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‘Kiss My Foot,’ Said the King: Firearms, Diplomacy, and the Battle for Raichur, 1520

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2009

RICHARD M. EATON
RICHARD M. EATON*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The little-known Battle for Raichur (1520), waged between Krishna Raya of Vijayanagara and Sultan Isma'il ‘Adil Shah of Bijapur, saw a number of firsts in South Asian history: the earliest significant appearance of cannon—whether used offensively as field artillery, or used defensively on the battlements of forts—the earliest known appearance of matchlock firearms, and the first significant use of European mercenaries. It followed the merging of new gunpowder technologies after engagements between Portuguese and Ottoman navies off the Konkan coast. Notably, the side that lost the battle, Bijapur, had the superior firepower. The essay also explores the extraordinary round of diplomacy that followed the battle and the humiliating demands Krishna Raya imposed on the defeated sultan. These demands, and the military and diplomatic manoeuvres that accompanied them, likely sowed the seeds for Vijayanagara's spectacular defeat and destruction forty-five years later, at the Battle of Talikota.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 289 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 This essay stems from an ongoing collaboration between the author and Phillip B. Wagoner, focusing on the architecture of the contested sites in the sixteenth-century Deccan.

2 See Roberts, Michael, “The Military Revolution, 1560–1660,” in his Essays in Swedish History (London, 1966), pp. 195–225Google Scholar; Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution: Military Innovations and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1988)Google Scholar; McNeill, William H., The Age of Gunpowder Empires (Washington DC, 1989), pp. 27–40Google Scholar; Hellie, Richard, “Warfare, Changing Military Technology, and the Evolution of Muscovite Society,” in Lynn, John A., ed., Tools of War: Instruments, Ideas, and Institutions of Warfare, 1445–1871 (Urbana, 1990), pp. 74–99Google Scholar; Eltis, David, The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-century Europe (London, 1995)Google Scholar; Hall, Bert S., Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics (Baltimore, 1997), pp. 201–35Google Scholar; Black, Jeremy, War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of Continents, 1450–2000 (New Haven, 1998)Google Scholar.

3 For India, see Khan, Iqtidar Alam, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India (New Delhi, 2004)Google Scholar, and Gommans, Jos, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700 (New York, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See McNeill, William H., The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago, 1982)Google Scholar; Downing, Brian M., The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, 1992)Google Scholar; Chase, Kenneth, Firearms: a Global History to 1700 (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Agoston, Gabor, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, 2005)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the theme as it relates to South Asia, see Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, “The Kagemusha effect: the Portuguese, Firearms and the State in Early Modern South India,” in Moyen Orient & Ocean Indien 4 (1987), pp. 97–123Google Scholar.

5 Joshi, P. M., “The Raichur Doab in Deccan History—Re-interpretation of a Struggle,” in Journal of Indian History 36 (1958), pp. 379–96Google Scholar.

6 Battuta, Ibn, The Rehla of Ibn Battuta, trans. Husain, Mahdi (Baroda, 1953), p. 96Google Scholar; Barani, Zia al-Din, Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi, in The History of India as Told by its Own Historians, ed. and trans. Elliot, H. M. and Dowson, John (Allahabad, 1964), p. 3:245Google Scholar. ‘Abd al-Malik ‘Isami, Futuhu's Salatin, ed. and trans. Agha Mahdi Husain (London, 1967), p. 3:902.

7 Vijayanagara's kings did achieve a few successes in the disputed region. In 1362, 1436, and 1443 their forces briefly seized Mudgal, which is located in the Doab some sixty miles west of Raichur city. On each occasion, however, the fort was soon recovered by Bahmani authorities. A. A. Kadiri, “Bahmani Inscriptions from Raichur District,” Epigraphia Indica, Arabic and Persian Supplement (1962), pp. 54–55.

8 Literary evidence suggests that during the second of his three campaigns against Vijayanagara, Sultan Firuz had forced Harihara II to make annual tributes to the Bahmanis. A 1444 Sanskrit inscription at Bidar confirms that one of Harihara's successors, Deva Raya II, was paying tribute to the Bahmani sultan, Ahmad Shah I. Ibid., pp. 54–55.

9 In the course of their Deccan campaigns, ‘Ala al-Din Khalaji and Muhammad bin Tughluq had brought with them new siege technology, including extensive groundworks, earthen battlements (pashib), mines, wooden siege towers, mangonels, and counterweight trebuchets. The Tughluqs, especially, were great fort builders. At sites like Tughluqabad, in Delhi, one sees their distinctive architectural features: massive projecting buttresses, merlons, turrets, and crenellations. Such features quickly diffused to the Deccan, as at Daulatabad, where ramparts were replaced with a double line in lime-mortar masonry, round bastions, and turrets. The Bahmani rulers continued these traditions in such major forts as Gulbarga, Firuzabad, and Bidar. Gommans, Mughal Warfare, pp. 141–44.

10 Some modern historians have referred to this group as afaqi or ‘ajami. Contemporary sources, however, call them gharbian (“Westerners”), or sometimes ghariban (“foreigners”).

11 Two inscriptions of Raichur dated 1515, one on an unidentified mosque and the other on a bastion of the outer wall, record the names of both Sultan Mahmud Bahmani and Isma'il ‘Adil Khan, Bijapur's effective sultan. K. M. Ahmad, “Inscriptions of Raichur in the Hyderabad Museum,” Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1939–40), p. 14, 16. But it was not until 1538, after the last nominal Bahmani sovereign had sailed off on a pilgrimage to Mecca from which he never returned, that the fourth of Bijapur's rulers, Ibrahim, styled himself ‘sultan’.

12 de Bulhão Pato, R. A. and Lopes de Mendonca, H. (eds.), Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque eguidas e documentos que as elucidam (Lisbon, 1884), p. 1:28Google Scholar. Cited in Augusta Lima Cruz, Maria, “Notes on Portuguese Relations with Vijayanagara, 1500–1565,” Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies 2 (1995), p. 21Google Scholar.

13 As the viceroy cynically wrote to Yusuf ‘Adil Khan's successor, Isma'il Khan of Bijapur, “I shall be ever your friend, and I will assist you against the King of Deccan [Isma'il's nominal overlord, Sultan Mahmud Bahmani], and against your enemies; and I will cause all the horses that arrive here to be carried to your stations and your marts, in order that you may have possession of them.” Walter de Gray Birch, trans, Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque (1884; repr. New York, 1970), pp. 3:20–21. For further discussion, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500–1650 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 116–35. See also Aubin, Jean, “Un Voyage de Goa à Ormuz en 1520,” Modern Asian Studies 22/3 (1988), pp. 417–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 John Briggs, trans. History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India (1829; repr. Calcutta, 1966), 2:303. Firishta not only mentions the “fire-workers” (atish-bazan) employed for the job, but states that until that time, peoples of the Deccan had never seen such battering devices or mines (“bi sakhtan-i sarkub va naqb ki ta an zaman dar Dakan sha'i‘ nabud”). Firishta, Muhammad Qasim, Tarikh-i Firishta (Lucknow, 1864–65), p. 1:352Google Scholar.

15 Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder, pp. 42–44.

16 Gommans, Mughal Warfare, p. 146, and footnote 52.

17 Gaspar Correia, Lendas da India, pp. 1:289–90. Cited in Subrahmanyam, Political Economy, p. 124.

18 “Five thousand footsoldiers who were gunners, bowmen, and rocketeers, and five thousand mounted archers” (“Panj hizar piada tup-chi va kamandar va ban-dar, va panj hizar sawar ki hama tir-andaz budand”). Firishta, Tarikh-i Firishta, p. 2:98. Briggs translates tup-chi as “matchlock-men.” Briggs, History, p. 3:124. The historian of Ahmadnagar's Nizam Shahi dynasty, ‘Ali Tabataba, notes that on this occasion Sultan Ahmad Nizam Shah had with him a detachment of rocketeers and musketeers (ban-kari va tufang-andazi). ‘Ali Tabataba, Burhan-i ma'athir (Delhi, 1936), p. 223. Haig, T. W., “The History of the Nizam Shahi Kings of Ahmadnagar,” Indian Antiquary 49 (1920), p. 126Google Scholar.

19 John Winter Jones, trans. The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema (1863; repr. New York, n.d.), p. 114.

20 “Avardan-i tup-hayi kalan ki ham dar an qil'a budand.” Firishta, Tarikh-i Firishta, p. 2:17. Briggs, History, p. 3:24.

21 Birch, Commentaries, p. 2:89.

22 Ibid., p. 3:16.

23 According to a document published by the sixteenth-century chronicler Gaspar Correia, at the time of the Portuguese conquest, there were in Goa “large houses with storage space which the Turks [os rumes] had filled with all the materials necessary for shipbuilding [or, “large houses which the Turks used as armories”], and lots of iron and mortar artillery, large and small, and also two of our camel cannons and eight cradles and mortars which the Turks had brought from the defeat of Dom Lourenco at Chaul [in 1508], and other metal pieces in their fashion and a great number of metal guns, and a large quantity of gunpowder, saltpetre and utensils used in the making of these, and an enormous quantity of all kinds of weapons.” Correia, Gaspar, Lendas da India (Lisbon, 1860), p. 2:60Google Scholar. Translated in Daehnhardt, Rainer, The Bewitched Gun: the Introduction of the Firearm in the Far East by the Portuguese (Lisbon, 1994), p. 37Google Scholar. Further information on the identity of these Turks is furnished by the Portuguese historian Duarte Barbosa, who was in India from about 1500 to about 1516. He writes that ‘Adil Shahi authorities in Goa had received Turkish escapees following the Portuguese defeat of an Ottoman navy at Diu in 1509. These men, writes Barbosa, were resettled in Goa with the help of Muslim merchants who financed the building of shipyards and plants for the manufacture of iron and copper ordnance. Mansel L. Dames, tr., The Book of Duarte Barbosa (1918, repr. Nendeln/Liechtenstein, 1967), pp.1:175–77. It thus appears that Ottoman–Portuguese naval engagements off the Gujarat and Konkan coasts had led to the settlement of Turkish gunners and gunsmiths in Bijapuri territory after 1508.

24 de Bulhão Pato and Mendonca, eds., Cartas p. 1:28. Cited in Daehnhardt, Bewitched Gun, p. 38.

25 Ibid., p. 1:174. Ibid., p. 39.

26 “. . .e asy se tornaram todolos oficiaees d artelharia, de bombardas e espimgardas, as quaees se fazem de ferro em goa milhores que has d alemanha.” Ibid., p. 1:203. Ibid., p. 38–39.

27 Ibid., p. 41.

28 It is sometimes claimed, based on Firishta's account, that Krishna Raya had invaded and occupied Raichur in 1512, and that Isma'il therefore moved an army there in 1520 to reconquer the city from Krishna Raya. See Sherwani, H. K. and Joshi, P. M., eds., History of Medieval Deccan (1295–1724) (Hyderabad, 1973), p. 1:308Google Scholar. But such a possibility is refuted by epigraphic evidence confirming Isma'il's continued occupation of Raichur from his accession down to 1520. An inscription dated 1511–12 records the construction of the Hazara Baig mosque in the time of Isma'il ‘Adil Khan and Sultan Mahmud Bahmani. An inscription dated 1513–14 records the construction of the Yak Minar mosque, mentioning the same two figures. In 1515–16 a third mosque was built in the city, with its inscription again mentioning Isma'il ‘Adil Khan. And in the same year, a bastion was built onto the fort's outer wall, which mentions Isma'il ‘Adil Khan. See Kadiri, “Bahmani Inscriptions,” p. 66 and 65; K. M. Ahmad, “Inscriptions,” p. 14 and 16.

29 Rubiés, Joan-Pau, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar, fn. 49. For thoughtful discussions of Nunes as a chronicler of Vijayanagara, see ibid., pp. 257–79, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Penumbral Visions: Making Polities in Early Modern South India (New Delhi, 2001), pp. 188–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Rubiés writes that he can “perhaps be identified with the Fernão Nunes who in 1512 was escrivão de feitor of Calicut, and who in 1526 appears as escrivão de fazenda in Cochin.” Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology, p. 204.

31 Robert Sewell, who translated Nunes's account and also wrote the first modern history of Vijayanagara, notes that throughout Nunes's account of the battle, “there is much that impels the belief that either himself or his informant was present at the Hindu camp while these events were taking place. The narrative of the campaign, in complete contrast to that of the remainder of the history, reads like the account of an eye-witness; especially in the passages describing the fortress of Raichur and the camp—where the supplies were so great that ‘you could find everything that you wanted,’ where ‘you saw’ the goldsmiths and artisans at work as if in a city, where ‘you will find’ all kinds of precious stones offered for sale. . ..” Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagara): a Contribution to the History of India (1900; repr. New Delhi, 1984), p. 153.

32 Firishta gives the date as 927 A.H., which is not possible since that year began on 12 December 1520, and Sewell demonstrates that the battle took place earlier that year, in May and June. See Briggs, History, p. 3:29; Sewell, Forgotten Empire, pp. 140–47.

33 The text reads “zarb zadan-i tup va tufang va digar atish-bazi.” Tarikh-i Firishta, pp. 2:19–20. Briggs, History, pp. 3:29–30.

34 “Chronicle of Fernão Nuniz,” in Sewell, tr., Forgotten Empire pp. 316–28. David Lopes, ed., Chronica dos Reis de Bisnaga (Lisbon, 1897), p. 28.

35 “Chronicle of Fernão Nuniz,” p. 331.

36 Ibid., p. 330, 332.

37 In Nunes's vivid account, “The troops advanced thus, pursuing the foe, till the King reached the river, where, seeing the death of so many—for here you would see women and boys who had left the camp, there horses and men who through clinging one to another could not escape as there was so much water in the river—and the King's troops stood on the bank, so that whenever a man appeared he was killed, and the horses that tried to clamber up the bank of the river, unable to do so, fell back on the men, so that neither one nor the other escaped, and the elephants went into the stream, and those that they could seize were cruelly killed by them.” Sewell, Forgotten Empire, p. 339.

38 “quoatro centos tiros grossos d artelharia, afora meuda, forão o numero das carretas d ellas nove-centas. . ..” Lopes, Chronica, p. 39. Sewell, tr, Forgotten Empire, p. 342.

39 “Chronicle of Fernão Nuniz,” p. 344. “. . .pellos mouros estarem tão descuydados e sem temor, como aquelles que atee ly numca lhe matarão homẽs com espimgardas, nem com outros tiros que lhe tirarão. . ..” Lopes, ed., Chronica, p. 40.

40 Daehnhardt, Bewitched Gun, p. 42.

41 “From the 16th century until the 19th century,” writes Daehnhardt, “Portuguese and Goan gunsmiths worked side by side, harmoniously mixing technical influences and decorative capacities.” Daehnhardt, Bewitched Gun, p. 71. Portuguese anxieties that their gun-making techniques might migrate to their adversaries on the plateau is seen in an incident, cited by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, in which Goan authorities in the 1620s sent an assassin to Bijapur to eliminate a Portuguese cannon founder who had taken up service at the ‘Adil Shahi court. The assassin first ingratiated himself with his victim and then, “having eaten and drunk well, murdered him and buried him under the floor of his own house.” The killer was subsequently rewarded with a clerical position to the magistrate in Diu. Subrahmanyam, “Kagemusha effect,” p. 111.

42 “Chronicle of Fernão Nuniz,” p. 347.

43 Ibid., p. 349.

44 The radical renovations and additions made to the fort's northern side suggest that this was where the walls had been breached, and not the eastern side, where Nunes reports that Vijayanagara's forces had concentrated their attack.

45 Ibid., 342.

46 “It is incredible,” wrote K. Raghavacharlu in the 1930s, “to believe that the generous and noblehearted Krishnaraya would behave in such a manner in respect to a fallen foe.” K. Raghavacharlu, “Krishna Raya, the Man,” in S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, ed., Vijayanagara: History and Legacy (1936, repr. New Delhi, 2000), p. 183.

47 The campaign is mentioned, but only in passing, by a fifth generation descendant of one of Krishna Raya's court poets. Kumara Dhurjati writes that the king “marched against the frontier fortresses of Bijapur. The garrisons in many of these fortresses surrendered after defeat, and Krishna Raya spared the lives of their Governors. He then put fresh garrisons in the fortresses of Adavani (Adoni), Mudugallu (Mudgal) and Rachuru (Raichur) and directed his march towards Golkonda.” “Krishna Raya Vijayam,” in S. Krishnaswami Ayyangar, ed., Sources of Vijayanagar History (1919; repr. Delhi, 1986), p. 131.

48 Joan-Pau Rubiés speculates that “the insight and perhaps also the bitterness bred of three years trying unsuccessfully to prosper by selling horses, leads [Nunes] towards an image in which the pretensions of ideal kingship, although not completely obliterated, are nevertheless reduced to human proportions.” Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology, p. 268.

49 The Battle for Raichur occurred toward the end of the period of Krishna Raya's major conquests in the Deccan and South India, which extended from 1509 to 1523. Unlike the sultans of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur during this period of time, Krishna Raya does not appear to have relied extensively on firearms in the course of these conquests.

50 Cruz, Maria Augusta Lima, “Exiles and Renegades in Early Sixteenth Century Portuguese India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 23/3 (1986), p. 260CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Ibid., p. 258.

52 “Xpovão de Figueiredo lhe disse que o oficyo dos portuguezes não era outro senão ho da guerra.” Lopes, Chronica, p. 40; Sewell, Forgotten Empier, p. 343.

53 Nunes nonetheless expressed full admiration for his fellow countrymen fighting under ‘Adil Shahi command: “the Portuguese did great deeds, and killed so many men that they left a broad road behind them which no one dared enter.” Sewell, Forgotten Empire, p. 342. Sewell mistakenly gives the number of these men as five hundred instead of fifty. Cf. Lopes, Chronica, p. 39.

54 South Indian Inscriptions p. 4:789. Cited in Sherwani and Joshi, eds., History of Medieval Deccan p. 1:120.