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We are not concerned, however, with the genuineness of Hasan's claim, for this is a question which cannot now be decided. It is certain that he put forward the claim and that his title "Bahman Shāh' was an embodiment of its assertion. The author of the Burhani-Ma’āṣir says (King, p. 1) "in consequence of his descent the king was known as Bahman," and subsequently (King, p. 17) refers to him as "the cream of the race of Bahman."

I believe that I have shewn that the epithet "Bahmani " applied to the great dynasty of the Dakan has no connection with the castename " Brahman," but is derived from the old Persian name Bahmani which was borne, as a title, by the founder of the dynasty.

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(2) THE OFFSPRING OF 'ALA'U-D-DÎN BAHMAN SHAH.

According to the author of the Burhan-i-Ma'aṣir1 Bahman Shah had four sons of whom three, Muḥammad the eldest, Maḥmüd and Aḥmad are named. Firishta does not give the number of the sons, but names three, Muḥammad the eldest, Da'üd, who afterwards ascended the throne as the fourth king of the line, and Maḥmūd 6 the youngest. Khāfi Khan, in the third volume of the Muntakhabu-l- Lubab, says that Bahman Shah had four sons, but he mentions three only. Muḥammad the eldest, Maḥmūd and Dā'ūd. No list of Bahman Shah's sons is given in the Tabaqat-i-Akbarī, and Muḥammad is mentioned as his son, without being distinguished as the eldest.7 Elsewhere, 8 however, Muḥammad Shah, the fifth king of the dynasty is referred to as "the son of Maḥmüd, the son of Hasan Shāh" (sul. Bahman Shāh). It is clear, from the general consensus of authorities, that Muḥammad, Bahman Shah's successor, was his eldest son, and it is also clear that Bahman Shāh had a son named Maḥmūd. The statements of the authors of the Burhan-i-Ma'āṣir and the Muntakhabu-lLubab as to the number of his sons may be accepted as correct, in spite of the fact that no one authority names more than three sons. have, therefore, two sons to account for, viz., Aḥmad, mentioned by the authors of the Burhan-i-Ma'āṣir, the Tazkiratu-l-Mulūk,' and Dā'ūd, mentioned by Firishta and Khāfi Khan. There seems to be little doubt that Bahman Shāh had a son named Aḥmad, but this question will be considered in connection with that of the parentage of the eighth and ninth Sulṭāns of the dynasty. I cannot, however, find any sufficient reason for believing that Aḥmad was the youngest son, as stated by

1 King, p. 22. * Ibid, p. 31. 8 Ibid, p. 36.

Firishta, i. 527.
Ibid, i. 533, 573.

• Ibid, i. 533.

* King, p. 408.

8 Tabaqat-i-Akbarī, p. 410.
• King, p. 47.

We

Major King in the genealogical table given by him on p. xxxiv of his book. The author whom he translates nowhere says that Aḥmad was the youngest son, and Firishta, who, although not entirely trustworthy in questions of genealogy, should be followed when he cannot be proved to be wrong, distinctly says that Maḥmüd was the youngest. So far, therefore, we havé Muḥammad the eldest, and Maḥmūd the youngest, with Aḥmad somewhere between them.

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Authorities differ as to the parentage of Dā'ūd. Both Firishta and Khāfi Khān make him a son of Bahman Shah, the only difference between them being that the former places the sons in the order—(1) Muḥammad, (2) Dā'ūd, (3) Maḥmud; while the latter places Muḥmūd before Da'ūd, without saying, however, that Maḥmud was the elder. In the Tabaqat-i-Akbarī 1 Dā'ūd is described as the first cousin of Mujahid Shah, son of Muḥammad Shah I, according to which statement he would be a grandson and not a son of Bahman Shāh. The author of the Burhān-i-Ma'āṣir says in one place that Dā'ūd was 2 younger brother, or according to one history, a cousin of Mujahid," but afterwards 3 says, " according to the most authentic accounts, Sulṭān Dā'ūd Shāh was son of Maḥmūd Khān, son of Sultan 'Alā’u-d-dīn' Ḥasan Shah Bahmani (sul. Bahman Shah). Although Firishta is generally an untrustworthy genealogist his account of Da'ud's parentage must be preferred to that of other authorities. It is possible that the word ("son") in Nizamu-'d-din Ahmad's description of him as the first cousin (e) of Mujahid is an interpolation. The statement in the Burhan-i- Ma'asir that Da'ud was the son of Mahmud Khan, the son of Bahman Shah, cannot be accepted. Firishta, who is not contradicted on this point, makes Maḥmud, as has been said, the youngest son of Bahman Shāh. He says that at the time of Bahman Shah's death (A.H. 759) Mahmud was a schoolboy, reading Sa'di's Bustan. He was probably, therefore, thirteen or fourteen years of age at that time, and can hardly have been the father of Da'ud, who held an important command in the expedition against the Raya of Vijayanagar in Mujahid's reign (A.H. 776-779). For these reasons I am inclined to complete the tale of Bahman Shah's four sons by adding to them Da'ūd, and this assumption, supported by Firishta's authority, whatever that may be worth, not only fills the gap left by the authors of the Burhan-i-Ma'aṣir and the Tabaqāt-i-Akbarī, but accounts satisfactorily for Dā'ūd's anger when he was rebuked by Mujahid for neglect of his military duty. Da'ūd might have borne a rebuke from a brother or a cousin older than himself who was also his king, but a rebuke * King, p. 29. s King, p. 31.

1 King, p. 410.

from a nephew would have been harder to bear, and the assumption that Da'nd was Mujahid's uncle explains his resentment, the result of which was the assassination of Mujahid and the accession of Da'ūd. Bahman Shah's four sons, therefore, were Muḥammad, Da'üd, Aḥmad and Maḥmūd. The only question concerning them which cannot be settled is the order in which Dā'ūd and Aḥmad came.

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Muḥammad was succeeded by his son Mujahid. Firishta, Nizāmud-din Aḥmad, and Khāfi Khan mention no other son, but the author of the Burhan-i-Maşir 1 says that Muḥammad had a younger son, Fath Khān. The statement may be accepted as correct, but Fatḥ Khān is not again heard of, and is therefore unimportant. Mujahid was assassinated after a reign of little more than a year, and his uncle and successor, Da'ūd, was assassinated after a reign of little more than a month. The former left no issue. Da'ud, according to Firishta, left a son, Muḥammad Sanjar, who was blinded.

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(4) NAŞIRU-D-DIN MUHAMMAD SHAH II.

Muḥammad Shah II is described both by Nizamu-d-din Aḥmad and by the author of the Burhan-i-Ma'aṣir as the son of Maḥmüd Khan, the son of 'Ala'u-d-din Bahman Shah. The latter authority also describes him, consistently but wrongly, as the younger brother of Da'ūd. Firishta, followed, of course, by Khāfi Khān, falls into a strange error regarding the name and the identity of this king, and asserts that his name was Maḥmud and not Muḥammad and that he was the son of Ala'u-d-din Bahman Shah. He is very positive on this point, as the following extract will show :

"The author of the Futuḥu-s-Salāṭin has made a mistake regarding the name of this king, saying that his name was Sultan Muḥammad Shah, and mentioning him as Muḥammad Shah in all his poems; and likewise some of the historians of Gujarat and Dihli, both ancient and modern, not having inquired into events in the Dakan as they actually came to pass, have made mistakes both in the names of the Bahmani kings and in many of the stories which they relate concerning them, and all of them have wielded untrustworthy pens and have failed to verify their information."

Firishta, in spite of his assurance, was unquestionably wrong. In the first place he stands alone, his copyist Khafi Khan excepted, in describing the fifth Bahmani King as Maḥmüd. All other authorities 1 King, p. 28. 2 Firishta, i. 576.

call him Muḥammad. In the second place he is contradicted by an inscription, dated A.H. 892, on the Muḥammadi gate of the fortress of Narnāla in Berar, in which Shahābu-d-din Mahmud Shah, the fourteenth king of the Bahmani dynasty is described as "the son of Sultan Muḥammad, the son of Sultan Humayun, the son of Sultan Ahmad, the son of Sultan Muḥammad." The inscription is not necessarily a better authority than Firishta, and the account of Shahābu-d-din Maḥmūd's descent which it gives is unquestionably wrong, but the Sultān Muḥammad to whom the descent is traced was evidently the fifth king of the Bahmani dynasty, so that in this respect the inscription corroborates the mass of evidence against Firishta. Finally we have the evidence of the coins. All the known coins of the fifth king of the Bahmani dynasty bear the name Muḥammad. None bears the name Maḥmūd. This fact alone is sufficient to decide the question. Even Firishta would have hesitated to assert that the officials of the mint did not know the name of the king whom they served.

It is, however, worth while to consider a possible source of Firishta's error. He may have seen this Sultan mentioned in some inscription, sanad, or other authentic document by his name Naşiru-d-din followed by his father's name, thus:-Nāṣiru-d-din-i-Mahmud, the izafat, which would be omitted in Persian script, denoting the patronymic. Similar errors in nomenclature have occurred. Thus, the Arab conqueror of Sindh, Muḥammad-i-Qasim or Muḥammad bin Qasim, has been styled by historians who should have known better, "Muḥammad Qasim," as though Qāsim were his own name instead of being his father's.

(5) THE OFFSPRING OF MUHAMMAD II.

The fifth king had two sons. Sultan Ghiyagu-d-din Muḥammad, or Bahman 1and Sultan Shamsu-d-din Da'ūd. The former succeeded him at the age of 17, according to Firishta, 2 or 12 according to the author of the Burhān-i-Ma'āşir,3 and was deposed and blinded after a reign of little more than a month. His younger brother Shamsud-din was then placed on the throne, at the age of 15, according to Firishta, or 6, according to the author of the Burhan-i-Ma'aṣir. 5 His reign lasted, according to Nizamu-d-din Aḥmad 6 and Firishta 7 fifty-seven days, and according to the author of the Burhan-i-Ma'āṣir 8 five months and seven days. The discrepancy may be due to a misreading.

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(6) THE PARENTAGE OF FIRŪZ SHAH AND AḤMAD SHÃH, THE EIGHTH AND NINTH KINGS.

Firishta says that Maḥmūd Shāh (Dā'ūd is evidently meant) had three sons: (1) Muḥammad Sanjar, who was blinded; (2) Firūz Khan; and (3) Aḥmad Khan; and that the uncle of these boys, Muḥammad Shāh II (whom Firishta calls Maḥmüd) before he had sons of his own, brought up Firuz and Aḥmad as his sons, married them to two of his daughters, and led Firuz to believe that he would be his heir, but that after the birth of his own sons he made Firüz and Aḥmad swear allegiance to Ghiyāṣu-d-din. This plausible story accounts for Firuz Khan's ambition, but for various reasons it cannot be accepted as true. In the first place the author of the Burhān-i-Ma'āṣir, who is a better authority than Firishta in genealogical questions, makes Firuz and Aḥmad the sons of Aḥmad Khan, the son of Ala'u-d-din Bahman " Shāh, and he is supported 3 by the author of the Tazkiratu-l-Mulūk. Firishta does not explain why the two younger sons of Da'ud should have been brought up as princes in the line of succession to the throne when it was found necessary to blind their eldest brother, Muḥammad Sanjar. There is good evidence, of a negative nature, in favour of the statements of the authors of the Burhan-i- Ma'āṣir and the Tazkiratūl-Mulūk. Among Oriental rulers the pride of descent is more exacting than it is in the West, and descent from those who are merely members of a royal house is less highly regarded than a descent which can be traced through an unbroken line of actual wearers of the crown. This

السلطان ابن السلطان pride finds its expression in the common formula

'bland, when a king can establish such a line of descent, he rarely fails to mention his father's name on his coins and in his inscriptions. So far as I know, neither Firuz Shāh nor Aḥmad Shāh ever mentions his father's name in such inscriptions. Aḥmad Shah's name appears in the inscriptions in his fine tomb at Bidar, but his father's does not. If the brothers had been sons of Dā'ūd, a king who actually reigned, they would certainly have mentioned the fact, either on their coins or in their inscriptions. As they have not done so it may be safely held, with the authors of the Burhān-i-Ma'āṣir and the Tazkirutus-Salāṭīn, that Firuz and Aḥmad were the sons of Aḥmad Khan, the son of 'Ala'u-d-din Bahman Shāh.

I have referred above to an exceptional coin. This is the coin which I have already mentioned in the account of the founder of the Bahmani dynasty. The reverse bears the inscription, "Aḥmad Shāh bin Aḥmad Shah bin Bahman Shah," but no date. I was inclined to 8 King, p. 47.

1 Firishta, i. 583,

2 King, pp. 36, 49.

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