Agra is
the city of the Taj Mahal, in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh,
some 200 km from Delhi. Agra has three UNESCO World Heritage sites, the
Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort in the city and Fatehpur Sikri nearby. There
are also many other buildings and tombs from Agra's days of glory as the
capital of the Mughal Empire. The city has little else to recommend it.
Pollution, especially smog and litter, is rampant and travellers are
pestered by swarms of touts and hawkers at every monument, mosque, temple
or palace. That said, the sites are some of the wonders of the world and
no trip to India is complete without at least one visit to the Taj. While
Agra's heyday was as the capital of the Mughal empire between 1526 and
1658, the city was founded much earlier. The earliest reference to Agra is
in the ancient epic, the Mahabharata, while Ptolemy was the first person
to call it by its modern name. The recorded history of Agra begins around
the 11th century, and over the next 500 years, the city changed hands
between various kings, both Hindu and Muslim.In 1506, Sultan Sikandar
Lodi, the ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, moved his capital from Delhi to
Agra. His son Ibrahim Lodi was the last ruler of the Lodi dynasty, as he
was defeated in 1526 by Babur, the first Mughal ruler, in the battle of
Panipat. Agra fell too, and became the capital of the Mughals, whose rule
over Agra was uninterrupted except for a brief period between 1540 and
1556. In 1540, Sher Shah Shuri overthrew Humayun became the ruler of much
of North India, including Agra. After Sher Shah Suri's death his
descendants proved unequal to the task of ruling the kingdom, and Hemu, a
Hindu general of Suri became the effective ruler who would later crown
himself King Hemachandra Vikramaditya just as the kingdom was facing an
assault from the reinvigorated Mughals. In 1556, Hemu would be defeated
and killed in the second battle of Panipat, and the Mughals regained Agra.
