| | Me, at the Kangra fort. It was one superb fort! Though both Sawa and me couldn't understand why did they bother to make walls towards the cliff side.
The Fort, also known as the Nagarkot or Kot Kangra, is situated to the south-west of the old Kangra town and built on the top of the precipitious hill on the confluence of the Banganga and Manjhi or Patal Ganga rivers which also serve as the most of the Fort. Access to the Fort from the town at this place where the ridge of rock which separates the two rivers is narrowed to a mere neck of about 50 m across which a deep ditch has been hewn at the foot of the walls. The antiquity of the Fort is traced back to a much earlier period. The earliest extant remains inside the Fort are the Jaina and Brahmanical temples which could be dated to around the ninth-tenth century AD. In the annals of history, its first reference occurs at the time of invasions of Mahmud Ghazni in AD 1009. In 1337 AD it was captured by Muhammad Tughlaq and again in 1351 by his successor Firoz Shah. But it did not fall to the Muslims permanently until 1621, when after a siege of fourteen months it was conquered by Jahangir, who garrisoned it with his troops and appointed a Mughal Governor to keep the hill chief in the check. The surrounding states however, remained in the hands of the Katoch Rajas. In the second half of the eighteenth century, after the death of its Governor Nawab Alif Khan, the Mughal power rapidly declined and Raja Sansar Chand II succeeded in 1786 in recovering the ancient fortress of his ancestors. But by carrying his ambitious design he came into conflict first with the neighbouring hill chiefs then with the Gurkhas of Nepal, under Amar Singh Thapa and finally with the Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh to whom he was compelled to surrender the Fort in 1809. It remained in the hands of the Sikhs till 1846 when it was made over to the British Government along with the hill States as far as Ravi. The Fort continued to be held by a garrison but was evacuated sometime before the great earthquake on 4th April 1905 in which extensive damage was sustained.
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- posted by Varun Singh @ 10:12 PM
