Hyderabad Circle

A BRIEF HISTORY  

After Independence and subsequent to the merger of princely states, Archaeological Survey of India had taken over some of the important monuments of them as National monuments and formed nine major circles for the administrative convenience.  The South-Eastern Circle was one amongst the nine major circles with the jurisdiction over entire Andhra, Orissa and parts of Central provinces with the Head Quarters located at Visakhapatnam.  Subsequently, the Head Quarter was shifted to Hyderabad in the year 1964.  In the year 1976, due to re-organisation of Circles, the monuments falling under Madhya Pradesh and Maharastra were deleted from this Circle but the contiguous northern districts of Karnataka were added to the South-Easter Circle.  In 1985, the Circle was re-designated as Hyderabad Circle and during the year 1996 the monuments of Karnataka were deleted from Hyderabad Circle to reorganise the Bangalore Circle to create a new Dharwad Circle with Hyderabad Circle having 137 centrally protected ancient monuments & archaeological sites dating from pre-historic time to late medieval period under its jurisdiction covering Andhra Pradesh and Telangana States. Later, the Hyderabad Circle was further bifurcated with effect from 07.06.2016 vide the Notification F.No.4-4/2015-Plg. & HRD comprising of 29 districts of State of Telangana with centrally protected monuments comprising of two forts, three temples, one mosque-edifice, one ancient mound and one pre-historic site as a result of the Creation of a New Circle at Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh furthering a step for better preservation and maintenance of Centrally Protected Monuments, Archaeological Sites & remains in State of Telangana Region.


FORTS:

1.     The Golconda Fort: Golconda is a three lined fortification originally under the control of Kakatiyas, then under the Bahamanis followed by the Qutb Shahis and finally under the Asifjahis with a moat around covering an area of 7 Km marked by 8 gates and 87 bastions mounted with canons.

2.     The Warangal Fort:  The fort is characterised by three concentric circuits of fortifications built by the great Kakatiyas having the ruins of structures like Swayambhu temple with four entrances called toranas, temples, khush mahal, a huge tank, pavilions, bastions, gateways and many small temples.

Temples:

1.     Alampur Temples: These temples consist of group of temples called the Navabrahma, the transplanted Papanasi group of temples and the Kudali Sangameswara temples distinctly representing the early Chalukyan style.

2.     The Thousand Pillared Temple: The Rudreswara temple popularly known as Veyistambhalagudi (thousand pillared temple) known to be the earliest of Kakatiya temples is a trikuta temple enshrined with Rudreswara, Surya and Vasudeva.  The arrangement of the deities is in square sanctums fronted by an antarala leading to a common rangamandapa / natyamandapa with a long portico entrance at the south and a huge Nandi open to sky.

3.     Ramappa temple: The 13th Century CE., Ramappa temple, an extant example of Kakatiya craftsmanship has a sabhamandapa and very elaborate and intricately carved door frames of the sanctum and ardhamandapa while the ceilings, entrance door-sakhas, exterior of adhishtana are treated with elaborate decorations covering divine and human figures, rows of animal and other motifs, geometric patterns etc with an exceptional skills of bracket figures. 

Mosque-edifice (Charminar): The mosque-edifice called Charminar has an extensive stucco decoration with four tall minars of 56 mt in height lies in its plan 30 mts in square with four imposing arches of 11 mt span surmounted by terraced balconies in receding series.

Ancient Mound (Kondapur): The Ancient Kaolin Mound at Kondapur is an early Satavahana (Andhra) site and it is spread over an area about 80 acres where  excavation was carried out in earlier in the 1940’s by the Nizams and then later by the ASI Excavation Branch IV, Bhubaneswar in 2009-2011 and yet to be explored in detail.

Pre-historic Site (Janampet): This site has megalithic burials are both dolmen-cists and cairns having burial chambers invariably encircled with a number of huge dressed stones occupying a huge area whose geographical boundaries are yet to be ascertained.  It is one and the largest Megalithic assemblage having more than 4000 reported megaliths.