Kākatīya dynasty

Warangal

The Kākatīyas emerged from Chalukya feudatory status in the twelfth century and unified the Telugu-speaking country for the first time under a single dynasty. Their capital at Warangal was ringed by concentric fortifications; the great carved stone gateways of its ruined temple, the toraṇas, are the emblem of Telangana today.

Their most consequential work was hydraulic. The Kākatīyas and their subordinates built thousands of tanks — earthen reservoirs catching monsoon runoff in a country with no perennial river system — including the great chains at Pakhal and Ramappa. Many remain in use, and the resulting agricultural expansion is the material basis of the dynasty's rise.

Rudramadevī

Gaṇapatideva, having no son, designated his daughter Rudramadevī as successor, and she ruled from 1262 to 1289. She was formally styled as a king, with the male name Rudradeva, in inscriptions — an accommodation that is itself informative — and led armies in person.

Marco Polo, who passed the Andhra coast shortly after her death, describes the kingdom of a queen who had ruled for forty years with great justice and whose country produced the finest diamonds. The Kākatīya country's Golconda mines were the world's only significant source of diamonds until the eighteenth century.

The Ramappa temple at Palampet, built in 1213 under Gaṇapatideva, is the dynasty's finest monument — a Śaiva temple in reddish sandstone with black basalt bracket figures of dancers, set on a star-shaped platform, and roofed with bricks light enough to float.

Conquest

Prataparudra, Rudramadevī's grandson, faced repeated invasions from Delhi. Alauddin Khalji's forces extracted tribute — the Koh-i-Noor diamond is traditionally said to have been surrendered in one of these settlements — and in 1323 Ulugh Khan, later Muhammad bin Tughlaq, took Warangal and ended the dynasty. Prataparudra died on the way to Delhi.

Kākatīya officers scattered: one branch took Bastar, others became the Musunuri and Recherla chiefs who contested the Sultanate's hold on the Telugu country, and the memory of the dynasty ran directly into the founding of Vijayanagara.