01Built by Rudrama’s general
A Telugu inscription on a long slab in the inner wall records that the fort was built in 1294 by Gore Gangaya Reddy, a general in the service of the Kakatiya queen Rudrama Devi. The inner walls are of huge dressed granite blocks fitted without mortar, in the Kakatiya manner; the citadel, the Bala Hisar, sits on a rock in the middle of the town. After the fall of Warangal in 1323 the fort passed through Delhi’s hands to the Bahmanis, and the doab became the field of war between them and the new kingdom of Vijayanagara.
021520
In 1520 Krishnadevaraya marched on Raichur with a vast army and laid siege to it. Ismail Adil Shah of Bijapur crossed the Krishna to relieve it, and on the field before the fort the Vijayanagara line first gave way and was then rallied by the king himself, as the Portuguese chronicler Nuniz tells it; the Bijapur army broke. The fort surrendered soon after. Raichur was lost again after Talikota in 1565 and stayed with Bijapur, the Mughals and the Nizams. Persian inscriptions of the Adil Shahi period on the gates record later additions.
The life of this place
- 1294Gore Gangaya Reddy builds the fort for Rudrama Devi.
- 1520Krishnadevaraya defeats Ismail Adil Shah and takes Raichur.
- after 1565After Talikota the fort passes to Bijapur.
