The first Bahmani–Vijayanagara war: Mudgal and Kauthal

01Mudgal and Kauthal

Firishta, writing in the early seventeenth century from Bahmani sources, says the war began over a dispute about money and insults between the two courts. Bukka’s army took Mudgal, the Bahmani fort in the Raichur doab, and killed its garrison. Muhammad Shah swore revenge, crossed the Tungabhadra in the rains, and met the Vijayanagara army at Kauthal. Firishta says it was the first battle in the Deccan where gunpowder artillery was used, and the Bahmanis won.

02The treaty

Firishta describes great massacres of civilians by the Bahmani army in the Vijayanagara country after the battle, and he gives inflated figures that historians do not accept. Both sides were exhausted. Firishta says the peace included an undertaking that in future wars the helpless and unarmed would not be killed. The frontier returned to the Krishna–Tungabhadra line, and the Raichur doab remained the prize of a war that would go on for 150 years.

Place · Founded 1336 by Harihara I and Bukka Raya; sacked 1565Hampi (Vijayanagara)Vijayanagara, the City of Victory, capital of the empire that held the south for over two centuries. After the defeat at Talikota in January 1565 it was plundered for months and never lived again.Read →