Bijapur

Tomb or Dargah of Sufi Saint Hazrat Murtuza Quadri located at western side Bijapur

Bijapur, now officially called Vijayapura, is the district headquarters of Vijayapura district (Bijapur district) of Karnataka state of India. It is also the headquarters for Vijayapura Taluka. Bijapur city is well known for its historical monuments of architectural importance built during the rule of the Adil Shahi dynasty. It is also well known for the sports by the popular Karnataka premier league team as Bijapur Bulls. Bijapur is located 530 km (330 mi) northwest of the state capital Bangalore and about 550 km (340 mi) from Mumbai and 384 km (239 mi) west of the city of Hyderabad.

The city was established in the 10th–11th centuries by the Kalyani Chalukyas and was known as Vijayapura (City of victory). The city was passed to Yadavas after Chalukya's demise. In 1347, the area was conquered by the Bahmani Sultanate. After the split of the Bahmani Sultanate, the Bijapur Sultanate ruled from the city. Relics of the Sultanates' rule can be found in the city, including the Bijapur Fort, Bara Kaman, Jama Masjid, and Gol Gumbaz.

Quotes

• No ancient Hindu or Jain buildings have survived at Bijapur and the only evidence of their former existence is supplied by two or three mosques, viz., Mosque No. 294, situated in the compound of the Collector’s bungalow, Krimud-d-din Mosque and a third and smaller mosque on the way to the Mangoli Gate, which are all adaptations or re-erections of materials obtained from temples. These mosques are the earliest Muhammadan structures and one of them, i.e., the one constructed by Karimud-d-din, must according to a Persian and Nagari inscription engraved upon its pillars, have been erected in the year 1402 Saka=A.D. 1324, soon after Malik Kafur’s conquest of the. Deccan.
  • Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report 1929-30, p. 29. Quoted from Shourie, A., & Goel, S. R. (1990). Hindu temples: What happened to them. [1]

• Writing on April, 7, 1561, C. Rodrigues remarks that in Bijapur “the Moors are as innumerable as insects.”
  • Donald F. Lach, Asia in the making of Europe, I, p.444. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.

• 'The fall and capture of Bijapur was similarly solemnized though here the destruction of temples was delayed for several years, probably till 1698.
  • Aurangzeb. Muntikhabul-Lubab, by Hashim Ali Khan (Khafi Khan), Cited by Sri Ram Sharma, Sharma, Sri Ram, Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Bombay, 1962., p. 137.

• Middle of 1698: ‘Hamid-ud-din Khan Bahadur who had been deputed to destroy the temple of Bijapur and build a mosque (there), returned to Court after carrying the order out and was praised by the Emperor.’
  • Aurangzeb. Akhbarat. Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, Volume III, Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1972 reprint, pp. 185–89., quoted from Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.

• Hamiduddin Khan Bahadur who had gone to demolish a temple and build a mosque (in its place) in Bijapur, having excellently carried out his orders, came to Court and gained praise and the post of darogha of gusalkhanah, which brought him near the Emperor's person.
  • Aurangzeb. 1698. Maasir-i-alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 241

• Historical names were on that road down through Karnataka. Bijapur was one such name. It was the name of a Muslim kingdom, established almost at the same time as the Portuguese in Goa (Goa had, in fact, been taken away from Bijapur). The name was associated in my mind not with Goa or Old Goa, but with a fine, Persian-influenced 17th-century school of miniature painting: the very name brought the faces and the postures and the special colours and costumes to my mind. But how did Bijapur fit into the history of the region? What were its dates, its boundaries? Who were its rulers and enemies? It was hard to carry all of that in the mind: I would have to look it up in the books, and even then (though I would learn that it had lasted two centuries) I would get no more than the bare bones of dates and rulers. Its achievements, after all, hadn’t been that great; there was nothing in its history to catch the mind, as there was in the art (and the architecture, from my reading: a certain kind of dome). And so that name of Bijapur, and the other historical names on the road south, were like random memories in an old man’s mind.
  • Naipaul, V.S. - India_ A Million Mutinies Now (Vintage, 2011)