The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Delhi

Also known in the past as Dihli or Dilli and, in some medieval records, as Yoginipura, Delhi is the capital and third largest city of the Republic of India. It occupies a triangular area bounded on the west and south by a low-lying spur of the Aravalli mountains and on the east by the river Yamuna. The triangular riverine plain contains several settlements stretching from the prehistoric into the modern age.

Although the ancient history of Delhi is always linked with Indraprastha, the capital of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata epic (ca. 1500–1000 BCE), no archaeological trace of the city has been discovered. Instead a variety of smaller settlements attest to the occupation of the area from the fifth century BCE without leading to full scale urbanization until, at the earliest, the 11th and 12th centuries CE, when the Tomara and Chawhan chieftains established their relatively humble headquarters in the southern reaches of the Delhi plain.

It was not until the 1220s that Delhi emerged as the capital of a realm comprising much of North India. Its rise to political prominence coincided with Chingiz Khan’s invasions of Transoxiana, eastern Iran, and Afghanistan and a vast influx of refugees into the subcontinent and Delhi. This conjuncture of events contributed to the reputation of the city as a sanctuary with a sacred aura, known by such names as Qubbat al-Islam (or Quwwat al-Islam, The stronghold of Islam) and Hazrat-i Dehli (Her Highness Delhi). It was not just the center of a political realm extending from Bengal in the east to Sindh in the west but also a refuge for aristocrats, literary luminaries, and the pious from the Persian-speaking world.

Delhi remained the paramount political power in North India during the 13th and 14th centuries with somewhat reduced fortune in the 15th. The Delhi Sultans constructed their cities in its riverine plain or on the foothills of the Aravalli spur, and by the 15th century “Delhi” contained several settlements of different sizes and population densities. In the 16th century the Lodi sultans (r. 1451–1526) shifted their capital to Agra. The Mughal emperors Zahir al-Din Babur (r. 1526–30), Jalal al-Din Akbar (r. 1556–1605), and Nur al-Din Jahangir (r. 1605–27) visited Delhi but did not choose it as their capital. Nasir al-Din Humayun (r. 1530–40 and 1555–56) briefly resided there, but it was not until 1648 and the construction of the new city in the northern part of the riverine plain by Shihab al-Din Shah Jahan that the imperial capital returned to Delhi. The new capital was named Shahjahanabad after its eponymous founder and was the largest, most complex and expensive city to be constructed in the Delhi region.

Although its morphology, architectural style, and decorations have been celebrated as the apogee of Mughal creative accomplishment, the life of its bazaars, its quarters, and a diffused cultural patronage developed slowly and only as the heavy hand of Mughal administration weakened. The city was looted twice in the 18th century but recovered quickly. It came under British administrative supervision in the early 19th century and the following half-century of peace provided for a great literary efflorescence. This ended abruptly with the 1857 uprising against the British under the nominal leadership of the Mughal emperor. The uprising was ruthlessly suppressed. The British exiled the Mughal emperor, mercilessly punished the “rebellious” residents of the city, denuded the city of its gardens, and carried out wide-scale demolitions and expulsion of residents, eventually shifting their capital to Calcutta.

The demise of Shahjahanabad as a center of culture, social life, and political authority was confirmed when the British started constructing New Delhi as their capital. The new colonial capital was modeled on architectural paradigms first tested in South Africa and Australia and, other than in its decorative aspects, retained little of the urban traditions of the Delhi Sultanate or Shahjahanabad. Independent India inherited this city as its capital in 1947, a transition that was disrupted by partition and communal clashes when large numbers of the city’s Muslim population fled and were replaced by displaced Punjabi refugees from West Pakistan. The demographic change in the population brought new residents to the city who were far removed from its history and culture. Hazrat-i Dehli meant little to the new residents of the capital of independent India, a past of the city that resides uneasily with its present.