Asifabad

Asifabad lies in the dry, hilly country of the Godavari basin in the Deccan, where low ridges and forest tracts separate fields and small market villages. Rainfall depends on the monsoon, and tanks, wells and streams determine where rice, millet and cotton can be grown. The settlement sits within a frontier of Gond communities, regional rulers and later Deccan states.

During the medieval period, the region passed between the Kakatiyas, Bahmani sultans and local Gond chiefs. Forts and forest routes controlled movement between the Godavari valley and the northern Deccan. The Gond kingdom of Chanda held much of this country, drawing revenue from agriculture and forest produce while allowing local clan leaders to govern their villages.

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Mughals and the Asaf Jahi rulers of Hyderabad extended authority into the area through revenue officials and military campaigns. Asifabad became a small administrative and market centre among villages whose cattle, grain and forest goods supplied larger towns. Its position on routes through the Deccan frontier outweighed its size.