ABSTRACT
Even when the last of the Mughal emperors, and some notables from the city of Shah Jahanabad, started establishing residences in south Delhi in the early nineteenth century, their hunting lodges or summer homes were located mainly to the west of Hauz-i Rani, in the Mehrauli area. Hauz-i Rani remained unaffected by the change in the fortunes of Mehrauli, and, while it continued to figure as a ‘reservoir’ on nineteenth-century British land-survey maps of the Delhi plain, the Gazetteer of the Delhi district admitted that by 1883-4 the hauz was no more than a seasonal swamp with its lands occupied by a mango grove (Anon. [1883-4] 1988; Fanshawe [1902] 1991: Map 8).
