Aurangabad Caves

Before we visited Aurangabad, I had done some basic research on the city and the surrounding areas of the Indian state of Maharashtra, and it is during that research that I had found out about the Aurangabad Caves. I planned an itinerary and sent my sister off to the Maharashtra Tourism office in Calcutta (Kolkata) to make some enquiries. She came back and told me that the Maharashtra Tourism office had never heard of the Aurangabad Caves! I was rather taken aback; after all, the caves are mentioned even in the Wikipedia article about the city. But it seems, in spite of being nearly 2000 years old, the Aurangabad Caves are not really high on any tourist’s list of priorities.

 

Alamgir Masjid: Aurangzeb's Personal Mosque, Aurangabad

The Alamgir Masjid of Aurangabad in the Indian state of Maharashtra, also known as the Shahi Masjid (Royal Mosque), is the personal mosque of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. Surprisingly not many people seem to be aware of this, even though this is one of the most important Mughal era monuments of the city. My friends in a popular Aurangabad radio station didn’t know about and neither did my chauffeur Anand who had lived in the city all his life. The only reason I found the mosque was because I was looking for it, because I had read about it in Pushkar Sohoni’s book.

 

Bibi Ka Maqbara, Aurangabad

The Bibi Ka Maqbara is the chief tourist attraction of Aurangabad in the Indian state of Maharashtra, although technically it lies just outside the city. Due to its resemblance to the Taj Mahal in Agra, it is called the Taj of the Deccan or even unflattering names like “poor man’s Taj Mahal” or “duplicate Taj Mahal”. But the Bibi ka Maqbara is, in fact, an original design; “the last in a distinguished lineage of Timurid inspired imperial Mughal mausoleums”, the earliest example of which would be Humayun’s tomb in Delhi, which was constructed 100 years earlier.

 

The Gates of Aurangabad

If Calcutta is the city of joy and Paris is the city of love then Aurangabad in the Indian state of Maharashtra is the city of gates. The city owes its existence to an Ethiopian by the name of Malik Ambar. Sold as a slave in childhood, he would eventually rise to become the regent of the Nizamshahi Dynasty of Ahmednagar (which later shifted its capital to Hyderabad). He turned the small village of Khadki into a modern city and equipped it with waterworks and other municipal conveniences. Khadki would eventually come to be ruled by the Mughals and Aurangzeb made it his capital when he was the appointed the viceroy of the Deccan in 1653 and it is after him that the city is named.