who stormed it, and fought day and night to reduce it. The army
that made the siege with heavy guns had neither eaten nor drunk for
twenty days. He lost 5000 of his best soldiers. On the capture of
the town 20,000 inhabitants men and women, had their heads cut off,
20,000 young and old were made prisoners and sold.... The treasury,
however, having been found empty, the town was abandoned."

It is impossible to decide to what this refers, as we have no other
information of any capture of Vijayanagar by the Sultan's forces
at this period. But the traveller may have confused the place with
Rajahmundry or one of the eastern cities of Telingana.

In 1482 A.D., as before stated, Mahmud Shah II. succeeded to the throne
of Kulbarga, being then a boy of twelve, but his sovereignty was only
nominal. Constant disturbances took place; the nobles in many tracts
rose against the sovereign, and amongst others the governor of Goa
attempted to assert his independence, seizing many important places
on the coast; civil war raged at the capital; and before long the
great chiefs threw off all semblance of obedience to the authority
of the Bahmanis, and at length divided the kingdom amongst themselves.

At Vijayanagar, too, there seems to have been chaos, and about the time
when the Dakhani nobles finally revolted, Narasimha Raya had placed
himself on the throne and established a new and powerful dynasty.

The five separate kingdoms which arose in the Dakhan were those of
the Adil Shahs of Bijapur, with whom we have most to do; the Barid
Shahs of Bidr or Ahmadabad; the Imad Shahs of Birar; the Nizam Shahs
of Ahmadnagar; and the Qutb Shahs of Golkonda.