Place · Qutb Shahi pavilion · India
Taramati Bāradari
The 17th-century Qutb Shahi twelve-arched garden pavilion at Golconda, Hyderabad, named for the royal Qutb Shahi court singer Taramati (c.1600s), whose voice is said to have reached the fort's Baradari pavilion from here. The twelve-arched structure (bara-dari means twelve-doors) is in the Deccan Qutb Shahi style with cusped arches, bulbous domes and ornate stucco decoration. Taramati and her sister Premamati were court musicians under Sultan Abdullah Qutb Shah (1626-1672); Taramati is said to have been his companion. The adjoining tombs of Taramati and Premamati stand at the Qutb Shahi tombs complex alongside the sultan's tomb. The Baradari is now part of the Hyderabad tourism circuit and hosts annual music festivals.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 17.356, 78.370
Worth knowing
Tradition holds that Taramati sang from this pavilion and that her voice carried across the valley to the Golconda fort, roughly two kilometres off — a claim about acoustics that nobody has tested and everybody repeats. She and Premamati are said to be buried among the Qutb Shahi tombs, which would be an unusual honour for court performers and is one reason the story is doubted.
Connections (3)
- Site adjacencyGolconda
Taramati Baradari, a twelve-arched pavilion on a rise outside Golconda, is named for a singer of the Qutb Shahi court whom tradition connects to the sultan; it faces the fort across the valley, and the story is that her voice carried the distance. The fort itself has famous acoustics — a clap at the gate is audible at the top — so the legend is built on something real about the site.
- Traditional seat ofChārmīnār
Taramati and Premamati, singers of the Qutb Shahi court, are said to lie among the royal tombs at Golconda — an unusual honour, and the kind of story that attaches to a dynasty remembered for its Dakhni poetry and its musical patronage. The baradari pavilion named for Taramati faces the fort across the valley, and the fort's famously carrying acoustics are what the legend about her voice is built on.
- Site withinHyderabad
The Taramati Baradari sits on the ridge between Golconda and the Hyderabad walled city, a twelve-arched Qutb Shahi pleasure pavilion from the court of Abdullah Qutb Shah in the mid-seventeenth century. The acoustics across to Golconda — a kilometre and a half northwest — are the local legend about the court singer Taramati; the pavilion is now part of Telangana's cultural centre, so a Qutb Shahi pavilion holds classical music concerts under the Telangana state again.
Sources
Standard reference accounts; site and museum records
Open Taramati Bāradari in the repository →