Feroz Shah Kotla
Located near the famous Feroz Shah Kotla Cricket Stadium, off Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Feroz Shah Kotla was the imposing citadel of Ferozabad, the Fifth city of Delhi. The great builder and Emperor Firoz Shah Tughlaq (1351-88), nephew of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq and successor of Muhammad Tughlaq built the city of Ferozabad with its citadel in 1354. It is said that this city was spread over a very large area, extending from Hauz-Khas in the southwest to Pir Ghaib in the north, where there is a hunting lodge built by Feroz Shah.
Designed by Malik Ghazi and Abdul Hakk, Feroz Shah Kotla was then popularly known as Kushk-I-Feroz, which meant Feroz’s palace. Consisting of three rubble-built walled rectangular enclosures, it forms an irregular polygonal plan with its eastern wall in one alignment. The eastern wall of the citadel was built on a bank of the River Yamuna. It is said that Feroz Shah erected this citadel here in spite of having three palaces in Delhi because of the shortage of water in those areas. Among the three enclosures of the citadel, the central one is the largest and is presently called as ‘Kotla Feroz Shah’ as one can only find the ruins of the northern and southern enclosures amidst the modern constructions. The central enclosure had an imposing main gateway from the western direction and bastions on either side flanked it, the ruins of which can be seen even today. Often compared to the ‘Windsor Palace of London’, Timur was spell bound with the beauty of the palace. The palace was finally abandoned in the year 1490 AD.
Structures within Feroz Shah Kotla
Presently nothing much survives in and around this once beautiful palace, which has now been developed as a beautiful garden, as the successive rulers used most of its ruins for the construction of later cities in Delhi. However, the remaining structures are still so interesting that it is among the favorite tourist destinations of the capital.
