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The HAMMAN, or Baths of Ali Verdi Khan, in Chipitolla Street, built in the time of Jahangir. An inscription over the gateway gives the date, 1620 A.D. They cannot be compared in interest with the splendid "Hakim's Baths," at Fatehpur Sikri. The ROMAN CATHOLIC CEMETERY, in the quarter known as Padritollah, near the Law Courts, is one of the most ancient Christian cemeteries in India.
The deserted palaces of Fatehpur Sikri, which he planned out and built with all his characteristic energy as a royal residence, only about twenty-two miles distant from the imperial city of Agra, still stand in a singularly perfect state of preservation that enables one to reconstruct with exceptional vividness the life of the splendid court over which the greatest of the Moghul Emperors the contemporary of our own great Queen Elizabeth presided during perhaps the most characteristic years of his long reign.
The Dutch General Messing, who held Agra Fort for the Mahrattas in 1794, has a very florid mausoleum of red sandstone, more curious than beautiful; the design of which is in imitation of the Taj. Fatehpur Sikri Fatehpur Sikri is the famous deserted city, about twenty-three miles from Agra, built by Akbar.
Like Fatehpur Sikri itself, which for lack of water he had been compelled to abandon within fifteen years of its construction, it was a magnificent failure, and it was perhaps bound in his time to be a failure. Aurungzeb was the first of the Moghuls to reside in the Mahomedan atmosphere of Delhi throughout his long reign.
Agra was the seat of government during the greater part of his reign. He also built the great mosque and the magnificent palaces and public buildings of Fatehpur Sikri, which are among the most famous of the antiquities of India. IV. Jahangir. He was passionate, cruel, and a drunkard, but not without ability and force of character.
It was when I was going through the panther-haunted palaces of Akbar at Fatehpur Sikri that I first felt how tremendously the ruins of the past may face towards the future; the thing there is like a frozen wave that rose and never broke; and once I had caught that light upon things, I found the same quality in all the ruins I saw, in Amber and Vijayanagar and Chitor, and in all that I have seen or heard of, in ancient Rome and ancient Verona, in Pæstum and Cnossus and ancient Athens.
The great mosque of Fatehpur is worthy of its founder's lofty ideals and nobility of soul. It is one of the most magnificent of all Akbar's buildings; the historic associations connected with it combine with its architectural splendour to make it one of the most impressive of its kind in the world.
Some distance beyond this tomb there is a small mosque, built in honour of the saint by the quarrymen of Fatehpur, before he had attracted the notice of the great Emperor.
Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between the extreme elegance, bordering on effeminacy, of the marble pavilions of Shah Jahan's palaces, and the robust, virile, yet highly imaginative architecture of this palace of Akbar; for though it bears Jahangir's name there cannot be much doubt that it was planned, and partially, if not completely, carried out by Akbar with the same architects who built Fatehpur Sikri.
Upon no building in Fatehpur has such a wealth of exquisite ornamentation been lavished as upon the dainty palace of Raja Birbal, the most learned and illustrious Hindu, who gave his spiritual as well as his political allegiance to Akbar.
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