitories. The entrance gate is on the east, with two minarets in front of it. The walls were faced with glazed tiles, and a frieze of Quranic verses ran across the front.

Teaching, Library and Later History

The madrasa taught Arabic and Persian, theology, philosophy, astronomy and mathematics. Education, board and lodging were free, and at any time the college supported over 500 students, some of them from outside India. Its library held about 3,000 manuscripts, a large collection for the time; what became of it is not known.

The building was damaged in the seventeenth century, when gunpowder stored in it exploded, and a lightning strike added to the ruin; it was later neglected. The Archaeological Survey of India has looked after it since 1914, and it is a centrally protected monument. The Bahmani and Barid Shahi monuments of Bidar form part of India's entry on the UNESCO tentative list, "Monuments and Forts of the Deccan Sultanate", submitted in 2014.

Riyazul-Insha, Scholars and Foreign Contacts of Mahmud Gawan

Gawan's Letters and Correspondents

Gawan was a poet and prose writer, and 148 of his letters survive in a collection called the Riyazul-Insha. They show a prime minister in regular contact with the rulers and scholars of the Islamic world. Mehmed II of the Ottomans, the Timurid rulers Abu Said Mirza and Husayn Bayqara, and the Mamluk sultan Qaitbay appear among his correspondents, and the poet Jami wrote to him as well. He invited scholars such as Jalal al‑Din Davani and Sharaf al‑Din Ali Yazdi to the Deccan.

These contacts made the Bahmani kingdom known in the western Islamic world and strengthened the Persian character of its court. They also fed the resentment of local nobles who saw the foreign scholars and officers as favoured outsiders.

Deccani-Afaqi Conflict and the Execution of Mahmud Gawan

Deccanis and Afaqis: Two Factions at Court

The Bahmani court was divided between two groups. The Deccanis were Muslims of local origin, descended from earlier settlers from northern India, who believed that office and patronage should belong to them. The Afaqis, also called Gharibs ("strangers"), were newcomers from Persia, Central Asia and the west, chiefly Shia and Persian-speaking. Gawan, a Persian who was likely Shia himself, belonged to the Afaqi group.

Table 3. Deccanis and Afaqis compared
Point Deccanis Afaqis (Gharibs)
Origin Local, descended from settlers from the north Foreign newcomers from the west
Religious leaning Mostly Sunni Mostly Shia
Language of the court circle Dakhni Persian
Basis of their position Local birth and long settlement in the Deccan Recruitment by the sultans to the court and the army

The regency of 1461 to 1466 kept the quarrel under control by balancing both groups. After 1473 the reforms hurt both factions, and the rift widened.

The Forged Letter and the Execution on 5 April 1481

Deccani nobles plotted against Gawan. The plot was helped by the absence of Yusuf Adil Shah, an Afaqi leader and one of Gawan's closest friends, who was then governor of Daulatabad and would have warned him. The conspirators produced a letter that appeared to be in Gawan's hand, addressed to Purushottama Deva of Orissa, saying that the people were discontented with the sultan and inviting the Gajapati king to invade.

Muhammad Shah III did not accept that the letter was forged and, partly because he was drunk, ordered Gawan's execution on 5 April 1481. The sultan soon regretted it and died on 26 March 1482. Malik Hasan Bahri (Nizam-ul‑Mulk), the leader of the Deccani party and one of the chief planners of the plot, followed Gawan as prime minister. Gawan was buried in a small tomb that did not match his rank.

Decline of the Bahmani Sultanate after 1481

From Mahmud Shah II to the Five Successor Sultanates

The sultanate fell into disorder after Gawan's death. The Deccani party, led by Nizam-ul‑Mulk, carried out a massacre of the Shia foreigners at Bidar. The next sultan, Mahmud Shah Bahmani II, was the last Bahmani ruler to have real power. In 1490 three governors, Malik Ahmad Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar, Yusuf Adil Shah of Bijapur and Fathullah Imad-ul‑Mulk of Berar, asserted their independence, and Qasim Barid at Bidar followed in 1492. Golconda became independent in 1518, and the later Bahmani sultans were puppets under the Barid Shahi ministers until the kingdom was formally dissolved in 1527.

Two of the founders are connected with Gawan. The founder of the Nizam Shahi line was the son of Malik Hasan Bahri, the Deccani leader behind the plot, and Yusuf Adil Shah was likely a former Georgian slave of Gawan's.

Table 4. The five successor states of the Bahmani Sultanate
Successor state Founder Year of independence
Bijapur (Adil Shahi) Yusuf Adil Shah 1490
Ahmadnagar (Nizam Shahi) Malik Ahmad Nizam Shah 1490
Berar (Imad Shahi) Fathullah Imad-ul‑Mulk 1490
Bidar (Barid Shahi) Qasim Barid I 1492
Golconda (Qutb Shahi) Sultan Quli Qutb-ul‑Mulk 1518

Four of these states, all except Berar, later combined to defeat Vijayanagara at Talikota in 1565.

Mahmud Gawan for UPSC Prelims and Mains

Exam Pointers and Common Traps on Mahmud Gawan

Mahmud Gawan belongs to General Studies Paper I, medieval Indian history, and to state PCS papers on the Deccan. The points that recur are the office and dates (prime minister from 1466 to 1481), the reform of the tarafs from four to eight, the capture of Goa in 1472, the Bidar madrasa, the Deccani-Afaqi rivalry, the forged letter and the five successor states.

Previous Year UPSC‑CSE Questions

Each question is explained option by option.

  1. UPSC Prelims 2022With reference to Indian history, consider the following statements :
    1. The Dutch established their factories/warehouses on the east coast on lands granted to them by Gajapati rulers.
    2. Alfonso de Albuquerque captured Goa from the Bijapur Sultanate.
    3. The English East India Company established a factory at Madras on a plot of land leased from a representative of the Vijayanagara empire.

    Which of the statements given above are correct ?

    1. a 1 and 2 only
    2. b 2 and 3 only
    3. c 1 and 3 only
    4. d 1, 2 and 3
    How to approach this Prelims question

    Question type: Multiple statements

    Approach: Test each statement on its own.

    • Statement 2 is correct: Goa was taken by the Bahmani in 1472, passed to the Adil Shahi kingdom of Bijapur after 1490, and the Portuguese under Albuquerque took it from Bijapur in 1510.
    • Statement 3 is correct: In 1639 the English obtained the strip of land that became Madras on a lease from Damarla Venkatadri Nayaka, a local governor under the Vijayanagara ruler at Chandragiri.
    • Statement 1 is incorrect: The Dutch factory and fort at Pulicat on the east coast were permitted in the reign of Venkata II of Vijayanagara, not by Gajapati rulers.

    So only statements 2 and 3 hold.

    Trap to watch: The Gajapatis did rule the Orissa and Andhra coast earlier, which makes statement 1 sound plausible; the Dutch arrived after their power on that coast had ended.

    Why each option is right or wrong:

    • (a) 1 and 2 only: Wrong. Statement 1 is incorrect, so an option that includes it fails.
    • (b) 2 and 3 only: Correct. Albuquerque took Goa from Bijapur, and the Madras land was leased from a Vijayanagara governor.
    • (c) 1 and 3 only: Wrong. It includes the incorrect statement 1 and leaves out the correct statement 2.
    • (d) 1, 2 and 3: Wrong. Statement 1 is incorrect, so all three cannot be correct.

    Answer: (b) 2 and 3 only. Goa was a Bijapur possession in 1510, and Madras was leased under Vijayanagara authority.

Sources

Editorial Disclaimer

This article draws on the current NCERT textbooks, the Archaeological Survey of India, the Bidar district administration and the other sources listed under Sources.

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