Badarpur Sarai

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Badarpur sarai, around which the urban village of Badarpur grew, was a rest-stop on the road between Delhi and Agra. All that visibly remains today of the 18th c. sarai are three gateways, remnants of the enclosing wall and a mosque, which has been much altered since. Till a couple of years ago, Delhiites may have spotted the southern gateway while stranded in the frequent traffic jams on Mathura Road here, but since the large elevated intersection was built at Badarpur, this sighting has been given a bypass. Continue reading →

Qadam Sharif And Nearby Qutb Road Structures

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Qadam Sharif was originally built by Firoz Shah Tughlaq (14th c.) as a tomb for his son Fateh Khan, but the structure has been heavily altered since. The tomb, now located in the Pahar Ganj area, was enclosed inside an irregular kot (fortification) with gateways to the north and east. Little remains of these fortifications except the eastern gateway and parts of the northern gateway. Both were double gateways. Continue reading →

Too Close For Comfort

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On one of my recent visits to Hauz Khas village I had been reminded of just how close the new construction is to the 14th century madrassa there, so I thought I’d put up some earlier photos I had taken of that proximity conundrum. This situation is repeated so often in Delhi and everywhere else in India. Just too close for comfort. Continue reading →

Dilli Darshan: Mehrauli

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Mehrauli is a large urban village that grew around the shrine of the 13th c. Sufi saint Bakhtiyar Kaki, much like Nizamuddin grew around the shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya (also 13th c. though a little later than Bakhtiyar Kaki). Kaki’s shrine was just outside the walls of Lal Kot, the fortified city within which the Qutb Minar is situated, and Mehrauli has grown right up to the edge of the now ruined fortifications. Continue reading →

Dilli Darshan: Sayyid and Lodhi Delhi

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I had thought that this leg of Dilli Darshaning was going to be of interest mostly only because it would take me to localities in south Delhi that I’d never been to before, while the buildings themselves would be nothing to write home about (or in this case write a blog post about). This is because common lore dictates that Delhi under the Sayyids and Lodhis became a “Necropolis”, a city filled with tombs and graves and nothing much else. Continue reading →

Dilli Darshan: Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s Delhi

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In the post previous to this one I had said that I’m not doing my Dilli Darshaning chronologically any more because most of the sites I’m visiting from this point on are very layered, in that they contain structures from various historical periods and architectural styles. So of course, the very next post (i.e. this one) has to be about sites with buildings from a very specific time in history and very specific architectural style, and which are much older than Purana Qila and Dilli Sher Shahi from the previous post! What to do? Nonetheless, here goes. :) Continue reading →

Comparing the Begampur and Jaunpur mosques

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As always, click on image to go to its flickr set

Just a small post to note possible similarities between the Begampur mosque’s pishtaq (the protruding central element on the facade) and the oversized pishtaqs of the Jaunpur mosques (such as the Atala masjid used as an example here). Both are Tughlaq era mosques (though Jaunpur is far away from Delhi) built in the mid-14th c. (Begampur) and late-14th c. (Atala). Of course the Atala mosque is much more ornamented and stylistically there are obvious differences, but the side-turret effect is similar, as is the batter effect, and to me the basic underlying design and massing is very similar. Hmm? Continue reading →

A brief history of Delhi, to explain it’s urban villages

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This post explains the development of Delhi’s “urban villages” over the past few decades, and is a supplement to the Back to Dilli Darshaning post below.

To understand the idea of the urban village in Delhi, a short primer on the history of Delhi is in order. Some of you might have heard/read this stuff before at various venues, but I love to tell this tale, so here goes! Continue reading →