Mohammed Quli Qutub Shah

d for the diamond mines that gave the world the Koh-i-noor (mountain of light). He was barely sixteen when he succeeded his father as king. His father Ibrahim Qutub Shah died leaving behind six sons to stake the claim for the crown. After a brief struggle for power the powerful section of the courtiers succeeded in crowning Mohammad Quli Qutub Shah, the third son of Ibrahim Qutub Shah, as the ruler of Golconda. He ruled for 31 years.

Though as a ruler he was called upon to fight battles he was mainly a man of culture and art. He strictly followed the policy of secularism put into practice by his father. His love for a village girl Bhagmati is the kind that fables are made up of. He married her and conferred on her the title of Hyder Mahal. In her honour he built the city of Hyderabad on the banks of the Musi river in 1590 and beautified it by constructing various palaces, gardens, mosques and bridges. Besides poetry and architecture, Mohammad Quli Qutub Shah was also a enthusiastic lover of dance, painting and calligraphy.

Mohammad Quli Qutub Shah was a prolific poet. He composed poetry barely for 25 years yet he has written about fifty thousand couplets.

Mohammad Qutub Shah, in the true sense, laid down the foundation of Dakhni ghazal, the precursor of the Urdu ghazal. He retained the form of the Persian ghazal but contrary to the tradition of Persian ghazal, used feminine gender to address his beloved. It was a very realistic point of view that was unfortunately abjured by later Urdu poets for the sake of aping the style of Persian poets. The idioms, similes, metaphors, symbols and images too used in his ghazals represent the local ethos. The language that later on came to be known as Urdu was in the formative stage and he did not inherit a rich tradition of Dakhni (which was his dialect) poetry. Dakhni, was also deeply embedded in Telugu and Marathi. Despite these drawbacks, Mohammad Quli Qutub Shah accomplished the task of popularizing the genre of ghazal. His poems were full of love, mirth and vivacity.

He died at a comparatively young age of 47 in 1611.

His Divan (collection of poems) was discovered in 1922 by Dr. Abdul Haq, in Hyderabad. Its discovery was a landmark in the history of Urdu literature for prior to it Vali Dakhni was regarded as the first Urdu poet with a collection to his credit.