Page:History of Aurangzib (based on original sources) Vol 1.djvu/241

CHAPTER X. INVASION OF GOLKONDA, 1656. GOLKONDA was a very fertile and carefully irrigated country, with a large wealth of the industrious population. The kingdom. Haidarabad, was at Golkonda: capital, this time the centre of the diamond trade, not of Asia alone, but of the whole world. Numbers of foreign traders assembled here and transacted business. The kingdom was famous for several industries. The steel works of Nirmal and Indur (two villages north of the city) supplied the raw materials for the world-famed Damascus blades, and the local out-turn of swords, lances and daggers was distributed in large quantities over all parts of India. The skilled cloth- weavers of Masulipatam were sought after for the Imperial factories of Burhanpur and Delhi, and the chintz woven there had a continental celebrity. The carpet industry of Ellore, conducted entirely by Muhammadans, was Digitized by Microsoft Ⓡ