Rachakonda

Rajaconda's is a fort in Andhra Pradesh India. Its history dates back to the 14th century A.D., when it was constructed by Recherla Singama Nayak, the founder of a new clan of kings (previously serving the Kakatiya dynasty rulers as military commanders since the 12nd century A.D) and governing the territory of Rajaconda.

The kings of Rajaconda were Recherla Velama chieftains of the Padma Nayak lineage, who rose to rule over the entire Telangana during the post-Kakatiya and pre-Bahamani period in the Deccan. Rajaconda acted as a buffer State between the Muslim Bahamani kingdom and the Hindu Vijayanagara empire and was subsequently taken over by the Bahamanis in 1433 A.D. during the Velama rule.

In 1498, the last governor of Telangana, Qutubul Mulk Dakhani, controlled the territory of Golconda, Warangal, Devaraconda, Rajaconda and Koilconda and went on to build the edifice of the Qutub Shahi dynasty. Rajaconda the fort, offers a good example of medieval Hindu fort architecture. The construction is of cyclopean masonry, and the whole fort is devoid of the use of mortar.

The gateways to the fort offer good examples that highlight the use of monolith pillars, beams and lintels and is most interesting to the history connoisseur. The fort walls are quite typical with stone cuts and diversified and laid on the side facing the outside with mudslopes on the interior.

The fort structure, as observed, seemed to be functionally useful as a defence bastion in the pre-firearms era as the structure suggests, leading experts to infer that with the induction of fire-arms in the mid 14th century, even as Golconda began to upgrade itself to suit the use of fire-arms, Rajaconda remained indifferent to the changing times and needs. In times to come Rajakonda settled to merely being a Jagir (province) of the Qutub Shahi kings.

To understand the history of forts, one needs to realise that various forts in a geographical region had different defence bastions and served different purposes. While some served as frontiers of kingdoms, others merely acted as centres of trade and commerce. These frontiers too kept changing from time to time. and hence no two forts can be compared to each other without understanding the role the served in the right perspective.

Rajaconda forms an ideal case to understand medieval Hindu town planning and architecture. The fort even adheres to Viswakarma's Vasthu Sastra on Hindu fort architecture. One can observe that the fort was structured as upper and lower tiers with the city lying on the south eastern side of the fort, partly sprawling outside the boundary wall.