The city of Vijayanagar itself contains numerous temples with rich ornamentation, especially the gateways, and a cluster of shrines for the deities.

Most prominent among the temples is the one dedicated to Virupaksha, a manifestation of Shiva, the patron-deity of the Vijayanagar rulers.

Temples continue to be the nuclei of diverse cultural and intellectual activities, but these activities are based more on tradition than on contemporary political realities. (However, the first Vijayanagar ruler—Harihara I—was a Hindu who converted to Islam and then reconverted to Hinduism for political expediency.)

The temples sponsor no intellectual exchange with Islamic theologians because Muslims are generally assigned to an "impure" status and are thus excluded from entering temples.

When the five rulers of what was once the Bahmani Sultanate combine their forces and attack Vijayanagar in 1565, the empire crumbles at the Battle of Talikot.

A city has grown up around Golconda fort in south-central India, but lack of space for expansion in the had prompted Mohammed Quli, the fifth Sultan of the Qutb Shahi dynasty, to call his advisers to search for a new virgin wooded elevated land site near a river, and one devoid of any man-made structures or monuments.

The city concept is planned on a gridron pattern with an iconic monument as the main foci.

Built from 1589 on the Musi River five miles (eight kilometers) east of Golconda in 1589, the planned site had been named as the City of Hyder after the title of the Fourth Caliph Ali, although many people believe that the city of "Hyderabad" was named after the people as their residence as "City of the Brave" from the Persian words "Hyder/Haider" (Persian and Urdu meaning lion or brave) and "Abad/Abaad" (Persian and Urdu meaning abode or populated) after their having survived the plague epidemic that had ravaged Golkonda.

There is another urban myth and folklore, probably apocryphal, that the Sultan had named it after his wife Hyder Mahal (it is unlikely, however, that he would given his spouse a male name or title).

The Sultan in 1591 orders the construction of the Charminar, a tall structure from which to survey the urban development and to keep watch over the river banks flooding the nearby areas, the source of grave epidemics of the kind the recent end of which this tower structure is built to commemorate.

Captain William Hawkins, leading the first voyage of the British East India Company to India, had sailed into the Gujarat port of Surat on August 24, 1608, carrying with him twenty-five thousand pieces of gold and a personal letter to the Mughal Emperor Jahangir from King James I seeking trade concessions.

He had persisted for over two years, however Portuguese pirates had stolen his gold, and had tried several times to murder him while on shore.

He had returned to England empty-handed.

The next envoy, Paul Canning, had lasted only a few months.

The Company had by 1611 managed to build its first factory (as the trading posts are known) in the town of Machilipatnam on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal, the major port of Golconda kingdom.

This is one of the earliest known British settlements in the Indian subcontinent.

The high profits reported by the Company after landing in India (presumably owing to a reduction in overhead costs affected by the transit points), had initially prompted King James I to grant subsidiary licenses to other trading companies in England, but in 1609 he had renewed the charter given to the Company for an indefinite period, including a clause which specified that the charter would cease to be in force if the trade turned unprofitable for three consecutive years.

Aurangzeb is the third son of the fifth Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal (Arjumand Bānū Begum).

After a rebellion by his father, part of Aurangzeb's childhood had been spent as a virtual hostage at the court of his grandfather Jahangir.

Muhammad Saleh Kamboh Salafi, a noted calligraphist and official biographer of Emperor Shah Jahan, had been one of his childhood teachers.

Aurangzeb had returned to live with his parents after Jahangir's death in 1627.

Shah Jahan, following the Mughal practice of assigning authority to his sons, had in 1634 put Aurangzeb in charge of the Deccan campaign.

Following his success in 1636, Aurangzeb had became Subahdar (governor) of the Deccan.

At this time, he had begun building a new city near the former capital of Khirki which he named Aurangabad after himself.

He had married Rabia Durrani in 1637.

During this period the Deccan was relatively peaceful.

In the Mughal court, however, Shah Jahan had begun to increasingly favor his eldest son Dara Shikoh.

Aurangzeb's sister Jahanara Begum had been accidentally burned in Agra in 1644, an event that precipitated a family crisis which is to have political consequences.

Aurangzeb had suffered his father's displeasure when he returned to Agra three weeks after the event, instead of immediately.

Shah Jahan dismissed him as the governor of the Deccan.

He had been barred from the court in 1645 for seven months, but Shah Jahan later appointed him governor of Gujarat, where he performed well and had been rewarded.

Shah Jahan had in 1647 made him governor of Balkh and Badakhshan (in modern Afghanistan and Tajikistan), replacing Aurangzeb's ineffective brother Murad Baksh.

These areas at the time were under attack from various forces and Aurangzeb's military skill proved successful.

After Aurangzeb was appointed governor of Multan and Sindh, he began a protracted military struggle against the Safavid army in an effort to capture the city of Kandahar.

He failed, and fell again into his father's disfavor.

Mughal prince Aurangzeb, reappointed governor of the Deccan in 1652, in 1657 attacks the border kingdoms of Golconda in an effort to extend the empire.

A desperate struggle for the succession begins among the Mughal princes after Shah Jahan falls ill on September 6, 1657.

Murad Baksh, the youngest son of Shah Jahan and empress Mumtaz Mahalp, proclaims himself emperor after reports that his father had died.

Aurangzeb's eldest brother, Dara Shikoh, is regarded as heir apparent, but the succession proves far from certain when Shah Jahan's second son Shah Shuja immediately declares himself emperor in Bengal and marching towards Agra while Murad Baksh, receiving the news that Shah Jahna still lives, allies himself with Aurangzeb.

Imperial armies sent by Dara and Shah Jahan soon restrain Shuja’s effort, and he retreats.

Dara has strong support from Shah Jahan, who has recovered enough from his illness to remain a strong factor in the struggle for supremacy, and his eldest son Sulaiman Shikoh had led his army to victory over Shah Shuja on February 14, 1658,
in the battle of Bahadurpur.

Dara had nevertheless been defeated by Aurangzeb and Murad on May 30 at the battlefield of Samugarh, thirteen kilometers from Agra.

Aurangzeb subsequently takes over Agra fort and on June 8 deposes his father.

Murad Baksh, while in a tent with his brother Aurangzeb in 1658, is intoxicated and sent in secret to the prison in Gwalior Fort ,where he faces a trial that sentences him to death for having murdered someone in the past.

Dara had retreated after the defeat from Agra to Delhi and thence to Lahore.

His next destination was Multan and then to Thatta (Sindh).

From Sindh, he had crossed the Great Rann of Kutch and reached Kathiawar, where he had met Shah Nawaz Khan, the governor of the province of Gujarat who had opened the treasury to Dara and helped him to recruit a new army.

He then occupied Surat and advanced towards Ajmer.

Foiled in his hopes of persuading the fickle but powerful Rajput feudatory, Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Marwar, to support his cause, the luckless Dara had decided to make a stand and fight Aurangzeb's relentless pursuers but on March 11, 1659, was once again comprehensively routed in the battle of Deorai (near Ajmer).

After this defeat he had fled to Sindh and sought refuge under Malik Jiwan, a Baluch chieftain whose life had on more than one occasion been saved by the Mughal prince from the wrath of Shah Jahan.

However, Malik had betrayed Dara and on June 10, 1659, turned him (and his second son Sipihr Shikoh) over to Aurangzeb's army.

Brought to Delhi, placed on a filthy elephant and paraded through the streets of the capital in chains, Dara's fate is decided by the political threat he poses as a prince popular with the common people—a convocation of nobles and clergy, called by Aurangzeb in response to the perceived danger of insurrection in Delhi, declares him a threat to the public peace and an apostate from Islam.

He is murdered on the night of August 30, 1659, by assassins.