Hyderabad History

Hyderabad is more than 400 years old and is noted for its many mosques, temples, minarets, bazaars, and beautiful geography. Hyderabad was founded on the banks of the Musi river in the present day Andhra Pradesh by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, Sultan of the Qutb Shahi dynasty, in 1590; this relocation was intended to relieve a water shortage the dynasty had experienced at their old headquarters at Golkonda. They ruled over the Telangana region and some parts of present day Karnataka and Maharashtra.Theories explaining the origins and etymology behind Hyderabad’s name differ. A popular theory suggests that after founding the city, Muhammad Quli fell in love with and married a local Banjara girl known as Bhagamathi. He named this city after her as Bhagyanagaram. Upon her conversion to Islam, Bhagamathi changed her name to Hyder Mahal and the new city’s name was correspondingly changed to match it, resulting in the eponymous name “Hyderabad” (literally, “the city of Hyder”).

Hyderābād was an autonomous princely state of south-central India from 1724 until 1948, ruled by a hereditary Nizam, and an Indian state from 1948 to 1956.When India became independent on August 15, 1947, the Muslim Nizam refused to accede to the Indian Union, although it entirely surrounded his territory, demanding the right as ruler of 18 million (overwhelmingly Hindu) subjects to rule a separate state. The resulting standoff ended with the state’s occupation by Indian troops between September 13-17, 1948 and its incorporation as a state of India the next year. In November 1956 the State of Hyderabad was divided along linguistic lines, with Telangana, the northeastern Telugu-speaking region including the city of Hyderabad, assigned to the newly created Andhra Pradesh state, the Kannada-speaking western districts assigned to the state of Karnataka, and Marathwada, the Marathi-speaking northwestern region of the state, assigned to Bombay state, later Maharashtra.