Delhi Agra Fatehpur Sikri by Shashank Shekhar Sinha

Delhi Agra Fatehpur Sikri by Shashank Shekhar Sinha

Author:Shashank Shekhar Sinha
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan


...Only yesterday, I was the master of nine hundred thousand troopers and today I am in need of a pitcher of water...37

The emperor Shah Jahan finally surrendered in 1658 and spent the rest of his life confined in the fort. Agra began to lose much of its imperial charm after Shah Jahan’s death in 1666, even though Aurangzeb continued to hold court at the fort. In 1666, during Aurangzeb’s reign, the Maratha king Shivaji visited Agra and met the Mughal emperor in the Diwan-i Khas. Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 weakened both Mughal power and its imperial stronghold and the empire started disintegrating fast. The history of the Agra Fort, for most of the 18th century, remains a story of multiple sieges and pillage, and it changed hands many times, including the occupation of the Jats and the Marathas. The Marathas gained control of the area south of Delhi after defeating the Mughals around the mid-18th century. After the Maratha loss to the Afghan and Rohilla forces led by Ahmad Shah Durrani in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the fort came under the control of the Durranis. The Marathas were however able to regain control in 1785 under the reign of Mahadji Sindhia. John Hessing was a mercenary Dutch officer under General Perron who retook Agra for the Sindhia. He was the commander of the fort from 1799 to 1803 when the Marathas lost the city and the fort again to the British during the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803. Colluding with European officers working in the Maratha garrison, Lord Lake was able to breach the fort from the south-eastern side of the Bengali Burj. Hessing’s tomb, also known as the ‘Red Taj Mahal’ now lies in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in the Padri Tola.

With the establishment of the British military garrison at the fort, many Mughal structures were pulled down to construct residential quarters, barracks, stores and so on. The grand courtyard of the Diwan-i Aam, for example, was converted into an arsenal, and many buildings and pavilions were whitewashed and subdivided with mud partitions for the private use of officers. The Uprising of 1857 did not impact Agra so seriously though there were cases of plunder and ‘army indiscipline’. The Diwan-i Aam courtyard has a European-style tomb of John Calvin who was the lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces at the time of the Uprising and had taken refuge in the Anguri Bagh complex alongside other members of the Christian community.

The fort came under some conservation efforts towards the late 19th century with the involvement of the Public Works Department. Lord Curzon’s restoration campaign at the beginning of the 20th century saw many military structures being removed from the premises. Independence, however, brought the military back to the Agra Fort, and a large part of the complex, including the Khizri and Hathi Pol gates, the ‘Mina Bazaar’ and the Moti Masjid, remains under the control of the Indian Army and is inaccessible to the public. In recent decades,



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