This was built by Akbar for his favorite son Jahangir to provide him with the comfort and luxury inside the fort. This palace displays an excellent combination of Hindu and Muslim architecture. Inside the fort there are places like the private room for Shah Jahan, Khas Mahal. The room inlaid with mirrors called the Shish Mahal and was used as a dressing room by the harem. The Anguri Bagh or the grape garden was a small formal Moghal garden. The Hauz-i-Jehangri is a huge bowl which is carved out of a single stone and is kept just outside the Jahangir palace. The Amar Singh gate is the place where the Maharaja of Jodhpur in a bid to escape from the fort ran his horse over the fort wall. The stone statue of the horse has immortalized the loyal horse.

Undoubtedly, the most noteworthy building inside Agra Fort is the Jahangiri Mahal (Jahangir's Palace), which was the principal zenana palace (palace for women belonging to the royal household), used mainly by the Rajput wives of Akbar. A splendid gateway leads to an interior courtyard surrounded by grand halls covered with profuse carvings on stone, heavily fashioned brackets, piers, and crossbeams. One can still spot remnants of decoration in gold and blue done in the prevalent Persian style. Jahangiri Mahal mixes Transoxanian (Central Asian) features, such as the verandah on the east front with its high slender columns (a translation into stone of the timber iwan of vernacular Transoxanian architecture), with courtyard halls styled in the broader Gujarat-Malwa-Rajasthan tradition as it had been passed onto the Mughals by the early 16th-century architecture of Raja Man Singh of Gwalior. This exotic medley and adventurous eclecticism suggests a daring approach in architecture. The typically Gujarati brackets-fabulously carved animal and floral motifs-register a dominating effect on the few Islamic features such as the verandah on the eastern front with exquisitely slender pillars facing the riverfront. Jahangiri Mahal is the most important building of the Akbari period in the Agra Fort.

Top