Bidar Sultanate

The Bidar Sultanate was the smallest of the five Deccan sultanates, ruling central Deccan from 1527 to 1619. It was born inside another state: Qasim Barid, a Georgian Turk who rose to prime minister of the Bahmani Sultanate, reduced its sultans to puppets from 1492 and ruled in their name; his son Ali Barid dropped the pretence in 1527 and took the royal title for himself, with his capital at Bidar. The Barid Shahis survived by alliance, joining the Deccan combination that destroyed Vijayanagara at Talikota in 1565, then watched the winners turn on each other. Smallness was no safety: succession murders hollowed the house, and in 1619 Ibrahim Adil Shah of Bijapur, once an ally at Talikota, swallowed Bidar outright. The sultanate's century of borrowed power ended, its Bidar Fort passing to new masters. Its Persianate court of poets and painters had long outshone its small territory, and the Deccan counted one sultanate fewer on its road to Mughal conquest.