Firoz Shah palace complex

關於

Hisar-e-Firoza fort city with rampart (including the protected archaeological Firoz Shah palace complex, Lat-Ki-Masjid Complex with an Ashokan pillar) along with the Gujari Mahal and Charbagh Garden outside the rampart, located in the modern-day Hisar in Haryana state of India, was built by Firoz Shah Tughlaq of the Delhi Sultanate in 1354 CE on the Sindhu-Saraswati Valley Civilisation (SSVC) and Vedic Period archeological mound of ancient Isukāra city. It is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India.

The narrative that Firoz Shah Tughlaq founded a city in a barren wasteland is contradicted by archaeological evidence and geomorphological data. The site was a strategic "choke point" within a dense "Rakh" (deciduous scrub forest) that acted as a natural barrier, requiring months of clearing for military passage. The "creation" of the Rajabwah and Ulughkhani canals by Firoz Shah was actually the de-silting and diversion of the Drishadvati River paleochannel, a Sindhu-Saraswati Valley Civilisation era water system desilted and maintained as far back as the Mauryan Empire. Tughlaq used massive forced labor to desilt these ancient Vedic-Mauryan hydraulic routes, rebranding them as his own benevolent innovation. The Delhi-Hisar-Multan-Khorasan route was a pre-existing segment of the ancient Uttarapatha highway, a trade artery established during the Sindhu-Saraswati Valley Civilisation and repaired during the Mauryan era. Tughlaq occupied this pre-cut route through the impregnable dense shub forest to consolidate military control over the frontier. The architecture of Tuglaq's Fort, including citadel and the Lat ki Masjid complex, is composed of spolia (reused elements of Hindu temple destroyed by Islamic invaders) looted in-situ and also from nearby sites like Agroha Mound. Tughlaq’s hagiographies (like the Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī) glorified these misappropriations, framing forced religious conversions to Islam and the rebranding of "Isukara" into "Hisar" as religious and civilizational jihad triumphs.

The shape of the Hisar-i-Firuza rampart was a polygonal enclosure rather than a perfect square, defined in the northwest by the surviving Royal Citadel—which projects outward like a spearhead—and the northern Charbagh and Gujari Mahal (originally situated outside the main city walls within their own light enclosures). The southwestern corner of the rampart, featuring a now-lost bastion, was located west of the present-day Gurudwara Singh Sabha, from where the wall ran sharply east via the Nagori Gate to the Rajguru Market Bastion (around present-day Pooja Market near the Ram Chat Bhandar Chowk). From this point, the rampart turned sharply north toward the Delhi Gate (at today’s Gandhi Chowk) before curving northwest to reach the Mori Gate, with the now mud filled outer moat represented by the roads that ring the old city. Following the 1857 Indian War of Independence, the British raj administration demolished and auctioned off much of the rubble from these outer walls and bastions to local builders, leaving the original footprint visible only in the raised elevation of the streets and the alignment of the historical markets. Gurjari Mahal and Charbgah garden, immediate north of the rampart of the fort, were also built by Firoz Shah for his wife Gurjari in 1356. The Jahaj Kothi Museum, a past residence of George Thomas, 2 km east of Firoz Shah's citadel, sits just outside the historic rampart of Hisar-i-Firoza fort.

The Hisar-e-Firoza monument's Shahi Darwaza entrance is just 100 meter east of Hisar's main Bus Stand, 4.5 km southwest of Hisar Airport, 2 km north of Hisar Junction railway station, 25 km southeast of Agroha Mound via NH9, 30 km west of Asigarh Fort, and 55 km southwest of Rakhigarhi.

內容改寫自 Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。照片來自 Wikimedia Commons.