Bijapur

Bijapur was the capital of the Adil Shahi sultans, a city of mosques, gardens, palaces and enormous tombs on the open plateau of the northern Deccan. Its skyline is dominated by the Gol Gumbaz, the mausoleum of Muhammad Adil Shah, whose dome is among the largest in the world, and by the finely carved Ibrahim Rauza. Walls and a moat enclosed the city, and conduits and tanks brought water to its gardens.

The Bahmani sultans took the area in 1347 and made Bijapur a provincial capital. As Bahmani rule broke up, Yusuf Adil Shah founded an independent sultanate here around 1490. In 1565 the Adil Shahis joined the other Deccan sultans in the victory at Talikota that destroyed Vijayanagara, and the wealth that followed paid for the Jami Masjid and new walls. Ibrahim Adil Shah II, who ruled from 1580 to 1627, was a poet and musician who drew Persian and Deccani artists to his court, and he was buried in the Ibrahim Rauza. His successor Muhammad began the Gol Gumbaz. Bijapur's rulers also fought the rising Marathas, but the greater danger came from the Mughals, and in 1686 Aurangzeb took the city after a long siege, ending the dynasty. Disease and war thinned the population, and from 1760 the area passed to the Marathas.