Tombeaux des Qutb Shahi (parc patrimonial Qutb Shahi)

The Qutb Shahi dynasty ruled Golconda and Hyderabad from 1518 to 1687, when it was the last Deccan kingdom to fall to the Mughals^1,2. Its founder Sultan Quli, a Turkoman from Hamadan who had served the Bahmani sultans as governor of Telangana, built his tomb in his lifetime at the foot of Golconda fort, and was murdered in 1543^1,2. His successors were buried around it; UNESCO’s tentative-list text counts 30 tombs of the royal family, with a mortuary bath and mosques, dated from 1543 to 1672³. Bilgrami (1927) wrote that in Qutb Shahi times the sultans’ domes carried golden crescent finials and the tombs were furnished with carpets and lamps, with readers reciting the Qur’an¹.

Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, third son of Ibrahim Qutb Shah, came to the throne in 1580 in his fifteenth year and died in January 1612, according to his epitaph¹. Bilgrami credits his reign with the founding of Hyderabad and the Charminar; he wrote poetry in Persian and Urdu under the pen-name Qutbshah^1,3. Later the complex fell into neglect, until Sir Salar Jung had the tombs conserved, laid out a garden and built a compound wall^1,2. In January 2013 the Andhra Pradesh archaeology department signed a ten-year conservation agreement with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC)⁶. By the completion ceremony in July 2024, almost 100 monuments had been conserved across the 106-acre site⁴.

Bilgrami ranked Muhammad Quli’s tomb second to none among the royal tombs¹. It stands on a double terrace raised 13 ft 6 in, its two levels 200 ft and 126 ft 3 in square¹. The square tomb, 71 ft 3 in a side, is wrapped in arcaded colonnades 22 ft high and crowned by a large dome; doors on the south and east lead into the hall¹. Opposite it stands the mortuary bath built by Sultan Quli, where the bodies of the kings were brought from the fort through the Banjara gate to be washed before burial; it has cisterns for hot and cold water and mosaic decoration¹.

AKTC describes the Qutb Shahi buildings as granite structures richly finished in lime stucco and incised plaster, a few with glazed tiles, each tomb raised on a wide terrace². Bilgrami called Sultan Quli the originator of the Qutb Shahi style, which he saw as a combination of Persian, Hindu and Pathan architecture¹. The heritage park now covers 106 acres with about 40 mausoleums, 23 mosques, six stepwells, the bath, pavilions and garden structures^2,4.

The hall of Muhammad Quli’s tomb, 33 ft 3 in square, holds his cenotaph of polished black basalt, carved in fine script with the Shiite creed, the Throne Verse and other Qur’anic verses, and with a Persian epitaph in naskh that gives the date of his death, his age of 49 and his reign of 31 years¹. A flight of steps leads down to the actual grave in a vault under the terrace; in 1927 Bilgrami noted that the vaults of the other kings were closed¹. AKTC has since restored the crypt⁵.