We read and write a lot about the Mughal invader Akbar building the Lahore Fort and the walled city in 1566AD. But the fact is that he was primarily expanding the fort and the city as built during the Syed Dynasty under Syed Mubarak Shah in 1422AD, almost 144 years before the Mughal ruler. The role of Mubarak Shah in building a completely devastated Lahore as a single unit, which the invader Timur had completely erased in his blind hatred of Shaikha Ghakkar, is seldom, if never, mentioned. Yet the contribution of Syed Mubarak is really the defining shape of what the old walled city and the fort are today. So, first a bit of history. The Ghakkars had captured Lahore while Timur was devastating Delhi and every town or village he came across on his way back to Uzbekistan. He died at Otrar in Kazakhstan. His body was embalmed and reburied in Samarkand. As the Tughlaq Empire was crumbling, the Syed Dynasty (normally spelt as Sayyid) was rising with Sultan Syed Khizr Khan, the governor of Multan under the last Tughlaq ruler Feroz Shah Tughlaq. The Sayyids claim directed descendance from the Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH) and had moved down from Arabia.

As different Turkish chiefs battled among themselves, the Sayyids with the departure of Timur managed to come to power. Khizr Khan came to power in 1414 and seven years later in 1421 as he was on his death bed nominated his son Mubarak Shah to take over in agreement with all the chiefs in Lahore. Mubarak faced a triple threat from the Ghakkars, the Turkbachas and the emerging Mughals. In October 1421 as the monsoons abated, Syed Mubarak ordered four of his commanders with their armies to secretly surround Jasrat Ghakkar, the son of Sheikha Ghakkar who was earlier beheaded by Timur outside Mori Gate of Lahore, from four different direction. It was a highly secret operation of which even the resourceful Jasrat and his spies did not know. Never had such a speedy advance taken place as the Syed forces galloped non-stop towards where Jasrat was. The Syed forces destroyed a major part of the Ghakkar army, who managed to find an opening and fled to Jullandur, and after crossing the Beas, then the Ravi and finally the Chenab he reached Talwara on the Kashmir slopes. But the changed Jammu king also attacked him and Jasrat fled towards his home in the Potohar plateau.

In January 1422 Syed Mubarak Shah thought it useless to chase the Ghakkars and headed towards Lahore. What he saw there shocked him. The ‘Tarikh-e-Mubarak Shahi’ tells us that the ruler stood “outside the destroyed fort on one side and the devastated walled city on the other as the stink of dead bodies filled the air”. The most important outpost between Delhi, the capital of the sub-continent, and the west towards Afghanistan and Iran lay in complete ruins. At this point Mubarak Shah camped in the high ground inside the destroyed fort and collected his advisers. My suspicion is that he camped on the ground of ‘Divan-e-Aam’. For the next one month his forces collected corpses decaying in every street, while his cleaning and sweeping men cleared the entire city. His planners set about a detailed plan to collect bricks, which were scarce, as well as planning to build large mud bricks which were partially baked. They were ‘cemented’ with mud paste.

The walled city was planned with just two southern gateways, one was Lohari Darwaza and the other was Mori Gate. The book says that there was just one gateway to the west, which seems to have disappeared after Akbar expanded the city and took the brick wall right up to Taxali Gate. But then the Taxali Gate of Akbar was outside the Mubarak Shah old Lahore. On the western side the wall ran on the eastern side of the current Bhati Bazaar. If you walk through the bazaar you will notice, still, that the eastern side is slightly higher than the western side of the bazaar. On this ‘height’ was the Mubarak Shah mud wall, which curved eastwards where today stands Tehsil Bazaar. The southern portion of this bazaar is also at a height where the Mubarak Shah wall stood.

The eastern walls of the ancient Mubarak Shah city were to the west of the Shah Alam Bazaar. If you walk through the bazaar today, you will notice that the western portion of the bazaar is at a height. This is where the ancient mud walls stood. To the north the wall surrounded the Langa Mandi area, which in the ancient city was at a height. The Rang Mahal area was outside the Mubarak Shah city, and the place where today is the grave of Malik Ayaz, the male slave of Mahmud of Ghazni, was a graveyard outside the city. The most interesting aspect of the Mubarak Shah planning was that all the high grounds south of the Lahore Fort were incorporated in the city mud walls, places like Mohallah Maullian, Gumti Bazaar etc. The planners understood that Lahore was several small habitations in a city of mounds, so they planned to join the main high grounds where habitation existed. It seems that smaller habitations, mostly probably all walled, touched one another. But Mubarak Shah converted them all into one huge walled city.

This fact alone sets apart Syed Mubarak Shah from all other rulers of Lahore, for he gave shape to our old walled city and fort. It is different from today’s walled city which Akbar finalised, but the basics were set up by Mubarak Shah. All we must do is look up old maps and it is evident that Akbar expanded the city outwards using baked bricks with more gateways. Mubarak Shah consolidated the walled city as one, giving it the foundations that Akbar expanded. The Lahore Fort’s Akbari Gate is an expanded area east of ‘Diwan-e-Aam’. The compulsion of Mubarak Shah was that he gifted Lahore with an organised shape, with a system where cleanliness was a primary consideration. This also meant that with an organised river port grain markets expanded. Along with this he built spaces for gardens and wells, which really gave the Lahore of old its future shape. It is also incorrect that only mud bricks were used. A partially burnt mud brick is a very strong one. So, Lahore was a well-defended city with an impressive fort. The Lahore of today is what Mubarak Shah left to be improved.

Akbar the Mughal basically had a situation where a famine had thousands of starving persons, and he used them on the promise of a free meal. His situation was that he wanted to please the Bhatti clans who were in revolt. The Dullah Bhatti episode is before us as an example. In the expanded western area, he housed the Bhatti clans in return for higher land taxes. The eastern expansion was to house the Cossack horsemen, mostly the Qizilbash tribe, who helped him tame an angry peasantry. That is why the Mochi Gate area was given to these horsemen.

As we study the old and ancient walled city of Lahore and its fort, we see a gradual expansion and improvement. The British blessed the old city with waterworks that changed social life considerably.The fact remains that while the British and the Mughals gave Lahore its grandeur and present shape, the starting point of this amazing urban dwelling is owed much to Syed Mubarak Shah and his considered planning. We should study his contribution and appreciate it.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2024