Vijayanagara: the "City of Victory" in southern India

In 1336 the brothers Harihara and Bukka found on the river Tungabhadra the city of Vijayanagara—the "City of Victory"—and a kingdom of the same name, which for more than two centuries becomes the chief power of southern India and the rival of the Muslim sultanates of the Deccan. The capital, at present-day Hampi, with its temples, markets, aqueducts and stone bazaars, astonishes visitors: the Persian envoy Abd al-Razzaq writes in 1443 that he has seen no city equal to it, and the Portuguese of the sixteenth century compare it to Rome. The summit is the reign of Krishnadevaraya (1509–1529), warrior and poet, under whom Telugu and Kannada letters flourish. In 1565 at Talikota an alliance of the Deccan sultanates defeats the army of Vijayanagara; the capital is plundered and abandoned, and its ruins stand to this day. In those same years the communities of Indian Jews live at Cochin and on the Malabar coast, described by the same travellers.