- published: 20 Aug 2014
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Coordinates: 28°40′N 77°14′E / 28.66°N 77.23°E / 28.66; 77.23
Old Delhi (Urdu: پُرانی دلّی Purānī Dillī) (Hindi: पुरानी दिल्ली), walled city of Delhi, India, was founded as Shahjahanabad (Urdu: شاہجہان آباد) by Mughal Emperor Shahjahan in 1639. It remained the capital of the Mughals until the end of the Mughal dynasty. It was once filled with mansions of nobles and members of the royal court, along with elegant mosques and gardens. Today, despite having become extremely crowded and dilapidated because of the failure of the predominantly Hindu Indian government to control migrants from moving in, it still serves as the symbolic heart of Islamic metropolitan Delhi.
The site of Shahjahanabad is north of earlier settlements of Delhi, its southern part overlaps some of the area settled during the Tughlaqs in 14th century, when it was the seat of Delhi Sultanate. The sultanates ruled from Delhi between 1206 and 1526, when the last was replaced by the Mughal dynasty. The five dynasties were the Mamluk dynasty (1206–90); the Khilji dynasty (1290–1320); the Tughlaq dynasty (1320–1414); the Sayyid dynasty (1414–51); and the Lodi dynasty (1451–1526).
Delhi (/ˈdɛli/; locally pronounced Dillee or Dehli), officially the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT), is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest metropolis by population in India. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16.7 million inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census. The region has been given special status of National Capital Region under The Constitution (69th Amendment) Act, 1991. There are nearly 22.2 million residents in the greater National Capital Region urban area (which also includes the cities Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon,Sonepat and Faridabad along with other smaller nearby towns).
Delhi is known to have been continuously inhabited since at least the 6th century BCE, though human habitation is believed to have existed since the second millennium BCE. Delhi is also widely believed to have been the site of Indraprastha, the legendary capital of the Pandavas during the times of the Mahabharata. Delhi re-emerged as a major political, cultural and commercial city along the trade routes between northwest India and the Gangetic plain after the rise of the Delhi sultanates. It is the site of many ancient and medieval monuments, archaeological sites and remains.