Page:Historic Landmarks of the Deccan.djvu/229

217 The most remarkable work in the neighbourhood of Haidarabad is the Husain Sagar, an artificial lake with a circumference of nearly eleven miles, which lies immediately to the south of the British cantonment of Secunderabad and between it and the city. This lake is older than Haidarabad, having been constructed by Ibrahim Qutb Shah, who died in 1580, the father of Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, who founded Haidarabad. The Mir Jumla tank which lies under the western wall of Haidarabad, has already been mentioned. This tank, which was probably at one time an imposing sheet of water and by the margin of which Kam Bakhsh, the youngest son of Aurangzib, encamped when he was attempting to assert in the Deccan his independence of his brother Bahadur Shah, who had succeeded to the imperial throne, is now silted up and is little more than an expanse of malodorous mud.

Yet a third artificial lake calls for notice. This is the Mir Alam lake, the surroundings of which are even more picturesque than those of the Husain Sagar. This lake was formed about a hundred years ago under the orders of Abul Qasim Mir Alam, minister of the State foi English affairs, and founder of the fortunes of the Salar Jang family in Haidarabad, by closing with a dam a valley to the west of the city which runs down in a north-westerly direction towards the river Musi. This dam, which is the work of French engineers, is a wonderful piece of masonry. Its outline follows the arc of a circle with the convex side towards the water, and the dam is composed of a series of horizontal arches the extrados of each of which resists the pressure of the water. What would be the feet of the arches, were they upright, form buttresses which strengthen the whole structure. The branches of the lake run up into the small valleys of the hills which enclose its catchment area, and the scenery is picturesque in the extreme.

On a hill to the east of the city stands the tomb of the Nizam's famous French officer Raymond, whose corps was disbanded in 1798 at the instance of Lord Wellesley. The tomb is a simple and massive obelisk without any inscription other than the monogram J. R. and stands on a high plinth on the summit of the hill. Immediately to the west of it and on the same plinth is a shrine which contains the adventurer's viscera. Monsieur Raymond is developing by degrees into a saint under the title of Musa Rahmu, and his memory is honoured by an annual