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Delhi is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world.
Having been the capital of several empires in ancient India, Delhi
was a major city in the old trade routes from northwest India to
the Gangetic Plains. Many ancient monuments, archaeological sites
and remains of national importance have been erected in its history.
The Mughals built a section of the city (now known as Old City or
Old Delhi) that served as the capital of Mughal Empire for a long
period. During the British Raj, New Delhi was built as an administrative
quarter of the city. New Delhi was declared the capital of India
after India gained independence from British rule in 1947. As the
seat of the Government of India, New Delhi houses important offices
of the federal government, including the Parliament of India. Delhi
has grown up to be a cosmopolitan city owing to the immigration
of people from across the country. Like many other large cities
of the world, Delhi suffers from urbanisation problems such as pollution,
traffic congestion and scarcity of resources. The rapid development
and urbanisation of New Delhi and surrounding areas coupled with
the high average income of the populace has largely eclipsed socio-cultural
traits that used to represent Delhi until a few years after independence.
Human habitation was probably present in and around
Delhi during the second millennium BCE and before, as evidenced
by archeological relics.[14] The city is believed to be the site
of Indraprastha, legendary capital of the Pandavas in the Indian
epic Mahabharata.[9] Settlements grew from the time of the Mauryan
Empire (c. 300 BC).[14] Remains of seven major cities have been
discovered in Delhi. The Tomara Rajput dynasty founded the city
of Lal Kot in 736 AD. The Chauhan Rajput kings of Ajmer conquered
Lal Kot in 1180 AD and renamed it Qila Rai Pithora. The Chauhan
king Prithviraj III was defeated in 1192 by the Afghan Muhammad
Ghori.[9] In 1206, Qutb-ud-din Aybak, the first ruler of the Slave
Dynasty established the Delhi Sultanate. Qutb-ud-din started the
construction the Qutub Minar and Quwwat-al-Islam (might of Islam),
the earliest extant mosque in India.[9][15] After the fall of the
Slave dynasty, a succession of Turkic and Central Asian dynasties,
the Khilji dynasty, the Tughluq dynasty, the Sayyid dynasty and
the Lodhi dynasty held power in the late medieval period, and built
a sequence of forts and townships that are part of the seven cities
of Delhi. (Source-Wikipedia.org)
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