Qutb Shahi-graftomben (Qutb Shahi-erfgoedpark)

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.