Bayaluseeme · Deccan Inland Plateau
The open plain has been a political centre twice and a province the rest of the time, and its periodisation follows that. Its ancient period ends in 753, when the Rashtrakutas took Vatapi from the Chalukyas who had built Aihole, Badami and Pattadakal — the one stretch in which the region set the terms for the whole Deccan. Its medieval period runs to 1686 and has two capitals of its own, the Ratta seat at Saundatti and then Belgaum, and the Adil Shahi capital at Bijapur from 1490. The modern period begins with Aurangzeb's capture of Bijapur on 12 September 1686, because after that date the plain never again holds a capital. It is governed from Delhi, then from Pune, then from Bombay, and what is left inside it are small desai chiefships at Kittur, Nargund, Saundatti, Mudhol and Jamkhandi. Almost every rising this region is known for is one of those chiefships losing the last of its autonomy.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The Kadambas of Banavasi held Halasi, near Belagavi, as a secondary seat, but the period belongs to the Chalukyas of Badami. Pulakeshin I fortified the hill at Vatapi in 543, and within two generations his successors were the dominant power in the Deccan and the only southern dynasty to stop a northern emperor at the Narmada. What makes the Malaprabha valley matter is not the empire but the rock. The Kaladgi sandstone there is flat-bedded and soft enough to cut, so the Chalukyas could quarry blocks and excavate caves from the same escarpment, and they used it to try out both the northern and the southern temple grammars side by side at Aihole, Badami and Pattadakal. No other site in India lets the two be compared within walking distance.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 4th–6th centuries | The Kadambas of Banavasi hold Halasi, near Belagavi, as a secondary seat. |
| 543 | Pulakeshin I takes and fortifies the hill at Vatapi, now Badami; the cliff inscription records it. |
| c. 618–619 | Pulakeshin II halts Harsha's advance on the Narmada, the event his court poets return to most often. |
| 634 | The Aihole inscription is composed by Ravikirti in Sanskrit in the Kannada script, recording the reign's victories. |
| 642 | The Pallava Narasimhavarman I occupies Vatapi; Pulakeshin II probably dies in the fighting. |
| 674 | Vikramaditya I recovers Badami and restores the dynasty. |
| c. 740 | The Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal is built, commissioned by the queens of Vikramaditya II after his campaigns against Kanchi. |
| 753 | Dantidurga overthrows Kirtivarman II; the Rashtrakutas take the Deccan and the plain becomes a province. |
For nine centuries the plain was fought over by powers seated elsewhere — Rashtrakutas at Manyakheta, Western Chalukyas and Kalachuris at Kalyani, Yadavas at Devagiri, the Bahmanis, and Vijayanagara south of the Krishna — with one long exception of its own. The Rattas ruled from Saundatti from the ninth century and moved to Belgaum, then Venugrama, about 1210; they were patrons of Jainism, and the Kamala Basadi inside Belgaum fort dates from 1204. The Adil Shahi sultanate founded at Bijapur in 1490 gave the plain a capital of its own again for two hundred years, and the Deccani architecture that followed — the Ibrahim Rauza, the Gol Gumbaz and its unbuttressed dome, the great cannon on the citadel wall — is the densest monumental layer anywhere in the Kannada country.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 875–1250 | The Rattas hold Saundatti and, from about 1210, Belgaum. Kartavirya IV's inscriptions of 1199 and the Kamala Basadi of 1204 belong to their last decades. |
| c. 1250 | The Yadavas of Devagiri defeat the Rattas and take Belgaum fort. |
| 1474 | A Bahmani army under Mahmud Gawan takes Belgaum. |
| 1490 | Yusuf Adil Shah establishes an independent sultanate at Bijapur as Bahmani authority breaks up. |
| 1580–1627 | The reign of Ibrahim Adil Shah II, who wrote the Kitab-i-Nauras, a work on music, and whose tomb complex the Ibrahim Rauza was completed in 1626. |
| 1656 | Muhammad Adil Shah dies; the Gol Gumbaz built over his tomb carries the largest unbuttressed masonry dome in the country. |
| 12 September 1686 | Aurangzeb takes Bijapur after a siege begun in 1685 and the Adil Shahi sultanate ends. |
After 1686 the plain was administered from outside — by the Mughals, then by the Marathas and the Peshwa, then from 1818 by the Bombay Presidency, with Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan overrunning parts of the Belagavi country in the 1770s and 1780s. What survived underneath were desai chiefships that held land and armed retainers on sufferance, and the nineteenth century is the record of their removal. Kittur in 1824 was a succession dispute that became a war; Sangolli Rayanna's campaign of 1829–30 was fought over confiscated land; the risings of 1857–58 at Supa, Bagalkot, Nargund and Dandeli, and the Halagali Bedas' refusal of the disarming order, were about the same thing. When organised nationalist politics arrived it arrived early by Kannada standards, and Belagavi hosted the one Congress session Gandhi presided over.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1776 | Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan overrun parts of the Belagavi country; the Peshwa recovers it after 1792. |
| 1818 | The British annex Belgaum at the close of the last Anglo-Maratha war; the plain enters the Bombay Presidency. |
| October 1824 | The East India Company refuses to recognise the heir Rani Chennamma adopted at Kittur. In the fighting that follows, St John Thackeray, the Collector and political agent, is killed. |
| December 1824 | A second assault takes Kittur; Chennamma is captured and held at Bailhongal, where she dies on 21 February 1829. |
| 1829–1831 | Sangolli Rayanna, Kittur's senior commander, keeps up a guerrilla campaign against Company posts and treasuries until his capture in April 1830. He was hanged near Nandagad on 26 January 1831. |
| 1857–58 | Risings at Supa, Bagalkot, Nargund and Dandeli coincide with the rebellion in the north; the Bedas of Halagali refuse to surrender their arms under the disarming regulation. |
| June 1858 | Mundargi Bhimarao and Hammige Kenchanagouda are killed fighting Company forces at Koppal, across the region's eastern edge. |
| December 1924 | The 39th session of the Indian National Congress meets at Belagavi under Gandhi's presidency — the only session he presided over — organised locally by Gangadharrao Deshpande and Hardekar Manjappa. |
| 1 April 1943 | Mailara Mahadevappa is killed by police at Hosaritti in Haveri while breaking open a revenue treasury during the Quit India movement. |
Rulers and commanders
Extended Chalukya authority across the Deccan and halted Harsha on the Narmada about 618–619. His reign is fixed in the Aihole inscription of 634, composed by his court poet Ravikirti in Sanskrit but written in the Kannada script — one of the earliest firm dates in peninsular history.
Dynasty: Chalukyas of Badami. Seat: Vatapi
A Ratta king whose inscriptions of 1199 survive on pillars in Belgaum fort. Under him and his immediate successors the seat moved to Venugrama, now Belagavi, and his officer Bichiraja built the Kamala Basadi there in 1204.
Dynasty: Rattas of Saundatti. Seat: Saundatti
A Bahmani provincial governor who declared an independent sultanate at Bijapur in 1490 as the Bahmani state broke up. The city he made a capital gave the dry plain the only two centuries in which it was governed from inside itself since the Chalukyas.
Dynasty: Adil Shahis of Bijapur. Seat: Bijapur
Wrote the Kitab-i-Nauras, a book of song texts in Dakhni on the nine rasas, and presided over the period in which Bijapur's painting and building were at their most inventive. His tomb complex, the Ibrahim Rauza, was completed in 1626.
Dynasty: Adil Shahis of Bijapur. Seat: Bijapur
Under him the sultanate reached its largest extent. The Gol Gumbaz raised over his tomb carries the largest unbuttressed masonry dome in India, and the whispering gallery inside it is an accident of that geometry rather than a design.
Dynasty: Adil Shahis of Bijapur. Seat: Bijapur
Widow of Raja Mallasarja. After her son's death in 1824 she adopted Shivalingappa and named him heir; the East India Company refused to recognise the adoption and moved on Kittur. She held the fort through the October fighting and was taken in December.
Dynasty: Desais of Kittur. Seat: Kittur
Kittur's senior commander, who after the fall of the fort and the confiscation of his own lands ran a mobile campaign against Company posts and treasuries through 1829 and into 1830, with support from cultivators and from the Siddi leader Gajaveera.
Dynasty: Desais of Kittur. Seat: Sangolli, near Belagavi
Raised a rising against the East India Company in 1858, took Koppaldurg fort and killed the commander of the force sent against him before being defeated and the fort retaken.
Dynasty: Bhave Desais of Nargund. Seat: Nargund
The history of Bayaluseeme from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)