| Abstract | In the second decade of the fourteenth century, twenty years after ascending the throne in Delhi, Sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī sent the former slave Malik Kāfūr on a series of southern campaigns, resulting in attacks on Warangal, Dvarasamudra, and Madurai. Even though the ostensible purpose was plunder, and Malik Kāfūr’s forces reinstated the defeated local kings while extracting tribute, these southern expeditions represent a dramatic expansion of Indo-Islamic power into the Deccan. Madurai, further south and controlled by the Pandyas, proved to be more recalcitrant than the other sites. Malik Kāfūr attacked Madurai in 1311 and sacked the nearby Srirangam temple, but it was not Malik Kāfūr but Ulugh Khān in 1323 who finally brought Madurai under Sultanate control. Madurai became independent between 1333 and 1334 and was ultimately conquered again by Vijayanagara forces in 1371. In this paper, I explore two Sanskrit literary responses to the conquests of Madurai that differ remarkably in genre and mood. A careful juxtaposition and analysis of the two poems presents a challenge to the dominant scholarly approach to such narratives as ‘epics of resistance’ and the concomitant assumption that representation of conflict reveals the existence of mutually exclusive and hostile ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ cultures.
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