The Forgotten Afghan Kingdoms of South India

When we think of Afghans in Indian history, our minds often drift to the northwest—to the Khyber Pass, to the Delhi Sultanate, or to the rise of the Sur Empire. We imagine rugged warriors descending from the mountains to claim the throne of Hindustan.

But what if I told you that some of the most influential Afghans in Indian history never went near Delhi? Instead, they traveled a thousand miles south, past the Deccan plateau, to the sun-scorched hinterlands of the Karnatak. There, far from their ancestral homelands, they built something remarkable: not a kingdom, but a web of influence that would outlast empires.

This is the story of the Pannis and the Miyanas—two Afghan lineages that became the unseen architects of South Indian politics for over a century. They were soldiers, merchants, diplomats, and kingmakers. But they did not build kingdoms in the traditional sense. Instead, they created something more subtle and resilient: military households. These were flexible, trans-regional networks that combined kinship, military service, and commerce. Unlike a kingdom tied to fixed territories, the household could move, adapt, and survive the rise and fall of dynasties. It was the primary unit of political organization in South India during this period. The Pannis and Miyanas were not territorial conquerors but power-brokers who built networks of influence rather than centralized states.

The Great Escape: Fleeing Mughal Wrath

The story begins not in the south, but in the north, in the court of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan.

In the 1620s, a young Afghan nobleman named Bahlul Khan Miyana served the Mughal prince Khurram—the future Emperor Shah Jahan. When Khurram rebelled against his father, Bahlul Khan followed him into exile. But the rebellion failed, and Bahlul found himself on the wrong side of history.

Rather than face the emperor’s wrath, he made a fateful decision. He joined the rebellion of Khan Jahan Lodi, another Afghan nobleman who had grown disillusioned with Mughal service. Together, they fled south, hoping to find refuge and opportunity in the Deccan.

But Bahlul Khan was a pragmatist. When he realized that Khan Jahan Lodi’s rebellion was doomed, he abandoned his commander and struck out on his own. According to the contemporary historian Farid Bhakkari, Bahlul Khan reportedly told Lodi:

“We left our homeland and royal service in the hope of receiving high rank in your service. You have destroyed people’s homes and thrown away your shield. What advantage is there for us to be killed alongside you?”

With that, Bahlul Khan Miyana and his followers turned their backs on the Mughal north forever. They sought service with the Adil Shahi Sultans of Bijapur—a Deccan Sultanate that was then expanding southwards into the rich territories of the Karnatak.

The Southern Frontier: Where Empires Went to Die

The Karnatak was, in the seventeenth century, a land of both terror and opportunity. To northern observers, it was a place of wonders and dangers. The Mughal chronicler Bhimsen, who accompanied an army south in the 1690s, wrote with a mixture of fascination and disgust:

“Along the road between Karnul and Nandiyal… we saw wild men. They do not speak the tongue of the village dwellers… They are of extremely dark complexion and they have hair all over their bodies. They tie the leaves of trees upon their heads.”

But for those who knew how to navigate it, the Karnatak was a goldmine. The region was crisscrossed by trade routes connecting the Coromandel Coast—with its bustling ports and textile industries—to the inland markets of the Deccan. Rice, cotton, indigo, diamonds, and textiles flowed through these networks.

The challenge was that the Karnatak was not a single kingdom but a patchwork of nayaka and palaiyakkarar (poligar) strongholds—remnants of the fallen Vijayanagara Empire. These local rulers were fiercely independent and expert at guerrilla warfare in the region’s dense forests and narrow mountain passes.

For the Afghan newcomers, the Karnatak offered a perfect environment. It was decentralized enough that an ambitious outsider could carve out a niche, yet wealthy enough to make the effort worthwhile. And the local rulers, accustomed to dealing with northern military entrepreneurs, were willing to negotiate.

Building a Household Empire

The key to the Miyanas’ success was the military household—a flexible organization that combined kinship, military service, and commerce. Unlike a state, which was tied to fixed territories, the household could move, adapt, and survive the rise and fall of dynasties.

At its core was a family group, but it expanded outward through marriage, patronage, and the recruitment of soldiers from diverse communities. The household was, in many ways, a medieval corporation—one that specialized in violence but diversified into trade and diplomacy.

Bahlul Khan’s descendants built their power base at Bankapur, a strategic fortress in the western Karnatak that controlled the route from the coast to the interior. From there, they expanded their influence eastward, eventually establishing strongholds at Kadapa and Savanur.

The Miyanas were not alone. Their close allies, the Panni family, established themselves at Karnul, a fortress town near the confluence of the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers. The two households intermarried, cooperated in military campaigns, and shared access to trade networks.

The Afghan Ascendancy in Bijapur

By the 1670s, the Miyanas had become the most powerful family in the Bijapur Sultanate. Bahlul Khan’s grandson, Abdul Karim Khan Miyana, rose to become Commander-in-Chief of the Bijapur army and later Regent for the child-king Sikandar Adil Shah.

But power bred enemies. Two rival factions emerged at court: the “Afghan” faction led by the Miyanas, and the “Siddi” (or Habshi) faction led by African-origin commanders like Khawas Khan and Siddi Masud. Their rivalry, often portrayed by modern historians as an ethnic conflict between “foreigners” and “Deccanis,” was actually a struggle between competing households for control of the state’s resources.

The battle lines were drawn not just in the capital, but in the distant Karnatak. The Miyanas’ power rested on their control of trade routes to the Coromandel Coast. Their rival, the Siddi faction, sought to break that control.In 1677, the Maratha leader Shivaji Bhonsle—himself a product of the Sultanate system—launched a devastating campaign into the Karnatak. His target was not the Bijapur state, but the Miyana household’s economic lifeline.

Shivaji captured Jinji, seized control of the Coromandel hinterlands, and systematically destroyed the Miyanas’ trade networks. Within months, the Miyana household was bankrupt. Abdul Karim Khan died in December 1677, and his followers scattered.

The Bijapur Sultanate would survive for only nine more years. In 1686, the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb conquered the city and ended Adil Shahi rule forever.

Daud Khan Panni: The Afghan Who Served the Mughals

While the Miyanas struggled to survive, another Afghan family rose to prominence under the Mughals. Daud Khan Panni (d. 1715) was the son of Khizr Khan Panni, who had served as Abdul Karim Khan’s right-hand man.

Daud Khan’s genius was his ability to serve the Mughals while maintaining his family’s independence. He entered Mughal service in the 1680s and rose rapidly through the ranks. By 1699, he was the deputy commander of the Mughal forces in the Karnatak.

His career exemplifies the “portfolio capitalist” model identified by historians Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Daud Khan combined military command with commercial enterprise. He owned ships that traded with Southeast Asia, controlled diamond mines in Rayalaseema, and cultivated alliances with merchants, bankers, and local rulers.

The English at Madras found him a terrifyingly effective neighbor. In 1702, he blockaded the port of Madras until the English paid him 25,000 rupees. He invited Afghan merchants to trade at San Thomé, undercutting the English port’s customs duties. He also supported local artisan communities against the English, allowing disgruntled weavers from Madras to shelter in San Thomé.

Daud Khan’s power was built on more than money and troops. He cultivated a fearsome reputation. He maintained a private zoo of exotic animals—tigers, leopards, falcons, and a thousand ducks. He had two hunting dogs that he named after his parents and used to execute criminals. When a rare monkey from Manila died in his care, he had the caretakers brutally punished.

But Daud Khan had no sons. He raised trusted companions “in place of a son” and married strategically to cement alliances. His most famous wife, a cousin, famously refused to share his bed after he spent his wedding night with a courtesan. After his death, she raised an army of 20,000 men and defied the powerful Sayyid brothers. The brothers, led by Hussain Ali Khan, had been the architects of his downfall.

Daud Khan Panni died in battle against Hussain Ali Khan in September 1715, near the town of Zafarnagar. The battle was the culmination of a bitter rivalry between Panni and the Sayyid brothers, who had been sent by the Mughal Emperor to curb his growing power in the Deccan. Panni’s widow, refusing to submit, successfully defended the family’s Deccan estates against Hussain Ali Khan’s forces, forcing the Sayyid commander to withdraw.

The Deccan-Karnatak Frontier

Daud Khan Panni’s death in 1715 marked the end of an era. The Mughal Empire was weakening, and a new power was rising in the Deccan: Nizam al-Mulk Asaf Jah (d. 1748), the founder of the Hyderabad state.

The Nizam understood that the Karnatak households were the key to controlling South India. In 1724, he defeated a coalition of Karnatak Afghans at the Battle of Shakar Khera and seized control of the Deccan.

But the Afghans did not submit easily. When the Nizam marched into the Karnatak in 1725, he found the Miyanas and Pannis allied with Maratha commanders. One Miyana leader, Abdul Ghafar Khan, fielded 14,000 cavalry and an equal number of foot soldiers. The Nizam was forced to negotiate.

The Nizam’s frustration is clear in his letters. He complained that the Afghans “would not be persuaded” despite his efforts to win them over. He even sent “reasonable and intelligent men of that group” to conciliate them. When that failed, he appealed to their shared religion, calling for a “jihad” against “unbelievers.” The Afghans ignored him and deepened their alliance with the Marathas.

The standoff continued through the 1730s. The Deccan and the Karnatak remained separate political spheres, with the Krishna River serving as the frontier. The Afghans were no longer able to expand northwards, but neither could the Nizam control the south.

The Coromandel Coast: Gateway to the World

While the Afghans battled the Nizam inland, they were also deeply engaged in the maritime economy of the Coromandel Coast. The Pathan merchants—as the English called them—were a vital part of the region’s trade networks.

These merchants operated from ports like Madras, San Thomé, and Porto Novo. They traded in textiles, elephants, ivory, tin, and rice. Their ships plied routes to Bengal, Aceh, Kedah, Malacca, and the Persian Gulf.

What is crucial to understand is that these merchants were not independent operators. Their trade networks and autonomy were built on the political protection and connections provided by the Panni and Miyana households. The Pathan merchants were, in many ways, the commercial wing of the Afghan military households. They could operate freely in ports like Porto Novo precisely because their inland patrons—the Miyanas of Kadapa and the Pannis of Karnul—controlled the overland routes and provided political cover. When the households faltered, the merchants’ networks collapsed with them.

The English coveted this trade but found the Pathans difficult to control. In 1716, the Pathan merchants decamped from Madras to San Thomé after the Nawaiyat ruler Saadatullah Khan offered them a favorable two percent duty. The English complained that the Pathans were “insolent and keep Correspondence with the Government and mutter at the Customs.”

The Pathans’ independence was rooted in their ties to inland powers like the Miyanas and Pannis. They could always shift their trade to ports outside English control. But that freedom was slowly eroding.

In the 1740s, the Marathas launched devastating campaigns into the Karnatak, sacking Arcot and Porto Novo. In 1743, the Nizam himself marched south with a massive army, imposing direct control over the region for the first time.

1748-1751: The Last Dance

The final act of the Afghan households’ drama came during the Hyderabad succession war of 1748-1751. When Nizam al-Mulk died, two claimants—his son Nasir Jang and his grandson Muzaffar Jang—fought for the throne.

The Afghans saw an opportunity. They cultivated secret ties with the French East India Company, whose governor, Joseph François Dupleix, was also seeking to expand French influence. The French, in turn, backed Muzaffar Jang and his ally, the Nawaiyat leader Chanda Sahib.

The war dragged on for years, with battles and negotiations in the Pondicherry hinterlands. The Afghans played a double game, publicly supporting Nasir Jang while secretly negotiating with the French.

On the night of December 15, 1750, the Afghans struck. They assassinated Nasir Jang and raised Muzaffar Jang to the throne. For a brief moment, it seemed the old order would be restored.

But the triumph was short-lived. Muzaffar Jang, realizing that the Afghans were too powerful, turned to the French for support. He granted Dupleix vast territories and titles, sidelining his Afghan allies. The Afghans, furious at being betrayed, assassinated Muzaffar Jang as well.

The killings triggered a violent reprisal. The new Nizam, Salabat Jang, marched south with French troops. The Afghans were defeated, their leaders killed or imprisoned. The Panni and Miyana households never recovered.

The Aftermath: From Kingmakers to Pensioners

In the decades that followed, the Afghan households faded into obscurity. The Kadapa-based Miyanas fell into civil war and debt, eventually being conquered by Hyder Ali of Mysore in 1777. The Savanur-based Miyanas became vassals of the Marathas, then of Hyder Ali, and finally of the British. The Karnul-based Pannis were reduced to a small princely state, eventually annexed by the British in 1839.

The historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani, writing around 1800, captured the melancholy of their decline. He described the Panni leader Alif Khan distributing his remaining wealth to holy men and soldiers, “satisfied that he had retained nothing of material value… Amongst this community, the era of bravery and manliness had come to a close.”

The Last Nawab: Ghulam Rasul Khan and the Fall of Kurnool

The Panni household’s long decline reached its final, dramatic conclusion in the person of Ghulam Rasul Khan Panni (c. 1780–1840), the last Nawab of Kurnool. By his time, the family had been reduced from a sprawling, trans-regional military household to a small, impoverished princely state. They were no longer the architects of Deccan politics but desperately trying to hold onto their titles and territories.

Ghulam Rasul Khan ascended to power in the early decades of the 19th century, inheriting a precarious position. The Pannis were caught in a three-way vice between the expanding East India Company, the Hyderabad Nizam, and the remnants of Mysore power. By the 1790s, the British Resident in Hyderabad was already baffled by the Nizam’s claim that Kurnool was a dependency, as the Pannis had been paying tribute to Mysore, not Hyderabad. The family had lost its military muscle, its coastal trade connections, and most of its political autonomy.

The “Wahhabi Conspiracy” and the Annexation of Kurnool

The eclipse of the Panni household culminated dramatically in 1839, when Ghulam Rasul Khan was removed from power and Kurnool was formally annexed by the East India Company. This is where the story takes a controversial turn.

The British accused the Nawab of being involved in a “Wahhabi conspiracy”—allegedly the leading edge of a perceived jihadist threat against the colonial state. The accusation painted Ghulam Rasul Khan as a dangerous religious fanatic plotting to overthrow British rule in the Deccan.

However, modern historians view this accusation with deep skepticism. The “Wahhabi” label was a catch-all term used by the British to describe any Muslim reformist movement, regardless of actual political affiliation. At a time when the Company was aggressively consolidating its power in the Deccan, the Nawab of Kurnool—who controlled a strategically important fortress overlooking the Krishna River—was simply in the way.

But the context was more complex. The immediate trigger for the British intervention was a power struggle involving the Hyderabad Nizam and the British Resident at the Nizam’s court. Ghulam Rasul Khan had been playing a dangerous game, trying to maintain his autonomy against both Hyderabad and the Company. When the British sensed that he was becoming a liability—or an obstacle to their territorial ambitions—they seized upon the “Wahhabi” charge as a convenient pretext.

The Annexation of Kurnool

British forces marched on Kurnool, deposed the Nawab, and brought the territory under direct Company administration. Ghulam Rasul Khan was arrested and taken into British custody. His palace was confiscated, his treasury seized, and his family scattered. The once-proud Afghan household that had navigated the treacherous waters of Sultanate, Mughal, Maratha, and European politics for nearly two centuries was finished. Kurnool became just another district in the expanding British Raj.

The Panni Legacy

The Pannis’ fate mirrored that of the other Afghan households of South India. The Savanur-based Miyanas had already been reduced to British pensioners after Tipu Sultan’s defeat in 1799. The Kadapa-based Miyanas were conquered by Hyder Ali in 1777 and never recovered their power. The Pannis of Kurnool were the last to fall.

But their story is not simply one of defeat. For over two centuries, these Afghan families had shaped the political landscape of southern India. They had moved between courts, bridged regional economies, and survived the rise and fall of empires. They had been soldiers, merchants, diplomats, and kingmakers. Their decline was not a failure of strategy but a consequence of larger forces—the consolidation of European power along the coast and the rise of centralized states inland—that made their flexible, decentralized household system obsolete.

Lessons from the Afghan South

The story of the Pannis and Miyanas challenges our assumptions about identity, power, and belonging in early modern India. These Afghans were not “foreigners” in the south—they were insiders who had made themselves at home through marriage, alliance, and trade. They were not just soldiers—they were merchants, diplomats, and kingmakers. They were not loyal to any single state—they served Bijapur, then the Mughals, then themselves.

Their success was built on flexibility. The military household, with its combination of kinship, commerce, and violence, was perfectly adapted to the decentralized politics of the Karnatak. It could survive the fall of empires because it was not an empire itself.

Their failure, in the end, came from the same source. The household system was too decentralized to withstand the combined pressures of expanding states (the Marathas and Hyderabadis) and expanding European trading companies. When the Coromandel Coast fell under European control, the Afghans lost access to the trade that had sustained their power.

But their legacy lived on. Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, who built the Mysore Sultanate into a formidable power, drew heavily on the recruitment networks and military traditions of the Afghan households. The Pathan merchants continued to trade along the Coromandel Coast, adapting to new circumstances. And the memory of Daud Khan Panni, with his exotic animals and his fearsome reputation, survived in local folklore for generations.

The Afghans of South India remind us that history is rarely as simple as maps and borders suggest. In the complex, fluid world of early modern South Asia, identity was a tool, not a destiny. And the most successful actors were those who could be, simultaneously, Afghans and South Indians, soldiers and merchants, servants and kings.

Beyond the Battlefield: The Pathan Merchants of Porto Novo

One of the most fascinating yet often overlooked aspects of the Afghan presence in South India was their role in maritime commerce. The so-called Pathan merchants were a vital part of the Coromandel Coast’s trade networks, and their story is inseparable from the political fortunes of the Panni and Miyana households.

These merchants operated from ports like Madras, San Thomé, and Porto Novo. They traded in textiles, elephants, ivory, tin, and rice. Their ships plied routes to Bengal, Aceh, Kedah, Malacca, and the Persian Gulf. They were, in many ways, the commercial wing of the Afghan military households, moving goods and capital across the Indian Ocean.

Porto Novo: The Last Free Port

Porto Novo (modern-day Parangipettai) was the crown jewel of this network. Unlike the European-dominated ports of Madras and Pondicherry, Porto Novo remained under indigenous control well into the 18th century. It was a free port—one of the few places on the Coromandel Coast where Asian merchants could trade without the interference of European companies. For decades, the Pathan merchants flourished there, paying low duties and avoiding the punitive regulations that plagued their counterparts in Company ports.

The Miyana household, which had long maintained a presence in the Porto Novo hinterlands, was closely tied to this trade. They controlled key inland routes connecting the port to the markets of the Deccan and Mysore. Their representatives in towns like Chidambaram and Bhuvanigiri acted as intermediaries, coordinating the movement of goods and capital.

The Erosion of Independence

The Pathan merchants’ freedom began to erode in the 1720s and 1730s. Political disruptions inland—including the defeat of the Karnatak households at Shakar Khera in 1724 and a series of devastating famines—forced many traders to seek new arrangements. European ports like Madras and Pondicherry, despite their restrictions, offered stability that inland markets could not provide.

The final blow came in the 1740s. Maratha invasions swept through the Karnatak, sacking Porto Novo and disrupting its trade. The British and French, sensing opportunity, moved to fill the void. By the time of the Hyderabad succession war in 1748-1751, the Pathan merchants were caught between competing European powers and inland factions. Their centuries-old trading networks were unraveling.

The Legacy of the Pathan Merchants

The Pathan merchants of Porto Novo represent a forgotten chapter in South Indian economic history. They were not merely traders but also diplomats, financiers, and bridge-builders. Their connections stretched from the court of the Nizam in Hyderabad to the spice markets of Aceh. They bridged the gap between inland political power and maritime commerce.

Their decline, like that of the Panni and Miyana households, was not a failure of entrepreneurship but a consequence of larger geopolitical shifts. As European companies consolidated control over the Coromandel Coast, the independent trading networks that had sustained the Afghan households for generations withered away.

References & Further Reading

1. Archambault, Hannah Lord. Geographies of Influence: Two Afghan Military Households in 17th and 18th Century South India. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2018. 

2. Eaton, Richard M. A Social History of the Deccan, 1300-1761: Eight Indian Lives. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

3. Gommans, Jos. Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire, 1500-1700. Routledge, 2002.

4. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. Penumbral Visions: Making Polities in Early Modern South India. University of Michigan Press, 2001.

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