ABSTRACT
The location of the city attracted Indian rulers of all kinds from ancient times because of its strategic and commer cial value: it has long dominated transport networks along the corridor between the Himalaya and the Thar Desert as well as the fertile zone between the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers. This was the area in which many of the events recounted in the Mahābhārata, the Hindu epic composed approximately 2,000 years ago, are said to have taken place, and Delhi is mentioned by name in some of the songs of the Hindu Bards, compiled around the same period. Archaeological excava tions in 1955 and later, which uncovered ancient remains below the seventeenth-century citadel of Shergarh, provide some evidence to support these legendary references and, therefore, the claim that a city, perhaps called Indraprastha, was founded on or near the site of modern Delhi around the ninth century B.C. It was probably this settlement that was referred to as "Dilli" by the Greek geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria, writing in the first century A.D. However, the establishment of the first historically verifiable Delhi, by the Tomara Dynasty, one of the leading families among the Rājput people of northwestern India, is usually considered to have occurred between 736 and 850. This settlement appears to have been relatively unimportant until 1060, when the Tomara ruler Anangpal either established or enlarged a major fortress at Delhi, called Lal Kot.
