Aurangzeb had wanted Golconda since he was a prince. In 1656, serving as a commander under his father Shah Jahan, he besieged the fort for the first time. Shah Jahan overruled him and negotiated peace with Golconda's ruler, Abdullah Qutb Shah, who promptly extended the fort's defenses -- the extension known today as Naya Qila. When Aurangzeb finally crowned himself emperor, he bided his time. He moved his camp to the Deccan in 1682, ostensibly to counter the rebellion of his own son, Prince Muhammad Akbar. Once that threat was neutralized, the emperor turned to his real ambition: swallowing the Deccan's last independent sultanates. Bijapur fell after a siege in 1685-1686. Golconda, with its diamond mines, agricultural wealth, and strategic trade routes, was next. The Maasir-i-Alamgiri, a chronicle of Aurangzeb's reign, supplied additional justifications -- the sultanate's Shi'i faith, its tolerance of Hindu practices, its alleged support of Maratha raids into Mughal territory.

Aurangzeb's problems began inside his own camp. His son Prince Muazzam, sent to take Hyderabad, preferred negotiation to conquest. Muazzam's forces entered the city and plundered its palaces, but when Sultan Abul Hasan Qutb Shah retreated into Golconda Fort, Muazzam pushed for a diplomatic settlement. Aurangzeb viewed this as treason. He offered the sultan terms of his own -- cede territory, pay a large sum, dismiss the Brahmin ministers Madanna and Akkanna -- but the sultan dragged his feet. In March 1686, pressure from within the kingdom led to the assassination of Madanna and Akkanna. It was not enough. On 14 January 1687, Aurangzeb marched on Golconda personally. Once the siege began, his commander Ghaziuddin Khan uncovered that Muazzam had been secretly sharing Mughal military tactics with the sultan and smuggling food into the fort. Aurangzeb placed his son under house arrest; Muazzam would not be freed until 1695.

The siege was brutal for both sides. Aurangzeb deployed 50,000 infantry, a comparable number of cavalry, and around 100 siege guns, including the Azhdaha-Paikar, a 1647 iron-bronze cannon capable of firing 33.5-kilogram projectiles. The Mughal army encamped at Fateh Maidan, just over a mile from the fort. By the end of January they had invested the full circumference, but Golconda's garrison fought back ferociously. Qilich Khan, father of the commander-in-chief, led a frontal assault only to have his shoulder shattered by a cannonball; he died three days later. A relief force of 40,000 Golconda cavalry was routed in the first two weeks, the only major attempt to break the siege from outside. Rivalries between Mughal generals stalled progress on the siege trenches. Famine from the previous year's monsoon failure left the army without food. When the actual monsoon arrived, the Manjira River overflowed and flooded the encampment. Epidemic spread through the ranks, worsened by disease from unburied corpses.

After the mine catastrophe in June, Aurangzeb shifted strategy. He ordered mud and wood walls built around the fort's entire circumference, sealing it completely. He proclaimed Golconda annexed into the Mughal Empire, giving it the epithet Dar-ul-Jihad. Reinforcements arrived under Prince Azam and paymaster-general Ruhullah Khan in July, but they only strained food supplies further. Then Aurangzeb waited. With no supplies reaching the garrison, time was on his side. On 21 September 1687, a Golconda noble named Sarandaz Khan betrayed the sultanate and provided the Mughal forces access to a rear entrance. Ruhullah Khan led a night assault through it, and the main gate was thrown open. Sultan Abul Hasan was arrested and sent to Daulatabad Fort, where he died three years later. Riches valued at over sixty million rupees were loaded onto camels and sent north. Aurangzeb had fulfilled his forty-year ambition -- but the administrative burden of governing the conquest would contribute to a crisis of land grants that historians consider a key factor in the Mughal Empire's rapid decline after his death.