Opposite the Great Mosque is the palace built by Shah Jehan, which was the home and abode of the Moghul Citsars. Surrounded by a lofty granite wall with frowning battle ments, it was a residence worthy of the descendants of the immortal Timur. The entrance was through a fine vesti bule. " It consists," says Heber, " not merely of a splendid Gothic arch in the centre of the great gate-tower, but after that of a long vaulted aisle like that of a Gothic cathedral with a small octagonal court in the centre, all of granite, and all finely carved with inscriptions from the Koran and with flowers." A long fine red sandstone arcade is all that now remains of the old entrance to the palace. The hall opened into a large courtyard, from which a great bazaar extended right and left, where sat and worked the royal manufac turers,—" goldsmiths, picture drawers, workmen in lace and workmen in silk and purple-gold, and in all those sorts of fine cloth of which they make turbans, girdles with golden flowers, and those drawers of ladies that are so fine and delicate." Passing through a great gate, over which was the Nobulkhana or Music Hall, the visitor entered the great court of the palace, in which " there is a great and stately hall with many ranks of pillars, high raised, very airy, open on three sides looking on to the court, and having its pillars and ground painted and gilded. In the midst of the walls which separate this hall from the Seraglio, there is an opening or kind of great window, high and large, and so high that a man cannot reach to it from below with his hand. There it is where the King every day about noon giveth a general audience to all ; which is the reason that this great hall is called Am-kas, that is, place of audience or a place of meeting common to great and small." Francois Bernier, who was Court Physician to the Moghul Emperor towards the be ginning of Aurangzeb's long reign (1658-1707), gives us a striking picture of the Am-kas as he saw it at certain festivals of the year.
" The King appeared upon his throne, splendidly ap pareled. His vest was of white satin, flowered and raised with a very fine embroidery of gold and silk. His turban was of cloth-of-gold, having a fowl wrought upon it like a heron, whose foot was covered with diamonds of an extra ordinary bigness and price, with a great Oriental topaz, which may he said to be matchless, shining like a little sun. A collar of long pearls hung about his neck down to his stomach, after the manner that some heathens wear here their great beads. His throne was supported by six high pillars or feet said to be of massive gold set with rubies, emeralds and diamonds. Beneath the throne there appear the great nobles, in splendid apparel, standing upon a raised ground covered with a great canopy of purpled gold with great golden fringes and enclosed by a silver balistre. The pillars of the hall were hung with tapestries of purpled gold having the ground of gold ; and for the roof of the hall there was nothing but great canopies of flowered satin fastened with red-silken cords that had big tufts of silk mixed with threads of gold hanging onthem. Below there was nothing to be seen but great silken tapestries, very rich, of an ex traordinary length and breadth." The glory has departed from the Diwan-i-Am, but the pillars of marble inlaid with mosaic work which supported the marble canopy above the throne still remain to please the eye of the traveller. A little behind the Great Hall of Audience, separated from it by a garden gay with flowering shrubs, rises an airy pile of white marble overlooking the broad Jumna. It is the Diwan-i-K has, or private Hall of Audience, world-renowned on account of the inscription which in letters of gold upon a ground of white marble ran round the cornice : " Agar Firdaus rue zamln ast—hamin ast to, hamin ast to, hamin ast (If there is a paradise on earth it is this, it is this, it is this)." The whole work is a master piece of refined fancy. On a marble platform rises a marble pavilion, whose flat-coned roof is supported by arches resting on a double row of marble pillars. The inner face of the arches, and the spandrels, and the pilasters which support them, are covered with flowers and foliage of delicate design and dainty execution, created in green serpentine, blue, lapis lazuli red and purple porphyry. The Moghul realized the prophecy, " I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones." On that hall the artist Austin de Bordeaux concentrated all his powers of modulation and lavished the wealth of an Empire. The ceiling was of wood, painted red and richly decorated with gold ; it was also formerly encrusted with a rich silver foliage inlaid with gold. Tavernier, the French jeweller, valued it at twenty-seven million francs. In the centre of the pillared terrace was the Emperor's judgment seat, hewn out of a solid block of natural crystal about " eighteen inches high and four feet in diameter " ; and in front of it three jets of clear water were continually kept playing. On state occasions His Majesty used the famous
peacock throne. " so called from its having the figures of two peacocks standing behind it, their tails being expanded and the whole so inlaid with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, pearls and other precious stones of appropriate colours, as to represent life. The throne itself was six feet long by five feet broad ; it stood on six massive feet, which with the body were of solid gold inlaid with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. It was surmounted by a canopy of gold, supported by twelve pillars, all richly emblazoned with costly gems, and a fringe of pearls ornamented the borders of the canopy. Between the two peacocks stood the figure of a parrot of the ordinary size, said to have been carved out of a single emerald." The peacock and parrot, Bernier states, were made " by a workman of astonishing powers, a French man by birth, who after defrauding several of the Princes of Europe by means of false gems, which he fabricated with peculiar skill, sought refuge in the Great Moghul's court, where he made his fortune." In a small court leading from the quadrangle in which the Diwan-i-Khas stands is the Emperor's private mosque, the Moti Musjid, or Pearl Mosque ; and well does it deserve its name, for it is as chaste and as rich as it can be. The domes only are seen above the red sandstone walls which enclose the mosque until the opening of two small fine brass gates, when the gem bathed in sunlight lies before you. But it is not full and untempered sunshine, for the Eastern architect designed with the sense of heat upon him and the value of shade. In the Moti Musjid, as in all other mosques, the central dome is always the largest, both in bulk and interest (as having the main archway), and the other two are sub ordinated to it. Behind the front arches there is another row of three arches supported on marble pillars, and the interchange of light and gloom in the three parallel aisles rivets the gaze. To break the monotony of the rise of the bulbous domes, are placed at the corners small minarets, and to relieve the creamy whiteness of the marble the para pet has a rich tracing of tendrils. In grace, simplicity and perfect proportion the Moti Musjid cannot be surpassed, and it is a fine expression of what is best in the Moslem creed. It was built by a devout Islamite, Aurangzeb, the son of Shah Jehan, under whose sway the Moghul Empire attained its widest limits. The Royal Baths, with their luxuriant ornamentation, and the jewelled apartments for the lights of the Seraglio, however, bear witness that the dominion founded by the brave warriors from the Oxus had already begun to subside into emasculate debility. Rapid was the decline. Thirty years after Aurangzeb's decease (February 21, 1707) Nadir Shah, the Persian soldier of fortune, descended through the passes of Afghanis tan and occupied and sacked Delhi. In the Diwan-i-Khas he exchanged with the vanquished Emperor his own service able head-dress for the jewelled turban of Muhammad Shah. Nadir Shah departed home, revealing to the free lances of the North that the power of the Great Moghul was not unassailable. The Afghans followed in his footsteps, and three years after his departure they captured Delhi and plundered the Imperial capital. Two years later the Mah rat tas dealt the mortal blow. After a month's siege they captured the city, desecrated the tombs and shrines, and stripped the Diwan-i-Khas of silver and gold ornaments. At the time (1788), when Burke in words of passionate elo quence was depicting the miseries caused by the wise ad ministration of Hastings, a Rohilla chief made a sudden attack upon Dehli, seized the Emperor Shah Alum (who had bestowed the Diwani of Bengal on Clive), and in the Diwan-i-Khas he struck out the monarch's eyes with his dagger. The unfortunate Emperor was rescued by the Mahrattas, but only to become in turn their prisoner, until he was released by Lord Lake. The English general was ushered into the royal presence at the Diwan-i-K has and found the Great Moghul " seated under a small tattered canopy, the remnant of his royal state, with every external appearance of the misery of his condition." Within the wall of the Citadel palace the English allowed him to hold a mock court, and though the power of the Great Moghul had perished, the title continued to attract the veneration of the natives. It was this spell which caused the mutineers, the morning they entered Delhi, to march to the palace crying, " Help, 0 King ! We pray for assistance in our fight for the faith " ; and in the Imperial Hall of Special Audience, the native officers waited on the Emperor and " promised to establish his rule throughout the whole country." Before the sun had set a descendant of the immortal Timur once more reigned in the Imperial City.