The memoirs of a French physician at the court of Aurangzeb, 1659–66, including a long letter describing Delhi and Agra: the fortress-palace, the streets and bazaars, the Jama Masjid, the houses of nobles and people, and the gardens.
François Bernier (1620–1688) arrived in India during the war of succession between Shah Jahan’s sons and stayed for twelve years, most of them in the service of a Mughal noble. His letter to François de La Mothe Le Vayer, dated from Delhi in 1663, is a portrait of Shah Jahan’s new capital. He compares it at every turn with Paris: its situation on the Yamuna, the fortress and its halls of audience, the two broad main streets lined with arcades of shops, the caravanserai of the princess, the great mosque on its rock above the town, and the houses, from those of the nobles among courts and gardens, with pools, cool underground rooms and roof terraces for the hot nights to those of the poor of mud and thatch, which burn every year.
Bernier is often sharp (he thought the city lacked the middle rank of good houses that make Paris) but exact, and his letter is the fullest contemporary description of Shahjahanabad.
The book, part by part
I Letter on Delhi and Agra (1663)
The fortress and palace; the principal streets; the Jama Masjid; the houses of nobles and people; the markets.
Rules: The palace on the river, the city bent round it · The main street: canal, trees and arcades · The Friday mosque on its rock · Houses of the nobles and of the people