Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / Aurangzeb's Siege of Golconda: The Fall of the Diamond Kingdom
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Aurangzeb's wars with the Marathas, the Rajputs, the Sikhs — but there's one campaign that's often treated as a footnote, even though it brought down one of the richest kingdoms in the world: the siege of Golconda in 1687. Luna: Golconda — that's the diamond kingdom, right? The source of the koh i noor? Lucas: Exactly. The Qutb Shahi dynasty had ruled Golconda since 1518, and by the late 17th century they controlled the Kollur mines — the only known source of diamonds in the world at the time. Golconda was synonymous with unimaginable wealth. European traders, Persian poets, everyone wrote about it. Lucas: But by 1687, the kingdom was the last independent Shia state in the Deccan. Aurangzeb, who was deeply orthodox Sunni, had already annexed Bijapur the year before. Golconda was next on his list. The pretext? The Qutb Shahi sultan, Abul Hasan Qutb Shah, had been harboring Maratha rebels, including Sambhaji's son. Luna: So it's part of the larger Deccan consolidation. But Golconda's fort was supposed to be practically impregnable. Lucas: Right. Golconda Fort sits on a granite hill, with massive outer walls, a moat, and three concentric lines of defense. The Mughals arrived in February 1687 with perhaps 100,000 men — and they quickly realized they couldn't storm it. So they settled in for a siege. Lucas: And it was brutal. The monsoon came, disease spread in the Mughal camp, and the defenders kept sallying out to disrupt supply lines. By summer, Aurangzeb's own chroniclers — in the maasir i alamgiri — describe the army being reduced to eating grass and boiled hides. Luna: Wait, they actually record that? The emperor's own history admits his army was starving? Lucas: Yes, the maasir i alamgiri is remarkably honest about setbacks. It says the troops were so desperate they'd trade a horse for a single bag of grain. Aurangzeb himself stayed in the field, refusing to retreat. But by September, the siege had been going on for seven months with no end in sight. Lucas: Then the Mughals tried tunneling. They brought in sappers — experts from Persia and Central Asia — to dig mines under the fort's walls. But the defenders had their own counter-miners, and they'd collapse the tunnels. It was a deadlock. Luna: So how did it finally fall? I'm guessing not through a frontal assault. Lucas: No, it fell through betrayal. The man who opened the gates was an Afghan nobleman named Abdur Rasul. He was a commander in the Qutb Shahi army, but he'd been secretly bribed by the Mughals — or so the story goes. One night in late September 1687, he let a Mughal force in through the Katora gate. Lucas: The Mughals poured in, and after a brief fight, the fort was theirs. Sultan Abul Hasan was captured and sent to prison in Daulatabad, where he died years later. The treasury — gold, jewels, the famous Golconda diamonds — was loaded onto thousands of camels and sent to Delhi. Luna: And the koh i noor? Was it in that haul? Lucas: That's where it gets tricky. The koh i noor was definitely in the Qutb Shahi treasury, but it had been given as a gift to the Mughals earlier — by Abul Hasan himself, actually, as a tribute to Shah Jahan. So by 1687, it was already in the Mughal treasury. But legend says Aurangzeb also seized a legendary 280-carat diamond called the Great Mughal Diamond, which later disappeared. Luna: So the wealth was staggering. But what did the conquest actually cost Aurangzeb? In the long run, I mean. Lucas: A huge amount. The siege lasted eight months and drained the Mughal treasury almost as much as it replenished it. And more importantly, it stretched the empire's military resources to the breaking point — just as the Maratha rebellion was gaining momentum under Rajaram. Aurangzeb would spend the next two decades chasing the Marathas across the Deccan, never quite finishing them off. Lucas: The fall of Golconda marks the high-water mark of Mughal expansion in the south. After 1687, the empire never really got bigger — it just started bleeding. Luna: Speaking of bleeding — we've been doing this for over 160 episodes now, and I think it's worth mentioning that this kind of deep dive into Mughal history is only possible because of listener support. A small group of people chips in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making this many of these. Lucas: Yeah, it's true. No ads, no corporate backing — just people who love history and want to see it treated with depth. If you're one of those supporters, thank you. It makes a real difference. Luna: Alright, back to the siege. So after Golconda fell, Aurangzeb appointed a governor and renamed the city to something more Islamic — Darul Jihad, 'Abode of Holy War' — but the name didn't stick. It remained Hyderabad, the city we know today. Lucas: That's right. And the Qutb Shahi legacy didn't vanish overnight. Their architecture — the Charminar, the Mecca Masjid — still defines Hyderabad's skyline. But politically, the Deccan was now under Mughal control, and that set the stage for the final act of Aurangzeb's reign: the long, grinding Maratha war that would bankrupt the empire. Luna: It's almost like the victory at Golconda was pyrrhic — he gained a diamond mine and lost his army's ability to fight elsewhere. Lucas: Exactly. And the irony is that the diamonds of Golconda ended up fueling the Maratha economy later, because they were looted and sold to European traders. In a way, the wealth Aurangzeb seized helped finance the rise of the very powers that would dismantle the Mughal Empire. Lucas: So that's the siege of Golconda — a forgotten campaign that changed the course of Indian history. Next time, we might look at what happened to the Qutb Shahi family after the conquest, or the role of the Deccan's Shia communities under Mughal rule. Luna: I'd love that. There's so much more to unpack. Lucas: Until then, thanks for listening.