LITMIR.BIZ

      MUSLIMS FROM CENTRAL ASIA BEGAN THE SERIOUS CONQUEST OF INDIA around 1000, and the passing centuries saw plenty of misery spread by the advancing armies—50,000 massacred here, 100,000 massacred there—but never enough in one place at one time to make my top one hundred list.

      By the fourteenth century, the Muslims controlled most of the subcontinent. On the leading edge of Muslim expansion was the Bahmani sultanate in west-central India. Facing it, the last stronghold of Hindu sovereignty was an empire centered on the city of Vijayanagar, in the south. The primary battleground for these two was the Raichur Doab, a wedge of land between the confluence of the Krishna and Tungabhadra Rivers in central India.

      While pushing back against the Muslims, Bukka Raya I of Vijayanagar captured the fortified town of Mudkal in the Raichur Doab and killed its entire garrison. Only one man escaped to report the slaughter to his sovereign, Muhammad Shah, Bahmani sultan in the town of Kulbarga, who was so grief-stricken by the news that he ordered the sole survivor killed as punishment for abandoning his comrades.

      Muhammad marched south across the Krishna River and swore he would not rest until he had killed at least 100,000 Hindus in revenge. At the first clash, the Hindu forces were routed, and they fled in a headlong panic to the safety of the nearby fortress of Adoni, abandoning their camp and camp followers to be massacred by the Bahmani.¹

      Without bothering to take Adoni, Muhammad Shah crossed the Tungabhadra River into the enemy heartland, which had never before been invaded by Muslims, and he brought cannons, another first for south India. The next battle was a tough, all-day fight until around four o’clock, when the Vijayanagaran army broke and ran. Indian soldiers were usually accompanied and attended by their families in camp, but these were now abandoned in the confusion. Once again, Muhammad Shah ordered a general massacre of all the Hindu camp followers, sparing not even the pregnant or newborn.

      For the next three months, he chased Bukka Raya all over his domains, defeating every Vijayanagaran attempt to stand against him, and killing every local resident who fell into his hands, regardless of age or sex. Then he brought the city of Vijayanagar under seige.

      After a frustrating month, it became clear that Vijayanagar could hold out as long as necessary, so Muhammad withdrew, harassed the whole way out by the Hindu army in close pursuit. The two armies crossed north of the Tungabhadra River, back into the Raichur Doab. Finally, Muhammad Shah stopped for the night and waited for the Hindu force to arrive and camp nearby—as the two armies had been doing since the retreat started. Around midnight, however, Bahmani forces snuck back and sprang a trap on their pursuers, killing 10,000 in the dark and scattering the rest. Muhammad proceeded to lay waste to the surrounding territory with genocidal fury, killing every inhabitant he could find.

      Sick of the devastation, Hindu religious leaders and Vijayanagaran military officers begged Bukka Raya to negotiate an end to the war. He sent ambassadors to explain to Muhammad Shah that, until now, it had been the custom in south India to not kill prisoners and civilians. Muhammad Shah’s own officers also pointed out to him that he had sworn to kill a hundred thousand Hindus—not all of them. When Bukka Raya agreed to apologize and pay reparations, Muhammad Shah returned home across the Krishna River.²

       Death Toll

      The Muslim historian Firishtah estimated the number of dead on the Hindu side as over 500,000.³ We probably shouldn’t take this literally, but it’s a plausible order of magnitude. Of all the individual wars during the Muslim conquest of India, this is one of only two for which the reported death toll passes the threshold for being on my list (see “Aurangzeb” for the other).

TIMUR

      Death toll: 17 million¹

      Rank: 9

      Type: world conqueror

      Broad dividing line: Timur vs. everyone he could get to

      Time frame: ruled 1370–1405

      Location: central Asia, the eye of the hurricane being Samarkand

      Who usually gets the most blame: Timur; also called Tamburlaine (old version) or Tamerlane (newer version) from his insulting nickname, Timur Lenk (“the Lame”)

      Another damn: Mongol invasion

       The Man You Love to Hate

      Throughout medieval Europe, traveling actors lived at the edge of society. They had to conform to rules of behavior and please their powerful sponsors among the nobility, so they would never dare to challenge the authorities. According to the strict guidelines of medieval drama, the bad guy always died in the end—often horribly, usually repentant. Theater was supposed to reinforce society’s norms.

      Then came the Renaissance, and in the commercial center of London, successful playwrights learned that they could afford to challenge the rules.

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