Bhagmati

Wife of Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah

For other uses, see Bhagmati (disambiguation).

Wedding procession of Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah with Bhagmati.

Bhagamati (Hyder Mahal), also known as Bhagyawati,[1] was a queen of Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, in whose honour Hyderabad was supposedly named.[2] The historicity of her existence is debated among scholars.[3][4]

## Popular narrative

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Bhagmati was born in 'Chichlam' (a location yet to be identified with certainty) to a Hindu family; she was a local nautch-girl.[3] Qutb Shah met her whilst out for a ride, fell so deeply in love that he constructed the Purana Pul bridge to ensure he could meet with her regularly, and entered into a marriage.[3][5] He founded a city at her birth-place and named it Bhaganagar or Bhāgyanagar in her honor.[4] After she converted to Islam and adopted the title Hyder Mahal, the city was renamed Hyderabad.[5]

## Scholarly debates

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That Purana pul was completed in 1578 after 2 years of construction; Qutb Shah (b:1566) was romancing Bhagmati as young as ten years.[3] Furthermore, no tomb was built over her last remains unlike other leading female figures of the court; no inscription or coin of that period mentions her name.[3][4] The chroniclers who mentioned of her were either from North of the Sultanate, who did not visit Hyderabad or foreigners, who arrived long after her death; contemporary Deccani sources including Qutb Shah himself don't mention of her at all.[4][5] The conferral of 'Hyder', an immensely sacred Islamic attribute on a nautch-girl has been doubted as well.[3][5] All these cast significant doubts on the authenticity of Bhagmati's existence.[4]

Some however assert that the historicity of multiple sources can't be rejected as hearsay due to their foreign nature, sources exist in that the State Museum in Public Gardens has a portrait of her commissioned around 1750, and that her conspicuous absence from Deccani sources were a result of damnatio memoriae.[4][5] Others believe Bhagnagar (which was indeed named after her) was a separate village which has nothing to do with today's Hyderabad.[4]

## References

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1. ^ Jagir Singh Bajwa, Ravinder Kaur (2007). Tourism Management. APH Publishing Corporation. p. 267\. ISBN 978-8131300473.
2. ^ "Hyderabad or Bhagyanagar? The tiff continues". Deccan Chronicle. 29 April 2014. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
3. ^ a b c d e f Ifthekhar, J. S. (11 November 2013). "Did Bhagmati really exist?". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
4. ^ a b c d e f g Ayoob Ali Khan, Mir (22 March 2010). "For Hyderabadis, Bhagmati is vital part of history | Hyderabad News - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
5. ^ a b c d e Pillai, Manu S. (15 November 2018). "Opinion | A Hyderabadi conundrum". LiveMint. Retrieved 16 December 2020.

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