Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ahmad Nizam Shah I founded Ahmednagar in 1494 on the site of a battlefield where he defeated Bahmani forces near the village of Bhingar. The city gave its name to the Nizam Shahi dynasty, which he established after the breakup of the Bahmani Sultanate.
British authorities detained Nehru and other Indian nationalists at Ahmednagar Fort before Indian independence. During his confinement there in 1944, Nehru wrote The Discovery of India. The fort had been in British possession since 1817 under the terms of the Treaty of Poona.
The Maharashtra state government renamed Ahmednagar to Ahilyanagar in honour of Ahilyabai Holkar, the Rani of Indore within the Maratha Confederacy in the late 18th century. The renaming was announced by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on the 31st of May 2023 and published in the state gazette on the 8th of October 2024.
The Cavalry Tank Museum is located at the Armoured Corps Centre and School in Ahmednagar and holds an extensive collection of 20th-century armoured fighting vehicles. Ahmednagar houses the second-largest display of military tanks in the world and the largest in Asia.
Cynthia Farrar was an American Christian missionary who ran girls' schools in Ahmednagar around the 1850s, operating around four schools. Mahatma Jyotirao Phule visited these schools and was inspired to open a school for girls in Poona; he also enrolled his wife Savitribai Phule in Farrar's teacher training program.
Ahmednagar has a hot semi-arid climate and sits in the rain shadow of the Western Ghats, receiving less than a third of Mumbai's monsoon rainfall and about a tenth of what Mahabaleshwar receives. Due to this scarce rainfall, the city often suffers from drought.