Maritime South Asia (1252 – 1395 CE): Bahmani–Vijayanagara Rivalry, Pandyan Decline, and Maritime Networks

Maritime South Asia includes peninsular India south of the Narmada River (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, southern Odisha, southern Chhattisgarh), Sri Lanka, Lakshadweep, the Maldives, and the Chagos Archipelago.

• Anchors: the Tamil plains, Deccan plateau, Kerala backwaters, Sri Lanka’s dry and wet zones, and the Maldives–Chagos island chains.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• The onset of the Little Ice Age (~1300) brought greater rainfall variability, including occasional monsoon failures and drier Deccan interiors.

• Coastal Kerala and Tamil Nadu remained stable rice-and-spice producers, buffered by maritime trade.

• Sri Lanka experienced decline in large-scale irrigation as the Polonnaruwa system fell into disrepair, with highland and coastal polities relying more on rainfall-fed fields.

• Maldives thrived as a cowrie-exporting hub despite fragile freshwater conditions; Lakshadweep integrated more deeply into Malabar’s pepper trade; Chagos continued as uninhabited atolls used incidentally by passing mariners.

Societies and Political Developments

• Delhi Sultanate campaigns (14th c.): Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughluq invaded Deccan, weakening Yadavas, Hoysalas, and Kakatiyas.

• Bahmani Sultanate (founded 1347): ruled from Gulbarga, later Bidar; rivaled Vijayanagara.

• Vijayanagara Empire (founded 1336): by Harihara I and Bukka Raya I, became bulwark of Hindu rule, centered at Hampi.

• Pandyas: waned, replaced by Madurai Sultanate (1335–1378), then absorbed into Vijayanagara.

• Sri Lanka: fractured between Sinhalese highland polities (Gampola, Kotte) and Tamil Jaffna kingdom.

• Maldives: Islamic sultanate flourished; cowries, tuna, coir exported.

• Lakshadweep & Chagos: sparsely populated, integrated into Malabar–Hormuz circuits.

Economy and Trade

• Rice, millet, pulses farmed inland; irrigation tanks vital.

• Pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, pearls, elephants, horses dominated commerce.

• Cowries (Maldives) used as global currency; exported to Bengal, East Africa.

• Ports: Calicut rose as premier Indian Ocean hub; Quilon, Goa, and Nagapattinam important.

• Chinese merchants arrived under Yuan–early Ming demand.

Belief and Symbolism

• Hinduism: Vijayanagara temples (Virupaksha at Hampi) monumentalized kingship.

• Islam: Bahmani mosques, Sufi shrines; Maldives consolidated Muslim identity.

• Buddhism: persisted in Sri Lanka but weakened under Tamil and regional wars.

Long-Term Significance

By 1395, Maritime South Asia was divided between Bahmani and Vijayanagara, with Sri Lanka fragmented, Maldives firmly Islamic, and the Lakshadweep–Maldives–Chagos arc firmly embedded in Indian Ocean currency and spice networks.

The Tughlaq Dynasty under Muhammad bin Tughluq holds power during the famine centered on Delhi in 1335–42.

The sultanate offers no relief to the starving residents of Delhi during this famine.

Tensions between the Muslims forced by Delhi to emigrate to the overwhelmingly Hindu province of Daulatabad had become open revolt in 1346.

After the Sultan, Muhammad Tughlaq, left Daulatabad, Maharashtra, the city had been conquered by Zafar Khan.

Independence from Delhi was immediately declared and Khan had established a sultanate of his own.

A Turkish or Afghan officer of unknown descent, Zafar Khan, whose name is Hasan Gangu, had earlier participated in a mutiny of troops in Gujarat.

When he establishes the Bahmani dynasty as Alaud-Din Bahman Shah, he probably does not feel too safe in Daulatabad, so he shifts his capital a ear later to Gulbarga (Karnataka), located in a fertile basin.

His dynasty that will rule he Deccan for nearly two centuries.

Delhi dispatches an army the following year, but troubles closer to home forces the sultanate to recall it before it is able to depose Alaud-Din, who will have to fight various remnants of Muhammad Tughlaq’s troops, as well as the Hindu rulers of Orissa and Warangal, who had also expanded their spheres of influence as soon as Muhammad had left the Deccan.

The sultanate, under its second Tughluq emperor, Muhammad, has reached its greatest extent yet, its territory stretching from Bengal to Panjab and from the Himalayas almost to the subcontinent’s southern tip.

Muhammad bin Tughluq is an able general but geography and the machinations of ambitious local rulers hinder his effective administration of an empire of this size.

Shortly after Muhammad’s death in 1351, the Sultanate shrinks to the boundaries of Sultan 'Ala'-ud-Din Khalji’s reign at the turn-of-the-century.

India’s Delhi Sultanate, beset by the eruption of numerous rebellions, devastating famine, and the ravages of bubonic plague, is unable to field its depleted armies effectively.

The Shia Muslim kingdom of Bahmani, founded in 1346, passes its first dozen years of existence primarily in consolidating its control over the western Deccan region south nearly to the Kristna, or Krishna, River, bringing it into conflict with the independent Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar established ten years earlier.

Conflicts begin in 1350 over possession of the extremely rich and anciently contested land lying between the Tungabhadra River (Bahmani’s southern border) and the Kristna River (Vijayanagar’s northern border).

Warfare between Vijayanagar and Bahmani continues under Bahmani’s second ruler, Muhammad Shah.

Despite Muhammad Shah’s novel employment of artillery in two wars, he gains little ground in the hotly contested border area between the Kristna and Tungabhadra Rivers.

The Bahmani defeat Vijayanagar in 1365 and again in 1367, inflicting a general massacre upon their Hindu enemies to the south.

Bahmani’s ruler, Muhammad Shah I, dies in 1377.

Under his successor, Bahmani narrowly fails in its attack against the capital city of the Vijayanagar kingdom.

The assassination of the new Bahmani sultan in 1378 permits a recovering Vijayanagar to seize Goa and other west coast ports.