Fatehpur Sikri: Why Akbar Abandoned His City of Victory After 14 Years

Long before the Mughals, the ridge at Sikri held a settlement dating to the sixth century. Excavations at Bir Chhabili Tila uncovered brick walls, writing tablets, glass bangles, game pieces, a sculpture of the Jain goddess Ambika with a Brahmi inscription, and a Jain Sarasvati statue installed in 1010 that names the town Sikrikya. The Sikarwar Rajputs held the area until the Battle of Khanwa in 1527, and Babur renamed it Shukri and built a garden of victory beside its lake. In 1569 Akbar, with no surviving sons, sought the blessing of the Chishti Sufi saint Sheikh Salim. That year a son named Salim, the future Emperor Jahangir, was born at Sikri, and by 1573, after a Gujarat campaign, Akbar had named his new walled capital Fatehpur Sikri.

Built of local red sandstone on a ridge three kilometers long, the city blended Timurid planning with Hindu, Rajput, and Gujarati building traditions. In the Diwan-i-Khas, Akbar sat on a circular platform atop a single carved pillar, linked by walkways to corners where representatives of different faiths stood, and debates in the Ibadat Khana shaped his Din-i-Ilahi. English merchant Ralph Fitch found the city greater and more populous than London. Yet Akbar left in 1585 for the Punjab, returned only once in 1601, and by 1610 it was deserted.

• The 54 meter Buland Darwaza carries an inscription calling the world a bridge on which no one should build houses
• Sheikh Salim Chishti's tomb stands out in white marble with mother-of-pearl work and lacelike jali screens
• The five-story Panch Mahal rests on 176 carved columns and worked as a windcatcher
• Jahangir stayed three months in 1619 to escape a plague outbreak in Agra
• Historians debate whether water shortages or Akbar's shifting military priorities in the northwest drove the abandonment