Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 25, 2010

The political history of Mysore and Coorg (1565–1760) is the political history of the contiguous historical regions of Mysore state and Coorg province in west-central peninsular India, beginning with the fall of the Vijayanagara Empire in 1565 and ending just before the rise of Sultan Haidar Ali in 1761. After the Vijayanagara Empire's fall, the Sultanate of Bijapur, the Sultanate of Golconda, the fledgling Maratha empire, and the Mughal empire, invaded the region intermittently. By the turn of the eighteenth century, the northwestern hills were being ruled by the Nayaka rulers of Ikkeri, the southwestern, in the Western Ghats, by the Rajas of Coorg, the southern plains by the Wodeyar rulers of Mysore, Hindu dynasties all; whereas the eastern and northeastern regions had fallen to the Muslim Nawabs of Arcot and Sira. Mysore's expansions had been based on unstable alliances. When the alliances began to unravel, political decay set in. The declining Mughal empire raided the Mysore capital, Seringapatam, to collect unpaid taxes; the neighbouring Raja of Coorg began a war of attrition with Mysore over western territory; and soon, the Maratha empire invaded again and exacted more concessions of territory. In the chaotic last decade of this period, a little-known Muslim cavalryman, Haidar Ali, seized power in Mysore. (more...)