DOWLETABAD, a city and fortress of India, in the north-western corner of the Nizam’s Dominions, near one of the right-hand tributaries of the Godavery. Though still the centre of an administrative district, the city has sunk into comparative insignificance since the rise of Aurungabad, about ten miles to the east; but the fortress remains, from its natural position, one of the most remarkable in the country. It occupies the conical top of a great granite rock, which rises abruptly from the plain to a height of at least 300 feet, and is encompassed at the foot by a ditch upwards of 30 feet wide. The only means of access to the summit is afforded by a narrow bridge, with passage for not more than two men abreast, and a long gallery, excavated in the rock, which has for the most part a very gradual upward slope, but about midway is intercepted by a, steep stair, the top of which is covered by a grating destined in time of war to form the hearth of a huge fire kept burning by the garrison above. In spite, however, of its natural strength and its various artificial defences, the fortress has frequently been taken. When about the year 1203 the Mahometans invaded this part of the Deccan, Deogurh, as the city was then called, was the wealthy residence of a powerful rajah. In 1306 it was occupied by Mallek Naib, the emperor of Delhi’s general; and in the early part of the same century Mahomet III., in his anxiety to make it the capital of his kingdom and worthy of its new name of Dowletabad, or Abode of Prosperity, endeavoured, but in vain, to cause a wholesale transmigration of the inhabitants of Delhi. About the year 1595 it surrendered to Ahmed Nizam, shah of Ahmadnagar; and on the fall of his dynasty it was taken possession of by Mallek Amber, an Abyssinian slave. His ...