Lal Quila the Red Fort

Delhi India
Lal Quila the Red Fort was built between 1638 and 1648 at the command of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan who also built the Taj Mahal as the royal residence in his new capital, Delhi. The fort, representing the highest achievement of Mughal architecture, contained all the accoutrements befitting a center of empire: public and private audience halls, domed marble palaces, luxuriously appointed private apartments, a mosque, and exquisite gardens. Much of the opulence has gone, but in its heyday its magnificence would have been unparalleled, as boasted by an inscription on one of its walls: If on Earth be an Eden of bliss, it is this, it is this, none but this. Delhi stands at the western end of the plain of the Ganges. The epic Mahabharata speaks of it as a thriving city built about 1400 b.c., although archeo-logical reality suggests it was settled about 1,000 years later. The first city named Delhi was founded in the first century b.c. by Raja Dhilu southwest of the modern location, it had six successors. Its Mughal history is relevant here. In 1526 Babur, the first Mughal ruler, established Delhi as the center of an empire that would unite vast areas of south Asia for the next two centuries. His son Humayun built a new city near Firuzabad but it was leveled when Afghan Sher Shah Suri overthrew him in 1540. He built a new capital, Sher Shahi, as the sixth city of Delhi. Once more eclipsed when the emperors Akbar and Jahangir moved their courts elsewhere, Delhi reached prominence, even glory, in 1638, when Akbars grandson Shah Jahan moved his capital from Agra to establish the seventh city of Delhi: Shahjahanabad, now known as Old Delhi. Most of it is still embraced by Shah Jahans walls, and four of its seventeenth-century gates still stand. He also built Lal Quila as the royal residence within the new city. Almost immediately, Shah Jahan commissioned the architects Ustad Hamid and Ustad Ahmad to design a fitting royal residencethe Red Fortat the northeastern corner of Shahjahanabad. It was completed within about ten years. An area of 124 acres 50 hectares was enclosed within 1.5 miles 2.4 kilometers of formidable defense walls. It was flanked by the Yamuna River on the eastern side, which fed a moat 76 feet 22.8 meters wide and 30 feet 9 meters deep. Thick red sandstone walls from which the fort derives its name, punctuated by turrets and bastions, rose 60 feet 18 meters from the river those on the other side stood up to 112 feet 33.5 meters above the surrounding terrain. Two of the six main entrancesthe Lahori Gate and the Delhi Gatesurvive. Now the moat is dry and the Yamuna flows almost a kilometer away, but Lai Quila towers above the modern city of Delhi that spreads out to the west. The buildings within the walls are all carefully arranged on the long north-south and shorter east-west axes of the octagonal plan. Although they reveal the delicate work that can be found in all Mughal architecture, they exemplify the later phase of the style, characterized by the increasing use of marble, elaborate floral decoration of external surfaces, and the proliferation of tall minarets and bulbous domes. Shah Jahan seems to have preferred the flowing plant motifs inspired by the European sixteenth-century herbariums that had been perfected by his fathers artists. The walls of carefully cut marble were patterned with precious and semiprecious stones and surfaces were decorated with inlaid flowers of hard stones in many colors. Immediately inside tlie fortified Laliori Gate was tlie Chatta Chowk. a vaulted two-story arcade containing thirty-two shops. East of it. on the same axis, was another gate called Naubat Khana Dram House, also two stories high, from which musicians played martial, music for tlie emperor five times a day. or announced tlie arrival of important guests. Further east on tlie axis and across a courtyard stood tlie Diwan-i-Am Public Audience Hall, ornamented with gilded stuccowork and hung with heavy curtains. There the emperor, seated in a canopied, marble- paneled alcove set with precious stones, would hear through his prime minister tlie complaints and petitions of tlie commoners. The Diwan-i- Am was also used for state functions. At tlie eastern terminus of tlie short axis of tlie plan stood tlie Rang MahalPalace of Colors, its roof crowned with gilded turrets. It housed tlie emperors wives and mistresses. The interior was richly decorated with painting. Its ceiling, overlaid with silver and gold, was reflected in a pool in tlie marble floor. The Nalir-i-Bihist Stream of Paradise flowed through its center, feeding small water channels that flowed to cool tlie other rooms of tlie Red Fort. The north-south axis, through tlie center of a courtyard that separated tlie Diwan-i-Am and tlie Rang Mahal, was flanked by sumptuous pavilions. In tlie Diwan-i-Klias Hall of Private Audiences, tlie emperor met with his courtiers and dignified guests. Standing on a plinth and supported by thirty-two pillars, tlie white marble hall was decorated with floral patterns of precious stones. At its center tlie fabled Peacock Throne carried off to Persia in 1739 stood on a white marble dais under a ceiling inlaid with silver and gold. South of that building lay tlie emperors private apartments, tlie Klias Mahal. On their east side was a large sitting room that opened to a cantilevered gallery, where each sunrise tlie emperor appealed before his subjects. At tlie northern end of tlie large square in front of these buildings stood tlie Hammam Royal Bath. Built of marble and extravagantly decorated with inlay, glass, and paint, it comprised three apartments that were also used for private meetings. Shah Jalians son Aurangzeb built tlie Moti Masjid Pearl Mosque within an enclosing wall beside tlie Hammam in 1659- 1660. At tlie northern end of tlie long axis stood a three-story octagonal tower. Shall Bhuijtlie shahs private working area. At tlie southern end Shah Jalianbuilt the Mumtaz Mahal, a palace for his favorite daughter Jahanara Begum. Mughal power waned in the eighteenth century. The British captured Delhi in 1803, and the city was the focus of Indias first war of independencethe British still prefer to call it the Indian Mutinyin 1857. In 1911 the colonials moved their imperial capital from Calcutta to Delhi and began to build the eighth city, New Delhi, officially inaugurated in 1931. India finally expelled the British in 1947, and the nation celebrates its liberty by flying the Indian flag above Lal Quila each 15 August, Independence Day.