Where the ground is flat and the water lies deep, raise it from wells by wheels into tanks and channels, and lay the garden out in regular, symmetrical plots round them, with walks, beds of flowers and trees in order.
The main street: canal, trees and arcades
Run the principal street straight from the fortress gate to a mosque at its far end, lead a canal down its middle between trees, open an octagonal square with a pool halfway along, and line both sides with arcades of shops.
Chandni Chowk was laid out about 1650 under the patronage of Jahanara, Shah Jahan’s daughter. It runs for over a kilometre from the Lahore Gate of the fort to the Fatehpuri mosque, and a canal brought from the Yamuna flowed along its centre. Halfway, an octagonal square with a pool (the ‘moonlit square’ that gave the street its name) was faced on the north by Jahanara’s caravanserai, with her garden behind it.
Bernier describes the principal streets as broad and straight and lined on both sides with arcades, the shops opening under the arches with an upper floor or terrace above. The second street, the Faiz Bazaar, ran south from the fort’s Delhi Gate on the same pattern.
Related rules
Orient the prayer hall so that its principal wall, the qibla wall, stands square to the direction of Mecca, and mark the middle of that wall with a niche, the mihrab.
qibla wall ⟂ direction of the Kaaba; mihrab on the axis
Lay out the garden as a walled square divided into four by raised walks with water channels on the two axes, and divide each quarter again.
1 → 4 → 16 beds; water on the axes
Where people disagree about the width of a public road, make it seven cubits, and let no one build out into it; lanes that serve only the houses on them may be narrower.
public road ≥ 7 cubits (≈ 3.5 m)
Build as you will on your own land, provided you do your neighbour no harm: open no window, door or roof terrace that looks into his house or court, and do not set your door opposite his across a lane.
Treat a dead-end lane as the joint property of the houses that open on it: no one may open a new door into it, build over it or narrow it without the consent of all of them, and they may close its mouth with a gate.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The main street: canal, trees and arcades”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/chandni-chowk-canal. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.