Rulers of the Bahmani Sultanate, an Islamic kingdom in the Deccan region of southern India, which prevailed from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. The kingdom was founded in 1345 when Zafar Shah, a soldier in the service of Muhammad Tughlaq, seized Daulatabad (near present-day Aurangabad) and assumed the name of Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah. The successors to his kingdom, thus, came to be known as the Bahmani Sultans. The Bahmani dynasty ruled first from Gulbarga and later from Bidar, both in the present-day state of Karnataka. The kingdom was a rival of the Vijayanagara empire and the Orissa Gajapatis, who were vying for control of the Deccan region. As the Sultanate declined in the second half of the fifteenth century, parts of its territory evolved into independent kingdoms, centred in Bijapur (ruled by Adil Shahis), Ahmednagar (ruled by the Nizam Shahis), Golconda (ruled by the Qutub Shahis), Berar (ruled by the Imad Shahis) and Bidar (ruled by the Baridis).