Fathehpur Sikri

Fathehpur Sikri (Hindi: फ़तेहपुर सीकरी, Urdu: فتحپور سیکری) is a city and a municipal board in Agra district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. Built near the much older Sikri, the historical city of Fatehabad, as it was first named, was constructed by Mughal emperor Akbar beginning in 1570, in honour of Sufi saint Shaikh Salim Chisti, who lived in a cavern on the ridge at Sikri, and foretold the birth of his son, who was named Prince Salim after him, and later succeeded Akbar to the throne of the Mughal Empire, as Jahangir. Fatehabad later acquired the name Fatehpur, and gave rise to present name Fatehpur Sikri.^[2][3]It was the first planned city of the Mughals and also first one in Mughal architecture, an amalgamation of Indian architecture, Persian and Islamic architecture, and served as the Mughal Empire's capital from 1571 until 1585. Though the court took 15 years to build, it was abandoned after only 14 years because the water supply was unable to sustain the growing population.^[4] and unrest in the North-West.^[5] Today, the complex of buildings, including the extant royal palaces, courts and the Jama Masjid is a popular tourist attraction, and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.^[6] The site itself is a ghost town, though the city has a population of 28804 as per 2001 census.^[7]

Sikri is built upon a rocky ridge, an extension of the upper Vindhya ranges, which are older rounded mountains and hills. It is situated on the bank of a large natural lake, now mostly dried, and abundance of water, forest and raw material, made it suitable for habitation, in the pre-historic period, evident by the existence of rock shelters with paintings found on the periphery of the lake. Stone age tools have been found in this area, apart from pottery and other items suggesting the habitation of the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture, dating c. 2nd millennium B.C. and the Painted Grey Ware culture, Iron Age culture of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, dating around 1200-800 B.C.^[2]

It is mentioned in the epic Mahabharat as Saik, defined in the lexicons as a region surrounded by water. After an archaeological excavation in December 1999, at the Bir Chhabili ki teela, a mound about 200 metres from the Fatehpur Sikri complex, further suggestions of continuous habitation in the region after the prehistoric period were found. Remains amongst of an ancient Jain temple was a 'Jain Saraswati' stone sculpture, dated 1067 Vikram Samvat i.e. 1010 AD, with an inscription mentioning the place as Sekrikya, which has a similar meaning to one mentioned in the Mahabharat. Plus, most of the Jain tirthankara icons also found in the same pit were dated 977 - 1044 AD.^[2][8]

During the Mughal era, the founder of Mughal Empire, Babur in his memoir Baburnama mentioned it as ‘Sikri’, when he visited it on the eve of Battle of Khanwa on March 16, 1527, at Khanwa a few miles away.^[9][10] After he defeated Rana Sanga of Mewar in the battle, which gave him control of North India, he subsequently built a garden, a Jal-Mahal (Lake Palace), and a baoli (step-well) commemorate his victory.^[2] Akbar had inherited the Mughal Empire from his father Humayun and grandfather Babur. During the 1560s he rebuilt the Agra Fort and established it as his capital. He had a son and then twins, but the twins died. He then consulted the Sufi saint, Salim Chishti, who lived in a cavern on the ridge at Sikri. Salim predicted that Akbar would have another son, and indeed one was born in 1569 at Sikri and survived.^[11] He was named Salim to honour the saint and would later rule the empire as Emperor Jahangir. Here after the second birthday of Jahangir in 1571, Akbar then 28 years old, decided to shift his capital from Agra to the Sikri ridge, to honor Salim Chishti, and commenced the construction of a planned walled city which took the next fifteen years in planning and construction of a series royal palaces, harem, courts, a mosque, private quarters and other utility buildings.^[12] He named the city, Fatehabad, with Fateh, a word of Arabic origin in Persian, meaning "victory", it was later called Fatehpur Sikri.^[7] It is at Fatehpur Sikri that the legends of Akbar and his famed courtiers, the nine jewels or Navaratnas, were born . One of them, musician and singer Tansen is said to have performed on an island in the middle of the pool Anup Talao.^[13]

According to contemporary historians, Akbar took a great interest in the building of Fatehpur Sikri and probably also dictated its architectural style. Seeking to revive the splendours of Persian court ceremonial made famous by his ancestor Timur, Akbar planned the complex on Persian principles. But the influences of his adopted land came through in the typically Indian embellishments. The Easy availability of sandstone in the neighbouring areas of Fatehpur Sikri, also meant that all the buildings here were made of the red stone. The imperial Palace complex consists of a number of independent pavilions arranged in formal geometry on a piece of level ground, a pattern derived from Arab and central Asian tent encampments. In its entirety, the monuments at Fatehpur Sikri thus reflect the genius of Akbar in assimilating diverse regional architectural influences within a holistic style that was uniquely his own.^[13]

The Imperial complex was abandoned in 1585, shortly after its completion, due to paucity of water and its proximity with the Rajputana areas in the North-West, which were increasingly in turmoil. Thus the capital was shifted to Lahore so that Akbar could have a base in the less stable part of the empire, before moving back Agra in 1598, where he had begun his reign as he shifted his focus to Deccan.^[14] In fact, he never returned to the city except for a brief period in 1601.^[15][16] In later Mughal history it was occupied for a short while by Mughal emperor, Muhammad Shah (r. 1719 -1748), and his regent, Sayyid Hussain Ali Khan Barha, one of the Syed Brothers, was murdered here in 1720. Today much of the imperial complex which spread over nearly two mile long and one mile wide area is largely intact and resembles a ghost town. It is still surrounded by a five mile long wall built during its original construction, on three sides. However apart from the imperial buildings complex few other buildings stand in the area, which is mostly barren, except of ruins of the bazaars of the old city near the Naubat Khana, the 'drum-house' entrance at Agra Road. The modern town lies at the western end of the complex, which was a municipality from 1865 to 1904, and later made a "notified area", and in 1901 had a population of 7,147. For a long time it was still known for its masons and stone carvers, though in Akbar time it was known and 'fabrics of hair' and 'silk-spinning'. The village of Sikri still exists nearby.^[11]