FOTO FEATURE...KOT DIGI FORT SUKKUR SINDH PAKISTAN

KOT DIGI FORT SUKKUR SINDH

The Kot Diji Fort, formally known as Fort Ahmadabad, dominates the town of Kot Diji in Khairpur, Pakistan about 25 miles east of the Indus River at the edge of the Nara-Rajisthan Desert. The fort was built between 1785 to 1795 by Mir Sohrab Khan Talpur, founder of the Kingdom of Upper Sindh in 1783. In addition to the fort, a 5 kilometer, 12 feet wide mud wall was built around the city. This defensive wall had bastions throughout its length and a huge iron gate served as the city's only entrance.

The fort was considered invincible and served as the residence of the Ameers of Khairpur in times of peace. It is, therefore, the ancestral home of royal house. During war time the zenana (female members of the royal family), would be shifted to Shahgarh Fort, formerly within the realm but since 1843, after the conquest of the rest of Sindh, it is in the Jaisalmer desert, now in India. When the Zenana moved into the comfort of palaces, it stood mainly as a decorated reminder of more violent times. Throughout its whole history, however, Fort Kot Diji was never attacked.

Kot Diji is a very practical fort constructed on a limestone hill with kiln-baked bricks. Bricks were used because the locally available limestone rock was very brittle and would have shattered easily on impact with a cannonball. The hill is about 110 feet high, above which the walls of the fort rise another 30 feet. It has three strategically placed towers about 50 feet tall.
The fort is over half a kilometer long. Its walls are segmented by about 50 bastions, and its 1.8 km outer perimeter wall identically follows the double crescent-shaped contours of the hill it stands on. This allows the fort to surround the attacking enemy on three sides on the west front. On the east, where the entrance lies, the fort is divided by three elephant-proof gates into three overlapping levels, so that the first two levels can be attacked by the next level above them in the event of the lower level being overrun by the enemy. The first gate is not a prominent portal but rather an indirect entry so that the gate cannot be rammed on a charge. The walls and bastions have arrow slits in them, allowing defenders to attack their enemy from two levels: from the battlement on top and from within the wall.
The fort was built at a time when cannons had become common and its design and position reveals that. It includes a multitude of stations for cannons and, because it is positioned high on a narrow ridge, enemy cannons would have had to fire at a great distance, permitting little accuracy. Cannonballs could either hit the hill or perimeter or would simply fly over the fort and fall on the enemies' own forces on the other side.




Kot Diji was located at the edge of the desert; this provided an advantage over enemies marching from the east, because an exhausted army could be met before it could take supplies and water from the irrigated lands. In fact, the Mirwah canal was built in 1790 specifically[edit] Role under the British Empire to irrigate the lands west of the fort and bring water to the military bThe Kingdom of Upper Sindh later was recognized by the British as the princely state of Khayrpur, after the East India Company had reduced its area to less than a third of its original size of over 50,000 km².

Map of Sindh. Confederacy of Talpur Kingdoms
The Fort was allocated the role of central military base for the Kingdom, especially to resist Afghan invasion. It was the strongest of the 20 or so Talpur forts and was named after the Persian architect Ahmed, who designed it. According to folklore it took 30 years to build; in reality, a much shorter, tactically feasible period may have been possible by mobilizing peasants and soldiers on a massive scale