Hyderabad State

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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. Its capital city Hyderabad was for most of that time one of India's four largest cities.

Hyderabad was founded by the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda. It was built by Persian architects and was known as Isfahan-e-Nau, The New Isfahan due to its beauty and architectural style. The basic architectural design of the city was based upon the Quranic model of Paradise.1

In 1686 the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb campaigned in the Deccan to tame the Marathas and conquer the independent Deccan states. Before the campaign, the Mughals had controlled the northwestern Deccan, including Khandesh and Berar, but Mughal control ended at the Godavari River. Aurangzeb conquered Golconda and Bijapur in 1687, extending Mughal control south of the Krishna River.

Image:Hyderabad and Berar 1903.gif

The Mughal Empire began to weaken during the reign of Aurangzeb's grandson, Muhammad Shah. A Mughal official, Asif Jah, defeated a rival Mughal governor to seize control of the empire's southern provinces, declaring himself Nizam-al-Mulk of Hyderabad in 1724. The Mughal emperor, under renewed attack from the Marathas, was unable to prevent it.

The seniormost (21-gun) princely state in British India, Hyderabad was an 82,000 square mile (212,000 km²) region in the Deccan ruled by the Asif Jah dynasty of Muslim rulers, who had the title of Nizam and style of His Exalted Highness. The Nizams ruled over the wealthiest state in India at that time, controlling some 16,500,000 people. During the height of Hyderabad's wealth in the 1930s the Nizam was the world's richest man, famous for employing 11,000 servants and using the Jacob Diamond as a paperweight. Administratively, it was made up of sixteen districts, grouped into four divisions. Aurangabad division included Aurangabad, Bhir, Nander, and Parbhani districts; Gulbargah (Gulbargah) division included Bidar, Gulbarga, Osmanabad, and Raichur districts; Gulshanabad or Medak division included Atraf-i-Baldah, Mahbubnagar, Medak, Nalgonda (Nalgundah), and Nizamabad districts, and Warangal division included Adilabad, Karimnagar, and Warangal districts.

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 - September 17, 1948 and its incorporation as a state of India the next year. The present Nizam (the eighth), Nawwab Mir Barkat Ali Khan, Mukarram Jah Bahadur, currently lives in Turkey.Image:Hyderabad state 1909.jpg

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.

Due to the long rule of the nawabs and the muslim rulers, there is still a long lasting cultural impact that continues to this day. For instance many of the local dialects of Telugu and Kannada are laced with Urdu - the official language during the Nizam rule. The cuisine too incorporates the Biryani a popular main dish and several other influences.

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