Hyderabad, city, Telangana state, south-central India. It is Telangana’s largest and most-populous city and is the major urban centre for all of south-central interior India. From 1956 to 2014 Hyderabad was the capital of Andhra Pradesh state, but, with the creation of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh in 2014, it was redesignated as the capital of both states.
Hyderabad was founded by the Quṭb Shāhī sultans of Golconda, under whom the kingdom of Golconda attained a position of importance second only to that of the Mughal Empire to the north. The old fortress town of Golconda had proved inadequate as the kingdom’s capital, and so about 1591 Muḥammad Qulī Quṭb Shah, the fifth of the Quṭb Shahs, built a new city called Hyderabad on the east bank of the Musi River, a short distance from old Golconda. The Charminar, a grand architectural composition in Indo-Saracenic style with open arches and four minarets, is regarded as the supreme achievement of the Quṭb Shāhī period. It formed the centrepiece around which the city was planned. The Mecca Mosque, which was built later, can accommodate 10,000 people. The mosque was the site of a bombing attack in 2007 that killed several Muslims and injured many others. The incident aggravated Muslim-Hindu tensions in the city, which has experienced periodic outbreaks of violence over the years.
Hyderabad has become a hub of trade and commerce and an international centre for information technology (IT). Pharmaceuticals, cigarettes, and textiles are among the items manufactured there. Service activities have expanded dramatically, especially those associated with IT, so that they have come to constitute the lion’s share of the city’s economy. Tourism has grown in significance. The city has long been associated with the production of Telugu-language films, which gave rise to its nickname Tollywood.
Hyderabad has good intercity transport facilities. There are rail and air services to Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, and Bengaluru (Bangalore), as well as to historical sites including the nearby Golconda fortress and the Ajanta and Ellora caves in neighbouring Maharashtra state, the latter two locales having been designated UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1983. Transportation infrastructure within Hyderabad, however, has lagged behind the city’s rapid population growth, and traffic jams have become common. Taxis, auto-rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws, private vehicles, and suburban bus and rail services provide local transport. Work began in 2012 on the first of three projected light-rail lines in the region, which were intended to help ease traffic congestion.
