The story about creation and naming of Hussainsagar lake is well known in Hyderabad. Lore goes that the reigning monarch at Golconda, Ibrahim Qutb Shah commissioned his son-in-law Hussan Shah Wali to construct the lake at the foothills of what came to be called Naubat Pahad. After the lake was completed, the king rode to the edge of the lake and asked about it from a passerby who told him that it is called “Hussain sahib cheruvu”. A disappointed king rode away and commissioned another lake and named it beforehand: Ibrahim cheruvu. Now, the area around the lake is still called Ibrahimpatnam.
But there was one more lake or rather a township that Ibrahim Qutb Shah commissioned. If the location were correct and had things progressed as the king imagined, that would have been the city we would all be living in, rather than Hyderabad.
The township was developed on the other side of Golconda on the other shore of Musi. A massive lake was dug up, gardens were planted to keep the area cool, stepwells were dug for people to use the water and a bridge across the lake’s sluice gate was also laid.
But alas! Nature had different ideas. The township was on a higher ground and immediately a water crisis laid it low. It was abandoned a few years later and then in 1573, Ibrahim Qutb Shah built what is called Purana Pul.
Hyderabad developed on the other side of the bridge laid by Ibrahim Qutb Shah.
The lake developed by Ibrahim Qutb Shah? Well, it is now called Neknampur lake! For the second time Ibrahim lost an opportunity to have a waterbody named after himself.
It was during his great grandson Abdullah Qutb Shah’s reign that the lake received water, when one of his nobleman Reza Quli titled Neknam Khan commissioned a channel. Instead of receiving water from the Musi, now the lake received water from a series of lakes behind the Golconda fort. Soon enough, the lake came to be called Neknampur lake after the nobleman.
- The area around Hyderabad railway station is known as Nampally as it was the jagir of Neknam Khan. After his death in Madras, Neknam Khan’s body was brought to Hyderabad and buried near the tomb of Ibrahim Qutb Shah under an open enclosure.
Neknam Khan of African descent, rose up in the hierarchy of Golconda sultanate. As a commander-in-chief of Golconda forces, his writ ran right up to the shores of Bay of Bengal in Madras. It was Neknam Khan who granted the East India Company a deed that allowed them to use Madras. This he did after raising taxes and collecting old tax dues.
Around the same time, one of the courtesans of Abdullah Qutb Shah built a masjid, which the locals call Pemamati masjid, A dancing pavilion built on the other side and came to be called Taramati baradari.
The Pemamati masjid which remained unfinished has largely been restored while the Taramati baradari is now a multi-cultural tourist centre.
The lake is now a weed-choked toxic broth of chemical pollutants laced with domestic sewage let into it by the numbers housing colonies that have cropped on the lake’s edge.
Maybe it is providence that the foul smelling lake doesn’t bear the name of Ibrahim Qutb Shah?
