Mahmud Gawan

Mahmud Gawan (1411–1481) was a Persian statesman who served as the chief minister, or Peshwa^[2] of the Bahmani Sultanate from 1458 and de facto ruler as prime minister from 1466 until his death in 1481. Mahmud Gawan, from the village of Gawan in Persia, was well-versed in Islamic theology, Persian, and the sciences and was a poet and a prose writer of repute.

After emigrating from a small kingdom in Persia in 1453, Mahmud was appointed a high-ranking noble by Alau'd-din Ahmad Shah, the Sultan of the Bahmani Sultanate, and given an officer position. Upon his accession to the throne, Mahmud was made chief minister (Walik-us-Sultanat) with the title Prince of Merchants (Malik-ut-Tujjar) by Humayun Shah. He would rule as chief minister until the breakup of the five-year triumvirate regency council, himself a part of, which oversaw Sultans Nizam Shah and Muhammad Shah III Lashkari in 1466.^[3] Following the triumvirate's breakup, in which his power had been throttled by its other members, he would exercise a great deal of authority over the Bahmani kingdom in his supreme rule. During his reign, Mahmud enjoyed the trust and confidence of rulers, locals as well as that of foreign kingdoms, who had great respect for him. Amongst a factional conflict between the local (Deccanis) and foreign nobility (Afaqis), Mahmud was executed in April of 1481 on Sultan Muhammad III's orders over a forged treasonous document by the Afaqis faction, headed by Malik Hasan Bahri, the chief orchestrator of the plot and Mahmud's successor as prime minister.

Mahmud Gawan led many campaigns against and defended against the Sultanate's neighbors, including the Vijayanagara Empire, the Gajapati Empire, and the Malwa Sultanate, which resulted in the Bahmani Sultanate reaching its greatest territorial extent under his reign.^[2] Mahmud is notable for his construction of the Mahmud Gawan Madrasa, a large centre of religious and secular learning (madrasa) built in Bidar in 1472 which emulated another college in Persia.