Diwan-i-Khas

The story of Diwan-i-Khas

The Diwan-i-Khas, the Hall of Private Audiences in the Red Fort, was built in 1648 for receptions, and this was where Shah Jahan received courtiers and state guests.

What you are looking at now is only a shell of the original hall, because the interior was completely plundered after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The throne, the carpets, and other furnishings went missing, and the arcaded courts that once stood to the west were destroyed as well. Even so, the building still carries the shape of imperial ceremony. It measures 90 × 67 feet, with a rectangular central chamber surrounded by a series of arches rising from marble piers. The lower parts of those piers are inlaid with floral designs, while the upper portions are painted and gilded. At the roof corners, you can still see pillared chhatri.

The ceiling has its own layered history. It was originally inlaid with silver and gold, then stripped bare by successive financial crises of the empire at the hands of the Jats or Marathas. The present ceiling was installed in 1911. That means the hall you see today is partly original structure, partly later repair, and partly absence.

This chamber was also known as the Shah Mahal. Nadir Shah’s men carried off the Peacock Throne from here in 1739, and a later Peacock Throne from after Nader Shah’s invasion once stood in the hall toward the east side. The French traveller François Bernier described seeing it here. Under the cornice, over the corner-arches of the northern and southern walls, is a verse of Amir Khusrow: “If there be a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.” That line is one of the easiest details to look for while you stand here, because it ties the room’s ceremonial purpose to the way the Mughal court wanted this place to be read.

There were once two enclosures on the west side of the hall, one for nobles and one for those of a lower rank. A gate on the north side of the preceding Diwan-i-Am led into the innermost court of the palace called Jalau Khana and then to this hall. In the riverbed below the hall and the connected buildings was the space known as zer-jharokha, or “beneath the lattices.” Through the centre of the hall flowed the Stream of Paradise, the Nahr-i-Bihisht, and the building used to have red awnings, or shamianas. Those details help explain why this was not just a room for sitting, but a carefully staged setting for imperial audience.

The hall also had a very specific role in court life: it was a place for bowing and scraping to the emperor, the formal business of power made visible. Later, Bahadur Shah Zafar became the last Mughal emperor here in May 1857, before being exiled by the British seven months later. After that, the damage deepened. British forces stripped and demolished large parts of the palace complex after 1857, and the hall remains damaged today.

Recent restoration work has redone the panels of inlay and reproduced the gilded pattern on one of the pillars fronting the hall. That is worth noticing as you look closely, because it lets you separate restored detail from surviving structure. If you can peer in through the open frontage, the striking thing is the emptiness at the center where the throne once stood, framed by marble, arches, and the surviving inscriptions.