Sunday, December 20, 2009

Hyderabad - Book Review

This is one of the books I read recently. Here is my review of it on my other blog.

With the issue of Telanganaboiling in Andhra Pradesh, I just chanced upon a book called Hyderabad, a biography of Hyderabad written byNarendra Luther.

It is an account of Hyderabad from its beginnings till now. It starts with the building of Golconda fort till the debacle of the IT chief minister of the state ChandraBabu naidu.

I learnt a lot of interesting things about Hyderabad from that book.

> Md. Quli was the person who built Hyderabad. There was just a small settlement at the banks of river Musi before that. He built it exactly where he saw and married Bhagmati, his lover.
> There were two dynasties who ruled Hyderabad. The Qutb-Shahi and the Asaf-Jahi dynasty.
> Quli's city was one of the best in the world. There were lot of garden's in and around the city. All the Baghs in Hyderabad were all gardens from his time.
> Most of the modern development in Hyderabad happened in the prime ministership of Salar Jung.
> Hyderabad was a very beautiful city even till independence. It was after independence that city expanded rapidly.

You can read some of the poetry written by the Nawabs of the time. It was a breeze to read through the book and its like a whirlwind view of that society. But I was saddened to see the the last Nizam actually didn't do much and was sidelined by the Razakars and how the last Nizam was very stingy that he offered biscuits himself that to one by one and put in them in the locker!!!

Not a must read, but you can pick it up if you want to know about Hyderabad or particularly interested about history of Golconda, Charminar.