Aurangabad

Aurangabad (now officially Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar) has a layered history shaped by the Deccan sultanates, the Mughals and the Nizams of Hyderabad.

The town began in the early 17th century as Khadki (or Kharki), founded and developed by Malik Ambar, the powerful Ethiopian-origin vizier of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate. He encouraged settlement, irrigation works and military outposts in the region. In 1653, Mughal prince Aurangzeb was appointed viceroy of the Deccan and made Khadki his capital. The city was renamed Aurangabad and grew as the Mughal administrative and military centre in the Deccan, with new suburbs, mosques, gardens and the fortified city wall.

After the decline of Mughal power in the 18th century, Aurangabad passed under the control of the Nizams of Hyderabad and remained an important provincial city of the princely Hyderabad State, known for textiles, Paithani sarees, and its proximity to the ancient cave sites of Ellora and Ajanta and the fortress of Daulatabad.

In 1948, after Hyderabad’s accession to India, Aurangabad was integrated into the Indian Union, later becoming part of Bombay State and from 1960 of Maharashtra. Since the late 20th century it has grown into a major industrial and tourism hub of the Marathwada region, while debates over identity and renaming culminated in its official renaming as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar in the 2020s.