Berar Sultanate

A captive boy in a commander's household

Drafted from Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (1829)formation

The man who founded Berar's ruling house began life a prisoner. Taken captive as a boy in one of the Bahmani sultanate's wars against Vijayanagara, he was raised among the household guard of Khan Jehan, the Bahmani commander-in-chief and governor of Berar, who noticed his ability and courage as he grew and advanced him through offices of increasing trust. After his patron's death he moved to the Bahmani court itself, where the same minister who reorganized the whole sultanate's provinces, Mahmud Gawan, secured him the title Imad-ul-Mulk and command of the Bahmani forces stationed in Berar.

A declaration ahead of its neighbors

In 1485, Fateh Ullah Imad Shah declared his own independence from the Bahmani court at Bidar — earlier, by this source's own dating, than the secessions of Ahmadnagar, Bijapur or Golconda, all still years away from breaking openly with a sultanate not yet visibly beyond saving. He died not long after, leaving the throne to his eldest son, Ala-ud-Din, who took the same royal title his father had claimed and settled a capital at Gawilgarh.

A kingdom that held its ground more than it grew

Berar's early history, as the source narrates it, was one of continuous contest with its larger neighbors rather than steady expansion. Ala-ud-Din seized the forts of Mahur and Ramgir from a rival's sons during one period of confusion, only to lose them again to Ahmadnagar's own forces soon after; alliances by marriage with Bijapur's ruling house offered periodic support but rarely arrived in time to matter. Of the five kingdoms that rose from the Bahmani sultanate's own collapse, Berar was consistently the smallest and the least able to act without a stronger neighbor's help.

Strangled in the same cell

Drafted from Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (1829)end

Burhan Imad Shah inherited Berar's throne as a child, and his minister Toofal Khan, appointed regent for the duration of his minority, used the years before the young king could rule in his own right to build a power base with help from neighboring Khandesh and from Ahmadnagar's own court. Before Burhan came of age, Toofal Khan had him confined in irons in the fortress of Narnala and simply assumed the royal title for himself.

A usurper who outmaneuvered his enemies for years

Ahmadnagar and Bijapur combined against Toofal Khan once his ambitions became undeniable, but he bought Bijapur's withdrawal from the coalition with a gift of jewels, splitting his enemies apart before they could destroy him together. Ahmadnagar's Murtaza Nizam Shah, discovering the bribery, withdrew rather than fight alone — but returned in 1572, this time under the declared purpose of freeing the imprisoned rightful king from his own captivity.

A siege won by starvation and a single trumpet

Toofal Khan sought help from Golconda and attacked Ahmadnagar's own forces directly, but was decisively beaten and pursued into the hill fortress of Narnala while his son held a second stronghold at Gawilgarh. Rather than storm so strong a position outright, the besieging general turned to attrition: he bribed deserters from the garrison one by one until only a dozen gunners remained, dragged a single cannon up the hillside to open a breach, and sent a small party over the wall at night with a trumpeter to sound the alarm. Believing a much larger force had broken in, Toofal Khan fled into the surrounding hills with almost no escort at all, abandoning the fortress without a further fight.

A dynasty ended in a single order

Ahmadnagar's pursuing cavalry caught Toofal Khan within three days. Murtaza Nizam Shah, rather than restore the freed King Burhan to his own throne, had the usurper, his son and the rightful king alike confined together in a Nizam Shahy fortress — where, by one account, all three were strangled on the king's own order, and by another, their entire households, forty people in all, died in a single night after their jailers, denied a bribe from the prisoners' own subsistence funds, locked them into an overcrowded cell on a hot night. Either way, the source records the same result: "the family of Imad Shah and that of the usurper Toofal Khan became extinct." Berar's own territory passed into Ahmadnagar's hands without a treaty, a partition, or any formal transfer — simply the last kingdom nearby strong enough to claim what a murdered dynasty could no longer hold.