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DELHI: A Heritage CityNomination to UNESCO’s List of World Heritage Cities

10/3/2011 INTACH, Delhi Chapter 1

Evolution of Delhi

The historic settlement that we know today as Delhi, took shape in a roughly triangular patch

of land. One side of the triangle is made up by the Yamuna River, and the other two consistof hilly spurs at the northern extreme of the Aravalli range of mountains. At a local level these

two natural features have provided a varied landscape –hills well covered with vegetation, as

well as a fertile alluvial plain. The wider regional importance of Delhi has historically

stemmed from its crucial geographical location within the Indian subcontinent. It is located at

the northern end of the Gangetic plain; at a point where the plain narrows to a neck of land

between the great rivers and Himalayas to the north, and the Aravallis and the Thar Desert to

the south. It is therefore a gateway to the fertile Gangetic plain, which empire-builders from

early times have sought to control, and to the Southern peninsula beyond.

The Delhi region was inhabited by tool making hominids, followed by human beings,

probably as far back as 100,000 years ago. In this pre-historic period it was mainly the hillyregions to the south of Delhi that were occupied. The area was almost certainly covered with

rich vegetation and ample wildlife – ideal for the hunting-gathering lifestyle of the Stone Age

people. It is also clear that the river Yamuna at that time flowed through these hills. The

river in fact has changed course several times and at least six old beds have been identified.

Interestingly, the location of Stone Age sites and their sequence suggests that pre-historic

people moved with the river.

When agriculture became the primary source of food for ancient populations there was a shift

in settlements –away from the ridge and towards the plains and more particularly along the

Yamuna. There is evidence that Delhi was settled during the Late Harappan period. This was

a phase, sometime between 2000-1000 B.C., when the sophisticated urban Harappancivilization was past its heyday, and its cities had been replaced by scattered rural settlements.

The Late Harappan phase was followed by the Vedic Age, when the ancient scriptures or the

Vedas were first composed. In the early part of the first millennium B.C. certain events were

taking place that are believed to have formed the basis of one of the great epics of India – the

Mahabharata. This is the tale of a rivalry and great war between two sets of cousins – The

Kauravas and the Pandavas. The capital city established by the latter, known as Indraprastha,

has in the local tradition been identified with the site of the Purana Qila, beside the Yamuna

in Delhi. Archaeological evidence from the site has been unable to point to anything definite.

Around the 6th century B.C. an active phase of state formation began in North India, with therise of several territorial states or Mahajanpadas. At this time Delhi, though not one of the

major political centres, was an important point on the great north Indian trade route, known as

the Uttarapatha. It was thus an ideal place for the emperor Ashoka, who ruled over the a large

territory in the third century B.C., to put up an inscription containing what is known to us as

his rock edict. The edict was inscribed on a large boulder on a hilly piece of ground, in an

area in modern south Delhi known as Kalkaji. Nearby is the Kalkaji temple, the site of a

temple to the goddess Kalka Devi and probably even in Ashoka’s time a temple stood here.

In the subsequent centuries too, Delhi probably formed a part of states which had their centres

of power elsewhere, such as the Sungas, Shakas and Kushanas. During the Gupta period,

sometime in the fourth century A.D. a remarkable commemorative pillar made out of a very

high quality iron was set up, maybe somewhere in the neighbourhood of Delhi. The

inscriptional evidence is not entirely clear but it is believed that this pillar was moved at least





once during its history. Today it is located in the middle of the oldest mosque in the city, in

the Qutub Minar complex.

By the eight century Delhi had come under the sway of the Tomars, one of the several Rajput

dynasties that had their origins in Rajasthan. The Tomars first established fortifications in thevillage of Anangpur, and around the large reservoir known as Surajkund, just south of Delhi.

In the mid-eleventh century, Anangpal II of this dynasty built the fortified city of Lal Kot,

located in present day Mehrauli.

The Chauhans, headquartered in Ajmer, wrested control of Delhi from the Tomars in the

twelfth century. Under Prithviraj Chauhan the fortifications of Lal Kot were extended to

enclose a larger space, forming the fort known as Qila Rai Pithora. A rich material culture,

including more than a score beautifully carved stone temples formed a part of this city. The

temple pillars can still be seen on the site as they were re-used in the construction of the

Quwwat ul Islam mosque – next to the Qutub Minar.

Then towards the end of the twelfth century, the Chauhans were overthrown by a new entrant

on the scene. The forces of Mohammad Ghori, a Central Asian Turk with a base in Ghazni,

defeated the armies of Prithviraj Chauhan at the battle of Tarain in 1192. In early 1193, his

general Qutubuddin Aibak captured Delhi and established the capital of Ghori’s Indian

territories in the fort of Qila Rai Pithora. The Turk conquest laid the groundwork for the

establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, which was to last in some form or the other until the

arrival of the Mughals in the sixteenth century. Under the Turks, from the early thirteenth

century Delhi acquired a new importance as the capital of a dynamic and expanding empire.

The Turk conquerors were Muslims, and avowedly committed to the setting up of an Islamic

state, with the name of the Caliph being included in the Friday sermon and on coinage. One of

the early Sultans, Iltutmish (1211-36) even sought to give his position legitimacy in the eyes

of the orthodox by obtaining a letter of investiture from the Caliph at Baghdad, confirming

Iltutmish’s title as sultan of India. Simultaneously however great changes were occurring in

the Islamic world. The Mongols under Chengiz Khan were wreaking havoc over Central and

West Asia, and important centres of Islam like Bukhara and Baghdad were destroyed. Thus

Delhi was looked upon as a last refuge for Islam in the East, and poets, scholars and men of

letters fleeing the destruction of their homes found shelter in India, and particularly in Delhi.

In its everyday practice however, the polity of the Delhi Sultanate was not based on orthodox

Islam, which would have advocated a harsh line with non-believers. And here, the role andinfluence of the Sufis was probably a factor. The Sufi saints were among those who came to

Delhi in the wake of the Turkish conquerors. Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, the Chishti Sufi,

was one of the several who made Delhi their base, and contributed to Delhi’s acquiring a

leading position in the sacred geography of Islam in the Indian sub-continent. The city in fact

came to be called Hazrat-e-Dehli, or ‘the venerable Delhi’. The saints, with their liberal

religious practice attracted not only converts and devotees in large numbers, they also

provided the political power with a model of governance that was based on a tolerance of

non-Muslim populations. Delhi, even as it was the capital of an empire that purportedly

derived its legitimacy from Islam, continued to have a large Hindu population.

The saints’ hospices and shrines and their spheres of influence, were also the setting for acultural interaction that was reflected in syncreticism outside the religious sphere. This

included new developments in architecture, music, literature and language, which brought





together diverse traditions to create a composite style that soon gained influence over the

entire sub-continent.

In the first century of the Delhi Sultanate, though the concentration of population continued to

be highest in Mehrauli, in and around Qila Rai Pithora, some settlements were coming upcloser to the river. One important reason for this was the need to provide access to a reliable

source of water. In the mid-thirteenth century the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya established

his seat or khanqah at the suburb of Ghiyaspur, today known as NIzamuddin. Around 1288

Sultan Kaiqubad built a walled palace at Kilokhari, about a kilometer from Ghiyaspur.

Kaiqubad’s successor Jalaluddin, who founded the Khalji dynasty in 1290, was unsure of the

loyalty of the people of the old city at Mehrauli, and therefore made Kilokhari his

headquarters. Soon the wealthy and powerful nobles and merchants of Delhi built houses in

Kilokhari, markets were established and it came to be known as the shahar-e-nau, or ‘new

city’.

The old town at Mehrauli continued to be important and was again the capital underJalaluddin’s successor Alauddin. One factor that checked the move towards the river was

strategic necessity, and the fortifications of Qila Rai Pithora on the ridge were important from

the point of view of defense, particularly when the Mongols threatened Delhi in the late

thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The emperor Alauddin Khalji found himself

repeatedly engaging them in battle on the plain of Siri, located north of Mehrauli. Alauddin

decided to build a fortification at this place, and this led to the founding of the new capital of

Siri in the early fourteenth century.

The founder of the Tughlaq dynasty, Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, was also very conscious of the

threat of the Mongols. His fortified capital of Tughlaqabad was built around 1321-25, on the

rocky scarps of the ridge in the south-eastern corner of the Delhi triangle. The rocks on the

site provided ample building material, the heights reinforced the defenses of the fort, and the

natural drainage line of the ridge could be dammed to provide a source of water.

Ghiyasuddin’s successor Mohammad Tughlaq moved back towards the old city at Mehrauli,

but in the meantime the population of the city had been growing and spilling outside the

walls. Conscious of the need for security, Mohammad Tughlaq decided to build a line of

fortifications linking the forts of the Qila Rai Pithora and Siri. The space thus enclosed was

named Jhanapanah, and Mohammad built an impressive palace complex (Bijai Mandal) and

congregational mosque (Begampur Masjid) in it.

By the mid-fourteenth century the Mongol threat had receded and from this point onwards

there was a decided move closer to the river. Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s city of Firozabad, built in

the 1350s, was towards the north, on the river. The end of the Tughlaq dynasty saw a sharp

decline in the power and territories of the Delhi Sultante, underlined by the invasion of the

Timur (also known as Tamerlane) in 1398. The succeeding dynasties of the Syeds and the

Lodis ruled over considerably shrunken territories and have not left behind any discernable

cities. Mubarak Shah of the short-lived Syed dynasty is said to have established a city called

Mubarakabad near the Yamuna, but no trace of it remains.

The Delhi Sultanate came to an end in 1526, when Babur, a descendant of Timur, defeated the

forces of the last Lodi Sultan, Ibrahim, and established the Mughal dynasty. His successorHumayun built the city of Dinpanah in the 1530s, just north of the shrine of Nizamuddin.

Coincidentally the citadel was placed on the site of the village of Indarpat, popularly





identified with the ancient city of Indraprastha. Humayun’s reign was interrupted by that of

the Suri dynasty, and Sher Shah Suri made his own additions to Dinpanah, and established the

city of Shergarh around it.

Humayun’s successor Akbar moved the capital of the Mughal empire to Agra, but Delhi didnot lose its importance as an important centre of trade and culture. In particular the Sufi

shrines of the city gave it a premier position in the sacred geography of Islam in India. The

choice of Delhi for the mausoleum of Humayun, located in the vicinity of Nizamuddin’s

shrine, underlined this importance.

In 1639 Akbar’s grandson Shahjahan decided to shift the capital out of Agra, and Delhi was

chosen as the site for his grand imperial city. The new city, called Shahjahanabad, was by the

river, north of all of Delhi’s previous cities. This continued to be the seat of the Mughal

emperor even as the empire declined in the eighteenth century, and the British East India

Company came to control most of its erstwhile territories. Shahjahanabad, as the seat of the

Mughal court saw a flowering of architecture, crafts, visual and performing arts, language andliterature, that persisted well beyond the heyday of the Mughal empire.

Through the nineteenth century the British ruled their Indian territories from their capital at

Calcutta. Delhi saw the upheaval of the Revolt of 1857 and was for a while relegated to an

administrative backwater. But the aura of the city survived. Its long history as the capital of

powerful kingdoms and empires had invested it with a mystique and prestige that not even the

British could ignore. In the popular mind Delhi had long been associated with sovereignty

over India, and the British government tapped into this legacy by holding imperial Durbars

assemblages in Delhi - in 1877 to proclaim Victoria Empress of India, in 1903 to celebrate the

coronation of Edward VII as Emperor of India, and in 1911 to similarly proclaim the

coronation of George V.

It was during the last Durbar of 1911 that the decision to shift the British Indian capital to

Delhi was announced, and a year later Delhi became the capital. Simultaneously work began

on the construction of a new imperial capital city, which was finally inaugurated in 1931 as

New Delhi. New Delhi was planned and built as a garden city laid out around a grand

ceremonial centre. While it owed inspiration to Baron Haussmann’s Paris and L’Enfant’s

Washington D.C., it drew on Indian traditions with respect to design elements, decorative

details, materials, and colonial forms such as the bungalow. Above all it carried forward the

aura of Delhi and the city’s tradition of learning from and adopting a wide range of cultural

influences.

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