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Description: | Photograph of the Lal Qila or Red Fort in Delhi from the Lee-Warner Collection, taken by John Edward Saché in the 1870s. The fort was built between 1639 and 1648 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (reigned 1628-1658) as the citadel of his new capital city, Shajahanabad. The fort lies at the eastern edge of the city and is named for its vast fortification wall built of red sandstone. The battlemented wall is strengthened with bastions and crowned by chhatris and turrets. It was originally surrounded on three sides by a moat, now dry, and on the fourth by the River Jumna. The buildings within include a bazaar, a court of public audience and the private palace apartments, a series of exquisite white marble pavilions arranged on a high terrace along the eastern edge of the fort overlooking the Jumna. A water channel known as the Nahr-i-Behisht or "Stream of Paradise" passes through them and they overlook internal "char bagh" gardens to the north. This is a distant view of the fort from the Jami Masjid, the main congregational mosque of Shahjahanabad also built by Shah Jahan to the south-west. The photograph is taken from an album containing mainly architectural and topographical views of sites throughout western and northern India, including a number of E.D. Lyon's views of Ahmadabad. The album was formerly in the collection of Sir William Lee-Warner (1846-1912), who
served in the Indian Civil Service and was a Member of the Council of India between 1902 and 1912. | License: | http://www.bl.uk/services/copy/permission.html | Rights holder: | British Library | Source: | Collect Britain | Creator: | Sach��, John Edward | Identifier: | http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personal... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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