Hyderabad’s iconic Charminar is said to have been planned as the centrepiece of the city. Its soaring archways pointed to the coastal route to Machilipatnam, the Golconda Fort, the royal palace on Koh-e-Toor (where the Falaknuma Palace exists) and the royal piazza of Char Kamans. But, what lay beyond? Was the kingdom’s reach limited to these nearby landmarks? To answer these questions, we have to turn to some of the travellers who reached the city when Golconda was one of the biggest trading hubs of the country.
Historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam, who recently received the Dan David Prize worth $1 million, has calculated the journey times from Golconda to various trade centres and coastal cities. Between Golconda and Machilipatnam seven days, from Golconda to Surat 28 days, the overland journey from Goa to Golconda about 17 days and from Golconda to nearby Bijapur about nine days. While Subrahmanyam estimates that it would have taken 24 days to travel from Machilipatnam to Surat, one of the Dutch travellers in early 17th century, Pieter Gilliesz van Ravesteyn, moved for 45 days to traverse the same stretch.
It is in the journeys of French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier that we get a fuller picture of the nature of trade links and the travel conditions in the region. Landing in Machilipatnam from Bandar Abbas, Tavernier, who wanted to sell and buy diamonds, first travelled to Madras, then controlled by the British. From Madras, he went to Gandikota where he met the Mir Jumla (chief minister) of Golconda kingdom and then travelled to Golconda. In another journey, he travelled from Surat to Golconda with a detour of the mining region of Raolkonda (somewhere near modern Kurnool).
The journeys are not significant by themselves, but what they indicate are.
Most of the big and prosperous cities of the world have been port towns. Or cities in river valleys. Golconda is a strange anomaly in that it was neither on the banks of a river nor was it a port town and yet it attained considerable prosperity thanks to its trade routes.
The first thing that Tavernier and other travellers’ journeys indicate is the level of security in the region. The central Indian region was known for thugs who would befriend travellers during their journey and, at an opportune moment, kill the travellers and take away all their belongings. In contrast to this, the region administered by the Golconda kingdom was free from such wayside killers and dacoits.
But, the route was not all smooth or paved. As the travellers neared the capital, they record the absence of a path good enough for the passage of horses. Many of them had to walk or take the help of palanquin bearers to make the journey. In the absence of bridges, the travellers had to use bamboo coracles to make the passage. The traders braved all these as the richest kingdom meant big business.
