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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…
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.
This study of Shahjahanabad focuses on the period 1639–1739 and fills an important gap in the history of premodern urbanization. Although there have been sophisticated treatments of premodern cities in West Asia, China, and Japan, there has been, up to now, no serious analysis of premodern Indian cities. The works that are available are descriptive and diffuse, showing little awareness of either urban theory or contemporary social-science techniques.
In addition to its contributions to the fields of Mughal Indian history and the history of urban development in India, this analysis sheds light on the field of premodern urbanization generally.
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