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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
JUNE, 19 20
his capital, with a very large army and encamped before the fort of Rânübari. As that fort was not very strong, 'Adil Khan formed the intention of capturing it and handing over the command to one of his officers, in order that he might then make it his base of operations against Ahmad Nizam Shah's country, and capture that country with ease.
When the king's spies reported to him Yûsuf 'Adil Khan's expedition, he issued orders for the assembling of his army, and prefects and muster-masters were sent in haste to all parts of the kingdom to bid the amirs and chief officers of the army to assemble at court with their troops. In a short time a very large army was thus collected, with which the king marched against the enemy. When the royal army arrived at Ghâți Vabalad, near which was the army of Majlis-i-Rafi' Yûsuf 'Adil Khân, the king commanded that the pass at the head of the ghat through which the invaders must pass, should be blocked, in order that their retreat might be cut off and that they might be confounded in the whirlpool of perplexity.
Although this plan for crushing the enemy was very well conceived, Masnad-i-Ali Malik Nasir-ul-Mulk and the rest of the amirs humbly represented that to close entirely the enemy's way of retreat would but compel him to invade still further the king's dominions and to support himself there by plundering the country. The best plan, they said, would be for the royal army to move aside and leave one line of retreat open. The king accepted this advice and ordered the amirs to choose a camping ground for the army. Then the king issued a farmán to the kølis dwelling in those parts, authorizing them to plunder and slay the enemy. The kôlis had been hoping and praying for such a permission. The enemy's camp was surrounded by jungle and brushwood, so dense that an ant could not penetrate it without shedding its skin like a snake. The kolie crept through this jungle on dark nights and poured showers of arrows into the enemy's camp and carried off horses and goods without any serious opposition, and when the day broke, took refuge again in the jungle and in their places of retreat, and would then again lie in ambush and attack the enemy with clouds of arrows, and thus in a short time reduced the army of 'Adil Shah 44 to great straita. The enemy's spirit was entirely broken, and at last, without fighting and without having acquired any honour, they determined to retreat, and set forth on their retreat by that road which passed close to the camp of the royal army. Since the king's army had closed the enemy's line of retreat and every pass was occupied by a detachment of royal troops, It was only with the greatest difficulty that 'Adil Khan extricated himself alive. The royal army fell upon his troops and defeated them with great slaughter and those of the enemy who dismounted and fled on foot escaped, while those who would not dismount and throw away their arms were slain. The royal army took much spoil from the vanquished, and the king returned in triumph to his capital.45
4 Here Sayyid 'Ali incautiously admits that Yusuf was as much a king as his hero was.
4 It is not easy to identify this raid of Yusuf 'Adil ShAh's. The author of the Basatin-118-Salatin says that Khwaja JabAn of Bijapur completed the fortress of Parenda in 1487, but there is no mention of any interruption of the work by Ahmad. According to Firishta, Ahmad's first enterprise after his declara. tion of independence in 1490 was the reduction of Dande-Rajpuri (Chaul), the siege of which place he had raised on hearing of the death of his father in 1488. The siege now occupied him for ten months or year, at the end of which time the fortress surrendered and left Ahmad free to march on Daulatábad. (F. ii, 186.) The account can hardly refer to Ahmad's expedition to Bijapur in A. D. 1503-04 which was undertaken for the purpose of compelling Yteuf. Adil Shah to revoke his ordinance establishing the Shish religion (F. ü, 19), and it is not improbable that the incident has been invented by Sayyid Ali for the glorification of Ahmad.
