Mughals · a Light

Akbar built a sandstone capital and left it fourteen years later

Akbar began Fatehpur Sikri in 1571 near the hermitage of the Sufi Salim Chishti, whose white marble tomb sits in the courtyard of the mosque there. The city is built almost entirely of the local red sandstone, cut like carpentry, with brackets and screens copied from Gujarati and Rajput work. In its hall of worship Akbar had Muslim scholars debate Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians and Jesuit priests, sometimes into the night. The gateway he added after his Gujarat campaign carries an inscription attributing to Jesus the words that the world is a bridge, and that one should pass over it and build no house upon it. By about 1585 the court had moved on. Historians usually cite water supply and northwestern campaigns.

Fatehpur Sikri, India · 1571 to c. 1585