Bahadur Shah (Gujarat)

Death of Bahadur Shah - Miniature from Akbar-nāma (late 16th century)

Sultan Qutb-ud-Din Bahadur Shah ruled the Sultanate of Gujarat from 1526 to 1537 (with a brief interruption in 1535/6) .

biography

Bahadur Shah's date of birth is unknown. His father Shams-ud-Din Muzaffar Shah II (r. 1511-1526) had determined the older son Sikandar Shah as heir to the throne. Since Bahadur Shah's relationship with his older brother was so tense that he feared for his life, he fled to Chittorgarh ; shortly afterwards he went under the protection of the Sultan of Delhi , Ibrahim Lodi (r. 1517-1526), ​​who was defeated only a little later by the Mughal prince Babur in the battle of Panipat and fell. After the news of his father's death, Bahadur returned to Gujarat, where the nobles of the empire paid homage to him as his successor. His older brother Sikandar had since been killed; his younger brothers suffered the same fate; only Chand Khan was able to flee to the court of the Sultanate of Malwa .

In the following years he besieged the fortress Daulatabad (1528/9), then turned against Malwa, took the capital Mandu (1531) and incorporated the principality into his empire. At the same time he had to deal with the Mughals in the north and the Portuguese in the south . In 1534 Bahadur Shah signed the Treaty of Bassein on board the Galleon São Mateus , in which he ceded several islands and coastal cities to Portugal. A year later, the Mughal army invaded northern Gujarat and took control of the sultanate; Bahadur Shah fled and sought protection and support from the Portuguese. In 1537, however, he was murdered on board a Portuguese ship anchored off the coast of Gujarat; his body was thrown into the Arabian Sea . A year later, the island of Diu was attacked by an Ottoman ship formation, but the Portuguese got the upper hand.

Succession

Since Bahadur Shah had no sons, the nobles of the sultanate looked for a suitable successor and finally found him in his nephew Mahmud Shah III. who officially ruled from 1538 to 1554, but was no more than a puppet in the game of the great. Under his equally weak successor Muzaffar III. the troops of the Grand Mogul Akbar I conquered the sultanate (1573) and administered it with the help of governors ( subahdars ) .

literature

• Michael N. Pearson: The new Cambridge history of India . Vol. 1: The Portuguese in India . Cambridge [u. a.] 1994.
• Sailendra Sen: A Textbook of Medieval Indian History. Primus Books 2013, pp. 114–115, ISBN 978-9-38060-734-4 .

Web links

• Gaspar Correia: Lendas de Indias. (Summary of the chapters dealing with Bahadur Shah )