Hauz Khas Complex
Hauz-i-Alai
A royal reservoir, a sultan's college and his tomb, now looking over a lake and a nightlife district.
Alauddin Khalji dug the tank around 1300 to water his new city of Siri. Half a century later Firoz Shah Tughlaq desilted it and built along its edge a madrasa — an L-shaped range of domed halls and pillared verandas stepping down to the water, one of the most important centres of learning in the Islamic world of its day. He placed his own tomb at the junction of the two wings, so that the sound of students would carry over his grave.
The complex survives with unusual completeness, and its setting is the strangest in Delhi: the medieval ruins look out over a restored lake and a deer park, while directly behind them the village of Hauz Khas has become a warren of bars, boutiques and design studios. Walking from one to the other takes ninety seconds and about six hundred years.
- 01The madrasa rangeDomed teaching halls and colonnades terraced down toward the water on two sides.
- 02Firoz Shah's tombA square chamber with fine incised plaster and a carved railing brought from an earlier structure.
- 03The tank and deer parkThe restored reservoir, with waterbirds in winter and blackbuck in the adjoining park.
Enter through the village lane past the shops — there is no grand gateway. Sunset over the tank is the reason to come late.