The Hindu resistance was seldom strong or well-organised. The Muslims had superior firepower, better organisation, and in most cases, unity. Although there was always considerable internecine jihad between rival Muslim factions, the warring groups could usually unite against the infidels. In 1564, the sultans of Bijapur, Bidar, Ahmadnagar, and Golkonda formed such an alliance against the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire, which ruled southern India. The following January, Rama Raya, the de facto Vijayanagara ruler, met the forces of the Muslim alliance near a Vijayanagara fortress, Talikota, with a mixed force of Hindus and Muslims.
The Hindus were winning the battle when two Muslim generals fighting for Vijayanagara deserted and joined the jihadi alliance. The Hindu line was broken, and Rama Raya was almost immediately captured and beheaded. The Muslims quickly stuffed his head with straw and mounted it on a pike for display. That was the turning point in the battle: the Hindus fled in shock and confusion. Noted Firishta: “The Hindus, according to custom, when they saw their chief destroyed, fled in the utmost disorder from the field, and were pursued by the allies with such success that the river was dyed red with their blood.
It is computed by the best authorities that above one hundred thousand infidels were slain during the action and the pursuit.” Muslims entered the city of Vijayanagar, the seat of the empire. In 1522, the Portuguese traveller Domingos Paes had visited Vijayanagar, and reported that it was comparable in size to Rome, with a population of five hundred thousand. He called Vijayanagar “the best provided city in the world…for the state of this city is not like that of other cities, which often lack supplies and provisions, for in this one everything abounds.”
Inside the palace, he saw a room “all of ivory, as well the chamber as the walls from top to bottom, and the pillars of the crosstimbers at the top had roses and flowers of lotuses all of ivory, and all well executed, so that there could not be better—it is so rich and beautiful that you would hardly find anywhere another such.” It was in this grand city that the warriors of jihad now went to work.
“The plunder was so great,” said Firishta, “that every private man in the allied army became rich in gold, jewels, effects, tents, arms, horses, and slaves; as the sultans left every person in possession of what he had acquired, only taking elephants for their own use.” They slaughtered as many people as they could and entered the temples in order to destroy the statues. After smashing the statues in the temple of Vittalaswami, they set fire to it.
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