The Great Moghuls Part 1

for 200 years a single family dominated India and astonished the world a family known to history as the great moguls you Oh yeah Oh are warned learn the Khyber Pass famous not only for its wild romantic scenery but also because this is the gateway from rugged Afghanistan to the riches of India through these mountains have come a succession of great conquerors Restless for new lands to plunder Alexander the Great came by sodid jenga's Khan and Tamburlaine and if today the armed men are more local in recent years most often the Mujahideen from Afghanistan this remains a dangerous and exciting place with the promise once over the top of India the first large town through the pass is Peshawar now in northwest Pakistan this has always been a busy meeting place of merchants and adventurers and no doubt the armies of those conquerors contributed their bit too to the racial mix passing back through here with the spoils of India on their way home but one conqueror who came through here in the 16th century intended to stay in India he was a Buccaneer with royal blood in his veins his name was Bubba Babur had a direct link with those earlier conquerors being descended on one side from the leader of the mongols jenga's khan and on the other from that equally ferocious predator Tamburlaine but his own descendants would rule with even greater splendor that court in India became famous throughout the world for its lavish display astounding the European visitors who witnessed this scene and would call these Emperor's the great moguls meaning the great Mongols their exquisite paintings and buildings together with often grisly deeds of treachery would add up to an irresistible exotic oriental melodrama the family liked to imply that they ruled almost the whole world enabling the lion to lie down with the lamb but the early days of Babu himself had been very much humbler his father had ruled a small Kingdom to the north of Afghanistan but he died when Baba was only 11 and his inheritance was grabbed by a stronger neighbor by his late teens Babu is living more like a bandit than a prince he and a few followers would roam around seizing cattle territory wealth of any kind in such a violent world the villages and towns were all fortified as indeed most of them still are today and baboy describes vividly in his diary how he and his men would ride out at night to attack just such a place as this under cover of darkness they would place their ladders against the wall often they were seen and had to ride away disappointed but sometimes they got in and then after an exhilarating hand-to-hand fight in narrow lanes they would take what they fancied or perhaps persuade this particular village to join their league barbers following steadily increased he was a leader who inspired great loyalty and then became a great breakthrough in 1504 when he was 21 he captured a rich sophisticated City 1 but she would hold for the rest of his life and when she came to think of as his real home it was car bull now the capital of Afghanistan set among mountains to the west of the Khyber Pass here was ancient city in which barber and his followers could settle down to a more civilized existence the main cultural influence on this part of the world came from Pasha barber himself a keen poet and gardener was able not to indulge in traditional Persian pleasures of a kind which he and his family would later introduced to India but a ruler in those days could never relax for long a regime based only on military power needed constant new conquests to bring in more territory more wealth in three directions Barbara's Kingdom at Kabul was unable to expand to the north was a powerful new ruler who had been grabbing vast territories including Barbara's ancestral Kingdom to the west was the even more powerful Empire of Persia to the south desert that left only the east through the Khyber Pass northern India was ruled by many rival Prince's too busy fighting each other to be likely to combine against an invader and the prize was a rich one India was fattening and an army could advance unopposed in these vast plains after victory in a single pitched battle when the time for that battle came barber would have one great advantage a magic new weapon in daraa just through the Khyber Pass firearms are the stocking trade everyone here is busy making them but when Barbara came this way with his new muskets which had reached him from Pasha no one knew what these strange objects were he describes tribesman making obscene gestures at this weapon that fired no arrow until it went off in their direction nearly 500 years later the magic of the musket may have been explained away but it remains as important as ever to get hold of a good weapon and people here will drill whatever barrel you require every day as the customers try out the where's the valley razones with gunfire in addition to his muskets baba had some very elementary artillery he had a Turkish gonna by the name of was stud meaning master who been able to cast a mortar for him a tubby vessel something the shape of a deep vars which when tilted upwards could fire a large stone for almost a mile baba had vastly enjoyed watching the hot metal being poured to cast this ultimate deterrent and he loved the excitement when it was fired the mortar had only managed 12 shots a day so each one was something of an event the rich Baba kept himself well informed a typical entry in his diary reads at the midday prayer a person came from his dad saying the stone is ready what is the order the order was far this stone off but keep the next till I come but if the big mortar was just a wonderful toy it was the muskets which would make the real difference when Barbara advanced into India he would face a vast array of elephants and cavalry a living force far greater than anything that he could match but with his muskets he was able to rely on a tactic which is now familiar to all of us from countless westerns he lashed together 800 wagons with rawhide ropes and behind this barricade his Musketeers only had to wait till the vast glittering ranks of Indian elephants and cavalry came within range after his victory Barbara moved unopposed to the heart of northern India through Delhi and on to the city which more than any other is now associated with the great moguls all the famous buildings here in Agra were created for Barbara's descendants and their families the Taj Mahal is but one of many in this city which would later display the world his family's magnificence Babur had a foretaste of the wealth of India among the booty captured here was a rather large Darmon the Kohinoor which is now the jewel in the crown of the British crown jewels Babur was a keen observer of the world about him and suniye was finding much to marvel at in this land which he had so rapidly conquered here was a culture entirely different from the Muslim world which had so far been the limit of his own experience a scene of colourful and noisy ritual and one in which women whether in stone or in flesh played a far more visible role as here in a temple in wood I pour ha the Hindu religion developed much earlier than Islam and this sort of thing was exactly what the Quran like the Old Testament most strongly disapproved of idols but Bravo was too fascinated by life to waste much time on indignation instead he was soon writing a section in his diary entitled description of India it begins boldly India he notes is extensive full of people and full of produce it was the profusion and color of life in India that most amazed Babu as indeed it does any visitors a day and he was astonished by the number of craftsmen though he does complain that it was impossible to get a decent pair of trousers made by travelpod member with all wealth depending in the end on what the land and humans skill can produce it was perfectly evident that there were better pickings to be had here than in Afghanistan though in India's summer heat Baba did always feel dreadfully homesick for the mountains of his youth the Hindu city of Gwalior 80 miles south of Agra was a place where Berber nurtured on his impressions in great detail he first came here on September the 27th 1528 that day he had earache and so had taken opium which was causing him to vomit when he visited this great fort but like any good tourist he put up with that the palace had been completed under 20 years earlier and it greatly impressed Bubba he noted the tiles which included he said the semblance of banana trees what struck him most was the work of the Masons these were he wrote wonderful buildings entirely of hewn stone Indian Masons have always treated blocks of sandstone as freely as carpenters in other countries shape and carve planks of oak here in these courtyards was a Hindu architectural tradition which Baba's grandson the Emperor Akbar would later put to excellent effect there was one aspect of Gwalior which deeply displeased Bubba the famous giant carvings in the rock face these idols confided the Emperor to his diary are shown quite naked without covering for the privat ease I for my part ordered them to be destroyed upon his orders the faces and the offending privat is were smashed modern restorers seem to have partly agreed with him only the faces have been replaced the illustrations done later for his diary reflect Barbara's fascination with the wildlife of India though the artists don't always seem to studied nature as closely as he might have wished one frequent complaint in his text is the lack in India of good cool streams all the Mogul emperors loved water and where they didn't find it in nature they set about providing it in gardens Oh this Garden in Agra the Romberg is believed to have been laid out by Babur himself it follows the rectangular system of the water gardens of Persia just as in the paintings water flows through the channels laid for it and tumbles and trickles into pools as the engineer carries out the plans approved by Babur himself he had made several such Gardens in Kabul and the ones he created here in India no doubt it helped to remind him of home Baba would come to his gardens for a task which he very much enjoyed that of writing up his diary from the notes he had taken all his life and the tale he had to tell was among the most romantic of life's basic plots the rags to riches story from the early days is sometimes just a couple of hundred followers to all the wealth of India and it was here in Agra that he decided to celebrate his success he would give a sort of Empire warming party word was sent out but all who had helped him on his way should come to receive fitting benefits even quite humble people were invited a man who'd once helped him across a river on a raft some peasants who had sheltered him in Afghanistan it took a couple of years for all the guests to arrive and then there was a huge feast with Bob or Andhra Pavilion in the centre and the guests stretched out in a great semicircle of a hundred yards or more it was much present giving and dancing and acrobatics and general self-satisfaction in India's climate most celebrations still take place in the open air from every day picnics to more special occasions a meal on the grass or on carpets remains a part of social life it's nearly 500 years now since Barbara's great feast but the music the food and the clothes here today are still true to the past though at Baba's party the only women would have been the dancing girls but his celebrations were premature because the new empire depended far too much on Babu himself two years after the feast he died his had been an action-packed life he was still only 47 and though his dynasty would later prosper as this painting reveals it was to be a close-run thing he was succeeded by his son Humayun aged 22 who had fought beside his father in the capture of northern india but was a very different character who my own had nothing of his father's brisk energy he was charming sentimental much given to scenes of tearful reconciliation with those who had conspired against him and superstitious exceedingly superstitious the superstition that dominated Humayun's life was one that is still an everyday feature of India this marriage procession a familiar sight in the streets here couldn't possibly happen without the precise time being chosen in advance by an astrologer the mysterious compulsion to have one's horoscope done is not confined to the east but whom I even tried to organize his entire civil service by the signs of the zodiac far more ambitious and the simple personal attention that most people want from the astrologer Rasika is a shootin cave the secret in the moon said yes he tell me carotene puts in a stigma in humayuns astrological civil-service the officials responsible for the earth signs naturally took charge of agriculture the water signs had the canals while the fire people visit themselves with military matters but astrology one few battles and soon the Mughal armies were suffering some unpleasant shocks who my own himself had to make several humiliating departures from the battlefield including one hurried escape across the Ganges hanging on to an inflated goat skin the Empire which had inherited from his father in 1530 extended far across northern India ten years later he had lost control of the whole of it and was wandering as a refugee in the deserts of Rajasthan with his family and a dwindling band of quarters their circumstances were already bleak but there was worse to come in the heat of the desert there is no greater relief than to come across a working world but this was to be an increasingly rare sight that summer for who my unit is family they began to find that most of the wells they came across would dry they had been filled with Sun the buckets were clogged and empty the cause was a clash with Hindus numbers of whom Islands party had killed some cows sacred animals to any Hindu Rajasthan is a fiercely Hindu territory and the people here had been deeply offended it was because of this sacrilege that the wells were being filled by followers of the ruler of joy Sonia one of the great desert strongholds of Rajasthan this kingdom was just the sort of place who my own descendants would have to come to terms with if they were to recover and hold India but for the moment mere survival had become the one priority for the evicted Emperor and his family they plodded hopelessly on though one small miracle which was often later retold with delight in family history did seem like a good omen a young wife of whom I Owens was just 15 years old there was also 8 months pregnant and she now felt that famous arbitrary longing of pregnancy for one particular kind of food in her case a pomegranate something impossible to come by in the desert but then happily that path crossed with that of a traveling merchant and he was found to have in his saddlebag one large juicy pomegranate then a month later at a small oasis the real miracle the birth of a son who had later radically transformed the family's fortunes they called him Akbar he would spend his childhood as a refugee because his father would soon be chased right out of India but against all the odds who my own later fought his way back in to recover the Empire and Akbar the child of the desert would grow up to deserve more than any other member of his family that's simple but resounding title the great mogul the powerful port of rotas in Pakistan was built during the boyhood of Akbar the greatest of the great moguls but it was built by a rival who had driven Akbar father from India a mere 15 years after the family had conquered the land the mobile empire now seemed little more than a nine days wonder but then India fell once more into chaos a Nut Bars father managed to fight his way back past here to recover his kingdom it was the plains of northern India which the mogul family had conquered in 1526 and which occupies father whom I owned now recovered settling back into his capital city at Delhi it was only just in time for six months later he was dead but at least that meant it was here in Delhi that his tomb would rise as the first of the great mogul monuments giving a reassuring if so far entirely false sense of stability and power above the tomb a dome like a bud which would later flower in the Dome of the Taj Mahal reflecting the Persian traditions behind the mogul family poetry played an important part in Persian court life and with pleasure such as these whom I own are relaxed once again in Delhi as well as reading poems a favorite game was to improvise them and naturally his reconquest of India was the most popular subject of all it was into this building that from my own Nam moved his precious collection of family manuscripts this was the scene of the poetry readings but the scene also of a disastrous accident one day in 1556 whom I owned was up here on the roof of his library he'd been hearing the latest news from Mecca from some pilgrims who had recently returned and he was discussing with his astrologers the are at which they expected Venus to rise because he intended to hold an assembly at that propitious moment and when that time had been agreed he began to go down these steep stone steps and then something which the astrologers had evidently not foreseen his foot was on the second step when he heard him was in from the nearby mosque calling the faithful to prayer and as Humayun turned to incline his knee in respect he tripped in his robe and fell headlong down he died three days later and in such an unstable Empire the sudden death of the emperor automatically meant a political crisis who my own son Akbar was already an experienced soldier even though he was still only 13 years old but he happened to be hundreds of miles away campaigning in the Punjab if the news got out before akbar was publicly enthroned it was certain that others would attempt to seize power as the first rumors spread anxious crowds gathered below the fort so whom omens courtiers fell back on an ancient ruse someone who vaguely resembled the dead Emperor was dressed up in his clothes and waved reassuringly at the crowd at a suitable distance no doubt some of the people were fooled for some of the time and meanwhile the action had moved elsewhere when the news reached Akbar he was miles from anywhere in this vast plain he had with him an experienced general to keep an eye on the boy and the general now organized a hurried but essential ceremony the had to be a coronation the king is dead long live the king it's quite a pilgrimage now to get to the platform which commemorates that event known as the throne of Akbar this surely has to be the least visited of all mogul monuments well here at last it is with just some water buffalos now standing where the courtiers did on that distant day and a rather brutal Ministry of Works fence separating it from the surrounding countryside it's in a very dilapidated state but you can just see how it must have been as a mogul monument here for example water would have come rippling down over a carved stone a very mogul detail dreary though this looks it's a most evocative place because that event here in the middle of nowhere in 1556 was to be the turning point for Akbar's family leading to more than a hundred years of astonishing achievements but on the face of it as he Satya that day in a golden robe especially made for the occasion the prospect was bleak it was only to his own army grouped around him that he was emperor others would have different ideas his claim to rule was not that strong his father and his grandfather between them notched up only 15 years ruling in India and the plenty of rival rulers who would now see a young boy on the throne as just the chance they'd been waiting for as proof of that it wasn't long after whom Ivan's death before a large Hindu army captured Delhi and then moved in this direction to drive Akbar from India in the resulting battle the Mughals were heavily outnumbered and if they'd lost that battle there would have been no Mughal Empire in the event they were saved by a stroke of luck a chance arrow hit the Hindu general in the eye and the sight of him slumped so visibly on top of his elephant caused his army to flee on such small incidents the tide of events can turn by the end of the battle the Mughals had captured nearly 1500 elephants and it was like that many tanks in perfect condition and with plenty of fuel and ammunition falling into the hands of a modern so Akbar and the elephants were able to march back together into Delhi for the moment unopposed after the victory a tower was built using the heads of the enemy a custom whenever the defeated were non-muslims rotting by the roadside this was not a tradition well calculated to appease the local community the young Akbar on the face of it seemed unlikely to appease anything physical danger was what he loved indeed he'd been so much the athletic schoolboy that he never even learned to read here this was the Emperor Akbar who had come to see the problems of India with its rival communities of Muslims and Hindus in a new and very unconventional light shocking many of his own Muslim followers in the process the great center of Hindu power lay to the southwest of Delhi in the area known as Rajasthan the land of the Rajas their fortresses dotted this ancient and highly colorful territory and two in particular would be of great importance to Akbar chitara and amber which is now known as Jaipur Oh Oh at the top of this fort in Rajasthan there is a most unusual feature a seat it's perfect now for enjoying a quite spectacular view but that wasn't its purpose it seems that this was a throne for use in times of siege here are the Maharaja would sit exposed but visibly in command conducting a campaign if there were enemies below to be driven back from this perfect vantage point you could see the build-up to an assault and choose where to fling his own men into the attack he won it the ferocity of the fighting men of Rajasthan the famous Rajputs was legendary they were known as the greatest warriors in all India reckless in their courage a reputation sustained by their habit of going into battle high on opium these were people that I would either have to subdue or make friends with the rulers of this particular fort later became known as the Maharajah's of Jaipur they came to terms with Akbar and the beauty of acid the largest in Rajasthan suggests that the were advantages in doing so Jaipur was built as a completely new city after two centuries of alliance with the moguls it all began with a marriage at an Indian wedding even today the bridegroom with a small male relation mounted in front of him goes on horseback to meet his bride but when acaba took a wife from the ruling family here in 1562 it was out of the question that he should ride to her it was she who was sent to him to present a bride to Akbar was a way of making an alliance in effect like signing a treaty and as he traveled round with his court building up his fragile Empire he made many such arrangements his harem contained some five thousand women mostly slave girls among his wives there were several Hindu princesses each a token of friendship from her own family but the first had been the bride from Jaipur and beneath the thought that would soon appear the famous Palace of amber the first unmistakable sign of a new prosperity it was built some 40 years after the wedding by a Maharaja who had become Akbar's leading general his palace has become one of the great sites of India for the tourists an elephant ride up to Amber is a compulsory item on everyone's shed you Oh the most impressive details were naturally in the Maharaja's own quarters with patterns of inlaid stones and fragments of mirror here in pavilions placed between the public part of the palace to one side and the harem to the other the ruler could entertain either outside visitors or his own women in surroundings that would delight them all a few miles away in their new city of Jaipur the Maharajah's of amber would build another palace and it's here that their present-day descendant lives I asked him what benefits he felt the Rabine for either side in the family's long relationship with the Mughal Emperors the moguls got governors and generalship from the house of amber and the house of amber got the peace and tranquility to be able to pursue and build the city of Jaipur and was again considered one of the main in Hindu and not food states of that period and what about religion well again it gave not addressing gate time to protect the Hindu religion during his reign acaba spent much of his time moving round with a vast army using the sport of hunting as his diplomatic cover any troublesome ruler might soon find the Emperor killing deer on his own doorstep with the infantry standing in as beaters one of the ways of hunting that the emperor most enjoyed was with the cheetah the Indian leopard the fastest animal on earth it can be unleashed for the kill like a fork this crowded scene with a fence in the background depicts another favorite way of hunting Akbar soldiers would drive the deer in from miles around in an ever-shrinking circle then as soon as the terrified animals were contained in a small enough space the portable fence would be put up around them and riding in with sword or lance or gun the emperor would indulge in an orgy of killing on one occasion on a vast plain such as this fifty thousand beaters drove in game from 60 miles around a very large army in disguise no wonder most rulers proved friendly when Akbar passed by but the word exceptions in particular the Rana of Mara who held the great fort of Chittoor as the senior prince of Rajasthan he openly scorned the house of amber for having given a daughter to the mogul Hari Akbar determined that this proud knee must bend in 1567 he arrives below the fort with his army which included Hindu princes from under Chittoor itself is nearly four miles long but Akbar camp extended ten miles it was to be one of the most famous sieges in Indian history Akbar used two methods of assault both of which are shown in these views done by his painters one was mining burrowing under the walls with explosives the idea was to blow up a section for the soldiers to enter the fort but fuses were unreliable and the Mughal army suffered a major disaster when a charge went off in two stages the first blew the intended hole in the wall but the second exploded as the Mughals stormed the breach killing several of Akbar's favorite officers the other method was a fortified corridor which was gradually extended until it reached the walls from its protection snipers often including Akbar himself would get closer and closer shots of the defenders performance this daily trial of strength dragged painfully on the siege came to a sudden end because of a single bullet there it appeared on the ramparts on that particular day a Hindu officer and in the way of the times the bullet that killed him was soon credited to the gun of the Emperor himself it's true that Akbar did take an active part in the daily business of sniping at the fort and it may well be that he did far the lucky shot but the significance of what had happened was not immediately appreciated in the mogul camp until they observed that FAR's were breaking out all over the fort then hindu generals in akbar army were able to explain to him what was happening the man who had died must have been the prince in command of the fort and the FAR's were part of a grisly but hallowed Rajput ceremony which always took place whenever defeat seemed inevitable yonni Jahangir Rajskub Hogg opinion Toby yamaraja cooper Algeria Johan Miguel fini Johann tschopp the comments the Johar describes to every visitor here is the favorite incident in Chitose history a symbol of the unyielding pride of Rajasthan for the wives of Rajput warriors death rather than dishonor was the compulsory tradition in the face of defeat they were all burnt before their husbands salad force to meet their own equally certain end in a final hopeless battle inside the fort there were some 40,000 peasants living and unusually for him Akbar now allowed them to to be massacred clearly this victory over the uncompromising Rana of Mela was to be taken as an example the city of Lodi poor reveals that the runner himself compromised in a rather different way he had left his men to defend Chittoor while he withdrew to start again here further removed from the centres of mobile power an unglamorous decision but it preserved the independence of his house which never intermarried with the Mughals and it gave us one of India's most beautiful cities today the Rana of MEWAs still feels it a matter of pride that the Moghuls were kept at arm's length now we knew that if we were going to compromise with the Mughals we would not be allowed to live with any self-respect in the Mughal Court and therefore we were very keen to protect our self-respect the other reason is that our family is religious deeply religious and we believe in the values set out in Hinduism and people look up to our family as the custodians of Hinduism and whenever the Hindu faith and in the religion was threatened we were not prepared to compromise and we fought for protecting faith to celebrate his victory over the Hindus of Chittoor Akbar made a pilgrimage to a great Muslim shrine it was to admire that he went to visit the tomb of a saint were brought to India the more tolerant strain of Islam known as Sufism his shrine remains a holy place today the Saint here had died three centuries before Akbar's visit but it was to be a living Saint who had now become of great importance to the Emperor fatehpur sikri is on the itinerary of most visitors to India today but in the mid 16th century it was just a minor place of pilgrimage there was a saint living here of the same tolerant sect as the saint a Taj Mir and like other holy men he would receive visits from those seeking comfort or advice in 1568 one of the pilgrims who came for advice was the young emperor who would later build at the top of these steps the great victory gateway leading into the mosque we're not barked came to visit the Saint who lived near here he brought him a pressing problem he was now at 26 but in spite of his large number of wives he still had no son well the Saint gave an uncompromising answer without hedging his bets in the usual way of soothsayers he declared categorically that the emperor would have not one son but three soon after these comforting words news came that the hindu princess from amber was pregnant for safety's sake akbar sent her to live near the saint and here a boy was born a year later another princess was pregnant she too was sent here another son and two years after that a third boy exactly fulfilling the Saints prophecy but with a track record like that an emperor does not stand idle and that was why over the next two years fatehpur sikri became increasingly important in Akbar's life the palace which Akbar would now build beside this mosque was a gesture of gratitude to the saint of confidence in the future and of exuberance and exuberance reflected its pleasant to imagine in an entertainment offered to the visitors here by one particular old man several times a day Oh when acaba began to build here at Fatehpur Sikri he had been 17 years on the throne since that horrid coronation as a boy in the plains of the Punjab he had turned his shaky inheritance into a stable Empire he was just 30 then there was still much to achieve but now with those three sons born here there would be someone to pass it all on to his family's future had never looked better loccent is the marceline the hilltop round the mosque at Fatehpur Sikri was bare in the 16th century they're not amazing speed an extraordinary group of buildings appeared here the heart of an empire all bustle and business but that lasted just fourteen years after which the place was deserted and it's remained so ever since this is not a ghost city it's a ghost palace in these courtyards the Emperor Akbar created his own very original concept of a place where a ruler could feel really at home Akbar decided to build here because of a local holy man or saint so the mosque was always central to that poor secret Meritage this under the Saints died soon after the building work began but then a Saints tomb properly tended can be almost as propitious as the saint himself clad in fine white Marvel which was added by octopus grandson the tomb is the centerpiece of the courtyard a daily custom in the shrine out of sight behind the carved marble screens reveals precisely why fatehpur sikri was built women tie threads to the screen each is a wish for a child a reminder that when October came here without an hour the Saint told him he would have three boys and when he did the builders were called in Akbar chose a Hindu style of architecture and no doubt most of his laborers were Hindus - certainly the women this is still a familiar sight anywhere in India and if it looks now a little slow compared to methods elsewhere nobody could have said that about the building of fatehpur sikri where it took just a few years to create a palace worthy of an increasingly confident Emperor this was the area over which akbar at the age of 13 had inherited very shaky control and this was the stable Empire which he in his turn would hand on some 50 years later Delhi had been his father's capital our grow would eventually become his own so the Saints home at Fatehpur Sikri in addition to being so propitious was strategically placed at the heart of the Empire a visit to fatehpur sikri is the best way of discovering the kind of life that went on around a mogul Emperor yes coming there were even more barriers them from the moguls to the British to today there is nothing new about Indian bureaucracy we take it for granted now that you can walk straight into any town but in those days the town gate was a real obstacle always shut for example at night this next gate was the entrance to the palace itself whenever the emperor came through here there were musicians playing for him in the room above but for the rest of us the name of this one has a somewhat familiar ring it was known as the knob at Cana which means roughly the house of taking one's place in the queue well as little danger of a queue today because now hardly anything comes through here except tourist buses but then as the remains of these shops reveals this was a bustling commercial thoroughfare the traders can be seen in this painting and beyond them the next gate the protocol sikri was a series of concentric circles with the Emperor at the center each circle became more private more difficult to get into it wasn't till this courtyard that you might catch a glimpse of the emperor himself he would appear here each morning to hold public audience from his raised throne for villain on the far side this is Bhavani um the heart of public audience and pleased to sit in the center in both side ladies and downside odd ministers bubbly be seated dear the public consisted largely of officials who attended here the judgments or decisions that the Emperor had made in private Council in the next courtyard stands the extraordinary building which Akbar devised for that private council it has an interior which is no use at all to anyone except an emperor it's a single high room with this massive pillar in the centre down below would stand those who are going to hear the Emperor's discussions but not take part in them clark's for example recording what was said the purpose of this great pillar is not immediately clear in fact it's a very high throne as can be seen from above the one flaw in this otherwise splendid design is that to reach his throne the Emperor had to climb so astonishingly steep stairs but once he got to the top a very different prospect and a quite extraordinary seating arrangement the replaces to sit all around the edges and for bridges to the throne in the center if someone needed to talk more intimately with the Emperor or to take him something of interest to look at he would cross one of the bridges no doubt stooping humbly as he went which does also make it feel a lot safer to our Akbar sat on plump and comfortable cushions so the whole arrangement seems custom-built for an egomaniac which is exactly what it was but then Emperor's and they have never gone hand-in-hand and this does feel exceptionally good Akbar loved in particular talking about religion on which he was very much a free thinker unlike his predecessors he refused to accept that his own Creed Islam could have a monopoly of the truth and he enraged his experts on the Quran by making them discuss in here the nature of God not just among themselves but in argument with Hindu gurus who would sit on the opposite side the final straw for the Orthodox Muslims was when Akbar introduced his own religion it borrowed something from each of the others but added one startling new element in the dark by himself seemed to have taken over the role of God close to Akbar's eccentric Hall of private audience there is a five-story building it stood on the borderline between the male world of Akbar's Imperial responsibilities and the feminine part of the palace the harem which lies beyond this is the Punch Mahajan five history building some as bad is for the ladies as the guide explains this lovely cool palace without walls was probably used on special occasions such as parties by Akbar and his profusion of ladies night the women would come to it from there in closed quarters beyond an area into which in those days no man except the Emperor himself and male members of the family would ever go Akbar provided intricately carved surroundings for his harem which included both Muslim and Hindu wives but the method of construction at Fatehpur Sikri is entirely Hindu with the straight lines of great stone pillars and beams instead of Muslim curves these rooms were lovely places to lunch at in on a warm evening if they look a bit stark now it's because they're unfurnished this is like viewing an empty flat and as on that occasion the trick is to imagine the missing items not just for girls themselves but pretty things in the alcoves cushions to recline among and above all carpets an English visitor to India marveled at the rich display of carpets all that bravery he wrote is upon the floor Oh in many Indian villages carpet making in the traditional way is still an important industry the sound here is that of the various Foreman calling out which color of wool is to go where to form the Shia or when Japan David area pocket a delicatessen featured a leader the daily life of Akbar's court is known to us in great detail thanks to one man a fascinating character a writer who became a close friend of the Emperor his name was Abel Fuzzle in fatehpur sikri at a discreet distance from the harem is this house it's believed to be the one in which above us all lived he'd come to court in his early twenties and his great intelligence combined with an almost unlimited willingness to learn flattery with a trowel both of them qualities which endeared him to Akbar meant that he soon became in effect the emperor's resident intellectual the great top

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Keywords: India, moguls, moghuls, bamba, gascoine, documentary, great, the

Id: TFdt_4VbQ_M

Length: 60min 23sec (3623 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 05 2011