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| Located near the famous Feroz Shah Kotla Cricket
Stadium, off Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Feroz Shah Kotla was the
imposing citadel of Ferozabad, the Fifth city of Delhi. The
great builder and Emperor Firoz Shah Tughlaq (1351-88), nephew
of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq and successor of Muhammad Tughlaq built
the city of Ferozabad with its citadel in 1354. It is said that
this city was spread over a very large area, extending from
Hauz-Khas in the southwest to Pir Ghaib in the north, where
there is a hunting lodge built by Feroz Shah. |
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| Designed by Malik Ghazi and Abdul Hakk, Feroz
Shah Kotla was then popularly known as Kushk-I-Feroz, which
meant Feroz's palace. Consisting of three rubble-built walled
rectangular enclosures, it forms an irregular polygonal plan
with its eastern wall in one alignment. The eastern wall of
the citadel was built on a bank of the River Yamuna. It is said
that Feroz Shah erected this citadel here in spite of having
three palaces in Delhi because of the shortage of water in those
areas. Among the three enclosures of the citadel, the central
one is the largest and is presently called as 'Kotla Feroz Shah'
as one can only find the ruins of the northern and southern
enclosures amidst the modern constructions. The central enclosure
had an imposing main gateway from the western direction and
bastions on either side flanked it, the ruins of which can be
seen even today. Often compared to the 'Windsor Palace of London',
Timur was spell bound with the beauty of the palace. The palace
was finally abandoned in the year 1490 AD. |
| Structures within Feroz Shah Kotla |
| Presently nothing much survives in and around
this once beautiful palace, which has now been developed as
a beautiful garden, as the successive rulers used most of its
ruins for the construction of later cities in Delhi. However,
the remaining structures are still so interesting that it is
among the favorite tourist destinations of the capital. |
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