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Golconda Fort

Walled hill fortress five miles west of Hyderabad. The Bahmani sultans received it from the ruler of Warangal in the 14th century. It became the seat of the Qutb Shahi sultans and was rebuilt in stone under Ibrahim Qutb Shah. It fell to Aurangzeb in 1687 after a siege of more than eight months.

Golconda Fort's granite walls and a gate climbing toward the hilltop citadel.
Golconda Fort's granite walls and a gate climbing toward the hilltop citadel. · Bernard Gagnon (opens in a new tab) · CC BY-SA 3.0 (opens in a new tab)

Golconda Fort stands on a rocky granite ridge about five miles west of Hyderabad.1 The Imperial Gazetteer of 1909 describes it as a “fortress and ruined city”.1 It was the seat of the Qutb Shahi sultans from the early 16th century.1 Even after the court moved to Hyderabad in the 1590s it remained their stronghold and treasury.2 For the town and its history, see Golconda.

Before the Qutb Shahis

Both the Imperial Gazetteer and Bilgrami say that a fort here was first built by the rulers of Warangal. Bilgrami cites the Mughal chronicle Maathir-i-Alamgiri.3 It says the fort was then called Mankal and had walls of mud.3

The Imperial Gazetteer says the Raja of Warangal gave it up, with its dependencies, to the Bahmani sultan Muhammad Shah in 1364.1 Gribble, following Ferishta, describes this as part of a peace that made Golconda the frontier between the two kingdoms.4

The Qutb Shahi fortress

Sultan Quli was governor of Telingana for the Bahmanis.3 Bilgrami credits him, while still governor, with the boundary wall, the Jami Masjid and a royal palace.3 He says Sultan Quli renamed the place Muhammadnagar.3 The chronicle translated by Briggs says he repaired the fort and built a town beside it, to which he moved his court.5

The Jami Masjid is also called the Masjid-i-Safa.6 It carries an inscription dated AH 924 (1518; AH is the Islamic way of counting years) naming Sultan Quli as its builder.6 He was killed in this mosque while at prayer in 1543.6

Ibrahim’s stone walls

Ibrahim Qutb Shah (1550–1580) rebuilt the walls in masonry. According to the chronicle, Bijapur and Vijayanagara armies had camped near Golconda, and Ibrahim then saw how exposed his capital was.7 He resolved “to rebuild the fort of Golconda with stone and mortar”, and invited his nobles to build palaces inside the walls.7

Bilgrami cites a later Qutb Shahi manuscript about the work of his reign.8 It gives 8,000 yards of wall and 104 bastions, costing twenty lakhs of rupees.8

An inscription in the Naskh script, more than 46 feet long, runs across the face of the Makka Darwaza, one of the gates.9 Bilgrami dates it to AH 967 (1559), in Ibrahim’s reign.9 The chronicle also lists among Ibrahim’s works the Kala Chabutra or Black Terrace at Golconda.10 In the next reign the ambassador of Shah Abbas of Persia was received there.10

The fortifications

The Imperial Gazetteer describes a crenellated stone wall (a wall with gaps for firing) more than three miles round, with 87 bastions.1 Some of the bastions still held large guns with Persian inscriptions, and a moat ran round the outside.1 Inside were the ruins of palaces, mosques and houses, and a citadel (bala hisar) in good repair.1 Of its eight gates, four were in use in 1909.1

Bilgrami gives a circuit of four miles and bastions 50 to 60 feet high.11 Some granite blocks weigh a ton or more, and some are joined with iron clamps.11 He names eight gates: Fateh, Makka, Patancheru, Banjara, Jamal, Moti, Bahmani and New Fort.11 The gates were studded with iron spikes against elephants, and the ditch was 50 feet wide.11 Inside the walls he saw cultivated fields and tanks, and he says most of the city’s people sheltered there in times of danger.11

Tavernier’s account

Tavernier wrote about the reign of Abdullah (1626–1672).2 He described the fortress as “nearly 2 leagues in circuit”, with a large garrison.2 In his words it was “in reality, a town where the King keeps his treasure”.2 The king had lived there since Aurangzeb’s army sacked Hyderabad.2

Buildings inside

Bilgrami found these buildings best preserved:12

  • the Jami Masjid12
  • a small mosque of Ibrahim Qutb Shah halfway up the hill12
  • the citadel and its pavilion12
  • a temple he calls the Madanna temple12

He thought the temple probably dated from before the Qutb Shahis.12 In his view it took its popular name from Madanna, the Brahmin minister of the last king, whose Hindu courtiers used it.12 He also repeats a tradition of a secret passage from the citadel to the Gosha Mahal palace, five miles away.13

Sieges

The siege of 1655–56

In 1655–56 Prince Aurangzeb, acting with the former Golconda minister Mir Jumla, plundered Hyderabad and besieged Abdullah Qutb Shah in the fort.14 Tavernier heard that the king forbade a gunner to fire at Aurangzeb.14 He also heard that the king was on the point of surrendering when his son-in-law snatched the keys from him.14

The Musa Burj

An inscription on the Musa Burj, the large bastion on the north side, records what followed, in Persian and Telugu.15 As Bilgrami reads it, the Mughal commander Mir Miran was pushing trenches and mines towards the ditch where only a small bastion stood.15 He was killed in his trench by a gunshot, and peace followed three days later.15 Abdullah’s commander Musa Khan was then ordered to build a large bastion on the spot, completed in AH 1077 (1666–67).15 The architect’s name is given as Dharmachar.15

H. Krishna Sastri deciphered the Telugu text.16 It opens with Saka 1578 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years), the Manmatha year, when “Sultan Aurangzeb” came and laid siege to the fort.16 It calls the fort Mahamadanagaru (Muhammadnagar).16

The siege of 1687

The final siege came in 1687.17 Gribble, following the Mughal historian Khafi Khan, describes eight months of trench warfare.17 The besiegers filled the moat with bags of earth, raised mounds to fire into the fort and dug mines, which the defenders countered.17 In Gribble’s day one mound was still pointed out as the place of Aurangzeb’s tent.17 The fort was entered only when a commander opened a gate at night.17

Bilgrami says Aurangzeb named the gate by which his troops entered the Fateh (“Victory”) Darwaza.18 A Mughal gun called Azhdaha Paikar (“Dragon-bodied”) still lies on the Musa Burj.18 Bilgrami counts it among the four famous guns used by Aurangzeb’s army in this siege.18

After 1687

The fort remained in use under the Nizams. In 1839 Mubariz-ud-daula, found to be implicated in a conspiracy against the British Government and the Nizam, was imprisoned at Golconda and died there.19 In 1909 the Imperial Gazetteer found the fort garrisoned by a few Arabs and the Golconda Brigade of the Nizam’s army, and listed a royal residence at Golconda.20 The Qutb Shahi tombs lie about half a mile to the north.1

Footnotes

  1. Imperial Gazetteer of India: Hyderabad State (1909), pp. 113–114 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  2. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, tr. V. Ball, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), p. 151 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. Syed Ali Asgar Bilgrami, Landmarks of the Deccan (1927), p. 108 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. J. D. B. Gribble, A History of the Deccan, Vol. I (1896), pp. 38–39 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  5. Golconda chronicle, in Muhammad Qasim Ferishta, tr. John Briggs, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, Vol. III (1829), pp. 353–354 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  6. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), pp. 110–112 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Briggs, Rise of the Mahomedan Power, Vol. III (1829), p. 409 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  8. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), p. 125, note (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  9. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), p. 120 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  10. Briggs, Rise of the Mahomedan Power, Vol. III (1829), pp. 446, 475 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  11. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), p. 109 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  12. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), pp. 109–110 and note (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  13. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), p. 110 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  14. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), pp. 167–168 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  15. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), pp. 109, 153–155 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  16. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), pp. 155–156 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  17. Gribble, History of the Deccan (1896), pp. 304–307 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  18. Bilgrami, Landmarks (1927), pp. 109, 180 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  19. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad (1909), p. 17 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  20. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad (1909), pp. 114, 116 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

Photos

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Inscriptions

Jami Masjid inscription, Golconda fort

1518 CE

An inscription of AH 924 (1518) over the doorway of the congregational mosque (Masjid Safa) in Golconda fort. It records that Sultan Quli Qutb-ul-Mulk built the mosque in the reign of the Bahmani king Mahmud Shah, son of Muhammad Shah. Syed Ali Asgar Bilgrami used it to argue that Sultan Quli stayed loyal to the Bahmanis until 1518, and became independent only after Mahmud Shah's death.

Makka Darwaza inscription, Golconda (1559)

1559 CE

An inscription in Naskh script, more than 46 feet long, across the front of the Makka Darwaza (Mecca Gate) of Golconda fort. It records that the gate was built in AH 967 (1559), in the reign of Ibrahim Qutb Shah, who is named only as 'the namesake of the Friend of God'. It was built by the efforts of his minister Kamaluddin Husain, entitled Mustafa Khan, and the inscription was written by Muhammad of Isfahan.

Musa Burj inscription, Golconda fort (1666–67)

1666–1667 CE

A Persian inscription on the Musa Burj bastion of Golconda fort, with a version in Telugu on another wall. It records the Mughal siege of 1656. Aurangzeb's commander Mir Miran was killed by a gunshot in his trench, and peace followed three days later. Abdullah Qutb Shah's commander Musa Khan then built the great bastion, finished in AH 1077 by the architect Dharmachar. The Telugu text, read by H. Krishna Sastri, dates the siege to Saka 1578 (23 January 1656) and the completion to Saka 1589 (1667).

References

Sources (5)
  1. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1909, pp. 17, 113–114, 116. [Public domain]
  2. Syed Ali Asgar Bilgrami, Landmarks of the Deccan: A Comprehensive Guide to the Archaeological Remains of the City and Suburbs of Hyderabad (opens in a new tab), Government Central Press, Hyderabad-Deccan, 1927, pp. 108–112, 120, 125, 153–156, 180. [Public domain]
  3. Muhammad Qasim Ferishta (tr. John Briggs), History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India till the Year A.D. 1612, Vol. III (opens in a new tab), Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, London, 1829, pp. 353–354, 409, 446, 475. [Public domain]
  4. J. D. B. Gribble, A History of the Deccan, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Luzac & Co., London, 1896, pp. 38–39, 172, 304–307. [Public domain]
  5. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (tr. V. Ball), Travels in India, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Macmillan & Co., London, 1889, pp. 151, 167–168. [Public domain]

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