Agra

Agra is a city on the banks of the Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh, northern India. It was the seat of the Lodi and the Mughal rulers, and its monuments, including the Taj Mahal, are among the most famous of Mughal architecture.

Agra lies on the Yamuna and is the headquarters of a division and district of Uttar Pradesh. In 1951 it had about 375,000 inhabitants, of whom 15.6 per cent were Muslims. Its early history is little known, but it was founded long before the Muslim invasions. The first reference to the city and its ancient fortress is in a qasida in praise of the Ghaznavid prince Mahmud b. Ibrahim, by the poet Mas'ud b. Sa'd b. Salman, which mentions the conquest of the fortress under Sultan Mas'ud III (1099–1115). The town was ruled by Rajput chiefs under the Delhi Sultanate. ¹

Sultan Sikandar Lodi rebuilt the city in 911/1505 and made it the seat of his government; it attracted scholars from across the Muslim world. It was the capital of Ibrahim Lodi (923–932/1517–1526), and after Babur's victory in 932/1526 it became Babur's capital. Babur built the Charbagh palace, laid out gardens and baths there. Humayun and Shir Shah held the city but seldom stayed in it. ¹

Akbar made Agra his seat from 965/1558 and began the fort in 972/1565 on the site of the Lodi fortress of Badal Gadh; before it was finished he began Fatehpur Sikri. Jahangir and Shah Jahan both ascended the throne at Agra. Shah Jahan later left for Delhi, where he founded Shahjahanabad. Shah Jahan was imprisoned in the fort by his son Aurangzeb, who held court there for a time, and he died there in 1076/1666. In the 17th century the court was rarely at Agra for long, but the city was still counted among the empire's capitals, and European travellers compared it in size to Paris, London and Constantinople. It was known for its textiles, gold inlay, stone and marble work and crystal. ¹

In the 18th century the city suffered from the Jats, the Marathas and the Rohillas. Mughal sovereignty was nominal until the British annexed the city in 1803. ¹

The Agra Fort, built by Akbar in about 1565–1573, is a semicircular double-walled fort of red sandstone on the Yamuna. Akbar's red-stone buildings, including the Akbari and Bangali Mahals and the Jahangiri Mahal, survive, but Shah Jahan had many of them demolished to make room for his marble structures, among them the Khass Mahal, the Shish Mahal, the Musamman Burj, the Diwan-i Khass, the Diwan-i Amm and the Moti Masjid. The Jami Masjid was built in 1058/1648 by Jahanara Begam. ¹

The tomb of Akbar at Sikandara was built in Jahangir's reign on a site Akbar chose himself, in five diminishing terraces. The tomb of I'timad al-Dawla, built by his daughter Nur Jahan and completed in 1628, is the first large building in India built wholly of marble. The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan for Mumtaz Mahal (Arjumand Banu Begam), who died at Burhanpur in 1631. Work began soon after her death. The white marble came from Jodhpur. The central dome is about 58 feet across. The architects were supervised by Makramat Khan and Mir 'Abd al-Karim. A tradition that an Italian, Geronimo Veroneo, designed it has no support in the Mughal chronicles or in the European travellers' accounts, and the building's close likeness to Humayun's tomb in Delhi points to a Mughal design. ¹