Shahjahanabad

• 1. Introduction

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  Shahjahanabad was born in 1638, when Shah Jahan commanded his chief architect, Ustad Ahmad Lahori, to build an entirely new walled capital city. Construction finished in 1649, and for more than two centuries, this fortified city served as the beating heart of the Mughal Empire. Today, most people know it simply as Old Delhi. But that nickname only came into use because a newer, grander Delhi was built just to the south-west. The old name points toward something older, stranger, and far more layered. What happened within these walls over those two centuries? What survived the collapse of the empire, and what was lost? And what does it mean that a city built for one of history's great dynasties now sells spices, paranthas, and marble-stoppered fizzy drinks to the same crowded lanes where Mughal processions once passed?

• 2. A City Built by Command

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  Ustad Ahmad Lahori received Shah Jahan's commission in 1638, tasked with creating a fortified city that would outshine Agra as a Mughal capital. The project took eleven years to complete. At its core sat the Lal Qila, the Red Fort, positioned so the city fanned out roughly as a quarter-circle with the fort at the focal point. Running west from the fort, the main boulevard was called Chandni Chowk, meaning Moonlight Square, a name earned because canals running through its center were engineered to reflect moonlight at night. Those canals were later removed. The surrounding walls measured 12 feet wide and 26 feet tall. Originally built of mud, they were replaced with red stone in 1657. Fourteen gates pierced the perimeter, from Kashmiri Gate in the north to Delhi Gate in the south, with the walls enclosing roughly 1,500 acres in total. In the Mughal period, every gate was locked at night. The Bahadur Shahi Gate, which connects Salimgarh Fort to the Red Fort, was the last gate built in the walled city, commissioned by the final Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar.

• 3. Layers of Rule

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  The land under Shahjahanabad had been inhabited and governed for centuries before Shah Jahan ever issued his command. Delhi Sultanate rulers controlled the site from 1206 until the Mughal dynasty replaced them in 1526. Five successive dynasties held power during that span: the Mamluk dynasty from 1206 to 1290, the Khalji dynasty from 1290 to 1320, the Tughlaq dynasty from 1320 to 1414, the Sayyid dynasty from 1414 to 1451, and the Lodi dynasty from 1451 to 1526. The southern part of what would become Shahjahanabad overlaps territory once settled by the Tughlaqs in the 14th century. Even the Mughals did not hold power without interruption. Between roughly 1538 and 1555, the Sur dynasty seized control from the emperor Humayun, forcing the Mughals into exile before they retook the subcontinent. The Khooni Darwaza, a gate just south of the walled city, was originally built by Sher Shah Suri of that same Sur dynasty. When the Mughal Empire finally fell to British forces after the revolt of 1857, the British shifted their Indian capital east to Calcutta in Bengal, where it remained until 1911. Lutyens' Delhi, built just south-west of the old city, was formally inaugurated as a new national capital in 1931.

• 4. Streets and What Lives in Them

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  Carr Stephen, writing in 1876, described Chandni Chowk as a grand street laid out by Jahanara, the daughter of Shah Jahan, with a canal of Ali Mardan running through its center, shaded on both sides by trees. Jahanara later built a garden and a sarai on the same street. Stephen noted the houses around the central square were of uniform height, ornamented with arched doors and painted verandahs. By his time, the Municipal Clock Tower stood where the tank had once been; that clock tower no longer exists, though the location is still called Ghantaghar. The sarai of Jahanara Begum has since been replaced by the city town hall. North of Chandni Chowk stood the mansion of Begum Samru, built in 1806, now known as Bhagirath Palace. South of the street, Dariba Kalan leads toward Jama Masjid. The stretch from the Lahori Gate of the Red Fort to near Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib was once called Urdu Bazaar, meaning the encampment market, and it is credited as a place where the Urdu language took shape. Publications like Din Dunia magazine helped sustain the language in print form long after the empire that nurtured it had dissolved. The streets themselves remain narrow, winding, and densely built, with historic shops, havelis, and religious sites constructed directly into the lanes.

• 5. Sacred and Contested Ground

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  On the 11th of November 1675, the ninth Sikh Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, was beheaded on the orders of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. His execution was punishment for resisting the forced conversion of Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains to Islam. Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib was built on that exact site in Old Delhi and stands there today. Aurangzeb's own daughter built Zinat-ul Masjid in Daryaganj in 1710. In Ballimaran, Gali Qasim Jan contains the haveli of the poet Mirza Ghalib, as well as the haveli of Hakim Ajmal Khan. The Haksar Haveli in Bazar Sitaram was the site of Jawaharlal Nehru's 1916 marriage to Kamla Nehru. The Haveli Naharwali in Kucha Sadullah Khan is recorded as the birthplace of Pervez Musharraf, former president of Pakistan. Razia Sultana, the only woman to rule the Delhi Sultanate, has her tomb near Kalan Masjid, itself a 14th-century structure. St. James Church, near Kashmiri Gate, was built in 1836 by Colonel James Skinner and is considered Delhi's oldest church. The Partition Museum now occupies the Dara Shukoh Library Building, once part of the palace of the Mughal prince Dara Shukoh, making it a space that holds the memory of both Mughal royalty and the painful division of 1947.

• 6. Markets That Outlasted Empires

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  Khari Baoli opened as a wholesale market for dry fruits, spices, and herbs in 1850, and is now identified as Asia's biggest spice market. The hardware market in Chawri Bazaar opened a decade earlier, in 1840, making it one of the first wholesale markets in Old Delhi. The Phool Mandi, or Flower Market of Daryaganj, was established in 1869 and continues to serve the area despite the density that surrounds it. Gulab Singh Johrimal, a perfumery established in Dariba Kalan in 1816, began as an attar manufacturing business and later expanded into incense, compounding, and toilet soap, with a retail outlet eventually added in Chandni Chowk. Harnarain Gopinath, a pickle and murabba shop in Khari Baoli, opened in 1857, is described as one of India's first commercially available pickle brands and is said to have served Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi before growing into the global brand Harnarains International. Pandit Gaya Prasad arrived from Agra in 1876 with a single shop selling hot paranthas. The enterprise grew through his family until the lane itself took the name Paranthe Wali Gali. By the time of the source, the sixth generation was running four of the sixteen shops that had filled that lane. Haji Karimuddin returned to Delhi in 1911, inspired to open a dhaba for people arriving to witness the coronation. In 1913, he established Karim Hotel in Gali Kababian near Jama Masjid, which became one of the city's most recognized culinary destinations.

• 7. Banta and the Codd Bottle

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  Banta, a fizzy drink characterized by its codd-neck glass bottle and a marble stopper pushed into the bulbous neck to unseal it, has existed in Old Delhi since 1872. The bottle design was patented that same year in London by engineer Hiram Codd, specifically to seal carbonated drinks. The design found a long second life in Old Delhi. During the Indian independence movement, protesters repurposed the bottles as improvised projectiles by adding calcium hydroxide to the liquid, which led to the bottles being banned in several cities at some point before 1947. The drink survived those bans and survived the end of empire, and can still be found in the lanes of Old Delhi today.