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 palace on the river, the city bent round it
Put the fortress-palace on the river bank, its private pavilions along the water and its public gates towards the town, and let the walled city spread round it on the landward side, its main streets starting from the fortress gates.
Shah Jahan founded Shahjahanabad in 1639 on the west bank of the Yamuna. The Red Fort, finished in 1648, lies along the river: on its water front a row of marble pavilions (the private audience hall, the emperor’s apartments, the harem and the bath) joined by the channel called the Stream of Paradise; on its landward side the Lahore and Delhi gates, the drum house, and the hall of public audience on the axis of the main gate.
The city wall swept round the fort from the river above it to the river below, with gates on the roads to Kashmir, Lahore, Ajmer and old Delhi, and the two great streets of the city began at the fort’s two gates. Bernier, who knew the city in the 1660s, describes this arrangement at length.
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
Stand the minarets free at the corners of the plinth, so that they frame the tomb in every view without crowding it.
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.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The palace on the river, the city bent round it”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/shahjahanabad-fort-river. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.