Asar-ul-Sanadid: a nineteenth-century history of Delhi’

In 1847 the Muslim educationist Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98) published an Urdu text entitled Asar-ul-Sanadid, listing and describing the buildings of Delhi. On the basis of this publication, Sayyid Ahmad Khan was invited to join the Royal Asiatic Society and to write a second, improved edition (published in 1854) intended for translation into English. Unfortunately the translation was never produced. The Asar was nonetheless a landmark text in the field of Indo-Islamic architectural history, representing one of the first comprehensive surveys written on Delhi’s architecture, and a foundation for further academic inquiry into the ancient city’s architectural history. This article presents a new English translation of excerpts from the original Urdu text of the second edition, describing major monuments of Delhi architecture as examined by Sayyid Ahmad Khan in the mid-nineteenth century.