Mecca Masjid: A Pilgrimage

HITECH (Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy) City: Info Hi-Way



Mecca masjid is one of the oldest masjids in the city and easily the biggest. Muhammed Quli Qutub Shah began building it in 1617 under the supervision of Mir Faizullah Baig and Rangiah Choudhary. Mughal emperor Aurangzeb completed the construction in 1694. It took 77 years to come up as the magnificent edifice we see today. Like many other ancient buildings in the city, the mosque is a granite giant with awe-inspiring innards. The main hall of the mosque is 75 feet high, 220 feet wide and 180 feet long, big enough to accommodate ten thousand worshippers at a time.

Mecca masjid is just a hundred yards southwest of the historic Charminar. Between Muhammed Quli Qutub Shah and Aurangzeb, Abul Hasan Tana Shah of Golconda also continued the task launched by the Qutub Shahi kings. It is believed that Muhammed Quli commissioned bricks to be made from earth brought from Mecca and inducted them into the construction of the central arch of the mosque, which explains the name of the mosque.



Fifteen graceful arches support the roof of the main hall, five on each of the three sides. A sheer wall rises on the fourth side to provide mehrab. The three arched facades have been carved from a single piece of granite, which took five years to quarry. More than 8,000 masons and workers were employed to build this grand mosque. Mohammed Quli Qutub Shah himself laid the foundation stone of the mosque, when he failed to find one person who had never missed his prayers. The king seemed to be the only person who never missed on his prayers ever since he was 12 years of age.

“It is about 50 years since they began to build a splendid pagoda in the town which will be the grandest in all India when it is completed. The size of the stone is the subject of special accomplishment, and that of a niche, which is its place for prayer, is an entire rock of such enormous size that they spent five years in quarrying it, and 500 to 600 men were employed continually on its work. It required still more time to roll it up on to conveyance by which they brought it to the pagoda; and they took 1400 oxen to draw it,” says Tavernier in his travelogue.

As the tourist gets past the main gateway and enters a huge plaza, a large man-made pond of bluish waters greets him. On the edge of the pond are two stone and slab benches and whoever sits on them, according to legend, returns to sit on them again. A room in the courtyard is presumed to house the hair of prophet Mohammed. At the peak of the minarets flanking the masjid is an arched gallery and above that a smallish dome and a spire. Inscriptions from Quran adorn many of the arches and doors. The majesty of the façade of the grand mosque is somewhat obscured by huge walls of wire mesh erected to prevent pigeons from entering the prayer spaces and ruining them.

The main structure of the mosque is sandwiched between two massive octagonal columns hewn out of a single piece of granite. The cornices running around the entire mosque structure and the floral motifs and friezes over the arches remind the tourist of the great attention paid to detail in Qutb Shahi architecture. They have a close resemblance to the ones the tourist sees on the arches at Charminar and Golconda fort.



Though an overview of the masjid yields a picture of a massive rectangular granite monolith, closer scrutiny discloses the sculptural excellence of this axis of Muslim faith and of the parts that constitute its sum. If the tourist can deflect his gaze from the sheerness of the façade, everything from the cornices, the alcoves, the balconies to the parapets and the sundry, reveals an unparalleled aesthetic brilliance. Look at the cornice running on the four sides of the mosque, you will find 25 windows positioned between the consoles. These windows have awnings, not very different in their lineage from Hindu temple architecture.

On the four sides of the roof of the main mosque are ramparts made up of granite planks in the shape of inverted conches perched on pedestals. From the cornice of the mosque, its minarets are not as high as the minarets on the mazaar (Nizams’ tombs) haven from their cornice. The octagonal columns have arched balconies on level with the roof of the mosque with an awning for a canopy above which the column continues upwards till it is crowned by a dome and spire.



As the tourist enters the great courtyard of the mosque, to his left he will find an exquisitely graceful, rectangular, arched and canopied building housing the marble graves of Asaf Jahi rulers from Nizam Ali Khan to Mehboob Ali Khan and their family. It is possible that this structure came up during the rule of the Asaf Jahs because it contains the tombs of the Nizams and their family. At both ends of this resting place for the Asaf Jahs and very much a part of it, are two rectangular blocks with four minarets each.

These minarets have elegant and circular balconies with low ornamental walls and arches. Above them is an octagonal inverted platter from which the rest of the minaret soars till it is arrested by a dome and a spire. This mazaar sanctuary is in reality a far greater specimen of architectural sophistication than the principal masjid and proclaims the artistic penchant of the Asaf Jahis.

The Mecca masjid is a listed heritage building crying for constant supervision and maintenance. Stains and patches can be seen disfiguring the exterior of this majestic structure and cracks are appearing in the octagonal columns. The mosque received a chemical wash in 1995. The tourist is also irritated by the growth of foliage in the crevices of the façade.

How to reach :
Citybuses
2, 7Z, 8, 8C, 9C

Timings :
Any Time

Ticketing :
No Tickets required
Women are allowed until the final sanctum sanctorum

Hussain Sagar: Lake Lustre

HITECH (Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy) City: Info Hi-Way



Hussain Sagar bridges not only culturally disparate Hyderabad and Secunderabad, known as twin cities all over the country, but constitutes a continuum between history and contemporainty. It was a quiet and placid lake of 24 kilometres built by Hazrat Husain Shah Wali on a tributary of the Musi during the time of that great builder Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah in 1562 to meet the water and irrigation needs of the city. This was much before the historic Charminar overshadowed every other landmark in the city. It is now popularly known as Tank Bund, a truncated version of its original expanse, and has acquired trappings and environs that enhance its appeal to tourists as well as the denizens of the twin cities.

The simple bund that at one time connected the British and Nizam areas of the two cities is today a complex of parks, temples, statuary, sites of entertainment and the capital’s administrative hub, enriching and at the same time ecologically damaging the environs of the shrunken tank. The aesthetically built Secretariat buildings, the NTR memorial, the Lumbini park, the Hyderabad Boat Club, a flyover nearing completion add to the attraction of the southern side of the Tank Bund, while the Secunderabad Sailing Club, the Sanjeeviah Park and the Hazrat Saidani Ma Saheba tomb on the northern side enhance its allure for the tourist. Parallel to the tank bund is what is now known as the lower Tank Bund road, which, though built to reduce traffic congestion, has now become the axis of print media activity.

From the southern side, the lower Tank Bund road is heralded by the famous and very popular Katta Maisamma temple and close to it is the sprawling green lung, the Indira Gandhi Park. A new artery known as the Necklace Road links Lumbini park in Hyderabad with the Sanjeeviah park in Secunderabad. But the centre of attraction literally and figuratively is the monolith Buddha statue in the middle of the ancient lake.

The lake, its size and purity are threatened by the ecologically inimical activity of immersion of Ganesha and Durga idols every year and industrial waste, not to mention encroachments blessed by political patronage. This, according to an expert, results in continuous increase of sedimentation and injection of sulphate that endangers marine life. Irrespective of what party is in power, governments lack the political will to check or control these immersions. Yet Hussain Sagar is the most popular boulevard and very scenic, its magnetism increased by a three-kilometre-long row of flowerbeds and lush green lawns running from north to south. On the west is a long protective and ornamental railing parallel to a row of wrought iron benches for romance-prone couples to forget time and mundane world.

Dotting the lawns and flowerbeds on the eastern side are an array of statues to commemorate the services of a host of luminaries who are an inseparable part of the history of the state. These bronze statues range from those of pioneers of Telugu classical poetry like Nannaya Bhattaraka, the great saint composer Thyagaraja, the thirteenth century Kakatiya warrior queen Rudrama Devi, the illustrious founder of Hyderabad Muhammed Quli Qutb Shah, the bard Vemana of the sixteenth century to Arthur Cotton who harnessed the life-giving waters of the Krishna and Godavari rivers and made Andhra Pradesh the rice bowl of the south, and progressive writers and poets like Sri Sri and Maqdoom Mohiuddin.

The lake is surrounded by four major spans of greenery, Indira Park in the east, Sanjiviah Park in the north, Lumbini Park in the south and a green belt area sandwiched between the Raj Bhavan road and the Necklace Road. Indira Park, named after former prime minister Indira Gandhi, is the earliest of these four parks and also a favourite site among the city people. It is also the most sought after locale for shooting Telugu and Hindi films. It boasts of a large nursery, which provides free saplings to persons who wish to add to the city’s greenery. The famous and ancient temple of Katta Maisamma, meaning goddess of the dam, is very close to this park and attracts lakhs of devotees every year.

Both Lumbini and Sanjeeviah are new parks. The entire Hussain Sagar complex comprising parks, statuary, recreation spots etc. was the handiwork of India’s most renowned architect Charles Correa who visualized the Buddha Poornima project with aesthetic ingredients. Lumbini, though referred to as an amusement park, is in reality the versification of nature. The park is named after the birthplace of Buddha whose monolithic statue dominates the lake and everything around it. The park has Japanese style rockery, ancient trees, formal gardens, cacti and imaginatively laid out pathways for strollers. A floral clock greets the visitors at the entrance itself. Then there is a musical colour fountain spouting water and playing to the tunes of popular film hits. Sanjeeviah park, being on the less populated northern side attracts fewer people which is why couples seeking privacy throng the site.

The lake radiates in the night the reflection of the Shri Venkateswara temple built by the Birlas on a hillock close to the Secretariat. The temple is a quarter century old and built of white marble and represents several schools of architecture, though the South Indian school is prominent in the construction of the rajagopuram. Utkal styles of temple architecture marks the tower over the main shrine called the Jagadananda vimanam. The towers over the temples for the Lord’s consorts Padmavathi and Andal are again in the South Indian style. The temple has a 42-feet high flagstaff and the main idol of the Lord is 11 feet tall.

The piece de resistance of the entire land and waterscape of Hussain Sagar is the 18-metre high and 350-tonne monolith of Gautama Buddha in the middle of the lake standing on what is known as the Rock of Gibralter. Two beautifully decorated floating decks shuttle between the statue and the Lumbini Park every day several times and are equipped to stage cultural and musical shows. Another boating point is likely to come up at the Sanjeeviah Park also. This apart, there are facilities for paddling. The boat rides are the most exciting experience of the tourists because they cover the most scenic spots around the lake like the Secretariat, the Raj Bhavan, Sanjeeviah Park, the Lumbini park, Shri Vennkateswara temple and the majestic Buddha statue.

The two-year-old Necklace Road and the Tank Bund are great spectacles in the night and turn into rendezvous for relaxation and romance. The Necklace Road is now much sought after by trade and industry for holding consumer melas and by the government to stage frequent cultural shows and programmes open to public. Laser film shows on aqua screen are an additional attraction. Two impressive gateways flank the Tank Bund, replicating the great Kakatiya and Vijayanagar architectural styles.

Flanked by the Hyderabad Boat Club in the south and the Secunderabad, Sailing Club in the north, Hussain Sagar becomes the annual venue for sailing events and regattas every year. One can see several rowboats and yachts gracefully navigating in the lake. But all this recreation and commercial activity is already telling on the purity and size of the lake. This will keep off the annual migratory birds from coming to the lake and the gardens around and deprive it of its pristine grandeur.

How to reach :
Citybuses
5, 6, 8, 20, 113, 190

Timings :
Any Time

Ticketing :
No Tickets required

HITECH City: Info Hi-Way

HITECH (Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy) City: Info Hi-Way



The nascent structures coming up in Madhapur area of the 400-year-old Hyderabad city provide a sophisticated contrast to the great and ancient monuments and palaces in the Qutb Shahi capital. It is a consummation of the vision of an information technology crusader unfolding itself in a healthy hurry, comparable to the architectural dreams of Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah. The structures are a two-phase tribute to a technology that has reduced the world to a global village.

The business like ambience of the HITECH city is in juxtaposition to its equally famous and graceful neighbour Shilparamam, an arts and crafts village, manifesting the simultaneity of two disparate periods in history, and contributing to the variety and contradictions in Indian life and tradition. Both the HITECH city and Silparamam are an evidence of chief minister Chandrababu Naidu's skills in reconciling his respect for the old with his desire to inscribe Andhra Pradesh firmly on the roll of achievers and performers.



The axis of the HITECH city is an artistically and yet functionally built 10-storeyed cylindrical building surrounded by a galaxy of imposing structures raised to house IT companies, foreign and Indian. It is a city planned as an integrated township with all infrastructural facilities like office space, production areas housing colonies, showrooms, cafeteria, health club, banks, shopping complexes and auditoriums. One look at the township will explain why 25% of computer personnel in the United States are from Hyderabad.

The HITECH city has already attracted multinational software giants like Microsoft, IBM, Metamor, GE Capital, Toshiba, and Oracle and Indian companies like Satyam Computers and Wipro. An earth station has come up in the township which links Hyderabad to the five continents of the world. It is planned to permit further growth and expansion with the 160 acres of land allotted by the government. The cylindrical showpiece known as Cyber Towers offers five lakh square feet of executive space.


A companion structure known as Cyber Gateway is nearly complete with 8.5 lakh square feet of built up space. The main features of the city are its land and hillscapes, wide roads, satellite earth station, fast internet access, ATM facility, VSAT and ISDN connectivity, videoconferencing and multimedia systems, power back-up, dust-free atmosphere and medicare. What makes the HITECH city different from other technology parks in the country are the International Institute of Information Technology and the Indian Business School, designed to be motors of leadership in their areas.

The Indian Business School is affiliated to Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the London Business School. IBS shares expertise and resources with these schools, besides participating in exchange of students and professors. Wharton and Kellogg schools have inducted the latest global management techniques and perceptions into IBS's academic programmes. Faculty members from these institutions now teach at the IBS after designing the school curriculum. Academic, residential and recreational infrastructures provided for students here match those found at the best business schools in the world. The campus structures are a blend of modern and traditional Indian architectures.



State-of-the-art air-conditioned amphitheatres, library, meeting rooms, coffee bars and restaurants mark facilities available at the school. These are in addition to wired classroom conferencing, and hispeed data communication networks. Services such as banking, ATM, infirmary, ISB shop, bookstore, documentation centre etc. are available. The school was inaugurated by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on 2 December 2001, praising it in these words: "The speedy journey of ISB from concept to completion was itself a case study of the world class management capabilities of the new generation of Indians who have promoted it."

In its fourth year now, the International Institute of Information Technology has a campus of 62 acres, housing such internationally known corporate schools like IBM School of Enterprise-Wide Computing, Signal Tree School of Excellence in Software Development Methodologies, Oracle School of Advanced Software Technology, Satyam School of Applied Information Systems and Motorola School of Communication Technology. A major aim of the institute is to provide a uniquely broad and interdisciplinary IT education of the highest academic quality.



State-of-the-art air-conditioned amphitheatres, library, meeting rooms, coffee bars and restaurants mark facilities available at the school. These are in addition to wired classroom conferencing, and hispeed data communication networks. Services such as banking, ATM, infirmary, ISB shop, bookstore, documentation centre etc. are available. The school was inaugurated by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on 2 December 2001, praising it in these words: "The speedy journey of ISB from concept to completion was itself a case study of the world class management capabilities of the new generation of Indians who have promoted it."



In its fourth year now, the International Institute of Information Technology has a campus of 62 acres, housing such internationally known corporate schools like IBM School of Enterprise-Wide Computing, Signal Tree School of Excellence in Software Development Methodologies, Oracle School of Advanced Software Technology, Satyam School of Applied Information Systems and Motorola School of Communication Technology. A major aim of the institute is to provide a uniquely broad and interdisciplinary IT education of the highest academic quality.

How to reach :
Citybuses
9J, 10H, 47K, 47S

Golkonda: Home of Diamonds

You will have to visit the Golkonda fort, 10 kilometres west of Hyderabad city, to appreciate the majesty and grandeur of the 800-year-old ruins and the architectural glory of those structures, which have survived the ravage of time and rampage by Mughal vandals. One of the most magnificent fort complexes in the country, Golkonda, meaning shepherd hill, was built consecutively by three dynasties, the Kakatiyas, the Bahmanis and the Qutub Shahis, the major contribution coming from the latter. It betrays the confluence of Hindu and Muslim architectural perceptions of the times. It was the capital of the Bahmani kings first and the Qutub Shahis later for sometime, before they shifted the capital to what is now the old city of Hyderabad. The fort has now become a symbol of the composite cultural heritage of the 400-year-old city.

The fort area on the hill is fenced off by a series of high and broad granite walls built in concentric circles, their defences strengthened by several moats and drawbridges. Legend has it that Golkonda was the centre of a flourishing trade in diamonds and that the world-famous Kohinoor diamond came from this market. The rugged and time-ravaged ruins throw up fleeting evidence of a golden age with Golkonda as its essence. The Qutub Shahis expanded the modest structures built by the Kakatiyas in the thirteenth century into a fortress complex that occupied the entire area of the hill and overflowed into the terrain around it. Its outside wall, around ten miles in length, is designed as a first checkmate to any aggression. The width of the wall ranges from 17 to 34 feet broken by 87 semi-circular bastions, 50 to 60 feet high.

All the four impregnable walls of the fort have huge ornamental wooden doors, opening at the centre with iron spikes driven into them so that elephants of the enemy would baulk at battering them. It took the Qutub Shahis 62 years to build the great fort that was completed in 1525. The complex shows off the incredible engineering and architectural skills, which characterised the golden era of the Qutub Shahis. The acoustics of the fort, its ingenious water supply system based on indigenous genius and the air conditioning of the palaces are the stuff in which historians revel. The fort conceals in its bowels the triumph and tragedy of the Qutub Shahis to whose times the bulk of the fort complex belongs.

The Qutub Shahis ruled from 1512 to 1590 the area known to historians as the Deccan, with Golkonda as their capital, which they later shifted to Hyderabad. The fort is built on a 400-ft. high hill, its highest point occupied by a double-storeyed structure, originally called Tana Shahi ki Gaddi. It is now known as Bala Hisar, which is the inner area marked for palaces.

According to some historians, the Kakatiya kings, part of whose territory Golkonda was, built the nucleus of the complex. It was handed over to Muhammad Shah Bahmani of Gulbarga in 1363 by one of the Kakatiya kings. Some maintain that the fort is 2000 years old and that it is older than the fort at Warangal.

After the death of Muhammad Shah Bahmani, Sultan Quli, who was the subedar of Golkonda under him, declared himself independent, thus founding the Qutub Shahi dynasty in 1518. The Qutub Shahis who ruled Golkonda for 170 years from 1518 to 1687 added to the earlier structures of the Kakatiyas and Bahmanis. Muhammad Quli Qutub Shah found water scarcity in Golkonda an intractable problem and founded a new capital on the banks of the Musi, which is now the old city of Hyderabad. Ibrahim Quli Qutub Shah, who preceded Muhammed, repaired and renovated the fort and built a small mosque midway on the steps leading to Bala Hisar.

Most impressive even in ruins, Golkonda houses a number of old buildings, mosques and palaces of historical interest. What once were well laid gardens today are barren and brown bushes. The structures or their vestiges we see today were mostly built in the time of Sultan and Ibrahim Qutub Shahs, the Safa Masjid, the Toli masjid and Kala Chabutara, for instance. It was during Ibrahim Shah’s rule that diamond mines were discovered at Kollur on the Krishna River.

“Three granite walls of megalithic construction encircle the fort,” says Raza Alikhan, author of Hyderabad: 400 Years. Of the several bastions that break the monotony of the wall Petla Burz is the biggest. A Musa Khan, a general of Abdullah Qutub Shah, built the Musa Burz towards the south of the fort to protect the fort from the first Mughal invasion in 1656. At these two bastions are posted the Fateh Rahbar gun and the Azhdaha Paikar gun. On some of these bastions, one can see inscriptions in Telugu, manifesting the interest of the Shahs in local culture. Another bastion known as the Kaghazi burz was entirely made of paper and cloth and was designed to be a camouflage. The idea behind the dummy bastion, a small distance away beyond Musa burz, was to deceive the invaders into thinking that their guns had completely ruined it.

The tourist is bound to marvel at the military architecture and civil engineering works in the fort, which is in the shape of a rhombus surrounded by a glacis. The fort, really a complex of four forts, remained unscathed till a traitor opened the Fateh darwaza for Aurangzeb’s army to enter. This darwaza is 13 feet wide and 25 feet high and is one of the eight gateways, which are well known. Another important gateway is the Banjara darwaza.

Today’s engineers cannot but wonder at the acoustics system of the fort. Even the rustle of leaves at the Fateh darwaza, which is at the lowest level of the fort area, can be heard clearly at the Bala Hisar pavilion on the top of the acropolis. What seems today fun for the tourists was in reality a strategic signalling system to alert the barracks about attempts to attack or sneak into the fort by hostile forces.

The water supply system is no less ingenious. Water was stored in huge cisterns at the foot of the hill and transported upwards through clay pipes to all quarters of the fort. Water was brought to the fort tanks from the Durg tank, which is about five kilometres from the fort. Remnants of the networked clay pipes (which carried water to the upper levels of the fort through the mechanism of a series of Persian wheels) can still be seen as a reminder of the hydrological engineering skills of the day. Water was thus pumped up to the fountains, the royal baths and kitchens in the fort.

At the top of the hill is the much talked about Bala Hisar baradari, a double-storeyed and twelve-arched structure, which is reached after a gasping ascent of 360 steps. This imposing pavilion, known as Tana Shah ki Gaddi originally, is more commonly known as Bala Hisar. Making use of the giant rocks on the hill slopes, one of the Qutub Shahi kings built a wall as a last line of defence, and almost 350 years later, this wall is still in tact. Bala Hisar also houses the temple of Madanna, a senior minister of Abul Hasan Tana Shah. You can also see the small prison where Tana Shah had jailed the great saint Bhadrachala Ramadas for appropriating state funds to build a temple for Rama.

On the terrace of Bala Hisar is a throne carved out of a huge boulder. This is the highest point of the acropolis. As you are about to enter Bala Hisar, two giant arches known as Habshi Kamans greet you. From Bala Hisar, you can see on two faraway hillocks the palaces of Taramati and Premamati, courtesans in the harems of Sultan Muhammed Qutub Shah and Sultan Abdullah. These hillocks are situated on the Osmansagar road.

The fort complex includes the tombs of the Quli Qutub Shahs amidst landscaped gardens, located one kilometre north of the outer wall of Golkonda. Prominent among the buildings outside the fort complex is the Toli masjid; a strikingly elegant structure with five arches heralding the entrance hall and three before you enter the inner hall of the masjid.

The Tourism department of Andhra Pradesh resurrects the history and romance of the kings, princes and queens of the bygone golden era twice a week through a spectacular son et lumiere show. The sounds and sights are recreated conjuring up and animating images of the glory of that period, the saga of Golkonda. The show is presented in both English, Telugu and Hindi. The fort juxtaposes a marvel of yester years with the modern artillery base of the Indian army nearby. Such of what has survived time and vandalism shows that the architecture of the darwazas, the mosques, and their minars matches other great architectural structures in the country.


How to Reach :
Golconda is a fortress and ruined city lying 11 km west of Hyderabad.
Citybuses
65G, 66G, 80I, 142M

Timings :
Opens 9:00 AM
Sound & Light Show (Duration : 55 Minutes)
Show Timings
Winter (Nov - Feb) 18:30
Summer (Mar - Oct) 19:00
English : Sundays and Wednesdays
Hindi : Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays
Telugu : Thursdays
Closed on Mondays

Tickets :
Rs. 5/- to enter
Rs.30/- Sound & Light Show

Charminar: Cultural Hub

Charminar is always on the top of the mind of any tourist visiting Hyderabad. To say that Charminar is a major landmark in the city is to state the obvious, to repeat a cliché. The great monument is a synonym for Hyderabad and the pivot around which the glory and history of the city have developed. To imagine this 400-year-old city without Charminar is to imagine New York without the Statue of Liberty or Moscow without the Kremlin. Built by Mohammed Quli Qutub Shah in 1591, shortly after he had shifted his capital from Golkonda to what now is known as Hyderabad, this beautiful colossus in granite, lime, mortar and, some say, pulverised marble, was at one time the heart of the city. This great tribute to aesthetics looks sturdy and solid from a distance but as one moves closer, it emerges as an elegant and romantic edifice proclaiming its architectural eminence in all its detail and dignity. Apart from being the core of the city’s cultural milieu, it has become a brand name.

Charminar is a squarish structure with four towers in the four corners of the square, each of whose sides is 20 metres in length. Every side opens into a plaza through giant arches, which overlook four major thoroughfares and dwarf other features of the building except the minarets. Each arch is 11 metres wide and rises 20 metres to the pinnacle from the plinth. The minarets soar skywards by 24 metres from the roof of Charminar. Each minaret has four storeys, each looking like a delicately carved ring around the minaret. Some Anglophiles call Charminar the Arc de Triomphe of the East. From the ground to the apex, the minarets cover a length of 48.7 metres.

According to Mir Moazzam Husain, a long time official of the UNESCO and a keen student of this historic city, “these minarets may even symbolise the first four khalifs of Islam, but I cannot vouch for this interpretation with any degree of certainty.” At the western end of the roof of Charminar is a beautiful mosque; the oldest in Hyderabad, and the rest of the roof was used as a court in Qutub Shahi times. Atop the great monument are 45 prayer spaces for the devout where they can offer worship in an atmosphere unspoilt by the bustle of the city. East of this space is a spacious verandah with small and large arches in the middle. The first floor has beautiful balconies from where one has a fantastic view of the historic city and its later accretions.

These are technical details, of interest only to scholars and scribes. For the tourist, Charminar disgorges unlimited architectural wealth exuding from every pore of its masonry surface. The minarets taper off with a bulbous dome, embellished by petal-like motifs, and crowned by a brass spire. Though Charminar has a number of features answering to Hindu architectural usage, the minarets themselves are exclusively an Islamic architectural tradition. Unlike Taj Mahal, the fluted minarets of Charminar are built into the main structure. Inside the four-storeyed minarets are spiral stairways of 149 steps leading you to the top, the highest point one can reach, and providing a panoramic view of the sprawling and amorphous city. Each minaret has four arcaded balconies helping the tourist to imbibe the beauty of the city at various levels.

The essence of Islamic architecture rests in the deployment of arches, minarets and domes in a harmonic whole. This is very much true of Charminar, where apart from the main arches on the four sides; above each arch are horizontal arrays of arches. Not only the four balconies of each minaret have arches but also between the fourth balcony and the crowning dome, you can see arches playing merry-go-round. Even as the arches and minarets of Charminar reflect the influence of Islamic architectural schools, the structure as a whole embodies elements of South Indian temple architecture. Again, flanking each arch are four arched and trellised windows one above the other. The four main arches have thus 32 such windows.

But Charminar actually is a galaxy of prominent landmarks in the city’s history. Its neighbourhood is as interesting a site of cultural heritage as Charminar itself. Around this architectural axis are colourful bazaars, bringing to mind the bazaars of ancient Baghdad and Istanbul, selling pearls, bangles, traditional Muslim gear and Mughlai delicacies. Architecturally significant are the Mecca masjid, Jamay masjid, Char Kamaan, and Miya Mishk mosque. The Nizams too had built a complex of palaces close to Charminar and beyond Lad Bazaar. Among them, more well-known are the Chow Mohalla palace (1750), Khilwat Mahal, the Malwala Palace (1845), the Salarjungs’ Dewan Devdi and Purani Haveli (1803).

The Chow Mahalla palace was built by the first Nizam, Salabat Jah, in 1750 and is presumed to be a more refined version of the Shah of Iran’s palace in Teheran. This is now a heritage building, flood-lit in the night. “The main quadrangle (of the palace) has a beautiful garden surrounding a large marble cistern, the fountains and the splashing waters of which in moonlit nights have been compared by a visitor with one of the enchanting gardens described in the Arabian nights. To the north of the cistern is the grand Durbar Hall, where the Nizams used to hold state receptions and receive official nobles.”

Chow Mohalla was built in several phases in the rule of different Nizams. The pavilion where the rulers held court was known as Khilwat, built in the regime of the second Nizam. Some consider its style extremely baroque. The complex includes Jilu Khana facing Lad bazaar and Daulat Khana-e-Ali, both built by the first Nizam. The four palaces comprising the Chow Mohalla complex are Afzal Mahal, Mahtab Mahal, Tahriyat Mahal and Aftab Mahal. Afzal Mahal is the most imposing of them all.

Sandwiched between the Chatta bazaar and Dabirpura main road is Purani Haveli, the home of the first peshwa of Muhammed Quli Qutub Shah. This complex is in the shape of a horseshoe with a single storeyed building in European style separating two oblong wings of double-storeyed buildings tapering off into single storeyed structures with deep arched verandahs. Purani Haveli architecture combines European facades with Indian courtyards. The Haveli today houses a college for vocational training and religious education. Of the 11 buildings in the complex, only the Baradari is open to public.

From the Charminar, it is impossible to miss the Char Kamaan built three years after the grand old edifice was built. The four arches of Char Kamaan envelop a vast plaza with a tank with an octagonal enclosure. This is now known as Gulzar Hauz, flanked by shops, which, in the times of the Qutub Shahis, were antechambers to their palaces. The Mughals destroyed them in 1687.

Jamay masjid to the northeast of Charminar has the distinction of being the first mosque built in Hyderabad. Muhammad Quli Qutub Shah built it in 1598. The third Nizam, Sikander Jah, renovated it later, respecting the Qutub Shahi architectural norms combining the Indo-Persian and South Indian styles. Not far off from Charminar is the Lad bazaar, a shopping centre specialising in bridal ware, and bangles of great beauty and dazzle. This is now known as Choodi bazaar (Bangles Bazaar).

Some recent buildings, whose architectural trends were inspired by Charminar and Golkonda, and built during the last of the Asaf Jahs’ times, are the Unani hospital, the High Court, and across the Musi the Osmania general hospital. All of them flaunt features of Indo-Islamic architectural styles. Charminar is very much a part of the vibrant life of everyone in the city and its cultural life.


How to Reach :
Citybuses
1C, 2, 8, 9, 57S, 72

Timings :
9:00am-6:00PM

Tickets :
5Rs to climb up the minars. Entry only till the 1st level.