Hyderabad: With an interest in reading the history of Deccan, Sibghat Khan found it difficult to get hold of reliable sources describing the past events of the plateau. Understanding the palpable gap, Sibghat took it to himself to document the history of Hyderabad on a digital platform for easy access for him and others like him having a keen interest on some unknown facts of the city’s past.
Having understood that the history presented on the internet lacked authenticity, the young lad started spending his time at libraries such as the Salar Jung Museum Library or the State Central Library to get a glimpse of the past era.
“Through the libraries, I got hold of some of the 18th century manuscripts from the Nizam’s era. We documented these manuscripts and also have added the soft copy or pictures of them to provide a digital version of it on our website. Most of these manuscripts from the Nizam era were in Urdu while several history books dated before the Nizam era were in Persian,” shares Sibghat who took help from Persian translators from Osmania University to understand the synopsis of the books.
As he began reading about the history, the 21-year-old student pursuing architecture started documenting the history chapter-wise in his blog – The Deccan Archive. “I started writing blogs about Telangana’s history starting from the Kakatiya’s and so on around three years ago. But somehow it didn’t work well. So I decided to start writing about something recent – about lesser known parts of the city,” Sibghat shares.
The student from Aurora’s Design Institute in Habsiguda, tagged along with his classmates from his college to have a look at some places around the city. And soon, the classmates grouped up and contributed to the website in different ways. Now, the group of ten students handle the blogging website.
Post the pandemic, the Deccan Archive group has also introduced Heritage Walks to many unknown spots in the city, and also collaborated with other organisations for the walks.
“We had started it for people to get out of their homes and overcome the fatigue of the pandemic. We explore some unknown places and the stories behind the venue. Just recently we even had a walk to the Zinda Tilismath Karkhana to see how the century old medicine is made and is still relevant even today,” Sibghat points out.
The Deccan Archive has also released a visual Book on the Deccani architecture. Called the ‘Hyderabad Deccan Illustrated’, the Vol 1 of the planned series features engineering drawings of the Deccani buildings.
To know more about your city log on to: https://www.thedeccanarchive.in/
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