The region was invaded by the
Bahmani Sultanate in 1471; in 1541 the
Qutb Shahi conquered and extended their conquests over the Guntur and
Masulipatnam districts. They appear to have acquired only an imperfect possession of the country, as it was again wrested from Balram Dev I, the ruling Jeypore king and his several feudal lords. The conquest was finally completed in 1571, during the reign of
Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah of
Golconda and
Hyderabad. Aurangzeb conquered Golconda in 1687 and the Circars along with the Qutb Shahi Sultanate were annexed to the extensive empire of
Aurangzeb. The successor of Raghunath Krishna proved to be an inefficient ruler and as a result lost a vast territory of the Circars. However, the kings of Jeypore continued to rule their decreased kingdom independently until the advent of the British in 1777. The British destroyed the fort of Jeypore and granted them a demoted status of a
Zamindari. The Northern Circars were governed as part of
Madras Presidency until India's independence in 1947, after which the presidency became India's Madras State. The northern,
Telugu-speaking portion of Madras state, including the Northern Circars, was detached in 1953 to form a new 'Andhra State'. The Andhra State was merged with the Telugu-speaking parts of
Hyderabad State in 1956 to form a united
Andhra Pradesh. The two were bifurcated again in 2014 as
Andhra Pradesh and
Telangana. ==See also==