A walled city bent round a fortress-palace on the Yamuna: from the fort’s gates two broad streets with canals down their middle, Chandni Chowk running west to the Fatehpuri mosque and the Faiz Bazaar south; the Friday mosque raised on its rock between them; havelis and lanes behind the arcades.
In 1639 Shah Jahan began a new capital beside the old cities of Delhi, and named it after himself. Its core is the fortress-palace, the Red Fort, on the west bank of the Yamuna: its private pavilions line the river front, its public gates face the city. The city was laid round it on the landward side and enclosed by a wall with gates on the roads to Lahore, Kashmir, Ajmer and old Delhi, so that the whole plan, with the river as its chord, has something of the shape of a bow.
Two ceremonial streets start from the fort’s gates. Chandni Chowk runs west from the Lahore Gate for over a kilometre to the Fatehpuri mosque, with a canal fed from the Yamuna flowing down its middle between rows of trees, an octagonal square with a pool halfway along, and on its north side the caravanserai and garden of the emperor’s daughter Jahanara. The Faiz Bazaar runs south from the Delhi Gate. Both were lined with arcades of shops. Between them, on a rocky outcrop, Shah Jahan raised the Jama Masjid on a high plinth, its great east gate facing the fort and its prayer hall facing Mecca, to the west.
François Bernier, the French physician who lived at the Mughal court from 1659 to 1666, described the city in a long letter: the fortress and its halls, the streets and arcades, the mansions of the nobles with their courts, gardens, fountains and cool underground rooms, and the mud-and-thatch houses of the mass of the people. The model follows his account and the surviving monuments; the fabric of lanes and houses is generic, and distances are approximate.