Golconda
Before Hyderabad there was Golconda, a hill fort a few kilometres to the west that had belonged to the Kakatiyas and then to the Bahmani sultans. In 1518 its governor, Sultan Quli, a Turkman from Persia, made himself independent and founded the Qutb Shahi dynasty. The sultans enlarged Golconda into a great walled city. The diamond mines of the Krishna valley, including Kollur, made the name Golconda famous in Europe, though the stones were mined far from the fort and only traded there.
The new city
By the late sixteenth century Golconda was overcrowded and short of water. Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (r. 1580–1612) built a new city across the Musi, laid out on a planned grid. At its centre he built the Charminar in 1591, a square arch with four minarets at the crossing of the main streets, with a mosque on its upper floor. Popular tradition says the city was first named Bhagnagar after Bhagmati, a dancer he loved; historians are divided on whether she existed, and the name may come from the word for a garden. Muhammad Quli was also a poet in Dakhni, Persian and Telugu, and his collected verse is among the earliest bodies of Urdu poetry.
The Mecca Masjid, one of the largest mosques in India, was begun in 1617 and completed under the Mughals. The tombs of the Qutb Shahi rulers stand together near Golconda on raised platforms with large domes.
Mughal conquest and the Nizams
Aurangzeb besieged Golconda in 1687, and the fort fell after eight months, reportedly when a gate was opened from inside. The last sultan, Abul Hasan Tana Shah, was imprisoned at Daulatabad. In 1724 the Mughal governor of the Deccan, Qamar al-Din Khan, Nizam al-Mulk, made himself independent in fact, though he never formally broke with Delhi, founding the Asaf Jahi dynasty. His successor Nizam Ali Khan moved the capital from Aurangabad to Hyderabad in 1763. The Nizams allied with the British from 1798 and kept their state, the largest princely state in India, until 1948. The court's patronage made Hyderabad a centre of Urdu culture, and Osmania University, founded in 1918, taught in Urdu.
Modern Hyderabad
In September 1948 the Indian army entered the state in Operation Polo, and Hyderabad was integrated into India. The city became the capital of Andhra Pradesh in 1956 and of the new state of Telangana in 2014. It is now one of India's largest cities and a centre of the technology and pharmaceutical industries.
Further reading
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1993
- Metcalf, Barbara D. A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press, 2012
See also
- Qutb Shahi Sultanate of Golconda — The Qutb Shahis ruled Golconda and the Telugu country from 1518 to 1687, founded Hyderabad, and controlled the diamond mines that were the world's only significant source until the eighteenth century.
- Asaf Jahi dynasty — The Asaf Jahi Nizams ruled Hyderabad from 1724 to 1948, the largest and richest princely state in India, annexed by the Indian army a year after independence.
- Kākatīya dynasty — The Kākatīyas ruled the Telugu country from Warangal for a century and a half, were governed for nearly thirty years by the queen Rudramadevī, and built an irrigation system that still waters Telangana.
- Aurangzeb — Aurangzeb (reigned 1658–1707), known also by his regnal title Alamgir, was the sixth Mughal emperor, under whom the empire reached its greatest territorial extent while sustained warfare in the Deccan and religiously restrictive policies strained its finances and cohesion.
- Bahmani Sultanate — The Bahmani Sultanate ruled the Deccan from 1347 to 1527, the first independent Muslim kingdom of the peninsula, and split into the five sultanates that followed it.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.