ABSTRACT
The Hauz-i Rani, the ‘Queen’s reservoir’, was constructed some time in the twelfth century by a queen or a princess, a rani about whom we possess no further information. In fact, it is only by accident that we can at all glean episodes from the early history of the Hauz-i Rani. There were other reservoirs in the Delhi plain from the same time period, but most of them have not been remembered. The Hauz-i Rani was first mentioned in the Persian chronicle of Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani (completed AD 1260) only because the city constructed by the early Sultans of Delhi was in its immediate neighbourhood. In the early thirteenth century the city’s major entrance, the Budaun gate, was about 300 m to the west, and faced the hauz. As a result, people entering the city on one of its major thoroughfares from the Bagh-i Jud in the north inevitably passed by its banks. According to Juzjani, there was a vast plain next to the hauz that was sometimes used as an army encampment, or lashkargah. This area was also used for large ceremonial occasions when, presumably, the space in the city proved deficient (Juzjani 1963-4: 81-2). It was near the hauz on 28 October 1242, in the reign of Sultan Ala’ al-Din Masud (1242-6), that Sultan Iltutmish’s military slaves wrought a terrible punishment upon their political competitors (Juzjani 1963-4:27, 469). In Ala’ al-Din Khalaji’s reign (1296-1316), it could not have been far from the Hauz-i Rani that the Sultan set up his major markets. The Sultanate historian Ziya’ al-Din Barani noted that these bazaars were located in the vicinity of the Budaun gate which we know was close to the hauz (Barani 1860-2:309).
