HYDERABAD: What is the greatest challenge faced by young people in today’s world? To locate that part of your being that finds solace in traditional methods of exploration, especially amidst the rise of innovations like ChatGPT and AI.
It is only natural that a 21-year-old explorer, while leading a group of somewhat older Hyderabadis on a heritage walk, points at an intricate geometric pattern on a mediaeval-era monument and says that they look like QR codes.
CE went on a tour to Bidar, a historic city, located in the northern part of Karnataka and about 142.6 km away from Hyderabad, known for its rich and diverse cultural heritage dating back to centuries. The tour was organised by The Deccan Archives, a group of college students, all in their early twenties, filled with immaculate passion for exploring new places, and immense strength and indomitable will to preserve their heritage.
The young leader who served as a guide on the trip, Wahaj, led some 30-odd people to lesser-known heritage sites in the city. Popular for the mediaeval-era Bidar fort and much widely, for Bidriware metal handicraft, the city also houses other monuments with magnificent architecture. The trip began at 6 am on a Sunday, and it was delightful to see so many people foregoing their weekend siestas to learn about history.
In about 3 hours, we were at the tomb of a Sufi saint named Khalil-Ullah Kirmani. The structure is known as Chaukhandi, built on the outskirts of Ashtur town. In 1431, Ahmed Shah Wali Bahmani, the 9th Bahmani Sultan who shifted his capital from Gulbarga to Bidar in 1422, invited Khalil-Ullah Kirmani to guide him in his rule after the death of Sufi saint Sayyid Shah Muhammad Al Hussaini. The saint, passionate for literature, brought people closer to education. Chaukhandi also served as a waystation for travellers, who would stop at the site to rest and pray.
The group then moved to the Bahmani tombs at Ashtur. Located near Bidar Fort, the Bahmani tombs are the final resting place of the rulers of the Bahmani Sultanate. The most noticeable of all the seven tombs is that of Ahmad Shah Al Wali. One cannot fail to admire the intricate black-stone carvings and brightly coloured, glazed ceramic tiles, the remnants of which can be noticed on the dome and above the entrance of the structure.
The tombs, which stand as witnesses to the grandeur of a bygone era and its gradual decline, are unfortunately not well known among tourists. However, some visitors have left their marks on the walls of these ancient monuments, inscribing the names of their loved ones and enemies on these beautiful structures, as if registering their names in history for onlookers to see.
Regretting the recklessness of the visitors, the group moves forward to the Madrasa of Mahmud Gawan, a splendid educational complex, which in its prime, was an indomitable structure but now houses only the vestiges of that grandeur. It was built by Mahmud Gawan, the minister of Muhammad Shah III in 1472 and functioned like a residential university. The complex houses a conventional quadrangular hall with chambers on the sides. The facade is adorned by multi-coloured tiles, “which from afar, looks like an animated screen,” described Pallavi, a fellow traveller in the group, evidently a millennial.
Anuradha Reddy, co-convener of INTACH Telangana and Hyderabad joined the group as well. She connected the otherwise fragmented dots of history that we had been tracing since morning. “The division we see today between different states like Telangana and Karnataka did not exist in the past. The Deccan region is home to wonderful forts, palaces, and is rich in Sufi culture. We were at Gulbarga last week. The Karnataka government has recognised the region, now renamed as Kalyana Karnataka, since Kalyani was an ancient kingdom in this area. It was called Basava Kalyana. This area is home to the architectural history that we now see in Golconda and in other areas within Hyderabad city today,” she said.
She explained how Bidar constitutes an essential part of Deccan history and how it is connected to Hyderabad. “It is a pleasure to be here because Gulbarga district used to be part of Hyderabad state. My father’s first posting in Hyderabad civil service was in a place called Shorapur, (not Shohlapur) a place where the first anti-British movement was started by a young ruler called Venkatappa Nayak. He was raised by captain Meadows Taylor who documented much of megalithic monuments and history in the region. We are also indebted to Dr. Ghulami Yazdani, who was the first director of the Hyderabad archeological department. It is a shared history which could not have been possible without Dr Ghulami Yazdani’s documentation work.
Much is owed to the seventh Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan as well, who, in 1914, recognized that the rich history and heritage of the region needed to be preserved. Dr Ghulami Yazdani took up the gigantic task of preserving the Ajanta and Ellora caves. Now in Maharashtra, the caves are of value to us as some of the institutional plannings that you see in Arts College at Osmania University in Hyderabad city, are richly endowed with architecture that is derived from these caves. These Jain-Buddhist monuments are representative of a shared history. This region also inherited Bidari work, artefacts made of dark metal embedded with silver. So we are importing craft, culture and architecture from other regions that have come to us. We share it, and it becomes our own,” she said.
Moving forward, the group went to see the Naubad Karez, remnants of mediaeval-era aqueducts, an ancient underground water management system used to provide a reliable supply of water to arid and semi-arid regions. It was followed by admiring the formidable Bidar fort with its amazing acoustics and a number of palaces that serve as examples of perfect melange of Indian and Islamic architectural designs.
The tour ended with some shopping of a variety of decorative and functional Bidriware objects at Chaubara. The craft has also been recognised with a Geographical Indication (GI) tag. With that, the group headed back home to Hyderabad, a city that is ever-eager to tell odd and peculiar, nevertheless charming tales. The only question it seeks an answer to is, “who’s listening?”