Daulatabad Fort

En un regard

Le château en bref

Perched on a conical rocky outcrop some two hundred metres north-west of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, the former Deogiri is one of the most renowned of the reputedly impregnable strongholds of the Deccan. Founded by the Yadava kings, it later served as the short-lived capital of the Delhi Sultanate when Muhammad bin Tughluq renamed it Daulatabad, ‘abode of wealth’, and then as the seat of the Nizam Shahi dynasty of Ahmednagar before falling to the Mughals in 1633. The site, spread over more than 80 hectares, reads as a succession of barriers: a glacis, two moats, three concentric enclosures known as Ambarkot, Mahakot and Kalakot, bent gateways bristling with iron spikes and, finally, the Andheri, a passage cut into the rock and plunged into darkness, which guarded access to the summit. Within the fort survive the Chand Minar, a tall victory tower of the fifteenth century, the Chini Mahal, a royal bathhouse (hammam), cisterns, stepped wells, a baradari at the summit and a network of terracotta pipes, bearing witness to remarkable hydraulic engineering.