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Said to be a reflex of the mind of a great man,
Fatehpur Sikri was a tribute by Emperor Akbar to his patron saint
Sheikh Salim Chisti. It was also his imperial capital for fifteen
years. A splendid edifice, the fort today rests in quiet peace-a
mute witness to the times were.
Soon after Akbar
succeeded Humayun as the third Mughal Emperor in 1566, he started
campaigns against his advisaries-Rajputs and Afghans with
determination to win. One by one Malwa, Chittor, Ranthambore, Surat,
Gujarat and Bengal fell to the Mughal sword. In 1569, with the
blessing of the Sufi saint Sheikh Salim Chisti of Sikri, Akbar’s
Rajput wife, Harkha, princess of Amber, gave birth to his first son
and cherished heir to the throne. Akbar called him Salim, after the
saint. He decided to build a grand city on the ridge of Sikri where
the saint. He decided to build a grand city on the ridge of Sikri
where the saint lived in a humble hermitage. Akbar’s ancestor
Babur, the first Mughal who had defeated Rana Sanga’s combined
Rajput forces at Khanwa near Sikri a bath complex, a garden called
Bagh-I-Fathipur, and a platform on the lake at the northern edge of
the lake. It was Babur’s resort but now Akbar’s new
capital. Ajmer, the great spiritual centre of the most venerated
Chisti order presided over by the Akbar’s guru Sheikh Muinuddin
Chisti thus came nearer to Agra with the building of Sikri. Besides,
it was also a shrewd diplomatic move to uproot the nobbles from Agra
and put them in a gilded prison at Sikri, in new humble houses below
the ridge crowned with the Emperor’s palaces.
In 1571, construction
work at Sikri began with the great Jami Masjid at the apex of the
ridge, close to Salim Chisti’s old residence and khanqah.
Residential palaces for Akbar and his seraglio, caravanserais, mints,
karkhanas and the public audience halls were built along the eastern
top of the ridge giving shape to an imperial dream.
Today, as one enter Sikri
from the Agra Gate, one of the nine gateways on the way to the
palace complex, Diwani-I-Aam, or the hall of public audience appears
first. It is a huge rectangular walled-in countryard where petitions
were heard, proclamations made, embassies received and entertainment
programmes held. The royal balcony, set within a frame of jail
screens, appears on the western front. In front of the royal seat, a
stone hook is still found embedded in the ground. As per tradition,
Akbar’s pet elephant Hiran was tied to this hook to crush to
death under its feet the head of the guilty. If it refused to obey
thrice, the victim was freed.
The royal enclosure lies
behind the Diwan-I-Aam. At the northern corner stands a small but
grand single-storey structure of Diwan-I-Khas with the most
magnificently sculptured and most photographed stone column at the
center of the hall. It bursts forth into a set of 36 closely set
voluted and pendulous brackets supporting a circular platform from
which radiate four passages. Is it really the famous Ibadat-Khana
where Akbar initiated religious discourses amongst diverse religious
groups-Hindu, Muslim, Jain and Jesuit etc? yet another conjectue
is-it was the royal jewel house. Of particular note are the
exquisitely carved ornamental brackets below the wide projected
chajjas (eaves). The structure is decorated with four corner kiosks.
Close to Diwan-I-Khas is Ankh Micholi, a set of three inter-connected
rooms, where the Emperor, it is surmised, played hide and seek with
his ladies. Some believe it was the royal treasury; but it has too
many doors to be safe enough for a treasury. A small kiosk outside is
noteworthy for its Dilwara temple-style torana (foliated arch). Here
sat the royal astrologer. The function of both these buildings is a
matter of conjecture.
Panch Mahal, a five
storeyed pavilion, stands on the western line of the courtyard. This
is the badgir, the Persian wind tower for ladies of the harem. The
jail screens between the 176 differently carved pillars have
disappeared. Once these screens provided purdah (cover) to queens and
princess on the top terraces enjoying the cool breezes and watching
splendid views of Sikri fortifications and the town nestling at the
foot of the ridge. In the coutnryard Akbar played pachisi (checker
board) with dancing girls as live pieces.
At the southern end of
this great countryard lies Anup Talao, an ornamental tank, seat of
Tansen, Akbar’s
court musician. When built in 1575 the tank was twelve feet deep but
filled up to its present level in the last century.
Akbar used to have it
filled up with gold, silver and copper coins on special occasions for
distribution amongst the poor. Nearly 1.67 million rupees ere thus
given away till the Emperior was in residence at Sikri. Overlooking
the tank is a grand pavilion, mistakenly called Turkish Sultana
Palace.
The carving on stone here
is splendid-birds, animals, flowers and luxuriant vegetation depicted
with the most perfect craftsmanship, an example of unexcelled
finesse. Akbar’s living quarters stand on the southern edge of
the tank, a rather Spartan and primitive structure in finish but
showing great strength and character of the emperor who built the
great Mughal Empire: A raised stone platform for the royal bed, faint
traces of murals and niches for safe-keeping of some precious
manuscripts. A small window allowed Akbar to appear for jharokha
darshan to his people. Many smaller adjacent structure have suffered
from subsequent wanton alterations done after 1585.
Abdul Fazl, Akbar’s
historian, mentions that the royal harem had nearly 5000 wives.
Blochman mentions only seven chief wives and Beveridge, a
contemporary historian, suggests only 300. the queens always brought
with them a great entourage of maids and dancers. The queen mother
and princess had innumerable slave girls as their attendants. The
member of concubines, families of courtiers away on royal duty, and
dancing girls was everising. The harem included not only the chief
wives but all women inmates. Haresara (female quarters) occupies the
largest central area in the royal enclosure at Sikri.
Jodha Bai’s palace
belonged to Harkha, the Amber princess and mother of Jehangir, and
the other Rajput wives from Bikaner, Marwar, Jaisalmer, Merta and
Durgapur and their companions. No wife of Akbar was called Jodha Bai.
One of Jehangir’s wives was so called. This is a high-walled
edifice, guarded by a grand gateway leading to a spectacular
courtyard. With double storeyed pavilions at the center of colonnades
on all four sides, this place has some striking Hindu architectural
features like ornamental columns, bells and chain motifs, heavy
brackets and niches on the wall for the deities worshipped by Rajput
ladies. The other smaller but beautiful palace belonged to Akbar’s
mother, Hamida Banu Begun, widow of Humayun. She was the most
respected lady of the harem with the title Mariam-Makani. This palace
is also called Sunehra Makan (golden house) because of the golden
paint on the faded murals.
The third palace in the
harem quarters belonged to Akbar’s two senior wives: Ruqayya
Sultan Begum (who brought up Jahangir’s son Khurram later
called Shahjahan), and Salima Sultan Begum-widow of Bairam Khan.
Maybe here lived Birbal’s daughter who was married to Akbar
hence its present name. Surely no male could have been allowed to
stay within the corner of the Sikri ridge. Way back towards the
mosque you would notice the splendid mansion once occupied by Abul
Fazl and his poet brother Faizi. This house could also have been used
as the nursery of the royal princes when Sheikh Salim moved into the
newly built mosque and his khanqah therin.
The mosque at Sikri was
the first structure to be built in 1571. Modeled after Bibi Khanam’s
mosque in Samarkand, this was the goddliest meskite of the East, as
William Finch described it in 1611. The exterior is modest but the
interior carries the most gorgeous ornamentation in the floral
arabesques and ingenious geometrical patterns in brown, red,
turquoise, black and white. The spacious courtyard adds a stately
charm to the place. It could accommodate ten thousand men at prayer.
Akbar was so enthusiastic about this mosque that he occasionally
swept the floor and gave azan (call for prayer). On June 26, 1579,
Akbar even read the khutba himself, a great innovation, earlier
attempted only the Timur and Mirza Ulugh Beg.
Fatehpur Sikri became a
deserted capital after 1585 when Akbar left for Lahore. The
population of nearly two million soon dwindled. The caravans of
royalty and the nobles left but hordes of people both Hindu and
Muslim have kept visiting the dargah of Sheikh Salim, a symbol of
religious and communal harmony. In 1580-81 eighty years after the
saint died in 1572, Akbar built the tomb in red sandstone. In 1606,
Qutubuddin Khan Koka, on orders from Jehangir, covered the edifice in
white marble. Much later in 1866, a district magistrate of Agra
replaced the plaster dome with white marble. The magnificence of the
splendid jail screens carved out of huge marble slabs shows a rare
perfection of craftsmanship. The dramatic serpentine brackets
supporting the wide chajja on all four sides of the edifice have an
amazing grace. The real grave lies in an undisturbed repose in the
crypt, closed to visitors. women devotees longing for a child come
here and tie a coloured thread to the jails. In a gesture of
thankfulness they come back when their wish is granted.
An interesting story is
told about the death of the saint. When Akbar asked how he would die,
the saint replied that whenever prince Salim recited lines tutored by
anyone except him, he (Sheikh Salim) would die. It so happened that a
nurse in sheer ignorance of this prophecy taught the child prince a
couplet: O God, open the rosebud of hope. Display a flower from the
everlasting garden! When the prince recited the couplet to the saint,
the latter knew his hour to depart had come. And sure enough he died
soon thereafter.
Close to the Sheikh Salim
Tomb stands the Zenana Rauda where he used to give lessons to the
princes Salim, Daniyal and Mured. The Emperors and his ladies
attended here the sama, an integral part of the Chisti faith
incorporating musical performance leading to mystical ecstasy. It
houses the graves of ladies of the Sheikh’s descendants. The
other bigger structure is the Jamat Khana where his disciples lived
together.
Buland Darwaza, the
colossal triumphal arch, was built in 1575 on the southern wall of
the countryard. It celebrates Akbar’s conquest of Gujarat. The
towering portal has the height of 176 feet from ground level and 134
feet over the top step. The grand recessed central arch is the most
magnificent of its kind in the whole range of Mughal architecture in
India. Modest ornamentation with calligraphy contains a famous line:
The world is but a bridge: Pass over but build no houses on it. The
Buland Darwaza commands the landscape for miles.
Further west, just below
the lofty wall, is the water reservoir now used as a public bath. For
a small reward youngsters will dive into the water from perilous
heights. The more inquisitive can go around the mosque to look at the
derelict Rang Mahal, the house where prince Salim was born. The Stone
Cutter’s mosque, the first mosque at Sikri, was built by the
humble masons who built the imperial palaces. The modest but much
altered house of Sheikh Salim still draws altered house of Sheikh
Salim still draws quite a few visitors. later, the saint moved into
the grand mosque. His tomb was built on the spot where he used to sit
for prayer.
In 1585, Akbar left for
Lahore. In 1596 he returned not to Sikri but to Agra. Some believe
Sikri was deserted because the water supply had failed. Other’s
regard it as a tactical move to uproot the nobles once again. The
orthodox and the liberals, Persians and Rajputs, were locked in
perennial conflicts. Maybe, after the death of his patron saint, the
Emperor felt lonely spiritually: The Sufi magic had lost its hold and
orthodox faith never really charmed Akbar much. Though Jehangir and
Shahjahan visited the former capital on certain occasions, Fatehpur
Sikri had really left its days of glory far behind. It remains
India’s glory far behind. It remains India’s best preserved
ghost city.
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