1 Gani - Muhammad Shah III

Muhammad Shah III ruled the Bahmani Sultanate during its final period of real coherence before the kingdom fragmented into the five Deccan Sultanates. His reign saw near-constant warfare against Vijayanagara to the south, and it was his minister Mahmud Gawan — one of the most capable administrators in medieval Indian history — who effectively held the sultanate together until his execution on the sultan's orders in 1481, a political miscalculation from which the Bahmani state never recovered.

Gawan's death came just a year before this issue's production window closes.