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Agra Fort (Qila Agra), also known as the Red Fort of Agra (Lal-Qila) or Qila-i-Akbari ("Akbar's Fort"), is an historic fort in the city of Agra in Uttar Pradesh, India. A brick fortification on the site, noted as early as 1080 and later known as Badalgarh, was extensively rebuilt in red sandstone by the Mughal emperor Akbar from 1565 to 1573. It served as the main residence of the rulers of the Mughal dynasty until 1638, when the capital was moved from Agra to Shahjahanabad in Delhi. Much of the present interior dates from the reign of Shah Jahan, who added a number of white marble palaces and mosques within the fort after 1628. The Marathas were the last Indian rulers to occupy the fort before it was captured by the British in 1803.
The fort has a semi-circular plan, with its straight side facing the Yamuna river. Its surviving Mughal buildings include the Jahangiri Mahal, Khas Mahal, Diwan-i-Am, Diwan-i-Khas, Musamman Burj, Shish Mahal, Moti Masjid and its two major gateways, the Delhi Gate and Amar Singh Gate.
In 1983, the fort was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its importance during Mughal rule. It is about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) northwest of its sister monument, the Taj Mahal. A substantial portion remains under the control of the Indian Army and is closed to the public.
The origins of Agra Fort predate the Mughals. An earlier brick fort stood on the site, although its date and builders are uncertain. The earliest known written reference to a fort at Agra appears in accounts of a Ghaznavid raid between 1068 and 1070, when Prince Mahmud (Saif al-Dawla Mahmud), son of Sultan Ibrahim of Ghazna, captured a fortress at Agra from a ruler identified as Gopala of the Rashtrakuta dynasty. The Persian poet Masud Sa'd Salman wrote in his Divan: "The fort of Agra appeared in the midst of the dust / Like a mountain, and its battlements like peaks." There is an enduring local tradition that a fort known as Badalgarh was built by the Rajput ruler Raja Badal Singh on the site in 1475.
In the 15th century, the fort came under the control of the Chauhan Rajputs. Sikandar Khan Lodi, the Sultan of Delhi and ruler of the Lodi dynasty, moved his capital from Delhi to Agra then occupied and developed the existing fort, making Agra the centre of Lodi administration. He died there in 1517. His son, Ibrahim Lodi, held the fort for approximately nine years until 1526, when he was defeated and killed at the First Battle of Panipat, some 270 kilometres (170 mi) north of Agra.
After the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, Babur's son Humayun, who was sent ahead to Agra, captured the family of Bikramajit, the ruler of Gwalior, and received from them a celebrated diamond which has traditionally been identified with the Koh-i-Noor. The Mughals now had control of Agra and its fort; Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in South Asia, subsequently arrived at Agra and ruled from the palace of Ibrahim Lodi in the fort.
Humayun was crowned as successor to his father at the fort in 1530. He was defeated at the Battle of Bilgram in 1540 by Sher Shah Suri, the first Sur emperor, and the fort remained under Sur control until 1555, when Humayun recaptured it. Humayun died the following year and was succeeded by his thirteen-year-old son, Akbar. Adil Shah Suri's general, Hemu, recaptured Agra in 1556 and pursued its fleeing governor to Delhi, where Hemu defeated the Mughals at the Battle of Tughlaqabad. Hemu's victory was short-lived; he was defeated by Akbar's forces at the Second Battle of Panipat later that year, restoring Mughal control of Agra.
Akbar made Agra his capital in 1558 and took up residence in the old fort. His historian Abul Fazl noted that the earlier brick fort known as Badalgarh was in a ruined condition. In 1565, Akbar ordered the fort to be rebuilt. The new fort, including its palace complex, was constructed in red sandstone from the Barauli area of Dhaulpur, Rajasthan, with a brick core and sandstone facing. Work began in 1565 and was completed in 1573, employing around 4,000 workers daily for eight years. In 1571, Akbar moved the imperial capital to Fatehpur Sikri, about 35 kilometres (22 mi) west of Agra, where his grandfather, Babur, had earlier established the Bagh-i-Fath ("Garden of Victory"). Constructed mostly between 1571 and 1573, Fatehpur Sikri remained the Mughal capital until Akbar moved the capital to Lahore in 1585.
Much of Akbar's palace complex was later replaced by Shah Jahan's marble structures, but surviving structures from Akbar's reign include the Delhi Gate, the Amar Singh Gate, the Akbari Mahal, and the Jahangiri Mahal. Substantial portions of the fort's red sandstone outer walls also date from Akbar's rebuilding.
It was during the reign of Akbar's grandson, Shah Jahan, that the site took on its current state. Within the fort, Shah Jahan added a number of white marble structures, including the Diwan-i-Am, the Diwan-i-Khas, the Khas Mahal, the Moti Masjid, and the Musamman Burj. Shah Jahan also built the nearby Taj Mahal in the memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal; unlike his grandfather, he favoured buildings made of white marble rather than red sandstone. In 1638, Shah Jahan moved the Mughal capital from Agra to the newly built city of Shahjahanabad in Delhi, ending Agra's status as the primary seat of Mughal government.
When Shah Jahan suddenly fell ill, a bloody war of succession broke out between his sons, where Aurangzeb was victorious. Aurangzeb would go on to place his father under house arrest in the Musamman Burj of Agra Fort. Shah Jahan remained confined there until his death in 1666, by legend spending his final years gazing out at the Taj Mahal from the tower.
In May 1666, Shivaji came to Agra as per the Treaty of Purandar (1665) with Jai Singh I to meet Aurangzeb in the Diwan-i-Khas. He was deliberately placed behind men of lower rank; insulted, he stormed out of the audience and was confined to Jai Singh's quarters in the fort on 12 May 1666, from where he escaped on 19 August 1666.
As Mughal central authority weakened through the early eighteenth century, Agra and its fort became increasingly vulnerable to outside powers; the Persian ruler Nader Shah's sack of the Mughal capital at Delhi in 1739, during which the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond were seized from Delhi's Red Fort, is generally seen as marking the accelerating decline of Mughal power that set the stage for Agra's later loss to regional rulers.
In 1761, the Jat ruler Maharaja Suraj Mal of Bharatpur laid siege to Agra Fort, then held by the Mughal faujdar (military governor) Mirza Fazilka Khan. After a month-long siege, the garrison surrendered on 12 June 1761 in exchange for a payment and a grant of five villages, and Agra passed into Jat control. Following their victory, the Jats melted down the fort's silver doors and removed valuables from the Taj Mahal to their capital at Deeg. The fort remained under the rulers of Bharatpur for 13 years, passing from Suraj Mal to his successors Jawahar Singh and Maharaja Ratan Singh; the 'Ratan Singh ki Haveli' built within the fort during this period is associated with the latter. In 1774, the Mughal commander Mirza Najaf Khan recaptured Agra for the empire.
In 1752, the Mughal wazir (chief minister) Safdar Jang entered into a defensive agreement with the Marathas on behalf of the emperor, under which the Marathas undertook to defend the Mughal Empire against internal and external enemies, and the Peshwa (Maratha prime minister) was to be appointed governor of Agra, Mathura, Narnaul, and Ajmer. The Maratha Empire had suffered a catastrophic defeat at the Third Battle of Panipat against Ahmad Shah Durrani in January 1761, which halted further Maratha advances in northern India and destabilised their territories there for roughly a decade. From 1771, however, Mahadaji Shinde re-established Maratha influence in the region, escorting Emperor Shah Alam II back to Delhi and campaigning against the Jats and Rohillas. Agra came under Maratha control in 1785, when forces under Mahadji Shinde captured the fort after a siege, which ended with its surrender on 27 March.
The British East India Company took Agra Fort from the Marathas during the Second Anglo-Maratha War in 1803. Under British control, the fort's character changed substantially: most of its roughly 500 original Mughal-era buildings, according to the court historian Abul Fazl's count, had already been thinned by Shah Jahan's own demolitions to make way for his marble palaces, but the British destroyed most of the remainder to raise military barracks. Fewer than 30 Mughal-era structures survive today, concentrated on the fort's southeastern side facing the river.
During the British period, the fort became associated with the controversial "Ghazni Gates". In 1842, following the British withdrawal from Kabul at the end of the First Anglo-Afghan War, Lord Ellenborough issued the "Proclamation of the Gates," ordering troops returning through Ghazni to remove a pair of carved wooden gates from the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni, which he claimed were the sandalwood gates originally looted from the Somnath temple some 800 years earlier. A regiment of Jat sepoys carried the gates back to India, where they were installed in Agra Fort's arsenal store-room. On examination, however, the gates proved to be made of deodar wood native to Ghazni rather than sandalwood, and their carved decoration bore no resemblance to Gujarati craftsmanship, discrediting Ellenborough's claim; historian Romila Thapar has argued that no contemporary Persian or Indic source corroborates the existence of any such gates at Somnath at all. The episode was debated in the House of Commons the following year and contributed to Ellenborough's recall as Governor-General.
During the Indian rebellion of 1857 the fort served as a refuge for the British at the Battle of Agra. Lieutenant-Governor John Russell Colvin died there of cholera in September 1857, and was buried in front of the Diwan-i-Am, where his tomb remains. The rebellion caused the end of the East India Company's rule in India, and led to a century of direct rule in India by Britain.
In 1983, the Agra fort was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its importance during Mughal rule. A substantial portion of the fort remains under the control of the Indian Army and is closed to public access, including the Delhi Gate and several historic structures. There have been periodic calls from local officials for the army to vacate these areas, as was done at the Red Fort in Delhi in 2003, but as of the mid-2010s no such transfer had taken place.
The fort's ongoing conservation is complicated by urban air pollution in Agra, reduced flow and pollution in the adjacent Yamuna river, and heavy visitor traffic, all of which contribute to the deterioration of its sandstone and marble surfaces. A proposed "Taj Corridor" riverfront development near the fort and the Taj Mahal was halted following a 2004 joint UNESCO–ICOMOS monitoring mission that raised concerns about its potential impact on the site's heritage values. The Archaeological Survey of India continues to carry out periodic restoration work at the fort, including fortification and structural repairs undertaken in 2021.
The fort is one of India's most-visited monuments; in the 2023–24 financial year it drew approximately 218,000 foreign visitors and generated over ₹15 crore (approximately US$1.6 million or £1.2 million) in ticket revenue, the fourth-highest of any monument managed by the Archaeological Survey of India. It is open to visitors throughout the year and is one of the five ticketed monuments in Agra covered by the Agra Development Authority's pathkar (toll) scheme, under which the toll paid by foreign visitors at one participating monument is valid at the others for the remainder of the same day.
The fort occupies about 380,000 square metres (94 acres) on the west bank of the Yamuna river. It has a roughly semi-circular plan, with the curved side facing inland to the west and the straight side running parallel to the river on the east. The outer defences consist of double ramparts of red sandstone, about 70 feet (21 m) high, with massive circular bastions at intervals, utilising battlements, embrasures, and machicolations.
Four gates were originally provided, one of which, the Khizri Gate, opened onto the river. The two main surviving entrances are the Delhi Gate on the west wall, which was the formal public entrance, and the Amar Singh Gate on the south, which forms the present visitor entrance. Both gates incorporate a bent entrance and were originally protected by a moat and drawbridge. The Delhi Gate complex includes an inner gateway known as the Hathi Pol. The northern portion of the fort is still used by the Indian military, so the Delhi Gate cannot be used by the public.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Agra Fort”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.