The first volume of Shahjahanabad introduces the city as it was built, lived in and ultimately transformed. Rana Safvi begins with the planning of the magnificent Qila-e-Mubarak, or Lal Qila, and the city Shah Jahan built around it, before walking you through the bustling quarters that gave Shahjahanabad its pulse-the Jama Masjid and its environs, the lanes of Matia Mahal, Turkman Darwaza, Chawri Bazar and Khari Baoli. This is the city as its residents knew it: mercantile, sacred and deeply layered with everyday life-before the catastrophic siege of 1857 changed it forever.