Author: Neelesh Chatterjee

the Adil Shahi dynasty (1489–1686) stretched across nearly a century, marked by religious reforms, military conquests, artistic splendor, and, inevitably, decline.

As it turned out, the Qazi who had brazenly threatened Sheikh Nizamuddin Auliya passed away suddenly just two weeks after. The Sultan, who was hand in glove with the ulemas in orchestrating the Sheikh’s humiliation, met a violent end only some months later. And the entire coterie of ulemas was dragged off to Daulatabad by the mercurial Muhammad bin Tughlaq in 1328. Most of them never returned to Delhi: A few died on the way, many more perished after reaching Daulatabad. The city of Delhi, too, lost its lustre: It turned into a ghost town when Muhammad bin Tughlaq decided to shift his capital, and though efforts were later made to rectify the damage done, the city never quite returned to its former glory.