Moula Ali Hill

Moula Ali hill is a dome-shaped hill in the Moula Ali area of Hyderabad, about 614 metres high, known above all for the Moula Ali dargah and a Shia mosque on its top. A flight of 484 steps climbs to the dargah, and some 600 tombs lie around the hill. People have lived near it since Neolithic times, and digs nearby have produced pottery, iron tools and pieces of human bone.

Tradition says that in 1578 Yakut, a sick eunuch of the Qutb Shahi court, dreamt that a man in green led him up the hill, where he saw Ali resting his hand on a stone. He woke cured, and a stone bearing the marks of a hand was found on the hill; Sultan Ibrahim Qutb Shah then had the dargah built, and the stone is kept inside. Thousands of mirrors line the interior. The Qutb Shahi sultans began a yearly pilgrimage here on 17 Rajab, later a major festival under the Nizams.