Lahore

The rebuilt walls could not stop a long decline. Mongol raids and two seizures by Khokhar chiefs, in 1342 and 1394, left Lahore so poor that when Timur took it in 1398 he did not bother to sack it. Its fortunes turned only in 1524, when its own governor invited Babur down from Kabul and the city passed to the Mughals.

Akbar held court here for fourteen years from 1584 and rebuilt the old mud fort in brick, and his successors filled it with palaces and pavilions; Aurangzeb raised the great Badshahi Mosque facing its gate. After his death in 1707 Lahore lay on the road of every invader from Persia and Afghanistan, and in one stretch of eleven years it went through nine governors. Sikh chiefs took the city in 1765, and in 1799 Ranjit Singh captured Lahore and made it the capital of the Sikh kingdom he ruled as Maharaja.