Rachakonda mosque inscription

In 1917 the Nizam’s Archaeological Department described Rachakonda as a ruined town in the Nalgonda district, about thirty-five miles south-east of Hyderabad.¹ It is the “Rajkonda” of the department’s report.¹ Other sources give a shorter distance: in 1922 Alladi Jagannatha Sastri put it thirty-two miles east of Hyderabad.²

When the Bahmani sultan Ahmad Shah I took Warangal in the 1420s, the Burhan-i Ma’asir says, “the Rayas of Devarkonda and Rajkonda” sent envoys.³ They agreed to pay him tribute.³ On these rayas, see the Recherla Velamas. About sixty years later the town had a Bahmani governor and a mosque.

The inscription

The record is known from the annual report of the Archaeological Department of the Nizam’s Dominions for 1915–16.¹⁴ Its superintendent, G. Yazdani, wrote the report.¹⁴ He noted that “Rajkonda” had seven unpublished inscriptions in Telugu.¹⁴ They were described in an article on its antiquities by T. Strinivas in the Journal of the Hyderabad Archaeological Society for July 1916.¹⁴

Yazdani also noted “a Muslim inscription there dated 889 A.H. (1484 A.D.), during the reign of Mahmud Shah Bahmani”.¹⁴ He appended his own translation to Strinivas’s article.¹⁴

According to the report, the inscription is in Arabic and “records the erection of a mosque by one Malik An-Ni’mat, son of Mubarak”.¹ Yazdani added that the mosque into which it is built “seems to have been originally a Hindu temple”.¹

He wrote that Malik An-Ni’mat “was obviously the Bahmani governor who converted the temple into a mosque”.¹ The article in the Journal with the text and translation is not in the library used for this page, and neither the report nor any other source read gives the reading of the inscription.

The setting

The inscription falls in the reign of Mahmud Shah.⁵ According to Ferishta, the province of Telingana and the districts round Bidar were then the only parts of the kingdom that still obeyed the king.⁵ Another inscription of his reign, the Jami Masjid inscription of 1518, is in Golconda fort. For the earlier history of the town, see Rachakonda and Rachakonda Fort. For the Bahmanis in Telangana, see their page.

Footnotes

1. Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of His Highness the Nizam’s Dominions, 1915–16 (1917), p. 4 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

2. Alladi Jagannatha Sastri, A Family History of Venkatagiri Rajas (1922), p. 22 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩

3. J. S. King, The History of the Bahmani Dynasty, founded on the Burhan-i Ma’asir (1900), p. 52 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

4. Annual Report … 1915–16 (1917), Government review, p. vii (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

5. Muhammad Qasim Ferishta, tr. John Briggs, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, Vol. II (1829), p. 535 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²