Bhagamati (Hyder Mahal) was a queen of Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, in whose honour Hyderabad was supposedly named.[1] She is also known by the name Bhagyawati[2] There exists debate among scholars about whether there existed any Bhagamati at all and whether she influenced the naming.[3][4]
Popular narrative
Bhagmati was born in 'Chichlam' (place not identified with certainty) in a Hindu family; she was a local nautch-girl.[3] Qutb Shah met her whilst riding out, fell in love to the extent of having constructed Purana Pul as a means of meeting her regularly, and entered into a marriage.[3][5] Accordingly, the sultan founded a city around 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
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]
