Hyderabad State: largest princely state in British India
The Asaf Jahi era, its currency, its army, and its 1948 end.
The Nizams ruled Hyderabad State for 224 years and at its peak it was larger than England, Wales, and Scotland combined.
Founded in 1724 by Mir Qamar-ud-din Khan (Asaf Jah I), the state spanned what is today Telangana, parts of coastal Andhra, Marathwada in Maharashtra, and Karnataka's Kalyana-Karnataka region.
Hyderabad State minted its own coinage — the Hyderabadi rupee and the silver Char Minar — until 1959, eleven years after the state's military annexation by India. Osmania University, founded 1918 under the seventh Nizam, was the first Indian university to teach in Urdu (and later switched to English).
The state's gradual integration into India — Operation Polo in 1948, then merger into Andhra Pradesh in 1956, then separation again as Telangana in 2014 — is one of the more dramatic state-level political histories in modern India.
