HYDERABAD: Quick quiz. How many Hyderabads are there? Two, most would say, one is the City of the Charminar in India’s Deccan and another in Pakistan’s Sindh province. What about the 82 other namesakes? Cities, towns and villages that dot a vast landscape covering Iran, Azerbaijan, Iraq in the West to Bangladesh in the East.
Hyderabad and its predecessor, the fortified sultanate capital of Golconda, had inspired many people across the globe over the past 500 years. The US has two Golcondas, one in Illinois and another in Nevada, while Charminar has its replicas too, including one in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. There are Hyderabad streets in Ontario, Canada, and in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Heritage expert Dastagir Anwar said Iran has 71 villages, towns and cities named Heydarabad. Azerbaijan has 10 Heydarabads. India and Pakistan have one city each named Hyderabad, the preferred spelling in these parts, while Bangladesh has one too, but it’s spelt Haidarabad. “You will find Heydarabad, Heider Abad or Haiderabad in Azerbaijan and Iran,” he said.
But they all mean the same, whatever be the spelling or however it’s pronounced in the local language – a short phonetic “Hi” or a longish “Hai”. Hyderabad is blend word from Hyder/Haidar, meaning lion, and Abad, a city or populated area. Hazrat Imam Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, was called Hyder.
Old books and archival records show that Hyderabad was Haidarabad and Secunderabad was Sikandarabad in the 19th century. It became Hyderabad in the early 20th century. English orientalist Sir Richard Francis Burton had referred to the city as Haidarabad in his works published in the 19th century, while French diamond trader Jean de Thevenot, who visited the city in the 17th century, called it Aiderabad.
The central Iranian province of Isfahan, after which Hyderabad is believed to have been planned, has nine Heydarabads. “This is how Hyderabad is pronounced in Farsi or Persian” said Anwar.
It is a common belief that Mir Momin Astarabadi, who was a PM in the Qutub Shahi period, studied the layout of Isfahan and it became the template for Hyderabad. But Anwar didn’t agree. He said hasn’t seen anything “in the old city and surrounding areas of Charminar that is like Isfahan or for that matter any city in Persia”. Did Isfahan inspire Hyderabad, or is Hyderabad an original? The jury is out.