Mumbai (/mʊmˈbaɪ/ muum-BY; ISO: Muṁbaī, Marathi: [ˈmumbəi] ⓘ), also known as Bombay (/bɒmˈbeɪ/ bom-BAY; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra.

[25][26][27] For centuries, the seven islands of Bombay were under the control of successive indigenous rulers before being ceded to the Portuguese Empire, and subsequently to the East India Company in 1661, through the dowry of Catherine Braganza when she was married off to Charles II of England.

[49] Other variations recorded in the 16th and the 17th centuries include: Mombayn (1525), Bombay (1538), Bombain (1552), Bombaym (1552), Monbaym (1554), Mombaim (1563), Mombaym (1644), Bambaye (1666), Bombaiim (1666), Bombeye (1676), Boon Bay (1690)[49][50] and Bon Bahia.

[53] The French traveller Louis Rousselet, who visited in 1863 and 1868, states in his book L'Inde des Rajahs, which was first published in 1877: "Etymologists have wrongly derived this name from the Portuguese Bôa Bahia, or (French: "bonne bai", English: "good bay"), not knowing that the tutelar goddess of this island has been, from remote antiquity, Bomba, or Mumba Devi, and that she still ... possesses a temple".

Pleistocene sediments found along the coastal areas around Kandivali in northern Mumbai suggest that the islands were inhabited since the South Asian Stone Age.

[71] The Kanheri Caves in Borivali were excavated from basalt rock in the first century CE,[72] and served as an important centre of Buddhism in Western India during ancient Times.

[93] Growing apprehensive of the power of the Mughal emperor Humayun, Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat was obliged to sign the Treaty of Bassein with the Portuguese Empire on 23 December 1534.

[117] From 1782 onwards, the city was reshaped with large-scale civil engineering projects aimed at merging all the seven islands of Bombay into a single amalgamated mass by way of a causeway called the Hornby Vellard, which was completed by 1784.

[29][118] In 1817, the British East India Company under Mountstuart Elphinstone defeated Baji Rao II, the last of the Maratha Peshwa in the Battle of Khadki.

[147] The three coordinated bomb explosions in July 2011 that occurred at the Opera house, Zaveri Bazaar and Dadar were the latest in the series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai which resulted in 26 deaths and 130 injuries.

[151] From being an ancient fishing community and a colonial centre of trade, Mumbai has become South Asia's largest city and home of the world's most prolific film industry.

The remaining areas belong to various Defence establishments, the Mumbai Port Trust, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Borivali National Park, which are out of the jurisdiction of the MCGM.

[167] The underlying rock of the region is composed of black Deccan basalt flows, and their acidic and basic variants dating back to the late Cretaceous and early Eocene eras.

Over the past few decades, new informal settlements were formed in the suburbs, causing a rapid increase in population, improper waste management, and drainage congestion.

The Central Pollution Control Board for the Government of India and the Consulate General of the United States, Mumbai monitor and publicly share real-time air quality data.

[213] Until the 1970s, Mumbai owed its prosperity largely to textile mills and the seaport, but the local economy has since then diversified to include finance, engineering, diamond-polishing, healthcare, and information technology.

[214] The key sectors contributing to the city's economy are: finance, gems & jewellery, leather processing, IT and ITES, textiles, petrochemical, electronics manufacturing, automobiles, and entertainment.

The Santacruz Electronic Export Processing Zone (SEEPZ) and the International Infotech Park (Navi Mumbai) offer excellent facilities to IT companies.

Mumbai also has a large unskilled and semi-skilled self-employed population, who primarily earn their livelihood as hawkers, taxi drivers, mechanics, and other such blue collar professions.

[234] Mumbai is the seat of the Bombay High Court, which exercises jurisdiction over the states of Maharashtra and Goa, and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

[257] Taxis and Auto rickshaws in Mumbai are required by law to run on compressed natural gas (CNG),[258] and are a convenient, economical, and easily available means of transport.

Its fleet consists of single-decker, double-decker, vestibule, low-floor, disabled-friendly, air-conditioned and Euro III compliant diesel and compressed natural gas powered buses.

Many of them live close to bus or train stations, although suburban residents spend significant time travelling southward to the main commercial district.

It was ranked 41 among the Top 50 Engineering Schools of the world by America's news broadcasting firm Business Insider in 2012 and was the only university in the list from the five emerging BRICS nations viz Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Its history as a major trading centre and the expansion of an educated middle class has led to a diverse range of cultures, religions, and cuisines coexisting in the city.

[407] Mumbai is the birthplace of Indian cinema[408]—Dadasaheb Phalke laid the foundations with silent movies followed by Marathi talkies—and the oldest film broadcast took place in the early 20th century.

Marathi literature has been modernised in the works of Mumbai-based authors such as Mohan Apte, Anant Kanekar, and Gangadhar Gadgil, and is promoted through an annual Sahitya Akademi Award, a literary honour bestowed by India's National Academy of Letters.

Limited land resources and an exponential increase in urban population were the primary reasons for Mumbai's vertical growth compared to other Tier 1 Indian cities.

Several other Indian language films such as Bengali, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Urdu are also occasionally shot in Mumbai.

The Conditional Access System (CAS) started by the Union Government in 2006 met a poor response in Mumbai due to competition from its sister technology Direct-to-Home (DTH) transmission service.