Dhillikā
The Tomaras held Haryana and the Delhi country as Gurjara-Pratihāra feudatories and later independently. Tradition places the founding of Dhilli in 736 CE, and the fortification of Lal Kot, on the ridge in what is now Mehrauli, is attributed to Anangpal Tomar in the eleventh century. The Chāhamānas later extended it as Qila Rai Pithora, and its walls are the earliest of Delhi's successive cities.
The iron pillar now standing in the Qutb complex — a fourth-century Gupta-era column that has resisted corrosion for sixteen centuries — is said to have been brought to the site in this period, though the tradition is not documented.
Displacement
The Chāhamānas of Śākambharī took Delhi from the Tomaras in the middle of the twelfth century, and it was as a Chāhamāna possession that the city fell to the Ghurids in 1192. A Tomara branch later ruled at Gwalior from 1394 to 1518 and is treated separately.
Delhi's continuous history as a capital begins with the Sultanate, but the site's importance was established under the Tomaras, and the choice of Lal Kot's ground for the first Sultanate buildings was a matter of taking over an existing centre.
Further reading
- Eck, Diana L. India: A Sacred Geography. Harmony Books, 2012
- Eck, Diana L. Banaras: City of Light. Alfred A. Knopf, 1982
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. The Colas. University of Madras, 1955
- Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta. A History of South India. Oxford University Press, 1955
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.