Sultanate of Bijapur

The Sultanate of Bijapur is a Sunni Muslim entity of the Indian Subcontinent, reaching from the Western Ghats mountains, across the central Deccan to the Bay of Bengal. The Sultanate has access to the Arabian Sea but has no significant ports there). The formerly powerful and stable region has been in a state of instability and conflict for nearly a century, warring with Vajiyanagar in the south and the Moghul Empire on the north. Portuguese, Dutch, English and French traders have taken steps to encroach upon Bijapur's trade, so that the once magnificent capital city of Bijapur has begun to show signs of decay. Bijapur's wealth, however, is said to be prodigious, while the city has entertained diplomats, travellers and knowledge seekers from around the globe.

The Sultanate covers an area of 288 hexes and has a population of 3,225,341. It borders on the Moghul Empire (Ahmadnagar, Berar and Bodhan); Golconda (Hyderabad and Helipuri); Vijayanagar (Madurai, Mysore, Keladi and Manjarun); and the European colonies of Goa and Coromandel.

The Sultanate is divided into six subahdars (Belgaum, Bellary, Bijapur, Kolhapur, Nellore and Pondicherry) and one Nayak (Vandavasi).

Geography

The region overlies that part of the Western Ghats called the Sahyadri mountain, with its foothills on the east; the mountains slope into the Arabian Sea on the west. Ridges of the Ghats reach eastward to where they meet the Deccan Plateau, a rocky terrain marked by boulders and somewhat inconsistent terrain. This stretches across the Sultanate from east to west until reaching the Nallamala Hills, a part of the Eastern Ghats. The Penner river, rising in the Deccan, flowing through the hills to drain into the Bay of Bengal. The Coromandel Coast is a strip of lowland with extensive mangrove forest and river deltas.