Wednesday 21 March 2012

SOME HISTORICAL TREASURES OF HYDERABAD



 
Adab arz hai:

Lets hope that the Government of AP will take appropriate steps to restore and preserve these historical treasures.



Dar-ul-Shifaa

"In the late 16th century, it was considered among the three best teaching hospitals in the world, the other two being in Bukhra and Baghdad"

The city had among its prized possessions, the Dar-ul-Shifa, a world-class hospital and the country's first in-patient treatment facility, four centuries ago. In the late 16th century, it was considered among the three best teaching hospitals in the world, the other two being in Bukhra and Baghdad. If the Qutub Shahis had Dar-ul-Shifa, the Nizams had to their credit Nizamia Tibbi and the Osmania Hospitals. 

Located a few yards across the old Municipal Corporation Office in an area named after it, Dar-ul-Shifa, was built in 1595, by Mohammed Quli Qutub Shah just four years after founding the city. The location itself needs a specific mention. It speaks of planning, vision and care taken by the Qutub Shahi rulers in creating the best of amenities for the citizens, though unani medicine was the only system of treatment available at that time..............The scale of the hospital spread over all of 6000 square yards and its symmetrical arched structure standing around a quadrangular courtyard, looks stupendous ...Books on the history of unani medicine in the city, record that the building had eastern, western and southern wings with twelve double rooms on the ground floor and the same number on the first floor. The northern side had the gateway, in which there were eight double rooms on the ground floor and the same number on the first floor. These chambers were used as "in-patient" wards. The outpatient wards were located adjacent to the northern gate. A staircase leads to the first floor from where convalescent patients could breathe in fresh air and get a full view of the nascent capital, this being the only double storied building in the area at that time. 


The hospital was utilised from the Qutubshahi period down to the reign of the first Nizam, Nizam-ul-Mulk...
 

Nizamia Observatory, Panjagutta, Hyderabad
Nawab Zaffar Jung Bahadur, a Minister, who had a fascination for stars, showed "scientific temper", long before the term became part of science jargon. He imported two telescopes - the 15-inch Grubb refractor and an 8 - inch Cooke astrograph from England in 1901- that were mounted at a strategic location, in his estate at Phisalbanda on the outskirts of the Old City. 

These were in 1908, shifted to a spot at Begumpet, that came to be known as the Nizamiah Observatory (named after the Sixth Nizam, Mir Mahbub Ali Khan).

Two Nobel laureates, Sir C. V. Raman and Prof. S. Chandrasekhar, who visited the observatory at different times, counted it among the best. It was because of its importance, that the observatory, a cylindrical granite structure topped by a dome that rises into the sky and an old granite building nearby, have been listed as Grade I monumental structures meant for conservation. 

"The second oldest observatory in the country, it has played an important role. It became famous for its involvement in the international project, Carte Du Ciel or astrographic sky survey of mapping and preparing an extensive Astrographic Star Catalogue in a given celestial zone. The task of mapping in a zone covering declination 17 to 23 degrees south was originally assigned to Santiago Observatory in Chile but later shifted to Nizamia. The project culminated in the publication of 12 volumes of catalogues giving accurate positions of nearly 8,00,000 stars". 

The observatory, which also participated in recording solar activity in the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58 and the International Quiet Sun Year in 1964-65, became a precursor to the Japal - Rangapur Observatory where a 48-inch reflecting telescope was installed. The OU Astronomy Department itself came to be upgraded as the Centre of Advanced Study in Astronomy. Its observations of variable stars used to be communicated to the British Astronomical Association and the Harvard College Observatory.
 
 

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