Mahmud Gawan
Mahmud Gawan (1411, Iran - 1481) was a prime minister in the Bahamani Sultanate of Deccan. Khwaja Mahmud Gilani, from the village of Gawan in Persia, was well-versed in Islamic theology, Persian language and mathematics and was a poet and a prose writer of repute. Later, he became a minister in the court of Muhammad Shah-III (1463-1482). A storehouse of wisdom, Mahmud enjoyed the trust and confidence of rulers, locals as well as that of foreign kingdoms, who had great respect for Mahmud.
Career
He was very capable and efficient. Greatly impressed with his military genius, Humayun had taken him in his service. After Humayun's death, he became the guardian of his minor prince Nizam Shah. He had the reigns of Government in his hands. When the young Sultan died in 1463 and h brother Muhammad III aged 9 succeeded him, Mahmud Gawan served as the prime minister. He effectively put an end to the havoc wrought on the pilgrims of Mecca and on merchants by the fleets of RaoRana Shankarrao Surve and RaoRana Neelkanthrao Surve Rajas of Khelna (Vishalgarh) and Sangameshwar which were part of Shringarpure jagir of Surve Maratha clan respectively. He captured Goa, the best part of Vijayanagar empire. In 1474, a terrible famine known as "famine of Bijapur" devastated the Deccan. Large number of people fled to Gujrat and Malwa. For 2 years the rains failed and when they came in the third year, scarcely any farmers remained in the country to cultivate the lands.
Campaigns against Vijayanagar
Mahmud Gawan served the state most faithfully and enlarged the kingdom to an extent never achieved before. He plundered Kanchi or Kanjeevaram during the course of campaign against Vijayanagar. He fought successful wars against ruler so Konkan, Sangameshwara, Orissa and Vijayanagar.
Introduction of gunpowder
He became powerful through military campaigns, administrative reform, and a policy of balancing rival factions in the Bahmani court. Mahamud Gawan, the prince of the Bahmani king Mahamud Shah Bahmani Lashkari, used gunpowder in the war against the Vijayanagar kings in Belgaum. He is considered the architect of medieval Deccan who invited Persian chemists to teach his soldiers the preparation and use of gunpowder.[1]
Education
He built the great university in Bidar which is known as Mahmud Gawan Madrasa. Almost at the centre of Bidar's Old Town stand the graceful buildings, which bear testimony to the genius and eclecticism of Mohammad Gawan. A linguist and a mathematician, he, together with carefully chosen scientists, philosophers and religious seers, created a distinguished religious school. His extensive library boasted of 3,000 manuscripts.[2]
His three-storey madrasa with a monumental minaret, a mosque, labs, lecture halls and students' cells overlooks an immense courtyard with arches on every side giving it a graceful facade. Many of the blue tiles on the mosque's outer walls have been pilfered. The minaret is elegant with Samarkhand-like domes here and there.
Death
Unfortunately, plots were hatched to topple him; the nobles forged a treasonous document purportedly from him. In a drunken state the Sultan ordered him executed in April 1481. "With him departed all the cohesion and power of the Bahmani Sultan."[3]
Later the Sultan regretted his hasty decision and buried his Prime Minister with honours.
Legacy
A Russian traveller, Athanasius Nikitin, who visited Bidar, has recorded that Mohammad Gawan's mansion was guarded by a hundred armed men and ten torchbearers.[2]