Saturday, December 1, 2007

Fatehpur Sikri

On the road to Agra we stopped at Fatepur Sikri. This was built by Mughal emperor Akbar (meaning great) to commemorate a victory at Sikri (Fatehpur means victory). However there was no access to water and the city was soon abandoned and is well preserved. This place is definitley worth a look. We hired a guide here as there is no labelling of anything so otherwise you'd just be wandering around aimlessly. The architechture features a combination of Islamic, Christian and Jain designs. Akbar had tried to come up with a universal religion, but it didn't last. He also had a Christian wife (Portugese), an Indian wife and a Persian wife each of whom had their own mini-palace (he also, naturally, had many concubines).

Seperate to the main palace complex was a large mosque with a tomb featuring delicate marble carmed screens: from inside you could clearly see outside, but from outside it just looked like marble. It was hot when we were here.

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