Place · Bahmani hill fort · India
Naldurg, Osmanabad
Also known as Adil Shahi), Naldurg, Naldurg (Bahmani, Naldurg (Bahmani-Adil Shahi), Osmanabad
The Naldurg Fort at Osmanabad in Maharashtra, 50 kilometres from Osmanabad city — a Chalukya-period hill fort rebuilt by the Bahmani Sultanate (14-century) and the Adil Shahi (16-century). The fort's distinctive feature is the Pani Mahal ('Water Palace'), an architectural masterwork combining the earthen dam across the Bori river (built 1613 by Ibrahim Adil Shah II) with a two-storey palace built into the dam's upper gallery. The Pani Mahal has two chambers, one over the other, with water from the Bori river channelled through the lower chamber as a cooling system — one of the earliest examples of hydraulic air-conditioning in Indian architecture. The waterfall from the upper reservoir plunges past the palace's lower chamber. The fort fell to Aurangzeb in 1684. ASI protection since 1951.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 17.808, 76.282
Connections (2)
- Architectural modelMurud-Janjira
Naldurg's Pani Mahal — a chamber built inside the masonry of a dam so that the court could sit with the river going over the roof — and Murud-Janjira's island fort with its freshwater tanks inside a sea wall are the two most ingenious pieces of Deccan hydraulic architecture. Both were built by sultanate-period engineers for whom water was a defensive and a ceremonial material at once, which is a way of building that the Mughals did not practise.
- Site adjacencyKunthalgiri, Osmanabad
Naldurg is a basalt-walled Bahmani-Adil Shahi hill fort near Tuljapur in Osmanabad district, while Kunthalgiri is a Jain siddhakshetra elsewhere in the same district; the two are neighbouring landmarks of Osmanabad's Deccan landscape rather than one inside the other.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Naldurg Fort”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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