Description
Its towers are the resting place of the sun... Its avenues are so full of pleasure that its lanes are like the roads of paradise. Its climate is beautiful and pleasant.. -1 So wrote Chandar Bhan Brahman of Shahjahanabad, the new capital of the Mughal Empire. A noble at the court of the Emperor Shahjahan, Chandar Bhan composed these lines in 1648/9 to commemorate the inauguration of the imperial palace-fortress. The new city, built between 1639 and 1648, sprawled along the banks of the river Jamuna in the southeastern sector of the Delhi triangle. While Shahjahanabad remained the home of the Mughal emperor until 1858, it probably ceased to be an imperial capital after 1739-the year Nadir Shah and his Persians captured, burned, and ransacked the city.