SITES AND MONUMENTS Ahmadabad*

Once the capital and still the premier city in , Ahmadabad () is an old walled town standing on the east bank of the river, which has throughout the centuries enjoyed the repu- tation of being one of the fairest cities in the whole of . The advent of industrialization, with mill and factory chimneys belching smoke, the streets lled with motor transport of every description, and urban sprawl and overcrowding resulting from the recent population explosion, have somewhat diminished Ahmadabad’s glories; but most of its loveliness is still to be found, and it has been sadly unappreciated by most modern travellers. A4mad Shh founded his new capital to the north of the old Hindu settlement of Ashaval. The new city, which replaced Anahilvada-Patan as the capital, covered an area of about 500 ha. The enclosure walls, some 5 m. to 6 m. tall, had original fourteen gates, and were defended by towers and bastions every 50 m. or so; but an 18th-century source ascribes these to the time of Ma4md ‘Begr’, giving a chronogram, saying the speci ed parts were the responsibility of separate nobles. The walls are even described as being of Mughal date, since their internal construction is of red brick, but this is not referred to in the Mughal sources. None of this, of course, precludes the possibility of there having been an earlier mud or mud-brick wall. On the west the city was defended by a wall following the almost straight line of the river bank. A temple to the goddess Bhadrakl in pre-Muslim times has now utterly disappeared except for the re ection of its name in the Bhadra, of Bhadra Qila, the internal fort which constitutes the citadel, a square enclosure originally housing the royal palaces, and separated from the Maidn-i Shh (royal grounds) to its east by a double gateway, of which the inner member stands imposingly between two enormous (later) circular bastions. (Excavations in recent times have revealed many fragments of Jain and Hindu temples in the

* “Mosques and Tombs,” in Ahmadabad, eds., G. Michell and S. Shah, Bombay 1988, 30–119. [Hijra dates and diacritical marks added by the editor.]