Qutb Shahi Sultanate of Golconda

Golconda and Hyderabad

Sultan Quli, a Turkoman from Hamadan in Bahmani service, made himself independent at Golconda in 1518. The fortress there — a granite hill ringed by walls, with an acoustic system by which a clap at the entrance is heard at the summit — was the seat until 1591, when Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah founded Hyderabad on the Musi river a few miles away because the fort had outgrown its water supply.

The Charminar, built at the new city's centre in 1591, is Hyderabad's emblem: four arches and four minarets on a square plan, at the intersection of the city's principal axes.

Diamonds and Telugu

The Golconda mines in the Krishna valley produced the Koh-i-Noor, the Hope, the Regent and the Orlov, among others. India was the world's only significant diamond source until Brazilian discoveries in the eighteenth century, and Golconda's name became a synonym in European languages for a source of wealth — the stones were cut and traded at the fortress, though mined elsewhere in the kingdom. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the French jeweller, visited the mines and left the best account of them.

The dynasty patronised Telugu as well as Persian and Dakhni. Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah wrote poetry in Dakhni Urdu — his collected verse is the first substantial dīvān in that language — and Telugu literature received court support under Ibrahim Quli, whom Telugu poets called Malkibhirāma.

The end

Aurangzeb besieged Golconda for eight months in 1687 and took it by bribing an officer to open a gate. The last sultan, Abul Hasan Tana Shah, was imprisoned at Daulatabad for the rest of his life.

The Qutb Shahi tombs outside Golconda — a garden necropolis of domed granite tombs on arcaded plinths — survive as the most complete royal cemetery of the Deccan. Hyderabad passed to the Mughals and then, from 1724, to the Asaf Jahi Nizams.