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Description: | Photograph of the Palace and Tank (reservoir) at Alwar, from an album of 80 albumen prints taken by Eugene Clutterbuck Impey. The principality of Alwar is in the north-east of Rajasthan, bordering the Delhi region. Alwar town is sited in a valley overlooked by a fortress stretching along the high ridges of the Aravallis to the north-west of it. Alwar's strategic position resulted in it changing hands several times, it was fought over by the Rajputs, the Mughals and the Jats from the 10th to the 19th centuries. From this it is evident that the state of Alwar has an old history, with tradition linking it even further to the ancient kingdom of Matsya associated with the Pandava brothers of the Hindu epic 'Mahabharata'. However, the city itself is more recent, founded by the Kachhwaha Rajput prince Rao Pratap Singh of Machheri in the 1770s as the state capital. He had wrested the 10th century Bala Qila Fort from the Jats of Bharatpur who had briefly overrun it. The picture shows part of the City Palace begun in the late 18th century by Rao Pratap's successor Bhaktawar Singh, which lies below the fort and consists of a complex of many courts dating up to the 1850s, all facing a stepped rectangular reservoir with many chhattris or pavilions protruding into the water. | License: | http://www.bl.uk/services/copy/permission.html | Rights holder: | British Library | Subjects: | Temples Resevoirs And Tanks | Source: | Collect Britain | Creator: | Impey, Eugene Clutterbuck | Identifier: | http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personal... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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