Hyderabad

Hyderabad was founded in 1591 by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, the fifth sultan of the Qutb Shahi dynasty, on the south bank of the Musi River a few kilometres from the crowded hill fort of Golconda, whose water supply had failed to keep pace with its people. The new city was laid out on a grid around the Charminar, with the Makkah Masjid rising beside it, and grew rich on the diamond trade of the Golconda mines and on textiles shipped through the Coromandel ports. In 1687 the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb took Golconda after a long siege and ended the dynasty.

Mughal authority in the Deccan was delegated to a viceroy, and in 1724 Asaf Jah I made that office hereditary, founding the line of Nizams who ruled from Hyderabad for more than two centuries. Under British paramountcy after 1798 the state kept its own army, currency, railways and postal system, and the later Nizams built the palaces, the Osmania hospital, the High Court and the Osmania University that give the centre its Indo-Saracenic look. A catastrophic Musi flood in 1908 killed thousands and led to the reservoirs at Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar and a replanned riverfront.

At independence the state did not accede to India, and in September 1948 it was taken over in a short military operation; the Nizam remained as titular head of state. Hyderabad became the capital of Andhra Pradesh in 1956. From the 1990s software and pharmaceutical firms transformed the western fringe into HITEC City, and after a long movement for a separate state, Telangana was created in 2014 with Hyderabad as its capital.

Hyderabad is often described as a meeting of two worlds, Deccani and Telugu, and the everyday result is a city where Urdu and Telugu are spoken side by side and a distinctive Hyderabadi Urdu, with its own idioms and humour, is heard in the old quarters. The courtly manners of the Nizams' era survive in styles of hospitality and in words for greeting and refusal; the tehzeeb, or civility, of the old city is a matter of local pride.

The Qutb Shahi and Asaf Jahi courts left a long tradition of poetry and music, and mushairas, evenings of Urdu verse, are still held. Crafts are closely identified with the city: lac bangles from Laad Bazaar, bidriware inlaid with silver on blackened alloy, Kalamkari cloth and the pearl trade that gave Hyderabad the nickname City of Pearls. The Telugu film industry, one of the largest in India, is based here and shapes the culture of the western suburbs; Ramoji Film City on the eastern edge is its best-known plant.

Festivals belong to several calendars. Bonalu and Bathukamma are Telangana's own, strongly associated with women's processions and with lakes and temples; Ganesh Chaturthi fills the streets in late summer; Ramadan turns the old city into an all-night food market; and Christmas and Diwali are both widely kept. Cricket is followed closely, with international matches at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Uppal. Visitors are expected to remove shoes at places of worship, dress modestly in the old city and eat with the right hand.

About 6.9 million people lived in the city at the 2011 census and about 9.7 million in the wider metropolitan area, making it one of India's largest urban regions. Information technology and pharmaceuticals are the pillars of the economy — the western corridor from Madhapur to Gachibowli holds the campuses of many global software firms, while the city and its outskirts are a centre of generic drug and vaccine manufacture. Older trades persist beside them: pearls and bangles in the old city, wholesale goods in Begum Bazaar, and government employment as a state capital.

Where people live divides the city sharply. The old city south of the Musi is dense, largely Muslim and poorer; Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills and the newer gated developments west of the Outer Ring Road are wealthy; Secunderabad, Begumpet and Uppal are middle-class and mixed. Long commutes, rising rents near the tech corridor and the spread of apartment towers into former villages are common complaints.

The day starts early, with temple bells and the call to prayer before dawn and office traffic building by eight. Irani cafés open at first light, offices in the west run on foreign hours, and evenings are for Tank Bund, malls, restaurants and family visits. The recurring civic issues are water — supply depends on distant reservoirs and the Krishna and Godavari rivers — along with flooding of built-over lake beds during heavy rain, air pollution and traffic.

Hyderabadi biryani is the dish the city is known for everywhere: rice and marinated meat layered raw in a heavy pot, sealed with dough and cooked slowly in its own steam, the method called dum, and served with mirchi ka salan, a peanut and chilli sauce, and dahi ki chutney. Haleem, wheat and meat pounded for hours into a smooth paste and finished with fried onion and lime, is eaten above all through Ramadan, when kitchens across the city advertise it. Other Deccani dishes include pathar ka gosht, mutton cooked on a hot stone slab; marag, a light mutton soup; and khichdi with khatta, a sour tamarind curry, eaten at breakfast in the old city.

Sweets close a meal: double ka meetha, fried bread soaked in sweet milk with saffron and nuts, and qubani ka meetha, a compote of dried Turkish-style apricots served with cream. Bakeries sell Osmania biscuits, lightly salted and crumbly, made to be dipped in tea. Irani chai, brewed strong and cut with thickened milk, is the city's social drink, taken in the plain cafés that Irani immigrants opened from the nineteenth century, often with bun maska, a soft bread roll with butter.

Telugu food sits alongside the Deccani tradition and is equally common: rice with pappu lentils, hot Andhra and Telangana curries, gongura pickle made from sorrel leaves, and vegetarian meals served on a plate of many small bowls. Breakfast is usually idli, dosa or upma with chutney. The Arab quarter of Barkas serves mandi and shawarma, and the western suburbs have the range of national and international restaurants that the technology boom brought with it.