The rise of the five Deccan sultanates from the chaos of the Bahmanī empire, through the assertion of autonomy by the provincial governors, has been mentioned in the previous chapter. Their subsequent political history is largely a record of continuous strife between them, with occasional and variously aligned alliances but only on one significant occasion a community of interest. Internally, however, in spite of their border troubles, they developed major literary, religious and cultural centres.

To some extent all the sultanates inherited the factionalism of local and foreign elements which had led to the disruption of the Bahmani empire; although the religious tensions implicit in this faction were less prominent, as the influential Shī‘a tended to be concentrated in the Shī‘ī sultanates, Bījāpur and Golkondā. The Barīd Shāhis in Bīdar and the ‘Imād Shāhīs in Barār were Sunnī, as were the Nizam Shāhīs of Ahmad-nagar until Burhān I adopted Shi‘ism in 944/1537. The sultanate of the Barīd Shāhīs was gradually encroached upon in the north and west by Bījāpur, against which Bīdar made occasional alliances with the other sultanates; Bījāpur was subject to continual pressure on the south from the Vijayanagara kingdom, and the only occasion on which all the sultanates, except the northern Barār, acted jointly was when their confederation defeated Vijayanagara at the battle of Tālīkota in 972/15 64-5. Bīdar was finally annexed by the ‘Ādil Shāhis of Bijāpur in 1028/1619.