Firozabad - Where the Djinns Grant Wishes!!

Nestled between a cricket ground and Ring Road, lies the ruins of Firozabad or Firoz Shah Kotla - the city built by the third Tughlaq ruler Feroz Shah Tughlaq. 

It is said that when Mohd. Bin Tughlaq died, the noblemen had to coax his reluctant cousin Firoz Shah Tughlaq to ascend the throne as he was planning to become a dervish. 

Yet, his rule is recorded as one of the most prosperous one and is described by chroniclers as a period of abundance, happy subjects, cheap goods and flourishing villages. 

A native saying goes, three things are needed to build a city - Dariya (a river), Badal (rain - brought by clouds) and Badshah (an emperor). In the 14th century, in the year 1354, Firoz Shah Tughlaq settled the city of Firozabad on the bank of river Yamuna and built himself this fortified palace complex as part of his capital city. The city doesn't exist anymore. What remains here are fragmented remnants of a series of walls, courtyards and broken gateways apparently leading nowhere. As against the delicacy of intricate artwork of the Mughals, the Tughlaq structures are huge, blunt, somewhat stern, hauntingly spectacular and magnificent their own unique way. The emperor's personal quarters and those of his wives were situated along the riverfront, which has now shifted course and has been replaced by the busy Ring Road.

Successor of two most talked about and controversial in Indian history - Firoz Shah's reign heralded the weakening of Tughaq dynasty. Though his reign of 40 years experienced a decline in the military prowess of his kingdom due to his reluctance to command armies and wage wars with his neighbors to increase his kingdom, it witnessed a period of architectural blossoming as he was credited by contemporary historians to have created numerous gardens around Delhi, several towns, built many mosques and villages, reservoirs, dams, hospitals, public baths and bridges.  He even reconstructed the two upper stories of Qutub Minar as it got damaged by lightning. Firoz Shah was said to be well known for three things: his passion for good governance, hunting and building. 

And his fourth hobby seemingly was collecting slaves; for according to the records, he had gathered more than a lakh of them in his lifetime !!

According to common belief, benevolent djinns now live in its dark labyrinths. Faithfuls throng here every Thursday to ask for wishes to be granted by these djinns. The range of their benevolence is believed to be from curing illness, to getting a job, reuniting families, to bringing missing people back home to something as small as winning a local cricket match!! Djinns are formless invisible beings who are created from smokeless fire by the Almighty and have the power to grant boons. 

There are seven underground vaulted windowless rooms called the sat-dar. In these dark corridor, in the dim light of flickering candle lights, and thick smoke of incense and fragrance of flowers, the devoted followers gather to move from chamber to chamber and write petitions with their requests on papers, spelling out the exact nature of their problems and stick it to walls of the recesses, innumerable crevices and alcoves blackened by the soot of oil lamps. 

Jami Masjid: Like every Islamic town has its own congregation mosque built for their respective cities, Ferozabad too had its own - which stands testimony to its glorious past. Its walls are mostly gone now, the prayer arches are totally in ruins, the cloisters on the sides of the courtyard and the prayer hall have all disappeared with time, and just a skeleton of its former grandeur remains today. It is believed that when Timur raided Delhi, he offered prayers here and was so impressed with this building, that he took away some of its artisans and masons to Samarkand where he built a mosque exactly of the same pattern. 

At the center of the courtyard of this mosque, Feroz Shah had described some policies of his governance. He had recorded that he had put a stop to physical tortures as means of punishment and had waived off petty taxes from common people. He desired to look after the welfare of his subjects and he did all he could to keep them happy. 

It is also mentioned that on becoming the ruler, he had sought letters of forgiveness from those who had been tortured or killed by his ancestor Mohd Bin Tughlaq, after offering them adequate compensations and had placed them in his tomb in a box believing that this act would grant spiritual mercy for his predecessor in his afterlife. 

Minar i Zarin: (Column of Gold) : 

While on one of his hunting expeditions in Meerat, Firoz Shah came across this massive monolith and was intrigued by it. Not knowing what to do with it, he got this 13 meters high and 27 tonnes heavy pillar excavated by hundreds of men and had it transported on a 42 wheeled cart using numerous pulleys and revolving wheels with 200 people pulling each rope attached to each wheel. Large boats were used to carry it across the Yamuna at this spot to have it erected here again on a three storied pyramidal structure. The pillar is similar to another one on the northern ridge which was also brought by Firoz Shah. 

This pillar made of sandstone has been polished so skilfully that even after 2300 years it continues to shine like gold giving it the name Minar i Zarin or column of gold. Much later the British deciphered the inscriptions on it as Brahmi script and were interpreted as Ashoka's edicts in Pali language. 

Sirat - i - Firozshahi narrates: 

... No bird can fly as high as its top and no arrows can reach its middle ... O God! How could they have painted it all over with gold that it appears to people like the golden morning!!

Notwithstanding the existing inscriptions, many legends continue to float around regarding its magical properties and some people still believe it to be the walking stick of the Pandava prince Bheem. Another belief is that the chief of the djinns, named as Laat Waale baba (the master of the pillar or laat) dwells inside this pillar and thus it is common to find the eager faithfuls touching this third century BC pillar that extols the virtues of Buddhist Dhamma and praying for granting their wishes. 

The Baoli:

Towards the northwest of the Ashokan Pillar, lies a large circular baoli or step well, surrounded by underground rooms which was believed to be used by the royalty to cool off during the summer months as they bathed in the waters of this well. The water supply ran through pipelines connecting the river Yamuna. 

Dargah Qutub Sahib - Thus Sleeps the Great Saint

Qutub-ud-din Bakhtiyar Kaki, born in 1173 A.D. in Iran, was an Islamic Dervish, the spiritual successor of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer, had his original name as Bakhtiyar and was one of the most famous sufi saints of the world. He was at the height of his popularity during the reign of Iltutmish. The Qutub Minar was named after him. The saint was fed with 'kak' or cake from heaven and thus he took the name 'kaki'. 

Popularly known as Qutub Sahib, this was the oldest and one of the most revered sufi shrines of Delhi and has been regarded as a magnet for the devout, the learned and the powerful for centuries. The saint preached values of universal brotherhood and made sufiism an important movement during his lifetime which attracted followers of all spheres. Nearly all the rulers and emperors who ruled Delhi, the mighty, famed and the powerful from Alauddin Khilji, Mohammad Bin Tughlaq,  Firoz Shah Tughlaq, Sher Shah Suri and Aurangzeb to Bahadur Shah Zafar sought the blessing of this simple holy man with humility and held him in the highest esteem.  
                                                                                                                                                                    

Such an exalted divine was he that his mentor Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti had decreed that anyone coming to seek his blessings must pay homage to Qutub Sahib first. This practice is still maintained as the pilgrims from haj even now make it a point to visit the final resting place of this illustrious saint to pay respect and those who attend the annual urs festival at Ajmer visit this dargah first on their way - even after 800 years of his passing away. 

A few weeks before his death, Hazrat Khwaja Qutbuddin was returning home after the Id prayer when he stayed at a place on the way and told his companions: "I feel the smell of love coming out of this place." The owner of the land was summoned immediately and it was purchased. This is the same place where the great saint was buried and where his illustrious Dargah stands upto this day. Even after the passing away of this saint, the dargah remains a place of pure faith for his followers. Many nobles and royals lie buried in the vicinity of his final resting place. The faquirs and mureeds who throng this place now have wondrous tales about the life of this great saint.  No one believes he is dead. They believe he is just wrapped a veil around himself and is visible to God and the blessed ones.  

The ardent faithful still believe that the city of Delhi is protected by this saint and as long as his mazaar remains, no harm can come to Delhi as he showers blessings on this city everyday, which became his home. 

Yogmaya Temple - Wrapped in Layers of Time

Hidden in the mystic alleys of Mehrauli village stands the 5000 year old historic Yogmaya temple - a temple dedicated to Goddess Yogmaya, sister of Lord Krishna. Many legends are associated with this place of worship. One says that it was originally built by the pandavas of the Mahabharata epic. Mehrauli was also known as yoginipura after this temple, according to 12th century Jain scriptures. 

According to another legend, Yogmaya was the sister of Lord Krishna born to his foster mother Yashoda. When the cruel king Kansa tried to kill her, she flew away and predicted that the child who would eventually kill him is born already. She then established a home for herself here at the Aravallis. 

Another local legend also says Krishna and Arjun came to pray here during the Mahabharata war after Abhimanyu (Arjun's son) was killed by Jayadrath. Arjun took a vow that he would kill the slayer of his son by next evening. But the following day the Kauravas continued to keep him away from Arjun to protect him from his wrath. Arjun and Krishna came to this temple to pray at such a time to ask for blessing from the Goddess. With her magical powers or 'maya' she created an illusionary eclipse that gave Arjuna the opportunity to kill Jayadrath.  

The temple that we see today was constructed in the 19th century during the Mughal rule with support from Lala Sethmal.  People living around this temple now are actually taking care of this place of worship. It is said that all these people come from one common ancestor hundreds of years ago and are still carrying on with the traditions and customs of the ancient times, voluntarily and amicably with unflagging devotion even today. 

Adham Khan's Tomb

Popularly known as Bhul bhulaiya, the tomb of Adham Khan and his mother Maham Anga, constructed in 1951 by emperor Akbar, lies at the entrance of Mehrauli village.

Adham Khan was a general in the army of the Mughal emperor Akbar and the son of his wet nurse Maham Anga, a very influential and powerful woman of her times. When Akbar's favoured general Atgah Khan became the Prime Minister in the imperial courts, Maham Anga was angered. Adham Khan could not bear to see his mother unhappy and in a fit of jealousy and anger, murdered him. Emperor Akbar punished him instantly by throwing him down the 40 feet high ramparts of the Agra Fort not once but twice as he was found to be alive after the first fall. Soon after, his mother also died of grief. Akbar sent the bodies of Adham Khan and Maham Anga to Delhi with full honor and respect and built this tomb where he buried the mother next to her son. 

The chamber is octagonal in shape with a dome in the architectural style of the Lodi dynasty, whom the Mughals considered as traitors, ironically. The tomb lies on a raised platform and is surrounded by a corridor that has three semi circular openings on each side. Since visitors used to often lose their way through these passages hence this tomb is locally known as 'bhul bhulaiya' or maze. 

And this is not all. This tomb has seen a lot more. 

A British Officer named Blake converted this tomb into his private residence and removed the graves in order to make way for his dining space. Even after his death it was being used as a Rest House for the British. Later it was converted into a post office and then to a police station. Finally Lord Curzon took initiative to restore the monument, and ordered to vacate it. He restored the grave of Adham Khan back to the original position. The mother's grave however could not be restored as nobody could identify what could have been the exact resting place of this powerful woman who died grieving for her son. 

It is considered bad for women to visit this tomb. This is because of the curse of queen Rupmati whose lover Baz Bhahdur was killed by Adham Khan during his invasion of Mandu. Roopmati also died soon, cursing Adham Khan saying that no woman would ever visit the tomb of the man who was responsible for the death of two lovers. To this day it is considered an ill omen for women to visit this tomb as it is supposed to mar conjugal happiness. 

Today this historic place is a home for homeless beggars, jobless people and stray dogs, carefully masquerading the turbulent history of bloodshed, murder, jealousy and intrigue of times gone by.  

Gandhak ki Baoli

Just as you cross the Mehrauli Bus Terminus, you turn left inside a narrow nondescript lane leading to Gandhak ki Baoli, nearly hidden among clusters of buildings, shops and dhabas. 
Baolis were stores of water for people of yore, when there was no system of modern water supply through pipes. Gandhak ki Baoli or the well of sulfur is all of five stories deep and has a circular wall at its southern end. 
Legend says that one day emperor Iltutmish (responsible for completion of the Qutub Minar) visited the sufi saint Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki to pay his obeisance and found him in a disheveled state. On asking why he has not bathed, the saint replied that he could not because he needs a place to do so. On hearing this, Iltutmish immediately ordered for the construction of a well and thus it was completed in record time. 
The well got its name because of the smell of sulfur in its water and was believed to have medicinal properties. Until some years back divers used to jump from its top stories to retrieve coins which the devotees threw into the water. Today the water is nearly non existent and is not even usable. 

Tughlaqabad, the Curse of a Saint

Ya base gujjar, ya rahe ujjar.' (May [this city] be the abode of nomads or remain in wilderness.)

These words, with which the great Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya cursed Ghiyas-ud-din's city, seem to still echo all over the ghostly ruins of Tughlaqabad. The citadel frowns down ominously like some Gothic palace all over the Qutub-Badarpur road and seems to prefer its splendid isolation, which is of course not exactly what Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq had in mind when he started out building it. It would have broken the old sultan's heart if he had seen just how swiftly the saint's curse went into action; soon after his death in fact.

Tughlaqabad fort, situated as it was on high rocky ground, was ideally located

to withstand sieges. Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq helped matters along by putting up formidable walls which, though short on aesthetic value, are excellent examples of solid unimaginative masonry and not the type that any invading army could hope to scale in a hurry. Tughlaq put ramparts towering at heights of anywhere between 9m (30ft) to 15.2m (50ft), and rising up to 29.8m (98ft) around the citadel, between himself and the Mongols.

  

It seems that even when he was far from being a king, Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq had dreamed of raising his city, Tughlaqabad. Earlier, Ghiyas-ud-din had been a general (he rose to being the governor of an important province like Punjab, but that's another story) in Ala-ud-din Khalji's army. Once while on the road with Ala-ud-din, Ghiyas-ud-din, on spotting this area, mentioned to the sultan what an ideal setting it seemed to provide for a new city. Upon this the king indulgently (and, knowing Ala-ud-din, also perhaps patronizingly) replied, 'When you become king, build it.' Knowing fully well, as every boss, that while he was around there was not a shadow of a chance of anyone else taking his place. After the death of Ala-ud-din, various events conspired to put the general on the throne at last. Then he fulfilled his long-cherished dream.

The crumbling ruins of the Tughlaqabad Fort convey a sense of lost grandeur and remains as the only witness of the embattled past and the terror and valor associated with that period in Delhi. Many unforeseen incidents took place during the construction of this structure. The king had a spat with the great saint Nizam-ud-din regarding the laborers who were to work on this project. The king took away all the workers who were working on the saint's shrine at the time, for completing his own fort, thus incurring the wrath of the saint. The saint cursed the king and indeed the king was mysteriously murdered while on his way to Delhi in 1325. Almost immediately after the death of the king, this fort lost all its former glory as his son Jauna (Ulugh Khan) succeeded him under the title Mohammad-bin-Tughlaq and wanted to build his own new city instead of following in his father's footsteps. The fort was abandoned unceremoniously in the year 1327 and strangely, true to the curse of the saint, it soon became a haunt for the Gujjars tending their cattle within the abandoned fort of Ghiyas-ud-din.

The Hauz of Alauddin

There's a lot more to Hauz Khas than the posh market, the fashion street and the village. The complex is centered around a hauz or tank of area 28 hectares built by Alauddin Khilji, named Hauz-e-Alai, which took care of the water needs of village around it. After his death, the Hauz was abandoned and it became stagnant as the water channels got silted. Firoz Shah Tughlaq took over the responsibility of reviving this 

tank in the 14th century so that it can be used again. Not only he cleared up the tank, he planned a layout of an L-shaped structure starting with a mosque, the Madrasa-e- Firoz Shahi, a college for Islamic theology, calligraphy, mathematics, religious law etc by best teachers and scholars invited by Firoz Shah from Islamic countries all over the world.

Firoz Shah's  tomb is in the junction of the L shaped structure of the 'madrasa' he commissioned, overlooking the Hauz and also the tallest in height. 

The tomb contains four unmarked graves; three are made of marble and the fourth, near the east door, is of rubble and plaster. The central grave is that of Firoz Khan. The other two marble graves, which are similar to the central one, are ascribed to the son and grandson of Firoz Shah. 

Though Firoz Shah inherited a disintegrating empire with nearly empty coffers, thanks to the capricious reign of his predecessor Muhammad Bin Tughlak with his disastrous ruling policies, it didn't stop him from beautifying Delhi. History says he, during his reign, constructed 1200 gardens around Delhi...200 towns, 40 mosques, 30 villages, 30 reservoirs, 50 dams, 100 hospitals, 100 public baths and 150 bridges. 

Established in 1352, the Madrasa was one of the leading institutions of Islamic learning in the Delhi Sultanate. It was also considered the largest and best equipped center of Islamic studies in the world.  The village surrounding the Madarsa was also called Tarababad (city of joy).  It takes a little stretch in our imagination to feel the heart of the area, that was once thronged by artists and scholars from all across the sub continent.

Here’s what contemporary poet, Mutahhar has to say of the madrasa:

‘The moment I entered this blessed building through the gate, I saw a level space as wide as the plain of the world. The courtyard was soul-animating, and its expanse was life-giving. Its dust was musk-scented, and its fragrance possessed the odour of amber. There was verdure everywhere and hyacinths, basils, roses, and tulips were blooming and were beautifully arranged so far as the human eye could reach. It seemed as if the last year’s produce had in advance the current year’s fruits, such as pomegranates, oranges, guavas, quinces, apples, and grapes. Nightingales, so to say, were singing their melodious songs everywhere. It appeared as if they had guitars in their talons and flutes in their beaks.’

Now the tank is a few yards away from the building but initially its water would have lapped at the madrasa walls. One can see steps leading to the water. On the other side of the tank is a ruined structure called the ‘munda gumbad’ or the bald/roofless dome. It is believed that this pavilion once stood within the tank. So we can assume that the tank would have been at least twice its present size.

The architecture of Firoz Shah is stern, austre, utilitarian, hauntingly lovely in the night, and warningly forbidding during daytime. The glazed tiles came off a long time ago; now only the naked walls stand tall, like the spirit of this prolific builder and architect king, in spite of validating the lack of skilled masons and sufficient capital of his times. 

The pavilions in the garden are significant srtuctures as well, as they are believed to be the graves of teachers who taught the students of the madarsa. Pavilions also acted like classrooms where the students could sit and study in the presence of their departed teachers.