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Notice. An Unpublished Inscription from the Fort of Ahmadnagar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2019

PUSHKAR SOHONI
Affiliation:
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Punepushkar.sohoni@iiserpune.ac.in
WILLIAM KWIATKOWSKI
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar, Washington DC

Abstract

The fort of Ahmadnagar is important in the Sultanate history of the Deccan. There is no published epigraphic evidence regarding its construction. This notice concerns an inscription that has hitherto gone unnoticed, and which mentions the rebuilding of the fort in stone.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2019

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References

1 Briggs, John, History of the Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India till the Year A.D. 1612, vol. III (London, 1829), p. 197Google Scholar.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., Astarabadi, Muhammad Qasim Hindushah, Tārikh-i Firishtah, jild 3 (Tehran, [2014]), p. 317Google Scholar.

4 Briggs, History of the Rise of the Mohammedan Power, p. 201; Astarabadi, Tārikh-i Firishtah, p. 321:

پس در شهر سنه تاسعمائه (۹۰۰) در ساعتی که منجمان اختیار کرده بودند مقابل باغ نظام کنار ناهار سین طرح شهر انداخت

5 Sohoni, Pushkar, ‘Patterns of Faith: Mosque Typologies and sectarian affiliation in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar’, in Seeing the Past - Envisioning Islamic Art and Architecture: Essays in Honor of Renata Holod, (ed.) Roxburgh, David (Leiden, 2014), pp. 110127Google Scholar.

6 Briggs, History of the Rise of the Mohammedan Power, p. 204; Astarabadi, Tārikh-i Firishtah, p. 327:

ان حشم را نوازش فرمود ان قله را تفرج نمود و هر چه محتاج مرمت بود تعمیر کرد و به مردم معتمد خود سپرده مزاففر و منصور به احمدنگر مراجعت نمود و در ساعت خجسته و طالع شایسته در باغ نظام که بر خود مبارک دانسته مسکن خود کرده بود حصاری از گیل و سنگ ساخت و درونش عمارات عالی طرح انداخت. قصور دلکش را چون آبگینه به سرخ و زرد بیاراست و در آن سنوات هر گزار سواری متقائد نگاشته

7 Briggs, History of the Rise of the Mohammedan Power, p. 242; Astarabadi, Tārikh-i Firishtah, p. 397:

نظام شاه به احمدنگر رفته قله را که از خشت و گل بود بشکست و دایره اش بزرگ ساخته از گچ و سنگ گردانید

8 Sohoni, Pushkar, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds: Responses to Gunpowder in the Early Modern Deccan’, South Asian Studies 31, 1 (Jan 2015), pp. 111112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 Nazim, M., ‘Inscriptions from the Bombay Presidency’, in Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica 1933–1934 (Delhi, 1937), pp. 161Google Scholar.

11 For inscriptions organised by the chronology of their creation, see Bendrey, V. S., A Study of Muslim Inscriptions: with special reference to the inscriptions published in the Epigraphia-Indo-Moslemica 1907–38 (Bombay, 1944), pp. 123126Google Scholar, concerns the period under Husain Nizam Shah; an example of a dynastic grouping of inscriptions of the Shahs, Nizam is ‘Appendix: Inscriptions’, in Sohoni, Pushkar, The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India (London, 2018), pp. 220235Google Scholar; a topographical list for Ahmadnagar is ‘Ahmadnagar’, in Desai, Z. A., Arabic, Persian, and Urdu Inscriptions of West India: A Topographical List (New Delhi, 1999), pp. 1620Google Scholar.

12 All the notices of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu inscriptions from Ahmadnagar are in the following issues of Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy: 1961–62 (1966), pp. 187–188 (D-119–122); 1962–63 (1967), p. 185 (D-103–112); 1971–1972 (1981), pp. 125–129 (D-47-78); 1976–77 (1987), p. 164 (D-205); 1978–79 (1989), p. 129 (D-78).

13 The authors are grateful to Manijeh Bayani and Wheeler M. Thackston for their assistance in translation.

14 Athavale, Aravind S., ‘Coins of Nizam Shahi sultanate of Ahmednagar’, in Numismatic Panorama: Essays in the Memory of Late Shri S.M. Shukla, (eds.) Maheshwari, K. K. and Rath, Biswajeet (New Delhi, 1996), pp. 291320Google Scholar, especially p. 301.

15 Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy 1965–66, D192; Indian Archaeology: A Review 1964–65 (New Delhi), Arabic and Persian Inscriptions, no. 18.

16 Brentjes, Sonja, ‘Issues of Best Historiographical Practice: Garcia da Orta's Colóquios dos simples e drogas e cousas medicinais da India (Goa, 1563) and Their Conflicting Interpretation’, in The globalization of knowledge in the Iberian colonial world, ed. Wendt, Helge (Berlin, 2016), pp. 95137Google Scholar, especially p. 98, available at https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/resources/publications/books/globalization-knowledge-iberian-colonial-world (accessed August 2019).