Agra
Agra is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. It is also the part of Braj region. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra is the fourth-most populous city in Uttar Pradesh and twenty-third most populous city in India.
Agra's notable historical period began during Sikandar Khan Lodi's reign, but the golden age of the city began with the Mughals in the early 16th century. Agra was the foremost city of the Indian subcontinent and the capital of the Mughal Empire under Mughal emperors Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Under Mughal rule, Agra became a centre for learning, arts, commerce, and religion, and saw the construction of the Agra Fort, Sikandra and Agra's most prized monument, the Taj Mahal, constructed between 1632 and 1648 by Shah Jahan in remembrance of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. With the decline of the Mughal empire in the late 18th century, the city fell first to Marathas and later to the East India Company. After Independence, Agra has developed into an industrial town, with a booming tourism industry, along with footwear, leather and other manufacturing. The Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The city features mild winters, hot and dry summers and a monsoon season, and is famous for its Mughlai cuisine. Agra is part of the Golden Triangle tourist circuit, along with Delhi and Jaipur; and the Uttar Pradesh Heritage Arc, a tourist circuit of Uttar Pradesh, along with Lucknow and Varanasi.
Name
There are several proposed derivations for the name Agra, none of which is very satisfactory. The most accepted etymon is the Hindi word agar, a name given to it due to the region's brackish soil; salt was once made in the area by evaporation. Others derive it from Hindu mythology, claiming that the Sanskrit word agra means in this case the first of the many small forests where Krishna frolicked with the gopis of Vrindavan. The term Agravana hence means grove forest.In the Mughal era, Agra was also known as Akbarabad, a name coined by emperor Shah Jahan in honour of his grandfather Akbar.
History
Pre-Mughal era
Agra has two histories: one of the ancient city on the east, or left, bank of the river Yamuna, going back so far as to be lost in the legends of Krishna and Mahabharata and reestablished by Sikandar Khan Lodi in 1504–1505; the other of the modern city, founded by Akbar in 1558, on the right bank of the river which is associated with the Mughals, and known throughout the world as the city of the Taj. Of ancient Agra little now remains except few traces of the foundations. It was a place of importance under various Hindu dynasties previous to the Muslim invasions of India, but its history is unclear, and possess little historical interest. The 17th century chronicler named Abdullah said it was a village before the reign of Sikandar Lodi. The king of Mathura had used the Agra fort as a jail. The degradation in the status of the site was a result of the destruction brought upon it by Mahmud of Ghazni. Masud Sa'd Salman claims to have been there when Mahmud assaulted Agra, claiming the Raja Japal surrendered after seeing a nightmare. Mahmud however proceeds to pillage the city.File:Mariam's Tomb, Sikandra, Agra.JPG|thumb|The Tomb of Mariam-uz-Zamani in Sikandra was originally built as a Baradari by Sultan Sikandar Khan Lodi in 1495.
Agra's period of historical importance began during Sikandar Lodi's reign. In 1504–1505, Sultan Sikandar Lodi, the Afghan ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, rebuilt Agra and made it the seat of government. Sikandar Lodi appointed a commission which inspected and surveyed both sides of the Yamuna from Delhi to Etawah and finally chose a place on the left bank, or the east side of the Yamuna, as the site for the city. Agra on the left bank of the Yamuna grew into a large flourishing town with royal presence, officials, merchants, scholars, theologians and artists. The city became one of the most important centres of Islamic learning in India. The sultan founded the village of Sikandra in the northern suburbs of the city and built there a Baradari of red sandstone in 1495, which was converted into a tomb by Jahangir, and now stands as the Tomb of Mariam-uz-Zamani, Akbar's empress.
After the Sultan's death in 1517, the city passed on to his son, Sultan Ibrahim Lodi. He ruled his sultanate from Agra until he was defeated and killed by Mughal Emperor Babur in the First battle of Panipat, fought in 1526.
Mughal era
The golden age of the city began with the Mughals. Agra was the foremost city of the subcontinent and the capital of the Mughal Empire until 1658, when Aurangzeb shifted the entire court to Delhi.Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty, acquired Agra after defeating the Lodis and the Tomaras of Gwalior in the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. Babur's connection with Agra began immediately after the battle of Panipat. He sent forward his son Humayun, who occupied the town without opposition. The Raja of Gwalior, slain at Panipat, had left his family and the heads of his clan at Agra. In gratitude to Humayun, who treated them magnanimously, and protected them from plunder, they presented to him a quantity of jewels and precious stones as a token of homage. Among these was the famous diamond Koh-i-nur. Babur went on to lay out the first formal Mughal garden in India, the Aram Bagh on the banks of the river Yamuna. Babur was determined to establish the seat of his government at Agra, but was almost dissuaded by the desolate appearance of the region, as clear from this quote from his memoir Baburnama:
Very few vestiges remain of Babur's city, of his fruit and flower gardens, palaces, baths, tanks, wells and watercourses. The remnants of Babur's Charbagh can be seen today at Aram Bagh, on the east side of Yamuna. Babur was followed by his son Humayun, but he was completely defeated at Kanauj in 1539, just nine years after his ascension, by Sher Shah Suri, an Afghan nobleman, who had submitted to Babur, but revolted against his son. In this brief interruption in Mughal rule between 1540 and 1556, Sher Shah Suri, established the short lived Sur Empire, and the region was eventually reconquered by Akbar in the Second Battle of Panipat in 1556.
Under Akbar, and followed by his grandson Shah Jahan, Agra was immortalised in the history of the world. Akbar built the modern city of Agra on the right bank of Yamuna, where the majority of its part still lies. He converted the city into a great centre of political, cultural and economic importance, connecting it with the various parts of his vast empire. Akbar raised the towering ramparts of the Agra Fort, besides making Agra a centre for learning, arts, commerce, and religion. Akbar also built a new capital city of Fatehpur Sikri, around 35 km from Agra. The new capital city was later abandoned. Before his death, Agra had become probably one of the biggest cities in the east, with huge amounts of trade and commerce happening through its bazaars. The English traveller Ralph Fitch who visited Agra in September 1585 in the life-time of Akbar, writes about the town:
These impressions of Fitch are corroborated by another European traveller, William Finch, who remarked about Agra:
Agra continued to expand and flourish during Akbar's successor Jahangir's reign as he wrote in his autobiography Tuzuk-e-Jahangiri:
Akbar's successor Jahangir had a love of flora and fauna and laid many gardens inside the Red Fort. Akbar's mausoleum at Sikandra was completed during Jahangir's reign. The Jahangiri Mahal in Agra fort and the tomb of Itmad-ud-daulah were also constructed during the reign of Jahangir. Jahangir loved Lahore and Kashmir more than Agra, but the latter continued to be the first city of the realm. It was, however, Shah Jahan whose building activity raised Agra to the pinnacle of its glory. Shah Jahan, known for his keen interest in architecture, gave Agra its most prized monument, the Taj Mahal. Built in loving memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, the mausoleum was completed in 1653. The Jama Masjid and several other notable buildings like the Diwan-i-Am, the Diwan-i-Khas, the Moti Masjid, etc., inside the fort were planned and executed under his orders.
Shah Jahan later shifted the capital to Shahjahanabad in the year 1648, followed by his son Aurangzeb moving the entire court to Delhi in 1658. With this Agra began rapidly declining. Nevertheless, the cultural and strategic importance of Agra remained unaffected and in official correspondence it continued to be referred to as the second capital of the empire.
Later periods
The decline of the Mughal empire caused the emergence of several regional kingdoms, and in the late 18th century the control of the city fell successively to the Jats, the Marathas, the Mughals, the ruler of Gwalior, and finally the British East India Company. The Hindu Jats of Bharatpur waged many wars against the Mughal Empire and in the 17th and 18th century carried out numerous campaigns in Mughal territories. The Jats under Maharaja Suraj Mal conquered Agra on 12 June 1761, after a month-long siege culminating in the Mughals surrendering to the Jat army. After this victory, the Jats melted the silver doors of the Taj Mahal. Agra remained under Jat control until 1774, when the Mughal Commander Mirza Najaf Khan recaptured it. 11 years after the Mughals reclaimed Agra, the city was conquered in 1785 by another post-Mughal Empire power, the Marathas, before falling into the hands of the British East India Company in 1803 after the Second Anglo-Maratha War. In the years 1834–1836, Agra was the capital of the short-lived Presidency of Agra, administered by a Governor. It was then the capital of the North-Western Province from 1836 to 1858, governed by a Lieutenant-Governor. Agra was one of the centres of the Indian rebellion of 1857.
During the Indian rebellion of 1857, when East India Company rule across many parts of India was threatened, the news of the mutiny at Meerut reached Agra on 14 May. On 30 May some companies of the 44th and 67th Native Infantry sent to Mathura to bring in the treasury mutinied and carried off the treasury to the rebels in Delhi. With the fear of the rebellion spreading to Agra as well, the rest of these native infantry battalions, which were part of the garrison at Agra, were successfully disarmed by the British on 31 May. However, when the Gwalior contingent mutinied on 15 June, all other native units followed. On 2 July the rebel force of the Nimach and Nasirabad contingents reached Fatehpur Sikri. Fearing advance of the mutineers to Agra, some 6000 Europeans and associated people moved into the Agra Fort for safety on 3 July. On 5 July, the British force stationed there attempted to attack an approaching force of Mutineers, but was defeated, and the British retreated back into the fort. The Lieutenant-Governor, J.R. Colvin, died there, and was later buried in front of the Diwan-i-am. The mutineers, however, moved over to Delhi, it being a more important attraction for the rebels. Despite an uprising by a mob and extreme disorder in the city, the British managed to restore partial order by 8 July. Delhi, in turn, fell to the British in September, following which an infantry brigade led by Brigadier Edward Greathed arrived in Agra on 11 October without any opposition from rebels. But shortly after their arrival another force of mutineers attacked the brigade by surprise, but was defeated and routed. This minor victory for the British was named the Battle of Agra. It is to be said that, the uprising in Agra was relatively minor compared to Delhi, Jhansi, Meerut and other major rebellious cities and regions. After this British rule was again secured, and the British Raj ruled the city till the independence of India in 1947. The capital of the North Western Provinces was shifted from Agra to Allahabad in 1858. Gradually, Agra declined to the position of a mere provincial town, and its prosperity declined:
Agra's role in the Indian Independence movement is not well documented. However, in the years between the mutiny and independence Agra was a major centre of Hindi and Urdu journalism. Paliwal park in Agra is named after S.K.D Paliwal, who brought out the Hindi daily Sainik.