RELICS AND RUINS
Once famous for its diamond mines, Hyderabad’s trove of ancient sites makes it an Indian treasure, finds Tom Otley
A weekend exploring Hyderabad’s rich history
From the top of Golconda Fort you can see the outskirts of Hyderabad, more than ten kilometres away. White one- and two-storey houses chart the undulating hills in the foreground, while on the horizon are the modern office buildings of the Indian high-tech centre. The view has probably changed more in the past three decades than in the past three centuries, but there’s something timeless about the fort.
Originally a mud construction dating from the 12th century, it represented the heart of the former independent state of Golconda, home to the famous diamond mines, in the 15th and 16th centuries. After reaching its heyday, it faced rapid decline until 1590, when, after a water shortage, Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah moved the capital to the banks of the Musi River and created Hyderabad.
Left behind are thick walls, chambers, armoury, palaces, temples and even a mortuary bath. After paying a small entrance fee (which seems to vary depending on who you ask), you walk through gardens to the giant Fateh Darwaza Victory Gate, where you may well see an attendant clapping together two pieces of wood.
The reason behind this becomes clear at the top of the 120-metrehigh fort and the Durbar Hall, which sits at its peak, where the sound of the clapping is amplified by the dome above. In times gone by, this would have warned those higher up of an impending attack.
A tour takes you past cisterns and the glazed pipework used to convey water around the fort through barrel-vaulted rooms, where bats wheel in the darkness, then through large courtyards where open-air music and plays are often put on.
From Golconda, it’s easy to spot the onion-shaped domes of the Qutb Shahi tombs about a kilometre away. It’s an evocative place, with fragile minarets towering over grey granite tombs, which are a mixture of Persian, Pathan and Hindu forms, for an absent audience of worshippers and tourists. Some appear to be on the verge of disintegrating, the stucco ornamentation flaking away, and the admission fees are not likely to help.
It’s ironic that a region once famed for its wealth is so reticent to display its attractions. In a sense, the state of Andhra Pradesh, next to Telangana (Hyderabad is the capital of both), is where Bollywood bling began. The rulers had centuries of wealth and spent as extravagantly as you’d expect when they could dig diamonds from the ground – the most famous being the Kohinoor, now part of the British Crown Jewels.