Vijayanagara and the Bahmani Kingdom

Vijayanagara was founded in 1336 by the brothers Harihara and Bukka of the Sangama dynasty, guided by the sage Vidyaranya, as a bulwark of the southern kingdoms against the Sultanate's advance. From its granite capital — modern Hampi — the empire commanded the trade routes of the peninsula and grew rich on horses, spices and diamonds.

Foreign travellers were dazzled: Domingo Paes hailed a city 'as large as Rome', and the empire's control of the Arabian Sea horse trade — it paid any price for horses, on which cavalry power depended — was the foundation of its military strength. The nayaka system assigned territorial and military lordships to warrior chiefs in return for tribute and troops.

The empire's zenith came under Krishnadevaraya of the Tuluva dynasty (1509–1529): conqueror of Orissa and Bijapur's fortresses, builder of the Vittala temple with its stone chariot and musical pillars, and himself a Telugu poet whose Amuktamalyada is a classic — his court of eight great poets, the Ashtadiggajas, marks a golden age of Telugu literature. His successors quarrelled, and the Rama Raya regency provoked the sultanates to combine.

The Bahmani kingdom, founded in 1347 by Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah, was Vijayanagara's mirror and rival, with its capital first at Gulbarga, then Bidar. Its great minister Mahmud Gawan reformed administration and built a famous madrasa, but factional strife between Deccani and 'foreign' (Paradesi) nobles broke the kingdom into five Deccan sultanates — Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Bidar and Berar.

In 1565 four of them united and destroyed Vijayanagara at the Battle of Talikota (also called Rakshasa-Tangadi). The city was abandoned to six months of sack and five centuries of ruin — yet Hampi's temples, elephant stables and royal enclosures still testify to what Alauddin Khilji's tribute-takers and the Portuguese horse-traders had built into the most splendid capital of medieval India.