KURNOOL, or KARNUL  , a town and district of British India, in the Madras presidency . The town is built on a rocky soil at the junction of the Hindri and Tungabhadra rivers 33 M. from a railway station . The old Hindu fort was levelled in 1865, with the exception of one of the gates, which Weis preserved as a specimen of ancient architecture . Cotton cloth and carpets are manufactured . Pop . (1901), 25,376, of whom half are Mussulmans . The DISTRICT OF KURNOOL has an area of 7578 sq. m., pop . (1901), 872,055, showing an increase of 6% in the decade . Two long mountain ranges, the Nallamalais and the Yellamalais, extend in parallel lines, north and south, through its centre . The principal heights of the Nallamalai range are Biranikonda (3149 ft.), Gundlabrahmeswaram (3055 ft.), and Durugapukonda (3086 ft.) . The Yellamalai is a low range, generally flat-topped with scarped sides; the highest point is about 2000 ft . Several low ridges run parallel to the Nallamalais, broken here and there by gorges, through which mountain streams take their course .

Several of these gaps were dammed across under native

rule, to form tanks for purposes of irrigation . The principal rivers are the Tungabhadra and Kistna, which bound the district on the north . When in flood, the Tungabhadra averages 900 yards broad and 15 ft. deep . The Kistna here flows chiefly through uninhabited jungles, sometimes in long smooth reaches, with intervening shingly rapids . The Bhavanasi rises on the Nallamalais, and falls into the Kistna at Sungameswaram, a place of pilgrimage . During the 18th century Kurnool formed the jagir of a semi-independent Pathan Nawab, whose descendant was dispossessed by the British government for treason in 1838 . The principal crops are millets, cotton, oil-seeds, and rice, with a little indigo and tobacco . Kurnool suffered very severely from the famine of 1876–1877, and to a slight extent in 1896–1897 . It is the chief scene of the operations of the Madras Irrigation Company taken over by government in 1882 . The canal, which starts from the Tungabhadra river near Kurnool town, was constructed at a total cost of two millions sterling, but has not been a financial success . A more successful work is the Cumbum tank, formed under native rule by damming a gorge of the Gundlakamma river . Apart from the weaving of coarse cotton cloth, the chief industrial establishments are cotton presses, indigo vats, and saltpetre refineries .

The district is served by the

Southern Mahratta railway .