18-Apr-2018: IIT Madras to map Bagh-e-Naya Qila

The Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey of In­dia (ASI) will be us­ing Ground Pen­e­trat­ing Radar (GPR) to map the con­tours of the area around the Bagh-e-Naya Qila ex­ca­vated gar­den in the Gol­conda Fort. It has roped in the In­dian In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy-Madras (IITM) to carry out the map­ping.

This medieval gar­den in Hy­der­abad is the only one of its kind still in­tact. The oth­ers — built dur­ing the Qutb Shahi rule (1518-1687) — have ei­ther been built over or have dis­ap­peared. The contour map­ping was ne­ces­si­tated by the im­pend­ing ad­vance of the Hy­der­abad Golf Club, which wants to ex­pand its 18-hole course into a 21-hole one by tak­ing over some of the land ad­join­ing the Bagh-e-Naya Qila. A GPR map would re­veal any buried relics. The Hy­der­abad Golf Club wants to add a few more holes on the other side of the gar­den. We don’t want to lose any more his­tory. We want to en­sure that there are no relics of the Bagh-e-Naya Qila un­der­neath and hence we are plan­ning to map the area. We would have liked to do this with a Light De­tec­tion and Radar (LiDAR) but for that the per­mis­sion of the De­fence Min­istry is required.

The Naya Qila gar­den in­side Gol­conda Fort was built by rulers of the Dec­can and is one of the few sym­met­ri­cal gar­dens ex­tant.

In 2014, when the ASI ex­ca­vated the area af­ter di­vert­ing the wa­ter flow, it dis­cov­ered wa­ter chan­nels, set­tle­ment tanks, walk­ways, foun­tains, grav­ity pumps, and other gar­den relics. An ear­lier ex­ca­va­tion un­earthed gold coins in the golf course area.

The IIT-Madras team has been informed to map­ the area be­fore the mon­soon.