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Rh college was plundered of a very valuable oriental library, and the building completely destroyed. A new college was founded in 1858, and was affiliated to the university of Calcutta in 1864. The old college attained to great celebrity as an educational institution, and produced many excellent scholars, but it was abolished in 1877, in order to concentrate the grant available for higher-class education upon the Punjab University at Lahore.

The Ridge, famous as the British base during the siege of Delhi during the Mutiny, in 1857, is a last outcrop of the Aravalli Hills which rises in a steep escarpment some 60 ft. above the city. At its nearest point on the right of the British position, where the Mutiny Memorial now stands, the Ridge is only 1200 yds. from the walls of Delhi; at the Flagstaff Tower in the centre of the position it is a mile and a half away; and at the left near the river nearly two miles and a half. It was behind the Ridge at this point that the main portion of the British camp was pitched. The Mutiny Memorial, which was erected by the army before Delhi, is a rather poor specimen of a Gothic spire in red sandstone, while the memorial tablets are of inferior marble. Next to the Ridge the point of most interest to every English visitor to Delhi is Nicholson’s grave, which lies surrounded by an iron railing in the Kashmir gate cemetery. The Kashmir gate itself bears a slab recording the gallant deed of the party under Lieutenants D. C. Home and P. Salkeld, who blew in the gate in broad daylight on the day that Delhi was taken by assault.

The population of Delhi according to the census of 1901 was 208,575, of whom 88,460 were Mahommedans and 114,417 were Hindus. The city is served by five different railways, the East Indian, the Oudh & Rohilkhand, the Rajputana-Malwa & Bombay-Baroda, the Southern Punjab, and the North-Western, and occupies a central position, being 940 m. from Karachi, 950 from Calcutta, and 960 from Bombay. Owing to the advantages it enjoys as a trade centre, Delhi is recovering much of the prominence which it lost at the time of the Mutiny. It has spinning-mills and other mills worked by steam. The principal manufactures are gold and silver filigree work and embroidery, jewelry, muslins, shawls, glazed pottery and wood-carving.

The has an area of 1290 sq. m. It consists of a strip of territory on the right or west bank of the Jumna river, 75 m. in length, and varying from 15 to 233 m. in breadth. Most of the district consists of hard and stony soil, depending upon irrigation, which is supplied by the Western Jumna canal, the Ali Mardan canal and the Agra canal. The principal crops are wheat, barley, sugar-cane and cotton.

When Lord Lake broke the Mahratta power in 1803, and the emperor was taken under the protection of the East India Company, the present districts of Delhi and Hissar were assigned for the maintenance of the royal family, and were administered by a British resident. In 1832 the office of resident was abolished, and the tract was annexed to the North-Western Provinces. After the Mutiny in 1858 it was separated from the North-Western Provinces and annexed to the Punjab. The population in 1901 was 689,039.

The stretches from Simla to Rajputana, and is much broken up by native states. It comprises the seven districts of Hissar, Rohtak, Gurgaon, Delhi, Karnal, Umballa and Simla. Its total area is 15,393 sq. m., and in 1901 the population was 4,587,092.

History.—According to legends, which may or may not have a substantial basis, Delhi or its immediate neighbourhood has from time immemorial been the site of a capital city. The neighbouring village of Indarpat preserves the name of Indraprashta, the semi-mythical city founded, according to the Sanscrit epic Mahabharata, by Yudisthira and his brothers, the five Pandavas. Whatever its dim predecessors may have been, however, the actual history of Delhi dates no further back than the 11th century, when Anangapala (Anang Pal), a chief of the Tomara clan, built the Red Fort, in which the Kutb Minar now stands; in 1052 the same chief removed the famous Iron Pillar from its original position, probably at Muttra, and set it up among a group of temples of which the materials were afterwards used by the Mussulmans for the construction of the great Kutb Mosque. About the middle of the 12th century the Tomara dynasty was overthrown by Vigraha-raja (Visala-deva, Bisal Deo), the Chauhan king of Ajmere, who from inscribed records discovered of late years appears to have been a man of considerable culture (see V. A. Smith, Early Hist. of India, ed. 1908, p. 356). His nephew and successor was Prithwi-raja (Prithiraj, or Rai Pithora), lord of Sambhar, Delhi and Ajmere, whose fame as lover and warrior still lives in popular story. He was the last Hindu ruler of Delhi. In 1191 came the invasion of Mahommed of Ghor. Defeated on this occasion, Mahommed returned two years later, overthrew the Hindus, and captured and put to death Prithwi-raja. Delhi became henceforth the capital of the Mahommedan Indian empire, Kutb-ud-din (the general and slave of Mahommed of Ghor) being left in command. His dynasty is known as that of the slave kings, and it is to them that old Delhi owes its grandest remains, among them Kutb Mosque and the Kutb Minar. The slave dynasty retained the throne till 1290, when it was subverted by Jalal-ud-din Khilji. The most remarkable monarch of this dynasty was Ala-ud-din, during whose reign Delhi was twice exposed to attack from invading hordes of Moguls. On the first occasion Ala-ud-din defeated them under the walls of his capital; on the second, after encamping for two months in the neighbourhood of the city, they retired without a battle. The house of Khilji came to an end in 1321, and was followed by that of Tughlak. Hitherto the Pathan kings had been content with the ancient Hindu capital, altered and adorned to suit their tastes. But one of the first acts of the founder of the new dynasty, Ghias-ud-din Tughlak, was to erect a new capital about 4 m. farther to the east, which he called Tughlakabad. The ruins of his fort remain, and the eye can still trace the streets and lanes of the long deserted city. Ghias-ud-din was succeeded by his son Mahommed b. Tughlak, who reigned from 1325 to 1351, and is described by Elphinstone as “one of the most accomplished princes and most furious tyrants that ever adorned or disgraced human nature.” Under this monarch the Delhi of the Tughlak dynasty attained its utmost growth. His successor Feroz Shah Tughlak transferred the capital to a new town which he founded some miles off, on the north of the Kutb, and to which he gave his own name, Ferozabad. In 1398, during the reign of Mahmud Tughlak, occurred the Tatar invasion of Timurlane. The king fled to Gujarat, his army was defeated under the walls of Delhi, and the city surrendered. The town, notwithstanding a promise of protection, was plundered and burned; the citizens were massacred. The invaders at last retired, leaving Delhi without a government, and almost without inhabitants. At length Mahmud Tughlak regained a fragment of his former kingdom, but on his death in 1412 the family became extinct. He was succeeded by the Sayyid dynasty, which held Delhi and a few miles of surrounding territory till 1444, when it gave way to the house of Lodi, during whose rule the capital was removed to Agra. In 1526 Baber, sixth in descent from Timurlane, invaded India, defeated and killed Ibrahim Lodi at the battle of Panipat, entered Delhi, was proclaimed emperor, and finally put an end to the Afghan empire. Baber’s capital was at Agra, but his son and successor, Humayun, removed it to Delhi. In 1540 Humayun was defeated and expelled by Sher Shah, who entirely rebuilt the city, enclosing and fortifying it with a new wall. In his time Delhi extended from where Humayun’s tomb now is to near the southern gate of the modern city. In 1555 Humayun, with the assistance of Persia, regained the throne; but he died within six months, and was succeeded by his son, the illustrious Akbar.

During Akbar’s reign and that of his son Jahangir, the capital was either at Agra or at Lahore, and Delhi once more fell into decay. Between 1638 and 1658, however, Shah Jahan rebuilt it almost in its present form; and his city remains substantially the Delhi of the present time. The imperial palace, the Jama Masjid or Great Mosque, and the restoration of what is now the western Jumna canal, are the work of Shah Jahan. The Mogul empire rapidly expanded during the reigns of Akbar and his successors down to Aurungzeb, when it attained its climax. After the death of the latter monarch, in 1707, came the decline. Insurrections