Agra Fort (Red Fort of Agra)

The fort of Agra, known as the Red Fort, owes its great red sandstone wall, twenty metres high, to Akbar: it runs in the shape of a bow whose straight side faces the Yamuna, with Akbar's palace built along its top. Of that palace only the Jahangiri Mahal remains, Shah Jahan having demolished the rest for his marble buildings. ^{1 3}

The inner courts lead to the Anguri Bagh in the zenana and to the Khas Mahal, which overlooks this quartered garden with its raised central marble tank; its four sections were planted with bright flowers for a carpet effect. A marble cascade with niches for flowers by day and lamps by night, like those of Kashmir, links the tank with a larger pool before the Khas Mahal, and here Shah Jahan celebrated the marriage feast of his sons Dara Shikoh and Shah Shuja. ^{2 4} Another court, the Machchi Bhawan ("Fish Square"), was stripped of its fountains and basins by the Jats of Bharatpur in the eighteenth century. ⁵

After Aurangzeb proclaimed himself emperor in 1658, Shah Jahan was held for eight years in his marble palace inside the fort, looking towards his wife's mausoleum, until he died in 1666 and was buried beside her in the Taj Mahal. ⁶