Red Fort of Delhi: Shah Jahan's Palace in Shahjahanabad

The Red Fort (Lal Qila) in Delhi is the great walled palace built for the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan between 1639 and 1648. It formed the heart of his new capital, Shahjahanabad, now known as Old Delhi, and housed the Mughal court for about two centuries. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the place where India’s prime minister addresses the nation every Independence Day.

Background: a new capital

Earlier Mughal emperors ruled mainly from Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Lahore. Shah Jahan, who reigned from 1628 to 1658, was the most ambitious builder of the dynasty; at Agra he was already raising the Taj Mahal for his late wife Mumtaz Mahal.

In the late 1630s he decided to build a new capital at Delhi, a city with deep historical prestige as the seat of earlier sultanates. Agra’s palace was considered cramped, and a new foundation allowed the emperor to plan a city around himself. The site chosen lay on the west bank of the Yamuna river, beside the older fortress of Salimgarh.

Construction, 1639–1648

Work on the fort began in 1639. The design is usually credited to Ustad Ahmad Lahauri, also associated with the Taj Mahal, working with court supervisors. The emperor formally entered the completed palace in 1648.

The fort is an irregular octagon. Its red sandstone walls, about 2.4 kilometres long, rise to between roughly 18 and 33 metres. On the river side the palace pavilions looked directly over the water, which then flowed beside the walls; the Yamuna has since shifted eastward.

Two main gates lead in: the Lahori Gate on the west, facing the city’s main avenue Chandni Chowk, and the Delhi Gate on the south. Shah Jahan’s son Aurangzeb later added barbicans, outer defensive walls, in front of both gates.

Inside the palace

Behind the Lahori Gate runs the Chhatta Chowk, a vaulted covered bazaar where merchants sold goods to the court. Beyond it stood the Naubat Khana, a drum house where musicians played to announce the emperor.

The Diwan-i-Am, or Hall of Public Audience, is a large columned hall where the emperor sat on a raised marble throne canopy to hear petitions and receive officials. Behind the throne, panels of pietra dura (inlaid stone) include birds and flowers thought to be of Florentine workmanship.

The Diwan-i-Khas, or Hall of Private Audience, was the most richly decorated building, built of white marble with gilded and inlaid ornament. Here stood the famous jewelled Peacock Throne. A Persian couplet on its walls, often attributed to the poet Amir Khusrau, says in substance that if there is a paradise on earth, it is here.

Along the river terrace lay the private palaces, among them the Rang Mahal (“Palace of Colours”) and the Khas Mahal, the emperor’s own apartments, as well as the royal baths. Through them flowed the Nahr-i-Bihisht (“Stream of Paradise”), a channel of water drawn from a canal that cooled the rooms and fed fountains. To the north were formal gardens such as the Hayat Bakhsh Bagh. Aurangzeb added the small white marble Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) around 1659–1660 for private prayer.

Life at the Mughal court

The fort was not only a residence but a stage for imperial ceremony. Each day the emperor showed himself to his subjects at a window on the river wall, a custom known as jharokha darshan, in which crowds gathered below to see the ruler. He then held public audience in the Diwan-i-Am, where nobles stood in strict order of rank behind railings of gold and silver.

Matters of state were discussed with senior ministers in the Diwan-i-Khas and in smaller private chambers. The fort also housed the imperial harem, treasury, workshops (karkhanas) producing textiles, jewellery and weapons for the court, stables, and quarters for thousands of servants, guards and officials.

European visitors were deeply impressed. The French physician François Bernier, who lived in Delhi in the 1650s and 1660s, left a detailed description of the palace and its ceremonies, as did other travellers of the period.

Shahjahanabad: the city around the fort

The fort was the head of a planned walled city. From the Lahori Gate the broad avenue of Chandni Chowk ran west, with a canal down its centre and shops and mansions on either side; it was laid out under the direction of Shah Jahan’s daughter Jahanara Begum. Nobles built mansions and gardens throughout the city, and the great Jama Masjid, completed in 1656, rose on a hill to the south-west of the fort.

At its height in the late seventeenth century Shahjahanabad was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population often estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

Decline of the Mughals

After Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, Mughal power weakened rapidly. In 1739 the Persian ruler Nadir Shah sacked Delhi and carried away enormous treasure, including the Peacock Throne. Later in the eighteenth century the fort was threatened or entered by Afghan, Maratha and other forces, and the emperors became dependent on stronger powers.

From 1803 the British East India Company controlled Delhi. The Mughal emperor still lived in the Red Fort and held court there, but with little real authority beyond its walls.

1857 and British rule

In May 1857 mutinous sepoys arrived in Delhi from Meerut and proclaimed the elderly emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar leader of the uprising. The fort became a centre of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

British forces stormed Delhi in September 1857. Bahadur Shah was captured, tried in the Diwan-i-Khas in 1858, and exiled to Rangoon in Burma, where he died in 1862. The Mughal dynasty was formally ended.

The British then turned the fort into a military base. Many palace buildings, gardens and courtyards were demolished and replaced with barracks; historians estimate that a large share of the interior structures was lost. In the early twentieth century, under Lord Curzon, some of the surviving buildings were restored.

Symbol of independent India

In 1945–46 officers of the Indian National Army, which had fought alongside Japan, were tried at the Red Fort. The trials provoked strong nationalist protest and helped build momentum for independence.

When India became independent in August 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru raised the national flag above the Lahori Gate, as described in Indian independence. Every year on 15 August the prime minister hoists the flag and gives a speech from the ramparts.

The Indian Army occupied parts of the fort until 2003. In 2007 the Red Fort Complex was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised as the high point of Mughal palace design under Shah Jahan.

Timeline

• 1628: Shah Jahan becomes Mughal emperor.
• 1639: Construction of the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad begins.
• 1648: Shah Jahan formally enters the completed palace.
• c. 1659–1660: Aurangzeb builds the Moti Masjid.
• 1739: Nadir Shah sacks Delhi and takes the Peacock Throne.
• 1857, May: Rebels proclaim Bahadur Shah Zafar at the fort.
• 1857, September: British forces retake Delhi.
• 1947, August: Nehru raises the flag of independent India over the Lahori Gate.
• 2007: The Red Fort Complex becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

The Red Fort was the stage on which Mughal emperors displayed their power, where that dynasty came to its end in 1857, and where independent India now celebrates its nationhood each year. Few buildings in South Asia carry as many layers of history.