Feroz Shah Kotla
Firozabad
The citadel of Firoz Shah's Delhi, crowned by an Ashokan pillar he carried here himself.
Firoz Shah Tughlaq founded Firozabad on the riverbank in 1354, and the Kotla was its citadel. Much of it is now foundations and vaulted cells, but the set piece survives: a stepped pyramid of tiered chambers with a polished sandstone pillar on top. That pillar is some sixteen hundred years older than the building beneath it — an edict column of the emperor Ashoka, moved from Topra in Haryana on a purpose-built cart and a barge, then raised here as a trophy of an older India.
Beside it stand a congregational mosque, once large enough that Timur admired it and took its masons back to Samarkand, and a circular baoli. The ruins have a second life that has nothing to do with archaeology: since the twentieth century people have come on Thursdays to leave letters, milk and incense in the underground chambers for the djinns believed to hold court there. The petitions are addressed, stamped and often photocopied.
- 01The Ashokan pillarA third-century-BCE edict column, deciphered in 1837, standing on a fourteenth-century pyramid.
- 02The Jami MasjidThe much-ruined mosque whose plan influenced building as far away as Central Asia.
- 03Thursday lettersWritten petitions left in the cellars for the djinns — a folk practice still going strong.
A small site, easily walked in half an hour. Not to be confused with the cricket stadium of the same name next door.