HYDERABAD - The City of Love
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The City of Hyderabad
presents an aesthetic sense of beauty all in itself. This is very much true with its
people and culture too. But, if you feel I am talking of the secularism of the city –
I am afraid you are wrong!
Do you know … Love laid the
foundations of the City of Hyderabad. Yes. I am speaking of the love story of a young
prince of the Qutub Shahi Dynasty, Muhammad Quli, who fell passionately in love with a
maiden from Chichlam village across the river Musi. |
His love for her was so strong that he
would venture to cross the river in floods, if was to meet his beloved. This made Ibrahim
Qutub Shah , his father, to build a bridge on the river so that the prince does not
endanger his life. Later, when Muhammad Quli ascended the throne, he built the grand
Charminar, at the site of the village. The city then on was called Bhagnagar (Bhagyanagar)
to appease his beloved, Bhagmati.
Hyderabad was modeled after Isfahan in Iran and built under the supervision of Mir Momin,
the Minister, a poet, architect and an aesthete. He in fact tried to create a replica of
Paradise itself to suit Muhammad Quli’s status as the greatest of the Qutub Shahi
rulers. The city was completed in 1592 with a grid plan of two broad intersecting streets
with the Charminar as a kind of triumphal arch at the center.
Bhagnagar literally meant the city of good fortune. Farkhunda Buniyad, the Persian
chronogrammatic name of the city yields the same meaning. The city is now referred to as
Hyderabad with the area of Charminar being referred to as the Old City. |
