Kaulas Fort (Kowlas Fort) is a historic fort in western

Telangana Telangana is a States and union territories of India, state in India situated in the Southern India, south-central part of the Indian subcontinent on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, ele ...

in India. It was constructed by

Rashtrakutas The Rashtrakuta Empire was a royal Indian polity ruling large parts of the Indian subcontinent between the 6th and 10th centuries. The earliest known Rashtrakuta Indian inscriptions, inscription is a 7th-century copper plate grant detailing th ...

in the 9th century CE. It later came under the rule of

Chalukyas The Chalukya dynasty () was a Classical Indian dynasty that ruled large parts of southern and central India between the 6th and the 12th centuries. During this period, they ruled as three related yet individual dynasties. The earliest dynas ...

Badami Badami, formerly known as Vātāpi (Sanskrit: from ''āpi'', ‘friend, ally’; ‘having the wind (vāta) as an ally’; Kannada script: ವಾತಾಪಿ), is a town and headquarters of a taluk by the same name, in the Bagalkot district o ...

, the

Kakatiyas The Kakatiya dynasty (IAST: Kākatīya) was a Telugu dynasty that ruled most of eastern Deccan region in present-day India between 12th and 14th centuries. Their territory comprised much of the present day Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and p ...

Musunuri Nayaks The Musunuri Nayakas were a prominent Telugu Hindu warrior dynasty that rose to power in the 14th century in the Deccan region following the fall of the Kakatiya Empire to the Delhi Sultanate in 1323 CE. They originated from the region of ...

Bahmani Sultanate The Bahmani Kingdom or the Bahmani Sultanate was a late medieval Persianate kingdom that ruled the Deccan plateau in India. The first independent Muslim sultanate of the Deccan, the Bahmani Kingdom came to power in 1347 during the rebellio ...

, Qutub Shahis,

Marathas The Maratha Empire, also referred to as the Maratha Confederacy, was an early modern India, early modern polity in the Indian subcontinent. It comprised the realms of the Peshwa and four major independent List of Maratha dynasties and states, Ma ...

Mughals The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of pre ...

and, finally, the Asaf Jahi rulers of the

Hyderabad State Hyderabad State () was a princely state in the Deccan region of south-central India with its capital at the city of Hyderabad. It is now divided into the present-day state of Telangana, the Kalyana-Karnataka region of Karnataka, and the ...

. It is in the Kamareddy district, near the trijunction of Telangana,

Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...

and

Maharashtra Maharashtra () is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. It is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian states of Karnataka and Goa to the south, Telangana to th ...

states. It has historically served as a strategic outpost contested by many kingdoms.

History

The history of the fort dates back to the 9th century AD. According to historians, it was built in Indra IV’s period of the Rashtrakuta dynasty in their political capital and was later captured by the Chalukyas of the Kalyani dynasty in the third quarter of the 10th century before it was captured by the Kakatiyas in the 12th century. The Kakatiya kingdom, which ruled from present day Warangal, held the Kowlas Fort till 1323 AD, a period more or less parallel to the one and only Kakatiya woman ruler, Rani Rudrama Devi. Later, the Kowlas region is said to have come under the rule of the Bahmanis, Qutb Shahis, Yadavas, Naikwaries, Mughals, Devagiri, Kalyani, Marathas, etc and finally under the Asaf Jahis (Nizams) (1724 to 1948).

Aurangzeb Alamgir I (Muhi al-Din Muhammad; 3 November 1618 – 3 March 1707), commonly known by the title Aurangzeb, also called Aurangzeb the Conqueror, was the sixth Mughal emperors, Mughal emperor, reigning from 1658 until his death in 1707, becomi ...

appointed two Kiladars, Khuni Khan and Ikhlas Khan who constructed two big mosques at the fort. Nizam ul Mulk Asaf Jah appointed Raja Gopal Singh Gaur, a Kshatriya or Rajput, as the Chief of Kowlas in the 1720s. Along with Koulas,

Kandhar Kandhar is a town and a municipal council in Nanded district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It lies near the western shore of Manyad Reservoir. Kandhar was famous as a major Jain centre in the Rashtrakuta kingdom, having Malkhed or Manya ...

and Mahur forts in Maharashtra were also under his control . This family resided in Kandhar. Gopal Singh's descendants ruled the kingdom of Kaulas until 1915. Raja Deep Singh played a leading role in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 and was sentenced to three years imprisonment by the British. The Nizam canceled his inam and restored the kingdom to his son. The last chief, Raja Durjan Singh, died prematurely and childless. In 1915 the fiefdom was declared ''Khalsa'' (meaning directly under the rule of the Nizam ). The annual revenue of the fiefdom was then 22,517 rupees. The Nizams appointed

Sahibzada Sahib or Saheb () is a term of address originating from Arabic (). As a loanword, ''Sahib'' has passed into several languages, including Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Crimean Tatar, Urdu, Hi ...

Maulvi Jamaluddin Sheikh Mirza, of Turk descent, as the

Kiladar Qiladar (Urdu: قلعہ‌دار) was a title for the governor of a fort or large town in early modern India. During the Mughal Empire, the title was commonly pronounced 'Killedar' (Persian: کیلدار). The office of ''Qiladar'' had the same func ...

of Kowlas. He was the maternal grandson of

Shehzada ''Shehzada'' () is a 1972 Bollywood drama film produced by Surinder Kapoor and directed by K. Shankar, set during the British Raj. The film stars Rajesh Khanna and Raakhee as the lead pair and the supporting cast included Veena, Pandari Bai ...

Mirza Jamaluddin Bahadur, the Kiladar of

Daulatabad Fort Daulatabad Fort, originally Deogiri Fort, is a historic fortified citadel located in Daulatabad village near Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India. It was the capital of the Yadavas (9th century – 14th century CE), for a brief time the capital of th ...

. His son Sahibzada Moinuddin Sheikh Mirza, was born in 1915 and chosen as his father's heir. Later, he adopted the name Moinuddin Cowlas upon migrating to Pakistan after the 1948 Annexation of Hyderabad. He remained the titular Kiladar of Kowlas until his death in 1981.

History of the village

Kaulas has the ruins of an ancient fort dating back to the Kakatiya period. There are many caves on the nearby hill. Anantagiri Temple, Kalyanaramadasu Mandir and Shankaracharya Temple are famous temples in Kaunas. Kaulas original name is Kailasa Durgam. It became popular in recent times as Muslim rulers called it Kaulas. After the end of the Kakatiya Empire , the Bahmani Sultans captured Kaulas Durga. Several battles were fought between the Bahmanis and the Musunuri chieftains centered around Kaulas Durga . Hasan Gangu gave the Koulas fort to the Kapaya leader and concluded a truce.

Village population

According to the 2011 India census, the village is spread over 1850 hectares with 491 houses and a population of 2186. The number of males in the village is 1178, the number of females is 1008. The number of scheduled castes is 328 while the number of scheduled tribes is 170. The census location code of the village is 571106 .Pin code: 503305.

References

{{Forts in India Forts in Telangana 9th-century establishments in India Hyderabad State Archaeological sites in Telangana Populated places established in the 9th century Kamareddy district