Berar Sultanate

History

On the establishment of the Bahmani Sultanate in the Deccan in 1347, Berar was constituted as one of the five provinces into which the kingdom was divided, being governed by a tarafdar, with a separate army. The perils of this system became apparent when the province was divided (1478 or 1479) into two separate provinces, named after their capitals Gawil and Mahur.

In 1490, Fathullah Imad-ul-Mulk, who had been appointed governor of Berar by Mahmud Gawan after assisting him in his campaigns, proclaimed his independence amidst the civil unrest in the Bahmani Sultanate and founded the Imad Shahi dynasty of Berar. He proceeded to annex Mahur to his new kingdom and had its capital at Ellichpur. Imad-ul-Mulk was by birth a Kanarese Hindu, but had been captured as a boy in one of the expeditions against the Vijayanagara Empire and brought up as a Muslim. Gavilgad and Narnala were also fortified by him.

Fathullah Imad-ul-Mulk died in 150,4 and his successor, Aladdin Imad Shah, resisted the aggression of Ahmadnagar with the help of Bahadur Shah, sultan of Gujarat. The next ruler, Darya, ascended the throne in 1530 and tried to align with Bijapur to prevent aggression from Ahmadnagar, but was unsuccessful. Early in his reign, the minor Burhan Imad Shah, who succeeded his father in 1562, was deposed by his minister and regent Tufail Khan, who assumed rule of the Sultanate. This gave a pretext for the intervention of Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar, who invaded Berar, imprisoned and put to death Tufail Khan, his son Shams-ul-Mulk, and the former king Burhan, and proceeded to annex Berar into his own dominions of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate in 1574.