HYDERABAD:

HYDERABAD:
INTRODUCTION TO HYDERABAD

When a poet, architect and an aesthete supervises the building of a city, beauty, balance and symmetry are to be expected. What leads romance to the city of Hyderabad, is the love story of a young prince and a village belle that resulted in its very foundations being laid. All the good hotels in Hyderabad are epitome of hospitality and make the travel to Hyderabad unforgettable.

HISTORY OF HYDERABAD

There is a love story related to the founding of the city of Hyderabad. As a young prince, Muhammad Quli fell passionately in love with a maiden from Chichlam village across the river Musi. He would even venture to cross the river in spate to keep his tryst with his beloved. Ibrahim Qutb Shah, his father, built a bridge on the river so that the crown prince did not endanger his life. When he ascended the throne, Muhammad Quli built a grand structure, the Charminar, at the site of the village. The city was called Bhagnagar to appease his beloved, Bhagmati. Later on it was called Hyderabad. Bhagnagar means city of good fortune. Farkhunda Buniyad, the Persian chronogrammatic name of the city yields the same meaning.

Hyderabad was modeled after Isfaan in Iran and built under the supervision of the prime minister Mir Momin, a poet, architect and an aesthete-like his master. He tried to create a replica of Paradise itself to suit Muhammad Quli's status as the greatest of the Qutb Shahi rulers. The city was completed in 1592. It has a grid plan of two broad intersecting streets with the Charminar as a kind of triumphal arch at the center. The French traveler, Tavernier in 1652, compared Hyderabad to Orleans 'well built and opened out' and in 1672, Abbe Carr was much impressed by the city as the center of all trade in the East. A stay in any of the good hotels in Hyderabad is the best way to experience its past.