Abd-al-Razzāq Samarqandī 2: City of Victory

Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World

Shah Rukh's ambassador to the Indian city of Qaliqut arrives at the heart of the Vijayanagara Empire, finding much to admire but also war, a usurper, and uncertainties about his own status. We visit Hampi, the centre of that late-medieval power, and we talk about elephants.

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Sources:

• India in the Fifteenth Century: Being a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India. Edited by Richard Henry Major. Hakluyt Society, 1857.
• Alam, Muzaffar and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Caine, William Sproston. Picturesque India: A Handbook for European Travellers. G. Routledge, 1891.
• Prange, Sebastian R. Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• Ray, Aniruddha. "The Rise and Fall of Vijayanagar – an Alternative Hypothesis to "Hindu Nationalism" Thesis," in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 64, 2003.
• Sewell, Robert. A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1900.

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