“Delhi still stands under the sign of the Kutub Minar, the splendid minaret--a landmark for miles and miles around--which dominates the vast graveyard of fallen dynasties at its feet and the whole of the great plain beyond where the fate of India, and not of India alone, has so often been decided.”

-India, Old and New, by Sir Valentine Chirol

The name Delhi may originate from the Urdu/Hindustani word Dahleez (English: threshhold, or frontier) or from the name of a Mauryan king, Raja Dhillu. The people of Delhi are known as Delhiites or "Dilliwaalay". The latter is a historical and cultural term describing people of the old city and the associated diaspora. There are, for example, communities (often living in neighbourhoods dominated and named after them) of Dilliwaalay in major Pakistani cities who still identify their clan with neighbourhoods in the Old City of Delhi. The Persianized surname Dahelvi is also related to residents of Delhi.

Legend has it that any man or king who creates a new city in Delhi will not

be able to last his rule. But legends have not stopped Delhi's conquerors, who came, saw and named new cities through the centuries. Delhi is an amalgamation and expansion of the "Seven Cities" of tradition (seven fortress settlements built at different times here by different rulers). If you count the smaller settlements and forts, the number may touch fifteen. Each city has left behind so much story and material for rumination that it requires many a lifetime to know them all completely.

These Seven Cities Of Delhi are :

Qila Rai Pithora built by Prithvi Raj Chauhan, near the oldest Rajput settlement in Lal-Kot;

Siri, built by Alauddin Khilji in 1303;

Tughluqabad, built by Ghiyasuddin Tughluq (1321-1325);

Jahanpanah, built by Muhammad bin Tughluq (1325-1351);

Kotla Firoz Shah, built by Firoz Shah Tughluq (1351-1388);

Purana Qila, built by Sher Shah Suri and Dinpanah built by Humayun, both in the area near the speculated site of the legendary Indraprastha (1538-1545); and

Shahjahanabad, built by Shah Jahan from 1638 to 1649, containing the Lal Qila and the Chandni Chowk

The hub of the metropolis is New Delhi, an orderly plan of wide roads lined with sturdy colonial buildings, which was established soon after the imperial capital of British India moved here from Calcutta in 1911. Many of the city's hotels are here, concentrated amid the colonnaded facades of Connaught Place. A couple of kilometres south, the broad, green east–west swathe of Raj Path links India Gate and the Indian parliamentary buildings, once considered to be the architectural jewels in the Imperial crown. Old Delhi, Shah Jahan's seventeenth-century capital of Shahjahanabad, lies 3km northwest of Connaught Place. This is Delhi at its most quintessentially Indian, where the traditional lifestyle of its predominantly Muslim population has changed little over two hundred years. A visit to the mighty Lal Quila or Red Fort and Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, is a must, and should be combined with a stroll through the area's ancient bazaars, a warren of clustered houses, buzzing with commotion, and infused with aromatic smells drifting from open-fronted restaurants, spice shops and temples.

Firozabad, another of Delhi's ex-capitals, is centred around Delhi Gate, while the other five former capitals, further south, are today all but deserted, standing as impressive reminders of long-vanished dynasties. Among them you'll find the towering free-standing twelfth-century column erected by Qutb-ud-din Aibak, the Qutub Minar – it marks the first capital, Qila Rai Pithora, and signalled the development of the city that visitors see today. Walls and dilapidated pillars survive from the fourteenth-century city of Tughluqabad, and Purana Quila, the sixth capital. Interspersed between these historic ruins are the grand tombs of Delhi's former rulers, plus a plethora of Hindu temples, and domed mosques, introduced by the Muslims, which dramatically changed the conventional mould of Indian cities. Perhaps the finest expressions of the Moghuls' architectural genius were the grand charbagh (quartered garden) mausoleums of Humayun's Tomb, and, most famously, the Taj Mahal in Agra. The major monument of the great Moghul period is Lal Quila (the Red Fort) in Old Delhi.

For a little more detailed history please refer to Delhi Timeline by clicking here.