Golkonda

The majestic ruins of Golconda Fort stand as a back drop to the sprawling city of Hyderabad. The original mud and brick structure built in 1143 was strengthened and expanded during the next 62 years, during the reign of Ibrahim Qutub Shah and his son, Muhammed Quli Qutub Shah.

The fort is an isolated granite hill and rises in splendor about 400 feet above the surrounding plain. The contours of the fort blend well with those of the hill. Today, in the midst of the arid plain, the ruins have desolate majesty.

The fort’s shape is an irregular rhombus, surrounded by glacis. The granite crenellated outermost walls traverse a circumference of nearly 7 km, with 87 semi-circular bastions and 8 huge gates surrounded by a deep trench. Still evident is remarkable water supply system of concealed earthen pipes. An ingenious signaling device was incorporated in the construction of the Golconda fort. The buildings of Bala Hissar, the royal apartments, were so designed that a handclap at the main entrance arch was transmitted clearly to another point more than 30 to 40 meters away. This is a favorite stopping place for tourists.

The walls and the bastions – three granite walls of megalithic construction, encircle the fort. The outer- most wall was extended to encompass a smaller fort on a hillock. The second wall skirts the hill along its foot, and the third , on the hill slope, links the huge boulders. The exterior wall’s thickness ranges from 5 m to 10 m and is broken by the 87 semi – circular bastions, 15m to 18m high, fashioned out of massive granite blocks. In the north-west corner lies Petla Burj, or the ‘big-bellied bastion’ jutting out from an angle in the fortification and commanding long portions of the wall on the both sides. The famous Fateh Rahbar gun is poisoned on the Burj. Another, along the north-east, is called ‘nine-lobbed bastion’, and has a corrugated face with nine lobes. There are two other famous bastions. The first is Musa Burj, situated towards the south of the fort, planned by Musa Khan, Abdullah Qutub Shah’s general, and built by Dharmachar, the architect, to protect the fort against the first Mughal invasion in 1656 led by Prince Muhammed Sultan. The Azhdaha Paiker gun is kept on this Burj. The other well-known bastion, non-existent today, was Kaghazi (paper) Burj, so called because the ingenious painters and craftsmen of Golconda fashioned overnight a perfect façade of paper and cloth after a portion which was extensively damaged by the Mughal guns one day before the fort actually fell. A few of these Burjs reveal Telugu inscriptions, registering the local interest shown by the monarchs, and at certain points in the fort, there are carvings of mythical figures that exemplify the Hindu influence that prevailed on the Qutub Shah kings.