Marathwada · Deccan Inland Plateau
Marathwada's dates are not the Marathi country's dates. Its medieval period opens in 1187, when the Yadavas fortified Devagiri and made the middle Godavari the seat of a Deccan empire for the only time in its history, and it stays a capital region under the Tughluqs, the Bahmanis, the Nizam Shahs and Aurangzeb's Deccan viceroyalty. Its modern period begins in 1724, not 1818: the Mughal governorship at Aurangabad stopped reporting to Delhi and became the Asaf Jahi state, and these districts stayed inside that state for the whole of the period in which the rest of Maharashtra was being made over by British revenue settlement, British courts and British schooling. That is why the ordinary furniture of life here differs, down to the Fasli year on a deed and the word for a village record-keeper, and why Urdu, which replaced Persian as the language of court and revenue in 1886, sits inside spoken Marathi.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The middle Godavari was the political centre of the Deccan long before Devagiri. Pratishthana, now Paithan, was the Satavahana capital and the inland terminus of the route from the Konkan ports, named in the Periplus among the very few interior markets a Greek merchant needed to know. What that prosperity paid for is still in the escarpment: the northern rim of the region carries two of the great rock-cut sites of the world, at Ajanta and Ellora, cut over roughly eight centuries by Buddhist, Hindu and Jain patrons in turn. The Kailasa at Ellora is the extreme case of the local method, a building quarried downward out of the living scarp so that nothing can be added and no error corrected.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 2nd century BCE – 2nd century CE | Pratishthana on the Godavari is the Satavahana capital and an inland market recorded in Greek and Roman geography. |
| c. 460–500 | The later caves at Ajanta, cut into the far face of the northern range, are excavated under Vakataka patronage associated with Harisena; the regnal dates are disputed and different scholars place the work anywhere between about 460 and 500. |
| c. 600–730 | The Buddhist group at Ellora is excavated, the earliest of the three religious groups at the site. |
| c. 756–773 | The Kailasa, Cave 16 at Ellora, is quarried out of the scarp under the Rashtrakuta ruler Krishna I; a copper plate of 812 refers back to a great edifice built on the hill by Krishnaraja at Ellora. |
| 10th century | The fort at Kandhar in the Nanded country is built under the Rashtrakuta ruler Krishna III. |
| 9th–10th century | The Jain caves at Ellora are cut by Digambara patrons, with work on the hill continuing into the Yadava period. |
For five and a half centuries this region was somebody's capital or somebody's forward base, and the basalt hill at Devagiri is the reason. Bhillama V fortified it in 1187; Alauddin Khalji's expeditions of 1296 and 1308 reduced the Yadavas to tribute and then to vassalage; Muhammad bin Tughluq renamed it Daulatabad and moved his court there in 1327 before reversing the decision in 1334. The Bahmani state was proclaimed there in 1347 before its capital moved south. In 1600 Malik Ambar, a minister of Ethiopian origin who had been sold into service and who ran the Ahmadnagar state in fact for a quarter-century, founded the city of Khadki nearby, gave the Deccan a revenue settlement that later administrations kept using, and cut the Nahr-e-Ambari, a tunnel-and-manhole water system that supplied the city for three centuries. Aurangzeb, governing the Deccan from that city, renamed it Aurangabad in the 1650s and was buried at Khuldabad, a few miles from Ellora, in 1707.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1187 | Bhillama V of the Seuna Yadavas fortifies Devagiri and makes it his capital. |
| 1296 and 1308 | Two expeditions by Alauddin Khalji reduce Ramachandra of Devagiri first to tribute and then to vassalage; Yadava rule ends in the 1310s and the fort is held directly from Delhi. |
| 1327–1334 | Muhammad bin Tughluq renames Devagiri as Daulatabad and moves his capital there from Delhi, ordering a mass migration; the decision is reversed in 1334. |
| 1347 | The Bahmani Sultanate is proclaimed under Alauddin Bahman Shah, with Daulatabad as its first seat before the capital moves to Gulbarga. |
| 1499 | Daulatabad passes to the Ahmadnagar Sultanate and serves as its second capital; most of the surviving fortification is Nizam Shahi work. |
| 1600–1626 | Malik Ambar governs the Ahmadnagar state as its minister, founds Khadki on the site of the present Aurangabad, carries out a revenue settlement of much of the Deccan, and builds the Nahr-e-Ambari water tunnel to supply the new city. |
| 1633 | Daulatabad is taken by a Mughal army under Shah Jahan, and the Nizam Shahi line ends soon afterwards. |
| 1653 | Aurangzeb, as Mughal viceroy of the Deccan, makes Khadki his headquarters and renames it Aurangabad. |
| 1707–1708 | Aurangzeb dies in the Deccan and is buried in an open grave at Khuldabad. In the same years Guru Gobind Singh reaches Nanded, where he died in 1708; the gurdwara over the site was built in the 1830s. |
In 1724 Mir Qamar-ud-din Khan, titled Asaf Jah, established himself as an independent ruler in the Deccan with Aurangabad as his first capital, and the eight districts of this region spent the next two hundred and twenty-four years inside that state. The consequences are administrative rather than dramatic and they are everywhere. Revenue was reckoned in the Fasli year, not the Christian one. Persian and then, from 1886, Urdu was the language of court, revenue and schooling, in a countryside that spoke Marathi at home. There was no ryotwari settlement of the Bombay kind, no Bombay Presidency school system and no Bombay Presidency press law, and so also no Congress politics of the British-Indian sort. When a political movement did form it formed late, in 1938, and it was directed at the state's own administration rather than at an imperial one.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1724 | Asaf Jah I establishes his authority in the Deccan after the battle at Shakar Kheda and rules from Aurangabad; the state later takes its name from Hyderabad. |
| 10 August 1763 | A Maratha army under Madhavrao defeats the Nizam's forces at Rakshasbhuvan on the Godavari in the Beed country; the treaty that follows is signed at Aurangabad. |
| 1798 | Asaf Jah II enters a subsidiary alliance with the East India Company, the first Indian ruler to do so; the state keeps its internal administration. |
| 1886 | Urdu replaces Persian as the language of the courts and the revenue administration throughout the state, and remains so until 1948. |
| 6 September 1938 | A Public Safety Act declares the newly formed Hyderabad State Congress unlawful three days before it was to contest elections. |
| 24 October – 24 December 1938 | A satyagraha is run in which members declare their membership of the banned organisation and court arrest; about three hundred are arrested before it is suspended. |
| 7 August 1947 | The Hyderabad State Congress calls a Join Indian Union day of processions, strikes and flag-hoisting across the state, and is banned again. |
| September 1948 | Hyderabad State acceded to the Indian Union. |
Rulers and commanders
Named in the dynastic lists as the founder of the Satavahana line, which ruled from Pratishthana on the Godavari. The dating of the earliest Satavahana reigns is contested and different scholars place the dynasty's beginning as much as a century apart.
Dynasty: Satavahana. Seat: Pratishthana (Paithan)
The Kailasa temple at Ellora is attributed to his reign, on the strength of a Rashtrakuta copper plate of 812 that refers to a great edifice built on the hill by Krishnaraja. It is quarried downward out of the scarp rather than built up from a foundation.
Dynasty: Rashtrakuta.
Fortified the basalt hill at Devagiri and made it the Yadava capital in 1187, which put the middle Godavari at the centre of Deccan politics for the next five centuries.
Dynasty: Seuna (Yadava). Seat: Devagiri
Ruled through the two Khalji expeditions of 1296 and 1308, paying tribute after the first and accepting vassalage after the second; Yadava rule ended within a decade of his death.
Dynasty: Seuna (Yadava). Seat: Devagiri
Proclaimed the Bahmani Sultanate at Daulatabad in 1347, the first Deccan state independent of Delhi, and moved its capital south to Gulbarga during his reign.
Dynasty: Bahmani. Seat: Daulatabad, then Gulbarga
Born in the Horn of Africa and sold into service, he rose to run the Ahmadnagar state as minister from 1600 until his death, holding the Mughal advance through mobile field tactics rather than pitched battle. He founded Khadki, cut the Nahr-e-Ambari water system in about fifteen months, and made a revenue settlement of much of the Deccan that later administrations continued to work from.
Dynasty: Served the Nizam Shahi. Seat: Khadki (Aurangabad)
Established himself as an independent ruler in the Deccan in 1724 with Aurangabad as his first capital. Every distinctive administrative feature of Marathwada, the Fasli year, the patwari, the Urdu record and the separate railway, descends from that year.
Dynasty: Asaf Jahi. Seat: Aurangabad
Authority in the countryside here was not dynastic for most of its history. The deshmukh collected and the deshpande recorded, both by hereditary watan right in a defined pargana, and every incoming power from the Bahmanis to the Asaf Jahis confirmed them because none could assess revenue without their papers. They are the reason a region governed in four successive court languages kept continuous village records in Marathi.
Dynasty: Offices held by watan right, not a dynasty. Seat: Pargana headquarters across the Godavari, Manjra and Purna basins
The history of Marathwada from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)