BIJAPUR, an ancient city and modern district of British India in the southern division of Bombay. It is a station on the Southern Mahratta railway, 6om. S. of Sholapur. The ancient city was supplied with water by an elaborate underground system of reservoirs and aqueducts, which has been restored in part. The population in 1931 was 39,747. The city used to be the extensive and splendid capital of an independent sovereignty of the same name, but now retains only the vestiges of its former grandeur, though it is now increasing in population, and includes one of the most picturesque collection of ruins in India. The city owed its greatness to Yusuf Adil Shah, the founder of the independent State of Bijapur. It consists of three distinct portions—the cit adel, the fort and the remains of the city. The citadel, a mile in circuit, is of great strength and encompassed by a ditch iooyd. wide, formerly supplied with water, but now nearly filled up with rubbish. Within the citadel are the remains of Hindu temples, which prove that Bijapur was an important town in pre-Moham medan times. The fort, which was completed by Ali Adil Shah in 1566, is surrounded by a wall 6m. in circumference and from 3o to soft. high, with massive bastions and a deep moat. Outside the walls are the remains of a vast city, now for the most part in ruins, but affording abundant evidence of the ancient splendour of the place. The Gol Gunbaz, or tomb of Sultan Mohammed Adil Shah, which was built 1626-56 is a square building, sur mounted by a great circular dome 198ft. high. The inside area is greater than the Pantheon at Rome. It has been thoroughly re stored, and one portion is used as a museum. The Ibrahim Roza, or tomb and mosque of Ibrahim Adil Shah, which took 36 years to build, is exquisitely beautiful. It was completed about 162o. The Gagan Mahal, or ancient audience hall, is in ruins but the archway, about 9oft. high, remains. Through it the last king of Bijaput was brought bound with silver chains, while on a raised platform sat Aurangzeb, the Mogul emperor, who had left Delhi three years previously to conquer the Deccan.
History.—The founder of the Bijapur dynasty, Yusuf Adil Shah, is said to have been a son of the Ottoman sultan Murad II., who went to India, took service under the Bahmani king of the Deccan, and ultimately became a person of great importance at the court of Mahmud II. In 1489 he took advantage of the break-up of the Bahmani power to establish himself as an inde pendent sultan at Bijapur, his dominions including Goa on the west coast. His descendants maintained the prosperity of the State, until the rise of the Mahratta power under Sivaji began to make inroads upon it, and it was exposed to the yet more for midable ambition of Shah Jahan. In 1686 the Mogul emperor, Aurangzeb, who as Shah Jahan's general had unsuccessfully be sieged the city under Mohammed Adil Shah, took Bijapur and annexed the kingdom to the Delhi empire. The celebrated gun, Malik-i-Maidan, now in the capital, and said to be the largest piece of cast bronze ordnance in the world, was captured from the king of Ahmadnagar by the king of Bijapur about the middle of the i7th century. An inscription on the gun recording that fact was erased by Aurangzeb, who substituted the present in scription stating that he conquered Bijapur in 1686. The city and territory of Bijapur remained annexed to Delhi till '724, when the nizam established his independence in the Deccan, and included Bijapur within his dominions; but, being defeated by the Peshwa in 176o, he was compelled to purchase peace by its cession to the Mahrattas. Upon the fall of the Peshwa in 1818 Bijapur passed into the hands of the British, and was by them included in the territory assigned to the rajah of Satara. In 1848 the territory of Satara was escheated through the failure of heirs. The city was made the administrative headquarters of the district in 1885.
The district of Bijapur occupies a barren plain, sloping east ward from a string of feudatory Mahratta States to the nizam's dominions. It contains an area of 5,71 osq.m., and its population in 193i was 869,22o. The fluctuating numbers of the population feveal the effects of famine. There is very little irrigation in the district. The principal crops are millet, wheat and cotton. There are considerable manufactures of cotton and silk goods and blan kets, several factories for ginning and pressing cotton, and a grain and cattle trade. The East Deccan line of the Southern Mahratta railway traverses the district from north to south.