Fatehpur Sikri is considered the greatest Mughal city ever built and there is a fascinating story on how the idea behind its construction came about.

As Akbar grew older, his principal anxiety was the lack of a male heir. He learnt of a dervish called Sheikh Salim Chisti, the last of the many great sages in the Chisti line and journeyed to seek his blessings in the tiny town of Sikri — 23 miles west of Agra.  Sheikh recited blessings and made promises. Soon thereafter in 1569, Akbar’s Hindu wife gave birth to a son, Salim, later known as Jahangir followed by two more sons, Murad and Daniyal.

Akbar’s response to Chisti’s magic  probably ranks as one of the most outstanding examples in history of royal gratitude. He commanded that a city be built on the spot where the saint’s retreat was situated and the Sheikh was made the spiritual mentor of the entire metropolis. Almost overnight an army of labourers was mobilised to fashion the city of Akbar’s dreams and by 1570, the construction was in full swing using a kind of pre-fabrication technique.

Wrote Father Monserrate, “The house was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither so that there was neither hammer nor any tool heard in the house when it was building.”

Most of the city was completed in seven years, which was a remarkable feat considering the fact that the Taj Mahal took 22 long years to construct.

Emperor Akbar designed many of the structures himself and worked in the pits with the stonemasons cutting bricks and carving sandstone corbels. Huge battlements and a wall with nine gates appeared and a five story mosque  known as Panch Mahal was later constructed in the style of a Buddhist temple.

A huge rectangular courtyard was erected bounded by symmetrical gardens. There were three palaces, waterworks and baths, a mint for stamping coins with Akbar’s profile, a Turkish palace for his Turkish wife, a Hindu palace for his Hindu wife, a Muslim palace for his Muslim wives, an enamelled hall for the emperor to play hide and seek with all his wives, a court on which to play pachisi with human pieces, viaducts, stables, octagonal towers, domed pigeon houses and more.

There was also a seventy foot octagonal tower built in honour of a pet elephant, a girl’s school, a zoo, a sewage system and the largest gateway in the east — the Buland Darwaza — which served as a gateway to the city.

In Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar gathered the finest singers, the boldest statesmen and the wisest philosophers. His cabinet, known then as the ‘nine gems’ was reputed to hold the nine most capable men in the world.

After 15 years of life at Fatehpur Sikri, the fickle sovereign began to grow bored with his magnificent project. The harsh landscape around Sikri was not conducive to gaiety and drinking water was inaccessible (a manmade lake, dug nearby collected only brackish water).

In 1585, when a military campaign called him to Northwest India, he moved his headquarters to Lahore and abandoned Fatehpur Sikri forever.

The story that Akbar left the city to oblige Sheikh Chisti when he complained that the noise was disturbing his devotions is apocryphal, for Salim died some years before the city was abandoned.

As quickly as it had been populated, the magnificent city emptied.

A few years later, the city was described by a European as “ruinate, lying like a waste district, and very dangerous to pass through at night”.

Today, except for a small community that lives at the foot of the city and lives off the largesse of occasional tourists, the city of Fatehpur Sikri is unoccupied, a ghostly red and white necropolis of sandstone courtyards and endless silent corridors, which are all in a state of perfect preservation.

It really seems too perfect.

In fact, the ingredients of the time — resilient mortar used between the bricks have never been chemically analysed with any real success.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Education> Student / by Anjali Sharma – ENS / November 21st, 2013