Belgaum

Belgaum or Belagavi is a town in the South-West Indian state of Karnataka with around 443,000 inhabitants (calculation as at 1st January 2007). It is located in the western highlands of the Deccan, on the edge of the Western Ghats near the border of Maharashtra and Goa, at an altitude of 753 meters above sea level and is located about 90 kilometers from the coast of the Arabian Sea.

Belgaum is the capital of the district. A large proportion of the population speaks Marathi Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, the official language is Kannada. On the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the state in 2006, the Government of Karnataka from a proposal by the writer UR Ananthamurthy, it changed its name.

Belgaum was built towards the end of the 12th Century, when the Ratta dynasty-moved their capital here from nearby Saundatti. The Ratta found an inscription from 1199 on a pillar of the Friday Mosque. Another inscription from 1261 refers to the Yadava, the Belgaum in the middle of the 13th Century who was conquered.

In the early 14th Century, the city fell temporarily to the Sultanate of Delhi, soon after to the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagara and in 1474 to the Bahmaniden whose crumbling power in 1490 by the Adil Shahi of Bijapur led to him being replaced.

The Adil Shahi expanded the native of the Ratta-time stronghold. In the late 17th Century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb conquered Bijapur and Belgaum and received the temporary name Azamnagar. In the early 18th Century, this was followed by the Marathas. In 1818, after several wars, they finally took advantage of the British, Belgaum in the Bombay Presidency was incorporated as an infantry base.

After India’s independence in 1947, Belgaum was initially part of the State of Bombay. Karnataka was created along the linguistic borders of Kannada. Since a large proportion of the population of the district and the town of Belgaum is marathisprachig there are demands from the neighboring state of Maharashtra on the region.

Belgaum is an important regional industrial center. The city is one of the largest aluminum plants in India. Furthermore, significant is mainly machinery (engines, automotive parts, hydraulic pumps, valves) and to a lesser extent, the manufacture of textiles and the food industry.

Belgaum is connected both to the National Highway 4 between Pune and Bangalore as well as with the national rail network. In the Sambre, about seven miles west of the city, there is a regional airport with regular connections to Mumbai and several cities of the Deccan. The city is also the site of the Indian Army and an Air Force base.

Attractions

The main attraction of the city is the 13th Century fortress that was rebuilt and expanded by later rulers many times. Its present form remains largely the same as in the 16th Century. Within the fortress walls are, the Jain Temple Kalama Basti in the late Chalukya style, the Safa Mosque and the Friday Mosque (Jama Masjid) from the 16th Century.