The seven cities of Delhi

When we study history in schools and colleges we only get to hear of this or that dynasty and for us each dynasty becomes a thing in itself, but we fail to see the continuities, cultural, linguistic, architectural, scientific, technological and administrative that flow from one dynasty to the other and from one historic era to the other. This column on alternate histories will try to look at the continuities and not at the disjunctures and cleavages in the hope that we are able to see our history as an ongoing process, as a continuity with its beginnings lost in the distant past when descendants of the primal humans, who set out from Africa, first set foot on this sub-continent. The present of that continuity is even now being fashioned by the progeny of those first humans and is everyday passing into history.

To begin with we will talk about this small bit of the Indo-Gangetic plains, known as Delhi, that has seen the rise and fall of scores of dynasties and the creation of seven major and a few minor cities and at least one non-city, but before we come to all that let us talk about the land that saw the rise of these cities and try to understand why were these cities situated on this little bit of land. The river Jamna, not Jamana or Yamuna, for that is what it has been called by those who have cultivated the banks of the river for millennia, enters the plains of Dehli in the North West and meanders out of the territory of Delhi in the South West. From the right bank of the river spreading out to the east is a large plain irrigated by a tributary of the Jamna, known as the Hindon. This vast flood prone depression was not suited for an urban settlement and was therefore ignored by all town builders and the studied neglect of Jamna paar in our times has its foundations in these ancient practices.

To the west of the river, there was a narrow strip of land bound on the west, from the north-west to the south-east, by the small denuded hillocks of one of the oldest mountain ranges in the World, the Aravallis. The Aravallis start from the North Delhi Ridge and cut across Haryana and Rajasthan before tapering off into Gujarat. The Aravallis provided an ideal location for two of the first three of the seven cities of Delhi that were to come up before New Delhi. The first of these was Lal Kot, also known as the Qila Rai Pithora, the capital of the Tomars and a territory later ruled by Prithviraj Chauhan whose capital was Ajmer. Lal kot was to become the capital of the Maluk dynasty  and remained the capital from Aibak to Ghiyas ud Din Balban, the last Mamluk king. The First Khilji King Jalal ud Din also ruled from Lal Kot. 

The second Khilji King, Ala-ud-Din Khilji moved the capital to Siri, near the present day Shahpur Jatt. Siri was built by Ala-ud-Din Khilji into the plains, roughly midway between the river and the Aravallis. The third city, built by the first of the three Tughlaq Kings — Ghiyas-ud-Din Tughlaq — moved back on to the Aravallis, the fourth  Jahanpanah came back into the plains near Siri, while the fifth, Ferozebad — the present day Kotla of Ferozeshah — was the first to be located on the western bank of the Jamna, to be followed by the fifth city built by the second Mughal King Humayun, was ruled later by Sher Shah Suri and Saleem Shah, before being taken back by Humayun after 15 years and merely 11 months before his untimely death in 1556, less than 85 years later Humayun’s Great Grandson was to build the seventh and the last mediaeval capital city in Delhi, called Shahjahanabad. 

In the weeks and months that follow, we will visit these cities and try to understand how these cities were born, grew and died and how some survived. We will also talk about the similarities, commonalities and continuities between these cities and we will talk of some of the major personalities that made these cities what they were and how this rich past shaped us and continues to inform how we view ourselves today.

Sohail Hashmi organises the Delhi Heritage Walks for children and adults and will write a fortnightly column for Alternate Histories.