Rohtas Fort

Rohtas Fort is a military machine rather than a palace, and that is what makes it exceptional. Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan ruler who had driven the Mughal emperor Humayun into exile, founded it around 1541 on a hill above the Kahan river in the Tilla Jogian range. It was meant to block Humayun's return and to subdue the Gakhars, a local tribe loyal to the Mughals. Construction was supervised by Todar Mal, his finance minister; the Gakhars at first refused to work for him, and only sharply raised wages brought labourers to the site. Sher Shah died in 1545, before it was finished.

The scale is enormous: some 70 hectares enclosed by about 4 km of walls, 10 to 18 metres high and in places 13 metres thick, following the contours of the hill. Sixty-eight bastion towers and hundreds of machicolations, many carved with geometric patterns, guard the walls, which stand on up to three levels of terraces. A separate walled citadel occupies the north-west corner. More than a dozen gates of grey ashlar lead in. The Sohail Gate is the most monumental, over 21 metres tall; the Kabuli Gate now houses a visitor centre and museum; and the Shishi Gate is named after glazed blue tiles that are the earliest known examples of a technique later perfected in Lahore. A small royal mosque near the Kabuli Gate is the most richly decorated of the original buildings.

Ironically, the fortress was obsolete almost as soon as it was complete: Humayun regained the region in 1555, and the Mughals, who preferred gardens and marble, rarely stayed here. Because it was never heavily altered, it survives remarkably intact, and UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1997, calling it an exceptional example of Muslim military architecture in Central and South Asia. It is also a living fort: a village inhabited since the sixteenth century occupies about a third of the interior, and walking its lanes between the ramparts is part of the experience.

Getting there

The fort lies near Dina, about 15 km from Jhelum in Punjab, some 8 km south of the Grand Trunk Road. Sialkot International Airport (SKT) is about 88 km away in a straight line; Islamabad International Airport (ISB), the main international gateway for the region, is roughly 95 km away. The last stretch is by road from Dina or Jhelum.