Uncovering Delhi’s Ancient Cities
Delhi’s two most recent “cities,” — colonial New Delhi and Shahjahanabad — are highly visible parts of the city. They lie at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of landscape forms. One is, essentially, a Beaux Arts garden city, the other an incredibly densely occupied “medieval” city, at least in its urban form and usage, even if the majority of the buildings are from the nineteenth or twentieth century. Less conspicuous are the remains of earlier cities that constitute parts of south Delhi. There are estimated to be at least seven. The reason for the uncertainty is that there is doubt as to which of the early settlements count as former cities. This depends on different people’s interpretation of Delhi’s history.
There are archaeological traces of an urban past in Delhi that go back to at least the first millennium B.C. while the existence of an Ashokan rock edict in south Delhi indicates a settlement of some importance in the area during Ashoka’s reign from 274-232 B.C. However, the first buildings that we can securely connect with a city are the 11th– and 12th–century walls of the Rajput Qila Rai Pithora (now known as Lal Kot.) Significant stretches of these can be seen in Sanjay Van, near the Qutab Institutional area. The “capital” of the Chauhan Rajputs, the clan who controlled this part of India for a few centuries before the Sultanate period, was actually at Ajmer but the first sultans — Afghans who overthrew the Chauhans in 1192 — built a ceremonial center in the heart of the Rajput city of Delhi and it developed into the capital of subsequent sultanates. Among other partly intact buildings that survive from that period, the Qutb Minar, a victory tower, and the adjacent mosque are justly famous. As well as testifying to the arrival of Islam in this area, they also illustrate the way in which local craftsmen were employed to create a superb synthesis of Rajput and Afghan art. In addition to the reworking of local motifs in alien structures (mosques and mausoleums), the buildings show how temples that were destroyed as a symbol of victory were recycled: the colonnades of the mosque are built from miscellaneous temple columns.
Approximately 100 years after the Afghan invasion, Sultan Alauddin Khalji embarked on a vast unfinished project to expand the original mosque. But he also built a high-walled enclosure approximately half the size of the existing city and about two kilometers away, on the military camping ground. It is not clear whether this “city,” now called Siri Fort, was any more than an army headquarters but the evidence, in the form of a decorated turret and the ruins of some large buildings, suggests it may have been an urban center. Indeed, the north African traveler Ibn Battuta recalled seeing Alauddin’s palace inside Siri, although no evidence for this has materialized so far. Very little excavation has been done inside the erstwhile walls, approximately half of which is now open woodland, much enjoyed by walkers.
In 1320, soon after Siri was built, Ghiyasuddin Tughlak, a member of the local Afghan nobility, took power. Over two and a half years he built Tughlakabad, perhaps the most atmospheric of Delhi’s ruins because its more or less intact rubble-stone walls have kept out the tide of Delhi’s advance. The village within the walls has now expanded so much that it has consumed most of the old settlement, leaving only the palace areas for archaeologists. Astonishingly, despite the size of this new city, the next sultan, Muhammad, went back to the original site and enclosed all the land between Qila Rai Pithora and Siri, calling the whole complex Jahanpanah. This was the city that Ibn Battuta visited in the 1330s and it contains two vast and magnificent mosques as well as by far the most enigmatic building in Delhi, the Bijay Mandal. This could well be the remains of the Hall of a Thousand Pillars where Ibn Battuta paid court to Sultan Muhammad. It now consists of a massive rubble structure topped by an octagonal pavilion, with a collapsing vaulted hall on one side and, beside these structures, a huge flat area that might well be the foundations of a bigger hall. The buildings underwent several modifications and, romantically, contain pits that must have been hidden under the floor of the vaulted hall. When opened in the first half of the twentieth century these were found to contain treasure in the form of coins, gold, rubies and fragments of coral, ivory and other luxury items.
The third of the Tughlak sultans, Firoz Shah, who reigned from 1351 to 1388, may have been politically unsuccessful (he lost considerable territory) but he was a great builder and conservationist, making repairs to many ancient structures, including the Qutb Minar, and transporting two Ashokan pillar edicts to mount on new buildings in Delhi. Some believe that the impressive remains of one of these buildings, Firoz Shah Kotla, a large fortified area near the river, is the centre of an entirely new city. This is unlikely because 10 years after Firoz Shah’s death, the great Turkic Mongol leader Timur (Tamerlane) took Delhi and, in his memoirs, he clearly describes Jahanpanah as his conquest.
Throughout the first couple of centuries of Sultanate rule the court at Delhi attracted numerous outsiders and also sufi clerics who built khanqahs and attracted wide circles of followers. It was not only the sultan who built in and around the city; there were many patrons building for the community as well as for themselves. By the time of Timur’s invasion we should picture two large walled areas, Jahanpanah and Tughlakabad, surrounded by peripheral forts, hunting lodges, tombs, shrines, reservoirs and, even, an observatory. These were spread over a wide area.
The dynasties who controlled Delhi for the next period of more than 100 years did not rule over as large a territory as the Tughlaks. But they still contributed a number of very fine buildings in the form of tombs and mosques, for example the Lodhi sultans’ tombs in Lodhi Gardens. It is, however, somewhat unclear where their palaces actually lay. One of the later sultans embarked on building a new city close to the river (where he was soon to be murdered), but nothing of this remains. So we have to assume that Jahanpanah remained the capital.
The year 1526 brought the Mughal invasion and, from 1540 to 1555, an interregnum when power was seized by Sher Shah Suri, a talented local Afghan chief from what is now Bihar. During this period, another fort was built, with walls more impressive than earlier ones, but covering a comparatively small area. This is what is now known as the Purana Qila. When New Delhi was planned, it would have closed the vista down King’s Way, now Rajpath, from the Viceroy’s house, had not the afterthought of the National Stadium interfered with this piece of urban drama. This fort might have become the nucleus of a new Mughal Delhi. In fact, although the later Mughals sometimes visited Delhi, they ruled mainly from Agra. Delhi did not become a capital again until Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor, finding Agra too congested, decided to build a new city some distance to the north of the earlier cities. The old cities were still known as Delhi and they later became known to early colonial visitors as “old Delhi,” distinguishing them from the new city of Delhi, Shahjahanabad, north of which the British established their cantonment.
Shahjahanabad itself consisted of the Red Fort, with its extensive palace buildings overlooking the river, a number of princes’ and noblemen’s houses strung out along the riverbank to the north and south, and many others occupying large sites within the city walls that enclosed the land around the fort on the west. Interspersed among the mansions of the nobility, which would have resembled the kind of palaces that, for instance, have often become hotels in Rajasthan, were the straw-thatched houses of the rest of the population. As time went by and the Mughal court shrank, so did the building projects. As late as the mid-nineteenth century there were still a number of substantial multi-courtyard mansions, but more typical were houses that consisted of an elaborately decorated entrance to a forecourt or entrance passage with one or two further courtyards behind. Until well into the twentieth century this continued to be standard for the residences of the upper strata of society, although sometimes the decorative features were entirely European in inspiration.
During the nineteenth century, when the British were in power in the Delhi area, the city diminished in importance: the fiction was maintained until the 1857 Uprising that Delhi was still ruled by the Mughals, with a diminished royal family and many impoverished relatives still surviving. After 1857, the city was to some extent punished for its role in the Uprising and it remained politically unimportant. Its inhabitants did very well commercially, however, and the city expanded considerably, mainly to the west of Shahjahanabad, while the European community was concentrated to the north, between Kashmiri Gate and the Cantonment, now the site of Delhi University.
This was the context in which, in 1911, Delhi was once again selected as the capital and the hunt was on for the ideal site.
Author: Lucy Peck | Source: The Wall Street Journal/India Real Time [November 01, 2011]
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| Shahjahanabad, now known as “old Delhi,” was built by Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor, when he moved the capital back to Delhi from Agra in the 17th century. Old Delhi essentially consisted in the walled city, the Red Fort, pictured [Credit: Feng Li/Getty Images] |
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| Jama Masjid, which stands across the road in front of the Red Fort, was built by the Mughal Emperor Shahjahan in the year AD 1656 with the help of 5,000 craftsmen [Credit: KonnectIndia] |
In 1320, soon after Siri was built, Ghiyasuddin Tughlak, a member of the local Afghan nobility, took power. Over two and a half years he built Tughlakabad, perhaps the most atmospheric of Delhi’s ruins because its more or less intact rubble-stone walls have kept out the tide of Delhi’s advance. The village within the walls has now expanded so much that it has consumed most of the old settlement, leaving only the palace areas for archaeologists. Astonishingly, despite the size of this new city, the next sultan, Muhammad, went back to the original site and enclosed all the land between Qila Rai Pithora and Siri, calling the whole complex Jahanpanah. This was the city that Ibn Battuta visited in the 1330s and it contains two vast and magnificent mosques as well as by far the most enigmatic building in Delhi, the Bijay Mandal. This could well be the remains of the Hall of a Thousand Pillars where Ibn Battuta paid court to Sultan Muhammad. It now consists of a massive rubble structure topped by an octagonal pavilion, with a collapsing vaulted hall on one side and, beside these structures, a huge flat area that might well be the foundations of a bigger hall. The buildings underwent several modifications and, romantically, contain pits that must have been hidden under the floor of the vaulted hall. When opened in the first half of the twentieth century these were found to contain treasure in the form of coins, gold, rubies and fragments of coral, ivory and other luxury items.
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| Turkman Gate, Old Delhi [Credit: Anuradha Goyal] |
Throughout the first couple of centuries of Sultanate rule the court at Delhi attracted numerous outsiders and also sufi clerics who built khanqahs and attracted wide circles of followers. It was not only the sultan who built in and around the city; there were many patrons building for the community as well as for themselves. By the time of Timur’s invasion we should picture two large walled areas, Jahanpanah and Tughlakabad, surrounded by peripheral forts, hunting lodges, tombs, shrines, reservoirs and, even, an observatory. These were spread over a wide area.
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| Humayun’s tomb in south Delhi [Credit: Virendra Singh/Hindustan Times] |
The year 1526 brought the Mughal invasion and, from 1540 to 1555, an interregnum when power was seized by Sher Shah Suri, a talented local Afghan chief from what is now Bihar. During this period, another fort was built, with walls more impressive than earlier ones, but covering a comparatively small area. This is what is now known as the Purana Qila. When New Delhi was planned, it would have closed the vista down King’s Way, now Rajpath, from the Viceroy’s house, had not the afterthought of the National Stadium interfered with this piece of urban drama. This fort might have become the nucleus of a new Mughal Delhi. In fact, although the later Mughals sometimes visited Delhi, they ruled mainly from Agra. Delhi did not become a capital again until Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor, finding Agra too congested, decided to build a new city some distance to the north of the earlier cities. The old cities were still known as Delhi and they later became known to early colonial visitors as “old Delhi,” distinguishing them from the new city of Delhi, Shahjahanabad, north of which the British established their cantonment.
 |
| Adham Khan’s tomb, Old Delhi [Credit: Anuradha Goyal] |
During the nineteenth century, when the British were in power in the Delhi area, the city diminished in importance: the fiction was maintained until the 1857 Uprising that Delhi was still ruled by the Mughals, with a diminished royal family and many impoverished relatives still surviving. After 1857, the city was to some extent punished for its role in the Uprising and it remained politically unimportant. Its inhabitants did very well commercially, however, and the city expanded considerably, mainly to the west of Shahjahanabad, while the European community was concentrated to the north, between Kashmiri Gate and the Cantonment, now the site of Delhi University.
This was the context in which, in 1911, Delhi was once again selected as the capital and the hunt was on for the ideal site.
Author: Lucy Peck | Source: The Wall Street Journal/India Real Time [November 01, 2011]
