Indian History Quiz: Cities and Capitals Founded by Indian Rulers

Udayin, also called Udayabhadra, was the son of Ajatashatru and the ruler of the Haryanka dynasty who built a fort at the meeting point of the Ganga and the Son and shifted the Magadhan capital there from Rajagriha.

The Kachhwaha ruler Sawai Jai Singh II moved his capital down from the hill fort of Amer and founded Jaipur in 1727, laying it out on a grid of nine rectangular blocks with the help of the scholar and planner Vidyadhar Bhattacharya, which makes it the first planned city of…

The fifth ruler of the Qutb Shahi dynasty founded Hyderabad in 1591 on the banks of the Musi, a short distance from the crowded hill fort of Golconda, and the Charminar was raised in his reign at the centre of the new city.

Devagiri in the Deccan, the old Yadava capital, was renamed Daulatabad by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, who ordered the transfer of the court and the population of Delhi there in 1327 so that he could control both north and south from the centre of his empire.

Akbar began building Fatehpur Sikri near Agra from 1571, naming it after his victory in Gujarat, and it served as his capital for roughly fourteen years before the court returned to Agra and later moved to Lahore.

The Gujarat sultan Ahmad Shah I founded Ahmedabad in 1411 near the older settlement of Asaval and Karnavati, and the city became the capital of the Gujarat Sultanate and a great centre of textile trade; the Bhadra fort and the Jama Masjid date from this period.

Firoz Shah Tughlaq was the greatest city builder of the Sultanate. He founded Firozabad on the Yamuna in Delhi, where the Firoz Shah Kotla stands, and outside Delhi he laid out Hisar, known as Hissar-Firoza, along with Fatehabad, Firozpur and Jaunpur, the last named in memory of Muhammad bin Tughlaq…

The two brothers of the Sangama family founded the city of Vijayanagara on the Tungabhadra in 1336 and with it the Vijayanagara empire, which lasted until the defeat at Talikota in 1565; the ruins at Hampi in Karnataka are a World Heritage Site.

Harshavardhana of the Pushyabhuti or Vardhana dynasty began his reign at Thanesar in Haryana and, after the death of his brother-in-law Grahavarman of the Maukhari house, united the two kingdoms and made Kannauj on the Ganga his capital around the early seventh century.

After defeating Humayun at Chausa and Kannauj, Sher Shah Suri refounded Patna in 1541 as a fortified administrative and commercial town on the ruins of ancient Pataliputra, recognising the strategic value of the site on the Ganga.

The fourth Sikh Guru, Guru Ram Das, founded the settlement of Ramdaspur around the sacred tank in the late sixteenth century, and the town came to be called Amritsar after the pool of nectar, the Amrit Sarovar.