Indian History

  Image source Located in Aurangabad, Bibi-ka-Maqbara is the mausoleum of 6th Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s wife Dilras Banu Begum who was posthumously called Rabia-ud-Daurani. The monument was commissioned by Aurangzeb in 1660.  With its four minarets flanking a central onion-domed tomb, the monument is built on a high square platform, which is approached by a flight of steps from the three sides.  Bearing a striking resemblance to the world acclaimed Taj Mahal at Agra, Bibi Ka Maqbara is also known as the “Taj of the Deccan”. 

Today is the death anniversary of Khudiram Bose [1889-1908], a revolutionary born in the Midnapore district of West Bengal.  One of India’s earliest revolutionaries to die on the gallows on August 11, 1908, Khudiram Bose was a member of the revolutionary society  Anushilan Samiti . He along with Prufulla Chaki threw a bomb at the carriage of Kingsford, an English Judge at Muzaffarpur in Bihar. He was arrested in the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy case and sentenced to death at the young age of 18.

In 1406 one of the many battles between the Vijayanagar kingdom and the Bahmani sultanate took place. If the medieval Persian historian Ferishta is to believed, the casus belli of the fight was a fascination of Vijayanagar ruler Deva Raya I for a goldsmith’s beautiful daughter living in Mudgal in the Raichur Doab , the region between the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers. Thanks to its being a fertile land, Raichur Doab was a bone of contention between the rulers of the Vijayanagar and the Bahmanis as none of them wanted to forsake their claim on the region.  Since the girl in question was averse to the idea of marrying Deva Raya I, this infuriated the latter who laid waste some villages in the neighbourhood of Mudgal. This antagonized the Bahmani Sultan Firuz Shah who considered the aggression as an encroachment on the Bahmani territory. In retaliation, he attacked Vijayanagar. Though the war initially went well for Vijayanagar, in the end Deva Raya I was forced to make peace with th...

The Tarikh-i-Alfi (History of a Thousand Years) is a historical work chronicling the first thousand years of Islamic world history. Commissioned by Mughal emperor Akbar, the chronicle was written by a board of compilers headed by a Shia theologian Mulla Ahmad of Thatta. Mulla Ahmad had written a large part of the text.  Due to the animosity between Shias and Sunnis, Mulla Ahmad was murdered in 1588 in the street of Lahore by a Sunni nobleman, Mirza Fawlad, who lured him out of his house on the pretext that the emperor had asked for his presence in the court.  Mirza Fawlad was condemned to death causing resentment among the Sunnis who  exhumed  Mulla Ahmad's body and  burnt it. After the death of Mulla Ahmad, Asaf Khan Jafar Beg completed the rest of the work around 1592.   Badauni was selected by Akbar to revise the manuscript and compare it with other histories.    

Pagal Panthi was a socio-religious sect whose members were mainly drawn from the Garo and Hajong tribes living in the Mymensingh and Sherpur districts of Bangladesh. The sect started as a resistance against local zamindars and with the passage of time established itself as bulwark against the British colonial rule.  Pagal Panthi was founded by Karim Shah, a darvesh or mendicant. After his death in 1813 the reins of the movement passed on to his son Tipu Shah or Tipu Pagal who in 1825 led a band of armed followers in plundering the houses of the zamindars of Sherpur. He organized peasant rebellions. After Tipu Shah's death in 1852, though the movement lingered on, it began to lose momentum and was finally put down by the British.

Close on the heels of Telangana's 13th-century Ramappa Temple receiving the title of World Heritage Site during the ongoing 44th session of the UNESCO's World Heritage Committee in Fuzhou in China, now the Harappan city of Dholavira in the Bhachau taluka of Kutch district in Gujarat has been inscribed on the list.   Dholavira is the  first Indus Valley Civilisation site in India  to be bestowed  the coveted title by UNESCO.  The archeological site of Dholavira is one of the two largest Harappan settlements in India. Rakhigarhi in Haryana is the other larger Indus Valley Civilization (also known as Harappan civilisation) site.  Locally known as Kotada timba, meaning a large fort, Dholavira was first explored by ASI’s J P Joshi in 1968. However, it was excavated extensively by RS Bisht in the 1990s.  Dholavira is one of the most well-preserved urban settlements from ca. 3000-1500 BCE. The site comprises a cemetery and  a fortified city . This...

Telangana's 13th-century Rudreswara temple, more famously known as Ramappa Temple, has been bestowed the much-coveted title of World Heritage Site by UNESCO's World Heritage Committee.  Ramappa Temple is a glowing specimen of the exquisite architecture patronized by Kakatiya kings who ruled over an area corresponding to the modern day Andhra Pradesh, Telangana,  eastern Karnataka  and parts of southern Odisha from the late 12th to early 14th centuries AD.     Built in 1213 AD during the reign of the greatest Kakatiya ruler Ganapati Deva (ruled 1199–1262) by his general Recharla Rudra, the Ramappa Temple is located in a valley at the village of Palampet, approximately 77 km away from Warangal and 200km north-east of Hyderabad.  Mandapa inside Ramappa temple  /  Copyright:  © ASI Venetian traveller Marco Polo, who visited this Kakatiya temple during the reign of his successor Rudrama Devi, had described the temple as the "brightest star in th...