Warangal

Warangal, once known as Orugallu, was the capital of the Kakatiya kings of the Telugu country. Its fort, built around a great granite outcrop, enclosed the Swayambhu temple of Shiva behind concentric walls and a moat, with four carved stone gateways at the temple's entrance. Tanks and temples across the surrounding uplands fed and served a prosperous capital that the dynasty's inscriptions ranked above every other city of the Telugu land.

Ulugh Khan, son of the Tughluq sultan, took the fort in 1323, sent King Prataparudra towards Delhi and renamed the city Sultanpur. The Swayambhu temple was ruined. Around 1336 the Telugu chieftain Musunuri Kapaya Nayaka drove out the sultan's governor and held Warangal until Anapota Nayaka of the Recherla house killed him in 1368 or 1369. The Recherla chiefs ruled from Rachakonda and Devarakonda, and in the 1420s the Bahmani sultan Ahmad Shah took Warangal. In 1460, according to inscriptions on the fort's gateways, the army of Kapilendra of Orissa captured it. Shitab Khan held it from 1504 and quarried Kakatiya temples to finish the stone fort. The Qutb Shahis of Golconda won Warangal in the early sixteenth century, and Aurangzeb's Mughals took it in 1687. Raiders plundered the fort in 1708 or 1709.