Twilight of the Sultanate c14.s4.26

c14.s4.26

⁷⁷ Tradition gives a long antiquity to Agra. It is said to have been a state prison in the time of Raja Kans, uncle of Lord Krishna, who ruled at Mathura. (Abdul Latif, *Agra Historical and Descriptive*, Calcutta, 1896, 2). When Mahmūd of Ghaznī invaded Hindustan he so ruined the place that it was reduced to an insignificant village. Later on it regained some of its old importance, and a Hindu prince Bādal Singh built a fort Bādalgarh there in A. D. 1475. Cunningham, Arch. Sur. Rep., IV, 1871-72, 98 n., 137. According to 'Abdulla it was formerly only a village of the district of Bayana (T.D., 42), but that is not correct, for it was a walled town when it was captured from Haibat Khan in 1492. Thus it seems to have been already well populated when Sikandar Lodī founded his new capital there (J.I.H., VII, 131), to justify mention of an earthquake on 6 July, 1505 (3 Safar, 911 H) when "buildings fell down and hills began to shake... and people thought the day of resurrection had come." T.A., I, 325-26; Ferishta, I, 183; T.D., 68-69; Badaonī, I, 319-20; Ranking, 1, 421 & n.; *Makhzan*, 61 (a & b). Whatever the importance or population of Agra, it was Sikandar Lodī who rebuilt it. There he founded the Sikandara which is called after him and built a fine *bārādarī* or summer-house, afterwards converted into the tomb of Maryam Zamānī, Jahāngīr's mother. But the new capital took time to be as good as Delhi as the coins of Sikandar Lodī struck at Agra are not so fine as those of Delhi (J.(P.)A.S.B., XI, 1915, 479). Akbar (A.N., II, 246-47) and Jahāngīr (*Tuzuk*, Rogers and Beveridge, I, 4) revived its glory. When Shāhjahān retransferred his capital to Delhi, one reason for doing so was Agra's overgrowth of population, narrowness of streets and want of space in the fort. Arch. Sur. Rep., 1911-12, 2.