184/.] Account of the Town and Palace of Feerozabad. 97 >) 



in any other work, and the details which he gives respecting Secree, 

 Jehanpunnah, the Houz-khan, and old Dehli will be most valuable in 

 hereafter identifying the ground on which these several places were 

 situate. After this we leave Mubareekabad, built by the second Saiud, 

 in 1436, on the banks of the Jumna, the site of which must have been 

 most likely, either below Kelokheree, or above Ferozabad. We find that 

 Hoomaioon, built (1533) according to Abul Fazl, (but repaired would 

 probably be the more correct expression, as this will probably be found 

 to have been the fort of " old Dehli" or " Gheiaspoor") the fort of In- 

 draput, which he called " Deenpunnah," that on his expulsion by Sher 

 Shah (Abul Fazl calls bim merely Sher Khan, looking upon him in the 

 light of an usurper,) that sovereign destroyed Secree, the town and fort 

 built by Allah-ood-deen, and laid the foundations of another town 

 (1542-1545) ; this the author of the Ayeen Akhberee tells us, was for 

 the most part in ruins in his time, and will probably turn out to be the 

 town, of which the two extreme gates (N. and S. nearly) are still in ex- 

 istence one (the Kabulee) near the Dehli gate of Shahjehanabad, and the 

 other a very splendid edifice (the Muthra gate) near the western wall of 

 Deenpunnah. The fact of this town having so soon gone to decay may 

 be easily accounted for by the fact of Akhber having transferred the seat 

 of Government to Agra ; while the absence, at Agra and elsewhere, dur* 

 ing some twenty years, of Sekunder Lodie, and his short-lived successors, 

 immediately before Baber's arrival in India, may have rendered it im- 

 perative on Hoomaioon, to provide a suitable place of residence on his 

 coming to the throne.* 



It has been observed above, and will be gathered from the details which 

 follow, that much is to be gleaned from some of the historical records 

 of the time, and no doubt more accurate information will be obtained, 

 by a careful examination of the many authors, who are as yet but little 

 known, at our disposal ; but in consequence of some of the writers of 

 these records being personally unacquainted with the places they named, 

 while the original works of others have had the serious misfortune of 

 falling into the hands of copyists, on whom alone we have now to de- 

 pend, and who themselves rarely knew any thing of the neighbourhood 



* The utility of this sketch was suggested by the perusal of an admirable letter from 

 Mr. H. M. Elliot, Secretary to Government to the Secretary Archaeological Society, in 

 which mnny of these point are touched upon. 



