Qila Mubarak, Bathindaਕਿਲ੍ਹਾ ਮੁਬਾਰਕ, ਬਠਿੰਡਾ

Where is Qila Mubarak?

Qila Mubarak rises in the very heart of Bathinda, its huge brick ramparts lifting above the bazaars of the old city. It is recognised as a monument of national importance and is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. Much of the fortress is closed to the public, but visitors can walk the lawns, climb towards the ramparts and enter the two gurdwaras inside the complex, and from almost anywhere in the old city the fort is the landmark that orients you.

How old is the Bathinda fort?

Qila Mubarak is described as the oldest surviving fort in India. In its present form it has stood on this ground since about 1100 to 1200 AD, but the bricks in its walls reach much further back, to the Kushana period, when the emperor Kanishka ruled northern India. Tradition credits Raja Dab, an ancestor of Vena Pal, with building the fort alongside Kanishka, raising it so that Hun invaders could not threaten the Kushana kingdom. Not every scholar accepts the oldest dating: one view, argued by the writer Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu in The Tribune, places its construction in the early ninth century under local Bhatti Rajput rulers. Either way, few fortresses anywhere in India carry so many layers of time in a single wall.

By the late tenth century the fort was in the hands of Jayapala of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, and chronicles of the period speak of it as his capital under its old name, Tabarhind. The Mughals strengthened it further, especially in the time of Akbar, and the Imperial Gazetteer of India recorded a fortress of 36 bastions standing about 118 feet high, a conspicuous landmark for miles across the flat Malwa plain.

Stand in front of the walls and the age of the place is written in its fabric. The bastions are enormous tapering drums of small, thin bricks, quite unlike the dressed stone of Mughal or Rajput forts further east, and long stretches of the curtain wall still carry the patched, weathered look of masonry that has been repaired by one regime after another. The fort guarded the old route across the dry Malwa country between Delhi and the northwest, which is why empire after empire, from the Hindu Shahis to the Mughals to the Patiala state, thought it worth holding, strengthening and renaming.

The prison of Razia Sultan

The fort's most famous episode belongs to the Delhi Sultanate. Razia Sultan, the first woman to rule Delhi, was defeated and dethroned in 1240, and her captor was Altunia, the governor of Bathinda, who had rebelled against her. She was imprisoned inside Qila Mubarak. The story then turns: Razia escaped, married Altunia, and marched with him towards Delhi to win back her throne. The attempt failed, and both were killed. The fort that held a queen is remembered across India for her story, and Bathinda's name is tied to it in every school textbook.

The Gurus' visits and the Patiala years

Qila Mubarak holds a deep place in Sikh memory too. Tradition holds that Guru Nanak Dev Ji visited Bathinda in 1515 and Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji around 1665. Guru Gobind Singh Ji came in 1705, after the Battle of Muktsar, and a gurdwara on the ramparts marks his visit. In 1754 Baba Ala Singh of Patiala took control of the fort and renamed it Gobindgarh in honour of Guru Gobind Singh Ji. Inside the complex stand two gurdwaras; the main Gurdwara Qila Mubarak was built in 1835 under Maharaja Karam Singh of Patiala in the Phulkian style, and the Patiala maharajas later restored the fortress. The Rani Mahal above the entrance gateway is a later addition from these years.

What can visitors see today?

A visit today is about scale and atmosphere more than polished exhibits. The great walls and round bastions, built of small ancient bricks, show their age honestly. The gurdwaras inside are living places of worship, so dress modestly and cover your head. The lawns below the ramparts are where Bathinda families come in the evening, and the view from the fort takes in the whole old city. Combine it with a walk through the bazaars at its feet, which have traded in the fort's shadow for centuries.

Give the fort an unhurried hour. Walk the approach slowly, because the ramparts reveal themselves in layers: first the outer walls above the market lanes, then the great bastions, then the gateway with the Rani Mahal above it. In the late afternoon the brickwork turns deep red in the low sun, and the sound of kirtan from the gurdwara inside carries over the lawns. It is this layering, a working shrine inside a frontier fortress inside a modern city, that makes Qila Mubarak unlike any other historic site in Punjab.