Bayana

Bayana stands below a formidable hill fort in eastern Rajasthan. Its commanding position gave the town strategic importance between the plains of northern India and the Rajput country. Successive settlements grew below the fortress, including a town founded after the Ghurid conquest. Mosques, tombs and other buildings preserve evidence of the varied courts and communities that occupied it.

In the fifteenth century Bayana was the seat of the Auhadi family, who held the fort while nearby Agra was still a much smaller settlement. The region later passed to the Lodis and then the Mughals. Earthquake, scarcity of water and the rise of a new capital at Agra contributed to Bayana’s decline, but its fortress continued to figure in the struggles for control of northern India.