Foundation
Shah Jahan's court had been based at Agra, with spells at Lahore. In 1639 he ordered a new city on the right bank of the Yamuna, north of the older Delhi settlements. The fort was built over nine years, and in 1648 the emperor entered it and made the new city his capital. It was named after him, Shahjahanabad, though it continued to be called Delhi in common use.
The fort
The fort, known to the court as the Qila-i Mubarak and now as the Red Fort from its sandstone walls, runs along the river. The name of Ustad Ahmad Lahori is often attached to it as architect. Inside were the halls of public and private audience, the Diwan-i Am and the Diwan-i Khas, the private apartments, and gardens fed by a canal, the Nahr-i Bihisht or stream of paradise, which ran through the palace buildings. The Diwan-i Khas held the Peacock Throne. An inscription there repeats the Persian couplet that if there is a paradise on earth, it is here.
The city
The city was enclosed by a wall with gates named after the places their roads led to. Two main streets crossed it. Chandni Chowk ran west from the fort to the Fatehpuri mosque, with a canal down its centre and a pool at its middle; its design is credited to Shah Jahan's daughter Jahanara. The Jama Masjid, built between 1650 and 1656 on a rise west of the fort, was the largest mosque in India of its time. Nobles built mansions, havelis, with their own gardens, and the merchants, artisans and servants of the court filled the lanes between them. Visitors in the later seventeenth century, among them the French physician François Bernier, described a crowded city of great wealth and great poverty.
Decline and sack
Aurangzeb, who seized the throne in 1658, spent the last decades of his reign in the Deccan, and the city lost some of its importance. After his death in 1707 it remained the imperial seat, but with less and less power behind it. In 1739 Nadir Shah of Persia defeated the Mughal army at Karnal, entered the city, and, after an attack on his soldiers, ordered a massacre in which a very large number of people died; contemporary estimates vary widely. He left with the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor. Ahmad Shah Durrani sacked it again in the 1750s, and the Marathas and Rohilla chiefs fought over the emperor's person. From 1803 the British held Delhi and the emperor became their pensioner.
1857 and after
In May 1857 rebel soldiers from Meerut reached Delhi and proclaimed Bahadur Shah Zafar their leader. The British besieged and stormed the city in September. In the reprisals that followed, many inhabitants were killed or expelled, the emperor was tried and exiled to Rangoon, and large areas around the fort, including mosques and mansions, were cleared for military use. Much of the palace interior was demolished and replaced with barracks.
New Delhi, built to the south after 1911, made the walled city the "old" one. Most of the wall has gone, but several gates, the Jama Masjid, Chandni Chowk and the fort survive. The prime minister addresses the country from the ramparts of the Red Fort each Independence Day.
Further reading
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1993
- Dalrymple, William. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. Bloomsbury, 2019
See also
- Delhi — Delhi is the capital of India and one of the longest continuously inhabited urban regions in the subcontinent, having served as the seat of power for successive dynasties across more than a millennium.
- Mughal Empire — The Mughal Empire was a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Timurid and Chagatai descent that ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from Babur's victory at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526 until the deposition of Bahadur Shah II following the 1857 rebellion, reaching its territorial and cultural peak under Akbar, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb.
- Aurangzeb — Aurangzeb (reigned 1658–1707), known also by his regnal title Alamgir, was the sixth Mughal emperor, under whom the empire reached its greatest territorial extent while sustained warfare in the Deccan and religiously restrictive policies strained its finances and cohesion.
- Revolt of 1857 — A large-scale uprising against East India Company rule that began among sepoys of the Bengal Army in May 1857 and spread across much of north and central India before being suppressed in 1858.
- Dara Shikoh — Dara Shikoh (1615–1659) was the eldest son of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and heir apparent to the Mughal throne until his defeat and execution by his younger brother Aurangzeb in the war of succession.
- Taj Mahal — The Taj Mahal is a white marble mausoleum complex on the Yamuna river at Agra, built between 1632 and 1653 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, and one of the most recognized buildings in the world.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.