"In the year 877 (A.D. 1472 -- 73) Perkna, roy of the fortress of Balgoan, at the instigation of the prince of Beejanuggur, marched to retake the island of Goa.... Mahummud Shaw, immediately upon intelligence of this irruption, collected his forces and moved against Balgoan, a fortress of great strength, having round it a deep wet ditch, and near it a pass, the only approach, defended by redoubts."

The attack ended in the reduction of the place, when the Sultan returned to Kulbarga.

The BURHAN-I MAASIR CALLS the chief of Belgaum "Parkatapah," and Major King, the translator of the work, gives a large variety of spellings of the name, viz.: "Birkanah," "Parkatabtah," "Parkatiyah," "Parkitah," "Barkabtah."[156] Briggs gives it as "Birkana." It has been supposed that the real name was Vikrama.

About the year 1475 there was a terrible famine in the Dakhan and the country of the Telugus, which lasted for two years. At its close the Hindu population of Kondapalle revolted, murdered the Muhammadan governor, and invited aid from the king of Orissa. This monarch accordingly advanced and laid siege to Rajahmundry, which was then the governorship of Nizam-ul-Mulkh, but on the Shah marching in person to the relief of the place the army of Orissa retired. In the latter part of the year 882, which corresponds to March 1478 A.D., Muhammad penetrated to the capital of Orissa, "and used no mercy in slaughtering the inhabitants and laying waste the country of the enemy." The Rajah submitted, and purchased his immunity from further interference on the part of the Sultan by a present of some valuable elephants.

Firishtah and the BURHAN-I MAASIR differ considerably as to what followed. The former states that, after his raid into Orissa, Muhammad Shah reduced Kondapalle, where he destroyed a temple, slew the Brahman priests attached to it, and ordered a mosque to be erected on its site. He remained nearly three years at Rajahmundry, secured the Telingana country, expelled some refractory zamindars, and "resolved on the conquest of Nursing Raya."

"Nursing," says Firishtah, "was a powerful raja, possessing the country between Carnatic[157] and Telingana, extending along the sea-coast, to Matchiliputtum,[158] and had added much of the Beejanuggur territory to his own by conquest, with several strong forts."

This was probably the powerful chief Narasimha Raya, a relation of the king of Vijayanagar, who, intrusted with the government of large tracts, was rising rapidly to independence under the weak and feeble monarch whom he finally supplanted. The Sultan went to Kondapalle,[159] and there was told that, at a distance of ten days' journey, "was the temple of Kunchy,[160] the walls and roof of which were plated with gold, ornamented with precious stones;" upon receipt of which intelligence the Sultan is said to have made a forced march thither, taking with him only 6000 cavalry, and to have sacked the place.

The account given by the BURHAN-I MAASIR as to Muhammad Shah's proceedings at this period is that on going to Rajahmundry he found there Narasimha Raya "with 700,000 cursed infantry, and 500 elephants like mountains of iron," who, in spite of all his pomp and power, fled like a craven on the approach of the army of Islam. The Sultan then reduced Rajahmundry, which had been held by a HINDU force -- not Muhammadan, as Firishtah declares. In November 1480[161] he marched from Rajahmundry to Kondavid, going "towards the kingdom of Vijayanagar." After reducing that fortress, he proceeded after a while to Malur, which belonged to Narasimha, "who, owing to his numerous army and the extent of his dominions, was the greatest and most powerful of all the rulers of Telingana and Vijayanagar," and who "had established himself in the midst of the countries of Kanara and Telingana, and taken possession of most of the districts of the coast and interior of Vijayanagar."