Qualla: Northern Circars https://qualla.com/northern-circars en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/t/g/5/5/northern-circars-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Northern Circars https://qualla.com/northern-circars Northern Circars: Introduction https://qualla.com/northern-circars/ Photo credit Yash9652, CC BY-SA 4.0. The word itself is a clue to how many hands have shaped this coast. Circar is an English rendering of sarkar, a Mughal administrative term for district, in use since the time of Sher Shah Suri in the early 1500s. By the time the British finished acquiring the Northern Circars in 1823, the word had picked up an additional meaning: British Sarkar, the government itself. Five districts along the Bay of Bengal, stretching from roughly Guntur in the south to Srikakulam in the north, had passed through so many empires that the language of governance had bent to accommodate them all.

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]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/g/5/5/northern-circars-wp/tg55-northern-circars-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Northern Circars: Five Districts, Five Centuries of Contest https://qualla.com/northern-circars/ Photo credit Yash9652, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Northern Circars comprised five districts: Chicacole (modern Srikakulam), Rajmandri (Rajahmundry), Ellore (Eluru), Mustaphanagar (Kondapalli), and Murtuzanagar (Guntur). Together they covered approximately 30,000 square miles of coastal territory, a narrow strip running along...

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]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/g/5/5/northern-circars-wp/tg55-northern-circars-five-districts-five-centuries-of-contest.mp3 0:06 2 full Northern Circars: Conquest Without Armies https://qualla.com/northern-circars/ Photo credit Yash9652, CC BY-SA 4.0. What makes the British acquisition of the Northern Circars unusual is how little fighting it involved. The process stretched from 1758 to 1823, a protracted campaign of diplomacy and financial settlements rather than military conquest. The British did not storm the Circars; they ...

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]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/g/5/5/northern-circars-wp/tg55-northern-circars-conquest-without-armies.mp3 0:06 3 full Northern Circars: Kingdoms Buried Beneath Borders https://qualla.com/northern-circars/ Photo credit Yash9652, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before the British or the Mughals, the Circars saw centuries of contest among regional powers. The Bahmani Sultanate invaded in 1471. The Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda conquered the Guntur and Masulipatnam districts beginning in 1541, though their hold was incomplete. The conque...

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]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/g/5/5/northern-circars-wp/tg55-northern-circars-kingdoms-buried-beneath-borders.mp3 0:06 4 full Northern Circars: From Presidency to State and Back Again https://qualla.com/northern-circars/ Photo credit Yash9652, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Northern Circars were governed as part of the Madras Presidency until Indian independence in 1947. The Presidency became Madras State, and in 1953 the northern, Telugu-speaking portion, including the Circars, was detached to form the new Andhra State. Three years later, the A...

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]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/t/g/5/5/northern-circars-wp/tg55-northern-circars-from-presidency-to-state-and-back-again.mp3 0:06 5 full