Description : Agra is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Agra district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is 206 kilometres (128 mi) south of the national capital New Delhi. Agra is the fourth-most populous city in Uttar Pradesh and 24th in India. Sikandar Lodi was the first ruler of the Delhi Sultanate to move his capital from Delhi to Agra in 1504, and so he is regarded as being the founder of Agra. Sikandar Lodi's son, Ibrahim Lodi, was defeated at the Battle of Panipat in 1526 by Babur, which marked the beginning of Mughal Empire. In a brief interruption in Mughal rule between 1540 and 1556, Sher Shah Suri, established the short lived Sur Empire. Agra was the capital of the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1648, under the Mughal Emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan, after which Shah Jahan shifted the capital to Delhi. The Mughal Empire saw the building of many monuments, especially Taj Mahal. The city was later taken by the Jats and then Marathas and later still fell to the British Raj. The history of the city before the Afghan invasions in the 11th century is unclear. The history from the Afghan invasions to the Mughal times, though tolerably well documented, has been described as being uneventful. A 17th century chronicler referred to Agra before Sikandar Lodi's reign (1488–1517) as an old settlement which was merely a village, whose degradation in status was a result of the destruction and pillaging done by Mahmud of Ghazni. The 11th-century Persian poet Masud Sa'd Salman claims to have witnessed Mahmud's assault of Agra, adding that Raja Jaypal, the then ruler of the city, surrendered after seeing a nightmare. Mahmud however proceeded to pillage the city. Sultan Sikandar Lodi, the Muslim ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, shifted his capital to Agra in the year 1504, and is thus regarded as the founder of Agra. Before this, it was under the lordship of Bayana, a city in present-day Rajasthan (Bharatpur district) After the Sultan's death in 1517, the city passed on to his son, Sultan Ibrahim Lodi. He ruled his sultanate from Agra until he was defeated and killed by Mughal Emperor Babur in the First battle of Panipat, fought in 1526.
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