Charminar – The Royal Figure

My tickets to Hyderabad were booked and we were already on our way for a short weekend to attend the marriage of my sister’s son in the royal city. We were a group of 10 so there was going to be lot of fun and frolic in the trip, I knew it.

Soon after we landed we had two days for the marriage so we decided to go around the lovely city of Hyderabad. I remember how we went to see the great monument Charminar. This great landmark in the city of Hyderabad is so named from the word Char which means four and minar which means tower in the Urdu language. These four minarets are very decorative and ornate and have four arches grandly constructed over them. They have today become an iconic memorial in the city of Hyderabad. They are actually amongst the most recognized and well known Indian monuments. With the Laad Bazaar in the northeast and the Mecca Masjid in the west this monument is certainly a lovely monument to visit and is still in my memories.

It is said that it was Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutub Shah who got this built. He belonged to the Qutub Shahi dynasty and he constructed this in the 15th century. He transferred his capital to Golconda which is present day Hyderabad and got this structure built, in memory of eradicating the plague epidemic from this royal city. He had prayed that if the disease gets eradicated then he would build a memorial celebrating it.

The structure had the south western portion of the minaret or tower falling down in the reign of the Qutb Shahi and the Asaf Jahi when a lightning struck and destroyed the structure. Then the monument was reconstructed with a lot of plastering work done at a cost of around Rs. 100,000 in those days.

In those times, this area of Charminar had around 14,000 shops apparently. These very shops today have developed into the Pathar Gatti, the Laad Bazaar , and all the tourists like us were only intent in developing our shopping tastes here. With beautiful bangles and the loveliest of pearls available here, this place certainly was a shopper’s haven.

Made of limestone, granite, pulverized marble and mortar, the structure stood tall in this place and was a gate to the city of the busy city of Hyderabad. The four minarets earlier faced the royal streets of the city and it is often said how there was a tunnel that connected the capital Golconda to this Charminar monumental piece. IT was also believed that maybe this tunnel was used by the Qutb Shahi rulers as an escape route.

The square memorial with around 20 meters long on each side and the four arches grandly proclaiming the historical past, has each tower facing a particular cardinal point. It actually opens out into four different lanes in the city. There is a balcony at the end of each corner and this double balcony is around 56m in height. A bulbous dome topped each tower and there was intricately carved designs in each dome.

Then I saw a beautiful structure at the west end of the structure and this was a mosque. This mosque occupied part of the open roof with the remaining portion maybe as a portico or a court during the rule of the Qutb Shahi dynasty.

We reached the upper floor climbing the innumerable steps. My nephew counted 149 and we were quite enthralled by the view from the top. The extreme solitude and the beauty of the serene surroundings in the top completely refreshed us and we were totally mesmerized by the Indian historical past. There was a space in the upper floor and this was where the people do their Friday prayers. There were around 45 such prayer spaces.

The structure was very typical of all kinds of architecture of the Islamic kind. There was a lot of aesthetic value and the sturdiness of the edifice was magnificently enthralling. It was getting closer to dusk and the structure started getting illuminated and this sight was completely out of the world.

It is a great tribute to the history of India and the complete magnificence of the whole area is what is to be experienced. It is said that each of the storeys are meant for learning. Each floor had a different branch of education. The British rule transformed the place into a storehouse of liqueur and opium it is believed.

Then we saw a vault which came from inside the Charminar. It had two galleries one above the other.

As we saw the resplendent structure of the Mecca Masjid in front of the Charminar, the place somehow had the grandeur of the past and the beauty of an era gone by.

We walked around the place and shopped to our heart’s content but took back great memories of this grand edifice in the heart of Hyderabad.