The Red Fort of Delhi
The Red Fort, known in Mughal sources as the Qila-i-Mubarak or “Fort of the Auspicious,” is the walled citadel that Shah Jahan built as the centrepiece of his new capital of Shahjahanabad, the seventh city of Delhi, between 1638 and 1648. Located on the western bank of the river Yamuna, the fort served as the principal residence of the Mughal emperors from Shah Jahan’s reign until 1707, when Aurangzeb’s death effectively ended the practice of imperial residence in Delhi. The complex has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2007, inscribed as “The Red Fort Complex,” and the main gate of the fort has served as the venue for the annual Independence Day address of the prime minister of India since 1947. Together with the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort represents the architectural apogee of Shah Jahan’s patronage and the high point of the Mughal palace tradition.
Commission and Construction
The Red Fort was commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1638, the tenth year of his reign, when he decided to shift the imperial capital from Agra to Delhi. The new city, named Shahjahanabad in the emperor’s honour, was laid out to the south of the older city of Delhi, and the fort was constructed as the northernmost element of the new imperial complex, with the river Yamuna forming the northern boundary. The architect of the fort, like that of the Taj Mahal, is traditionally identified as Ustad Ahmad Lahauri, although the attribution is again somewhat uncertain. The construction was carried out rapidly, with the walls, the principal audience halls, and the royal residences substantially complete by 1648, and the entire complex was effectively in use by the middle of the seventeenth century.
The site chosen for the fort had earlier associations with the fortifications of the Delhi Sultanate and of the Tughluq dynasty, and the citadel at Salimgarh, which forms the eastern part of the modern Red Fort complex, had been built by Islam Shah Suri in 1546. Shah Jahan’s architects incorporated the older structures into the new complex, and the Salimgarh fort remains an integral part of the modern monument. The choice of red sandstone as the principal facing material of the new fort gave the complex its popular name, and the contrast between the warm red of the walls and the white marble of the interior buildings has shaped the visual identity of the complex ever since.
The construction of the Red Fort was carried out by a workforce that included, by contemporary accounts, several thousand workers drawn from across the empire. The project made use of materials from across northern India, including red sandstone from the quarries at Fatehpur Sikri and Agra, white marble from Makrana in Rajasthan, and a range of decorative stones and inlay materials sourced from across the empire. The cost of the project, although not directly comparable to that of the Taj Mahal, was considerable, and the Red Fort was understood in its own time as a major statement of imperial ambition.
The Walls and the Plan
The Red Fort follows an irregular octagonal plan, with the longer axis running roughly north-south and the walls extending for about two and a half kilometres in total length. The walls, faced with red sandstone, rise to a height of up to thirty-three metres on the river side, with a corresponding height of about eighteen metres on the city side, and they are crowned by a continuous parapet with regular merlons. The walls are pierced by a number of gates, of which the Lahore Gate on the western side, the Delhi Gate on the southern side, and the water gate on the river side were the most important.
The principal entrance to the fort is the Lahore Gate, named for its orientation toward the road to Lahore, and the name survives in the modern Lahori Gate, through which the visitor enters the complex today. The gate is approached through a covered bazaar, the Chatta Chowk, which runs along the western wall of the fort and which once housed the principal imperial workshops and shops. Beyond the gate lies a succession of courtyards, gardens, and palaces, organised along a north-south axis that culminates in the river-front pavilions.
The internal layout of the fort is divided into a series of distinct functional zones, each separated from the others by walls, gates, and changes of level. The southern portion of the fort, including the area immediately inside the Lahore Gate, contained the principal administrative and ceremonial buildings, including the Diwan-i-Aam (public audience hall) and the principal bazaars. The central portion of the fort contained the Diwan-i-Khas (private audience hall), the khwabgah (sleeping chamber), and the principal royal apartments. The northern portion, closest to the river, contained the zenana, the women’s quarters, and the riverside pavilions. The Hayat Baksh garden, the Nahr-i-Bihisht (stream of paradise), and the principal marble pavilions were also located in this northern portion of the fort.
The Diwan-i-Aam
The Diwan-i-Aam, or public audience hall, is the first major building of the Red Fort interior. Constructed of red sandstone with a façade of carved and painted ornament, the building consists of a raised platform with a flat roof supported on rows of carved sandstone columns. The roof, originally crowned by a series of chhatris, was restored in the early twentieth century after the original chhatris had collapsed. The throne of the emperor was placed at the centre of the rear wall, and the floor in front of the throne was inlaid with a marble pattern representing the appropriate rank of the courtiers approaching the emperor.
The Diwan-i-Aam was the venue for the daily public audience, when the emperor received petitions, heard complaints, and transacted the routine business of the empire. The hall is associated with the jharokha-i-darshan, the balcony of appearance, from which the emperor appeared to the public on ceremonial occasions, although in the Red Fort this feature takes a particular form. The adjacent Nahr-i-Bihisht (stream of paradise) ran along the rear of the building, providing a flow of water that was both a practical amenity in the hot climate and a symbolic representation of the imperial abundance.
The Diwan-i-Khas
The Diwan-i-Khas, or private audience hall, is the most celebrated building of the Red Fort interior. Constructed of white marble in striking contrast to the red sandstone of the surrounding walls, the hall is a square pavilion of unusual structural sophistication. The roof, originally supported on a series of marble arches, was carried on an innovative system of cantilevered beams that left the central area of the hall open and that allowed the imperial throne to be placed in a position of greater visual prominence.
The most famous feature of the Diwan-i-Khas is the line of inscription, executed in black marble inlay on the white marble of the central arch, that records the celebrated couplet of the poet Amir Khusrau: Agar firdaus bar roo-i zameen ast, hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast (“If there is paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this”). The inscription, which became a signature of the building in the popular imagination, was supplemented in the original design by the inlay of the famous Takht-i-Taus or Peacock Throne, which was placed in the centre of the hall during the reign of Shah Jahan.
The Peacock Throne, commissioned by Shah Jahan and completed in the 1630s, was one of the most extravagant royal seats ever constructed. The throne proper, of gold and inlaid with precious stones, was surmounted by a canopy in the form of a peacock with outspread tail, the feathers of which were inlaid with sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. The throne was looted by the Persian invader Nadir Shah in 1739, and it was subsequently broken up, with its component parts incorporated into the Persian imperial regalia. The original appearance of the throne is known only from contemporary descriptions and from later representations.
The Royal Residences
The northern portion of the Red Fort contained the principal royal residences, organised around the Nahr-i-Bihisht, the artificial water channel that ran through the centre of this portion of the complex. The water channel, supplied from the Yamuna by a system of aqueducts, was both a practical amenity and a symbolic representation of the four rivers of paradise, and the buildings of the imperial residence were designed to make the most of its visual and acoustic presence.
The principal royal residences in this portion of the fort included the Khas Mahal, the principal sleeping chamber of the emperor, a white marble pavilion of extraordinary refinement; the Rang Mahal, the palace of colour, which was painted and decorated in a particularly lavish manner; the Mumtaz Mahal, originally a residence for one of the ladies of the imperial household, which has been converted into a museum; and the Shah Burj, the imperial tower, which served as the principal private residence of the emperor in the later Mughal period. The pavilions along the river frontage, including the Zafar Mahal and the smaller kiosks, provided the imperial household with views of the river and the surrounding landscape.
The decorative programme of these residences combined the techniques of carved and inlaid marble, painted and gilded plaster, mirror-work, and the careful application of pigment and gold leaf on the interior surfaces. The contrast between the austerity of the red sandstone exterior and the rich ornament of the interior pavilions was a deliberate feature of the design, and the effect was deliberately calculated to overwhelm the visitor who penetrated beyond the public spaces of the fort. The surviving fragments of the original decoration suggest that the interior of the royal residences was once among the most lavishly decorated spaces in the world.
The Hayat Baksh Garden
The Hayat Baksh garden, located in the northern portion of the fort, is the principal surviving example of the charbagh garden tradition within the Red Fort complex. The garden was laid out on a rectangular plan, divided into four equal parts by raised walkways and water channels, with a central marble pavilion that served as the focal point of the composition. The garden was originally planted with fruit trees, flowering shrubs, and scented plants in the manner of the Persian and Mughal garden traditions, and the integration of the garden with the surrounding pavilions produced one of the most refined examples of the imperial garden tradition.
The garden was supplied with water from the Yamuna via the Nahr-i-Bihisht, and the engineering of the water supply, including the aqueduct that brought water to the fort and the channels that distributed it through the complex, represents one of the technical achievements of the building. The garden has been extensively restored in the post-Independence period, and it is now a central element of the public experience of the Red Fort.
Post-1707 History
The Red Fort continued to serve as the principal residence of the Mughal emperors until 1707, when Aurangzeb’s death effectively ended the practice of imperial residence in Delhi. The eighteenth century was a period of considerable political instability for the fort, and it was plundered on several occasions, most famously in 1739 by the Persian invader Nadir Shah, who carried off the Peacock Throne and a substantial portion of the imperial treasury. The later eighteenth century saw a succession of political upheavals, including the Afghan invasions of the 1750s and 1760s, the Maratha occupation of Delhi, and the gradual reduction of the Mughal emperors to pensionaries of the regional powers.
The British colonial period, beginning in 1803, saw the Red Fort converted into a military cantonment, with the principal imperial buildings used as barracks and the gardens converted into parade grounds. Many of the original buildings were damaged or modified during this period, and a number of the marble pavilions were demolished, with the materials reused in colonial buildings elsewhere. The most serious losses occurred during the Rebellion of 1857, when the fort was the focus of the Indian resistance to British rule and the residential portions of the complex were largely destroyed in the fighting.
Independence and Modern Significance
The post-Independence period has seen the Red Fort restored to a position of national significance. The main gate of the fort, the Lahori Gate, has served since 1947 as the venue for the annual Independence Day address of the prime minister of India, a ceremony broadcast nationally and watched by several million viewers. The address, delivered from the ramparts of the fort on 15 August each year, is one of the principal symbolic events of the modern Indian republic, and the choice of the Red Fort as the venue reflects the deliberate identification of the new Indian state with the imperial heritage of the Mughals.
The Red Fort was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, and the management of the complex is shared between the Archaeological Survey of India, the Ministry of Culture, and a number of specialised bodies. The major conservation challenges of the past few decades have included the restoration of the surviving Mughal structures, the management of the large visitor numbers, and the resolution of the conflicts between the modern ceremonial use of the fort and the conservation of the historic fabric. The substantial loss of the original interior of the residential portion of the fort has been partially addressed by a series of archaeological investigations and conservation projects, and the surviving elements of the imperial complex, including the Diwan-i-Khas, the Diwan-i-Aam, the Hayat Baksh garden, and the principal gateways, are now accessible to the public.
For the broader context of the imperial building tradition, the Mughal architecture overview pillar offers a synthetic account. The cluster pages on the Taj Mahal, the Mughal palaces tradition, the Mughal gardens, and the Mughal tombs treat the related themes in greater depth. The biographical and political context of the building is treated in the Shah Jahan cluster, and the post-Mughal history of the fort is treated in the decline overview and the rebellion of 1857 cluster.
Sources
- Yashodhara Dalmia, The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad (Niyogi Books, 2011).
- Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India (1992), pp. 240–55.