Delhi is puzzled over, introduced, interpreted, celebrated all the time. Walks, performances, talks and articles keep the past alive here. But not many realise that the person who began it all was a young man in his 20s. Two centuries after he was born, Syed Ahmad Khan’s work can now enjoy a wider readership because of its translation into English. His book Asar-us-Sanadid was translated into English by historian Rana Safvi in 2018, for us to revisit Delhi as it was in the nineteenth century.

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To Khan, historic architecture was not just patrons, materials, form and function. They were part of a continuous culture, nourished by new infusions. Political history, the overlapping cities and forts, the increasingly sophisticated elements in architecture, became four-dimensional by reading mosques, dargahs and mazhars as sacred spaces, calm with the presence of mystics and scholars long departed. They were to be experienced in silence, reading the inscriptions, not listening to the patter of a guide. He delineates the complementarity of a vibrant urban culture—music, poetry and dance—and animated bazaars, and the tranquil atmosphere of the countryside, fields and hills dotted with ruins. ‘The charm of the Delhi scene’, as historian Percival Spear was to describe it a century later.

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