Red Fort: Remembering the Magnificent Mughals

PART-I

THE CITYSCAPE

Introduction

Babur (meaning Panther in Turkish) was a direct descendant of the Central Asian Turkish conqueror Timur the Turk and the Mongol Genghis Khan. On the paternal side, he was the grandson of Sultan Abu Said Mirza of Herat, a great-grandson of Timur. On his maternal side, he was grandson of Yunus Khan of Tashkent, the thirteenth in direct line of descent from Genghis Khan. Thus, he combined in himself ‘the energy of the Mongol’ and ‘the courage and capacity of the Turk’, writes Stanley Lane-Poole, ‘to the restlessness of the nomad Tartar he joined the culture and urbanity of the Persian.’ At 12 years of age, after taking over as a warlord of Ferghana (present day Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan) – a land of meadows, rolling hills, a cool climate, apple, apricot and almond orchards – he was fascinated with the idea of reclaiming the lands once conquered by his ancestor Timur. This meant the beautiful city of Samarkand, a sophisticated city of egg-shaped domes, slender minarets, and tiled gateways. Beyond it was the city of Kabul which he captured in 1504, and finally through the deadly Khyber Pass lay the promised land of dust and diamonds: Hindustan.

While Babur was on military campaign, news came from Kabul that he was blessed with a baby boy. So fascinated was he with the prospect of a rich and a splendid conquest of Hindustan – that land of immense wealth – that he considered the news a good omen and named his son Hindal, after his dream-destination of Hindustan. After conquering it in 1526, he however notes disapprovingly in his Baburnama, that Hindustan was a land of few charms: The country and towns of Hindustan are extremely ugly, and it … is a country that has few pleasures to recommend it. The people are not handsome. They have no idea of the charms of friendly society…they have no genius … no politeness of manner, no kindness… they have no good horses, no good flesh, no grapes or musk-melons, no good fruits, no ice or cold water, no good food or bread in their bazars… Perhaps his opinion became less critical after he acquired its immense wealth and treasures, above all the Koh-i-Noor, about which he wrote that, It is so valuable, that a judge of diamonds valued it at half of the daily expense of the whole world.

In Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi’s vindictiveness had already alienated his provincial governors, causing total chaos in the country when he imprisoned and murdered the fabled Wazir Mian Bhua appointed by his father Sikandar Lodi, holding him accountable for his military reverses. Provincial governors saw the writing on the wall and what awaited them at the hands of the tyrant ruler in Delhi.

When Ibrahim summoned the governor of Lahore, Daulat Khan Lodi, to the court, he abstained and sent his son Dilawar Khan to Delhi. In Ibrahim’s court, Dilawar was suitably threatened and thrown into prison for a few days for good measure, where he was made to witness bodies of nobles hanging from the walls. Ibrahim released Dilawar and ordered the army to march to Lahore and capture his father. Daulat Khan thought of all options, then sent his son as his emissary to meet Babur – apprising him of the discontentment simmering among the nobles in India and asking him to invade Delhi and remove Ibrahim Lodi.

Hindustan had been Babur’s obsession for sure, but at the same time, he was too wise not to know anarchy alone could not justify a military gamble. Ahmed Yadgar the historian writes how Babur spent the entire night thinking what to do, and finally left it to God – if only I see the symbols of India, i.e., the betel leaf and mango the following day, will I consider it as a good signal to invade Delhi.

In the morning, Dilawar presented himself before Babur in his court, and offered him the traditional gifts he had brought with him. Among these presents were betel leaves and half ripe mangoes preserved in honey. Babur’s mind was instantly made up on his southern expedition.

The memoirs of Babur from 1508 to 1519 are lost, and that between 1520 to 1526 do not contain the prelude to his final attack to achieve his dream of capturing India. In April of 1526, Babur’s army of 12,000 men arrived at Panipat and stayed put while forming a defensive position: for eight days, the two armies of Babur and Ibrahim Lodi watched each other eyeball to eyeball, feeling restless like prisoners under the hot Indian sun. Ibrahim had 100,000 soldiers with him, but as Babur explained to his generals, they were too clumsy and incapable and without any strategy or plan. On the ninth day of stalemate – the day was April 21, 1526 – Babur sent out a small attacking force to the Indian side, which succeeded in drawing out the full offensive of the massive force of Ibrahim. The heroic and calm Ibrahim Lodi fought the invading Mughals, delivering an attack like the brazen ramparts of Alexander with his massive army. But the defensive military strategy and artillery power of Babur was surely unexpected. Center, Left Wing, Right Wing, Vanguard, Reserve, and the flying columns of the disciplined Turks soon enveloped the Indians. By midday, it was all over. The Indian attack elephants turned back by the Mughal artillery and musketeers trampled down their own Pathan army, causing massive confusion and terrible carnage that killed Ibrahim Lodi with 6,000 loyal troops still around him. At the end, Babur asked for the body of Ibrahim to be located. With great difficulty, he was found under heaps of corpses, and when his head was brought to Babur, he remarked praised be thy heroism!

However, in the mere four years of his rule, Babur was not able to consolidate his foothold in India. When his nobles nudged him to part with the great Kohinoor diamond that he had acquired in 1526 as a sacrificial offering in exchange for the life of a very sick Humayun, his son, he dedicated his own life instead. Coincidentally, his health started to deteriorate and that of his son improved, till he breathed his last at a rather young age of 47. It was believed that a cook bribed by Ibrahim Lodi’s mother laced his food with the deadly kalakuta poison a few years earlier, ultimately resulting in his death. Humayun ascended the throne in 1530 but was driven out of the country for fifteen long years by his rebel noble Sher Shah Suri. Akbar, the first Mughal Emperor to born in India, is considered as the real founder of the Empire, so much Indianized by his birth and religious outlook that he was even described as non-Muslim by a few European travellers, as well as by some Hindu and Jain observers, as we will see later. It was only during Akbar’s reign that the very term ‘Mughal’ was officially used to describe the royal family. Says the eighteenth-century historian Khafi Khan that from the reign of Akbar the term Mughal came into common use for the Turks and Tajiks… Babur proudly identified himself as a Chaghtai, descending from Ghengis Khan’s son Chagta. Not only that, he looked down on the horde of Mongols, calling them mischief-makers in his Babur-Nama. Akbar ruled for nearly fifty years, the same as Aurangzeb, making them the two longest serving Mughal emperors. His son Prince Salim or Jahangir (world-conqueror), the emperor famed for his indulgence in arts and alcohol, ruled from 1605 to 1627. And then ascended to the Mughal throne Prince Khurram, christened Shah Jahan. His reign was the age of arts, architecture and fine culture.

After the death of his 38-year old beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal – the chosen one of the Palace and mother to 14 children, Shah Jahan – corroded with grief – kept himself busy in his grand building schemes, beginning with the Taj Mahal, described by Rabindranath Tagore as a teardrop on the cheek of Time. Then, perhaps, to escape the searing heat of Agra, and perhaps from the memories of Mumtaz, he chose to shift his capital from Agra to Delhi and built the new metropolis Shahjahanabad in 1648 on the western banks of river Yamuna. In the heart of city, he erected the Red fort: designed by Ustad Ahmadi Lahori and superintended by the Persian Makramat Khan: the defining monument of Shahjahanabad that anchored the cityscape and a new close-knit social structure. From the Red Fort, the city spread like an extended family: defining a social hierarchy at the zenith of which sat Shah Jahan. From the depth of the formidable Fort, the Emperor controlled the heart-beat of the Mughal Empire, sitting on his Peacock throne, made from 1150 kilograms of gold and supported with 12 emerald columns, and aglitter with emeralds, rubies, diamonds and pearls.

Delhi however lived up to its reputation of slipping through the very fingers of those who attempted to raise a new city here: starting with Prithvi Raj Chauhan’s Lal Kot; Allauddin Khilji’s Siri; the Tughluq trio’s troika of Tughluqabad, Jahanpanah & Kotla Firuz Shah; Humayun’s Dinpanah and later Lutyen’s Delhi of the British; Shah Jahan’s majestic offering to the city of his choice was soon to be destroyed by fate. No more than a mere nine years of rule by Shah Jahan at Delhi must have passed, considered as the golden period of Mughal rule, when the cold-blooded animosity amongst his children, – a rebound of the takht ya takhta precedence Shah Jahan himself had set for securing the throne by murdering his brother – saw not only his ouster but also the beginning of the city’s gradual downfall. The absence of Mumtaz’s motherly empathy in the family accentuated the differences among her children, and the Emperor’s favouritism for his daughter Jahanara infuriated her younger sister Roshanara with jealousy, just like his open declaration of son Dara Shukoh as his preferred successor made his younger son Aurangzeb rise in an open military revolt against his father. Killing his siblings who opposed him and poisoning to death those who supported him, imprisoning his father, and sending the cleaned severed head of his brother Dara in a gift box to Shah Jahan to be opened to him at his lunch time as a present to a forgiving father; Aurangzeb’s forty-nine-year rule heralded the beginning of a gradual downfall of not only Shahjahanabad, but the Empire itself.

It was August the 23rd, 1659, when Dara Shukoh was brought back to Delhi after months of relentless chase. With his legs chained, Dara was draped in coarsest clothes and an unclean turban that the poorest only wore. He was seated on an elephant with his 14-year old son Siphir and a slave holding a naked sword, while being paraded through the streets of Delhi. ‘Piercing and distressing shrieks’, says the eye-witness Francois Bernier, emanated from people lamenting the fate of Dara ‘as if some mighty calamity had happened to themselves.’ Then on the 30th night, assassins entered his quarter, pushed aside a wailing Siphir, and quickly beheaded him. The headless corpse was then once again paraded through Chandni Chowk.

The naked Armenian Jew turned Sufi, Yogi and accomplished poet in Persian, Muhammad Sa’id Sarmad Kashani (original Armenian name unknown, but was better known by Sarmad-Arabic for ‘Eternal’) who roamed the streets without a cloth, whom Dara addressed as ‘my master and preceptor’, was next. When Aurangzeb mocked the naked Yogi on his questionable prediction that Dara alone would ascend the throne, Sarmad replied that his prediction had indeed come true: Dara alone would be remembered and held in higher esteem in the great Heavens. A popular legend has it that after he was beheaded, Sarmad held out his own head and ran up the steps of Jama Masjid vowing to finish the empire, when he heard his master Hare Bhare Saheb beckoning him from his tomb at the foot of the Masjid to come back and rest there.

For as long as twenty-six years (1681-1707), Delhi was left to itself with the Emperor busy in the Deccan and having moved the capital to Aurangabad. As the treasury was drained to support the mindless and futile campaign down south to expand the empire at the cost of utter neglect of central administration, overbearing court officials harassed citizens and farmers to extract more revenue. As a reaction to these unceasing harassments from a state run by remote control, Jats, Sikhs and Rajputs from neighbouring states rose to defy its authority. Religious differences between the emperor and the rebellious subjects added to the tensions.

Since Aurangzeb’s death, Shahjahanabad’s fluctuating fortunes had changed its course in 1739 when Nadir Shah plundered the city, only to rebound once the city was occupied by the British in 1803. Province after province were falling away from the Empire’s control. By 1758, the Mughal emperor had to personally lead military campaigns to extract tributes from neighbouring villages, which by then had shrugged off their allegiances to the throne.

From the northwest, Afghan forces under Ahmad Shah Abdali imitated their predecessor Nadir Shah’s 1739 plunder of Delhi with alarming regularity in 1748, 1756, and 1760. From the South, Deccani and Maratha forces were now claiming territories further northwards and were the real rulers of Delhi from 1771 to 1803. The Eastern part of the empire saw Oudh and Bengal gone under the control of East India Company.

After quelling the 1857 uprising, the British planned a complete demolition of the city, a decision rescinded only after waves of mass-executions and demolitions were unleashed. Ghalib wondered if there was any point of carrying on when everything he had lived for throughout his life had been destroyed. Said he, Five things kept Delhi alive: The Red Fort, Chandni Chowk, the daily crowds at Jama Masjid, weekly walk to the Yamuna bank, and yearly fair of the flower-sellers: none of these survives today. The Lal Qila was turned into a British barrack.

On 21st Sept 1857, Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor as a British prisoner, was sitting cross-legged on a cushioned charpoy on the veranda of the residence of Nazir Hussain Mirza, with two attendants waving peacock-feather fans against the heat. He was guarded by a British officer with two sentries, who had an express order to personally kill the king if any attempt was made to rescue him. Zafar sat not a great distance from the Kotwali in Chandni Chowk, where the bullet- ridden half-naked bodies of two of his sons were laid in the open on stone slabs for three days. The next month, in October, two more sons of Zafar were also shot dead.

The Mughal Empire had thus been exterminated, some 330 years after Babur ‘the Panther’ decimated Ibrahim Lodi’s forces at Panipat.

Shahjahanabad: The

City and Its People

Shahjahanabad was built in the ancient city of Delhi, which was a capital of Hindu kings from 1000-1200 A.D., and of Muslim sultans from 1200-1500 A.D. Moreover, it already had an aura of spirituality, with shrines of Sufi saints Nizamuddin Auliya and Khwaja Bakhtiyar Kaki making it a religious pilgrimage. Planning of a new capital in such a historical and spiritual city, that too by Shahjahan the master-builder Emperor, demanded something out of the ordinary. Its Persian and Hindu architects and designers amalgamated the buildings and physical layout of the new Mughal capital with an underlying concept of ‘centre of the world’, drawing from both Sufi text of Rasail and the Hindu Vastu Sastra. Stephen P. Blake explains the city’s semi-elliptical design was based upon the ancient Hindu Manasara Shilpa Shastra that proposed a city-scape fronting a river as that resembling a bow or a karmuka.

Well-planned streets in the city were laid out to resemble different parts of the bow. The north-south street from Akbarabadi Gate (now called the Delhi Gate) to Kashmiri Gate represented the bow-string. The outer city-walls, along with the roads that connected the Lahori Gate to Mori Gate on one side and to Delhi Gate on the other side, represented the curved shaft of the bow. Chandni Chowk was the archer’s arm. In such a Hindu layout, the centre of the archer’s arm is designated as a site for a Vishnu or Shiva temple. In the city of Shahjahanabad, that place was selected for the imposing Red Fort.

It had 7 main gates for vehicular, mounted, or pedestrian traffic: Kashmiri, Mori, Kabuli, Lahori, Ajmiri, Turkmani; and Akbarabadi gates; in addition to water front gates – Nigambodh, Raja Ghat, and Qila Ghat, all three of which provided Hindus access to the river-side to burn their dead.

To superimpose Islamic architectural concepts on it, says Stephen P. Blake in the Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India, 1639–1739, the Iranian architects of his court borrowed Sufi architectural traditions from the Rasail of the Ikhwan al-Safa or the Epistles of the Brothers of Purity. They drew similarities between the Cosmos and Man or between the macrocosm and the microcosm, believing the working of the human body to be an analogy for the working of the universe.

(Flowing arches of the Diwan-e-Khas, smooth and symmetrical as if drawn on a paper)

The same concept was also theorised by Leonardo da Vinci in his ‘Vitruvian Man as cosmografica del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm). They laid out the new city to emulate the anatomy of the ‘Perfect Man’ (insan-i kamil) as a fusion between the two. Chandni Chowk Street was its backbone, the Jama Masjid was at the position of its heart, and the large city gates represented its cardinal points, while the Palace-Fortress was its head looking westwards towards Mecca, down the illuminated street of Chandni Chowk.

In the city, traders including foreign merchants such as Armenians, Persians, Central Asians and Kashmiris established themselves. Apart from general markets such as Khas Bazar and Mina Bazar, specific trade-based markets flourished, says Hamida Khatoon Naqvi in the Delhi Through the Ages, such as sabzi mandi (greengrocer’s market), nil katra (indigo market), khanam bazar (dealing with military supplies), nakhas (for sale of slaves, beasts and birds), and many others.

The main avenue of the city ran from the Lahori Gate of the Fort and was 40 yards in width and 1520 yards in length. On this street lay two prominent squares: the Kotwali Chabutra and Chandni Chowk.

The main avenue of the city ran from the Lahori Gate of the Fort and was 40 yards in width and 1520 yards in length. On this street lay two prominent squares: the Kotwali Chabutra and Chandni Chowk. As per Stephen P. Blake, the section of the street from the Lahori Gate of the fort till the Kotwali Chabutra was called the Urdu Bazar or Camp Market, which served the general population living around the fort. The section from the Kotwali Chabutra to the Chandni Chowk was called the Ashrafi Bazar, or Jauhari Bazar (Moneychanger’s Market, or Jeweller’s Market). The section from Chandni Chowk to Fatehpuri Mosque was called the Fatehpuri Bazar. Over the time, the entire stretch from Lahori Gate of the fort till Fatehpuri Masjid was came to be known as Chandni Chowk.

Carr Stephen says the section between the Lahori Gate of the fort till the beginning of the street called the Khuni Darwaza was the Urdu or the Military Bazar. The section between the Khuni Darwaza and the Kotwali Chowk was known as the Phul Mandi or Flower Market. The section between the Kotwali and a gate known as the Taraiah was called the Jowhari or Jewellers’ Bazar. Between the Taraiah and the neighbourhood known as Ashrafi ka Katra was the Chandni Chowk. The section therafter till the end of the street was the Fatehpuri Bazar. The houses round Chandni Chauk were of the same height and were ornamented with arched doors and painted verandahs. To the north and south of the square there were two gate-ways, the former leading to the Sarai of Jahanara Begam, and the latter to one of the most thickly populated quarters of the city. Round the tank the ground was literally covered with vegetable, fruit and sweetmeat stalls. In the course of time the whole of this long street came to be known as the Chandni Chauk.

On reaching the Fatehpuri Masjid, the street turned left and then right, thus describing a figure of four, and terminated at the Lahori Gate of the city. The street had a lovely canal running along its entire length, that shimmered like a sheet of silver in moonlit nights. A stone-paved walkway and a broad carriageway that ran along it were lined with a row of shade giving trees. In the mornings, it was the place for elites to shop, where shopkeepers offered sherbets to the wives of amirs while describing their products in Persian couplets.

In evenings, it transformed into a place for splendorous ostentatious displays by the amirs and their families. Ceremonial marriage processions were led through it and turned the street into a glittering exhibition. The groom came sitting on a gorgeously caparisoned elephant, while the bride and her friends were carried in stately and colourful palanquins, led by smartly dressed guards in bright clothes. Trains of camels and elephants were accompanied by mace-bearers carrying gold or silver sticks, and men waving huge fans of peacock-feathers. Servants ran ahead of them, shouting and announcing their revered titles. It was a place of great show of Delhi.

The Faiz Bazar (Market of Plenty) was a street from the Akbarabadi or Delhi Gate of the fort and terminating at the Akberabadi Gate of the city. It measured 30 yards in width and 1050 yards in length and was built by Akberabadi Begum. The Khas Bazar (Special Market) was the street connecting the Akbarabadi Gate of the fort to the Jama Masjid, along with lay the Sa’adullah Khan Square. The area was frequented by dancing girls, quacks, doctors, and story-tellers.

The glory days of Shahjahanadab were indeed short. But when the splendour of the Mughal Empire was at its peak, the city was its showcase. Sometimes the Great Mughal Emperor rode out on a hunting expedition or a pleasure trip to Khyber, Kabul, or Kashmir, from the palace gate onto these very streets of the city. A giant procession of richly garrisoned castled elephants, burdened camel trains, carried royal household baggage as well as various tents for use such as durbar hall, reception, kitchens, living rooms, baths, gymnasium, mosques, and so on. Accompanying the emperor and his royal women and children, army men and courtiers, were troops of dancing girls, players, and buffoons to enliven evening camps. A few rare animals would follow in tow – hooded hunting leopards trained to take down deer led along by their keepers; and even a few tigers in cages for a late afternoon entertainment of fight with a giant bull; with thousands of armed men leading the procession and shouting: Clear the way for his sublime Highness, the King of the world…!

Delhi, or Shahjahanabad, was not a very visually appealing city beyond the palace fortress. The only beautiful havelis in the city belonged to the amirs and mansabdars, which were made of brick and stone. They were lavishly built, apparently as smaller versions of the Red Fort – complete with all the features of the fort. However, most houses, where the multitude of traders and troops resided, were made of mud walls and thatched roofs – unprotected against devastation from fire and flood. As François Bernier said, ‘In Delhi, there is no middle state. A man must either be of the highest rank or live miserably.’

The shops, similarly, were a mix of both – a few selling beautiful gold, silver, fine cloth and the like, juxtaposed with ordinary ones that stocked barrels of oil and baskets of pulses and grains. European wines were so expensive that their taste was destroyed by their cost, wrote Bernier. The shops in the streets had a typical layout. The shop was at the front, a warehouse at the rear, with the owner’s residence on the first floor just above the warehouse, and the roof of the front shop forming a terrace where the family slept in the summer nights under windy skies. Perhaps Delhi was windier in those days than now, with lesser buildings and planned layout.

The city had a remarkable fruit-market, with supplies from Persia, Bukhara, Samarkand and Balkh. There were three or four types of apples and pears, while black and white grapes covered in cloth were brought in wooden boxes by Afghan traders around November. The best mangoes in the summer season came from Bengal, Golkonda and Goa, of which Bernier says, ‘I do not know any sweetmeat more agreeable.’ In the Ain-i-Akbari, Abul Fazl says, "The Persians call this fruit Naghzak…This fruit is unrivalled in colour, smell and taste; and some of the gourmands of Turan and Iran place it above muskmelons and grapes. Mangoes are to be found everywhere in India, especially in Bengal, Gujrat, Malwah, Khandesh, and the Dekhan."

Mangoes were treasured so highly that when Prince Muazzam (later to become successor to Aurangzeb as Emperor Bahadur Shah I) was on a military expedition to Hyderabad in 1685, doubts were raised by the courtiers in Aurangzeb’s court on whether he was sending the best mangoes back to Delhi or keeping some of them for himself! On another occasion, Aurangzeb’s eldest son Prince Aazam Shah became so impressed with a high-quality mango variety, that he sent some samples to his father asking him to name the fruit variety. Aurangzeb, though considered a fanatic by subsequent historians although he did maintain Mughal patronage of