The Bahmani army, worn down by a two-year siege and sickness, was routed by Vijayanagara; Firuz Shah lost territory and soon gave up his throne.
01Two years before the walls
Pangal, near Nalgonda, guarded the eastern approach to the Krishna valley and had Kakatiya temples within its circuit. Firuz Shah, the scholarly and ambitious Bahmani Sultan who had beaten Devaraya I once before, marched on it around 1417. Firishta, the historian of the Deccan sultans, says the fort held out for two years. Disease broke out in the Bahmani camp, and many of the Sultan’s men died or deserted. Devaraya gathered his army and came to relieve Pangal.
02The rout
The battle that followed was a heavy Bahmani defeat. Firishta records that the Sultan’s army fled, many of its commanders were killed, and the Vijayanagara forces pushed into Bahmani territory. Firuz Shah never recovered. He fell ill, handed power to his brother Ahmad Shah in 1422 and died soon after. Vijayanagara held the eastern doab, and Pangal stayed in its hands. The Pachala Someshvara temple at Pangal, with its carved pillars of the Kakatiya age, still stands among the fields.
Pangal was the greatest Vijayanagara victory over the Bahmanis before Krishnadevaraya, and it ended the reign of the strongest early Bahmani Sultan.