Delhi

The sultanate's greatness did not survive the 14th century. Muhammad bin Tughluq forced much of Delhi's Muslim elite to move to his new capital at Daulatabad in the Deccan, and the nobles never forgave him. Then, in December 1398, Timur took the city and his army sacked it for days, leaving it in ruins. The sultans who followed held so little that people joked the realm of the king of the world ran from Delhi to Palam, a village a few miles off, and in 1526 Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat and Delhi passed to the Mughals.

Shah Jahan gave the city its Mughal splendour. Between 1638 and 1649 he built the walled city of Shahjahanabad beside the Yamuna, with the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid, and moved his court there from Agra. That wealth drew Nader Shah of Persia, who crushed the Mughal army at Karnal in 1739; when a false rumour of his death set off a rising in Delhi, he ordered a massacre that killed some twenty to thirty thousand people, and he left with the Peacock Throne. Marathas, Afghans and Jats then fought over a capital whose emperor ruled little beyond its walls, until the East India Company took Delhi from the Marathas in 1803.