Ibrahim Adil Shah II
Ibrahim Adil Shah II ruled Bijapur for forty-seven years, wrote songs invoking the Hindu goddess of learning alongside the Prophet, and was called by his subjects Jagadguru, teacher of the world, which was the title he wanted. He was nine when his uncle Ali Adil Shah was murdered in 1580 and he inherited a throne that his aunt by marriage, Chand Bibi, held for him through four years of regents who tried to keep him. He took power himself around 1590. The first thing he did with it was change the state's religion: Bijapur had been Shia since his great-grandfather, and he made it Sunni, which reconciled the Deccani nobility and let him govern a Hindu majority with a lighter hand than any Adil Shah before. The reign that followed was the sultanate's high point. He built Nauraspur as a city of music outside the capital, composed the Kitab-i-Nauras, a book of songs in the Dakhni language on the nine rasas that opens with praise of Saraswati and of Ganesh, patronised painters who made Bijapur's the most original school in the Deccan, and employed Hindus as ministers and Marathi as an administrative language. He was on cordial terms with Akbar, whose son Daniyal married his daughter in 1604, and he kept the Mughals at bay by paying tribute and giving nothing else. When Ahmadnagar fell to them in 1600 he stayed out, and when Malik Ambar rebuilt it he stayed out of that too. He was, the Dutch and English traders reported, fat, fond of the tambura, superstitious, and the most tolerant prince in India. The Ibrahim Rauza, the tomb he built for his wife and was buried in himself in 1627, is the building Bijapur is known for after the Gol Gumbaz, which his son built for himself and which is larger.
- Lived: 1571 CE – 1627 CE
- Nationality: Indian
- Roles: sultan, head_of_state, patron, musician
