L ooking at the chaotic traffic in Chandni Chowk, who would believe that a canal used to flow through it up to the 19th century! The site, which once boasted of a clock tower, was marked by a huge tank of red sandstone fed by the canal.

It was constructed by Firoz Shah Tughlak in the mid-14th century and was 30 kos, or 75 miles long. In the 17th century Shah Jahan lengthened it another 75 miles and made it flow through Chandni Chowk.

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It was originally known as Faiz Nehar (after Faizullah, the minister, who was in charge of the project during Firoz's reign, though some say it was so named to denote that it was a canal meant for the welfare of the people).

Shah Jahan made part of the canal flow into the Red Fort, where it merged with the Nehar-e-Behest, the stream of water lifted up from the Jamuna that flowed through the Rang Mahal in the fort. The other part, known as Nehar Saadat Khan, named after Shah Jahan's minister, flowed through Daryaganj before eventually joining the Jamuna.

The canal, which originated in present-day Haryana, was actually an aqueduct, when it flowed through Chandni Chowk, and also used to water Sahibabad, or Begam Bagh, laid by Jahanara Begum, the emperor's elder daughter.

On either side of the canal were shady neem and peepul trees and shops of jewellers, fruit sellers, sweet sellers and cloth merchants. When the ladies of the Mughal harem came, the atmosphere was truly enchanted.

Some say they came from the fort in boats and that one of them fell into the canal and nearly got drowned. Faiz Nehar was closed after the Mutiny of 1857 as it began to stink because of the bodies dumped into it by the avenging British.

However, the causeway could be seen right up to the closing years of the 19th century, after which it was levelled up and the division of the road done away with for free flow of the increasing traffic. Now the Nehar is just a distant memory.