Hyderabad State

Hyderabad State, the Nizam's dominion, was the greatest princely state of India, lasting from 1724 to 1948. Its founder, Nizam-ul-Mulk, was the Mughal viceroy of the Deccan who stopped obeying Delhi and built his own court at Hyderabad; his Asaf Jahi house ruled ever after. Caught between Marathas, Mysore and the French, the Nizams signed the subsidiary alliance and became Britain's most loyal princely friends, rewarded with guns salutes, precedence and non-interference. At its height the state covered Telangana, Marathwada and Kalyana-Karnataka, and its revenues, diamond mines of Golconda memory and the Nizam's fabled jewels made it the richest throne in India. The last Nizam dreamed of independence in 1947, signed a standstill agreement instead, and watched his Razakar militias lose to India's tanks in five days in September 1948. The state was dissolved into the Indian union, and the richest Nizam became a pensioner of the republic. Hyderabad's Charminar gate and Chowmahalla Palace still anchor the old city above the Musi river.