By Isla Quinn
Four thousand people. Or three thousand. Or two thousand. Three sources, three numbers, one fort. It is a good place to start with Jaisalmer, because the town sits in the Thar Desert and the question of who is inside its walls is still open.
Where and when
Wikipedia’s article on the city puts Jaisalmer in north-western Rajasthan, about 575 km west of Jaipur, in the heart of the Thar Desert. It gives the elevation as 225 m in the infobox; the source cited in its climate table says 231 m. The article says the city was founded in 1156 by Rawal Jaisal of the Bhati clan of Rajputs, and is named after him. Its article on the fort gives the same year and the same founder.
The fort
The fort’s article gives the dimensions: 1,500 ft (460 m) long and 750 ft (230 m) wide, on a hill that rises more than 250 ft (76 m) above the surrounding land. The material is yellow sandstone. The outermost base wall is 15 ft (4.6 m) tall, and the upper bastion perimeter is about 2.5 miles (4.0 km). There are 99 bastions, 92 of them built or substantially rebuilt between 1633 and 1647, and four fortified gates on the town side. History Hit, a history media site, says the walls are about 30 feet (9 m) high. That is not the figure above, and the two pages may be measuring different walls; neither says.
The hill has two names. The city article calls it Meru Hill, with the fort named Trikoot Garh. The fort article says Trikuta Hill. The names for the fort also differ in what they explain: Wikipedia says “Sonar Quila” and “Golden Fort” come from the yellow sandstone, tawny by day and honey-gold at sunset, and that no single historical figure gave the name. It adds that Satyajit Ray’s Bengali film Sonar Kella was shot there and made the name popular.
Who lives inside
Here the sources split. Wikipedia’s fort article says nearly a quarter of the old city’s population lives inside, and later gives about 4,000 residents. History Hit says around 3,000. The World Monuments Fund, a heritage charity, says about 2,000. None of them dates its count, and the fort article does not give a figure for the old city, so we cannot test the “quarter”. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre says only that the fort contains an extensive township that has been inhabited since the outset and remains inhabited today. The fort also holds seven Jain temples built in yellow sandstone between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, according to Wikipedia.
The World Heritage listing
UNESCO lists the fort as one of six in the serial property Hill Forts of Rajasthan, inscribed in 2013, and calls Jaisalmer “an example a hill fort in desert terrain”. The property covers 736 hectares with a buffer zone of 3,460 hectares. Wikipedia’s fort article gives the session as the 36th in its infobox and the 37th in its text, and we have not settled which.
Water, and what it does to sandstone
The World Monuments Fund says two bastions and a large section of pitching wall collapsed during intense rainfall in July 1999, and that studies found water seepage, not foundation failure, behind such collapses. It says 87 of the fort’s 469 structures have collapsed. It says modern plumbing and guest houses have added to the drainage problem, and that a state and Asian Development Bank project is upgrading the drains using its studies. Wikipedia’s fort article agrees on the seepage and adds that the fort sits on weak sedimentary rock. Both sources are about conservation, and neither is a visitor guide.
A trading town
Wikipedia’s city article says Jaisalmer was a trading centre in the Middle Ages and that its kingdom’s main income came from levies on caravans. The economy fell sharply after Bombay became a major port and sea trade replaced the overland routes, and a drought and famine from 1895 to 1900 made it worse. It also says Gadisar Lake, excavated in 1367 by Rawal Gadsi Singh, was once the town’s main water source and is increasingly threatened with drying up.
The desert climate
The article classifies the climate as hot arid. Summer maximums are around 40 °C and winter minimums around -5 °C. Average annual rainfall is 256.5 mm in the text and 256.9 mm in the table, almost all of it between June and September. Our reading: a rainfall figure that small, set against the seepage story above, explains why the fort’s problem is water that arrives rarely and then stays in the stone. That is our inference, and no source puts it this way.
Dates in order
- 1156: the fort and city founded, according to Wikipedia.
- 12th to 16th centuries: the seven Jain temples built, according to Wikipedia.
- 1367: Gadisar Lake excavated, according to Wikipedia.
- 1633 to 1647: 92 of the 99 bastions built or rebuilt, according to Wikipedia.
- 1895 to 1900: drought and famine, according to Wikipedia.
- July 1999: bastions and wall section collapse in heavy rain, according to the World Monuments Fund.
- 2013: Hill Forts of Rajasthan inscribed, according to UNESCO.
What kind of sources these are
Two Wikipedia articles, which anyone can edit; the UNESCO World Heritage Centre; a heritage charity’s project page; and a history media site. We read no tourism board page, no municipal page and no survey report. For that reason we have left out opening hours, entry details and transport.
What we left out
We left out the 2011 population figures, because the article gives two that differ. We left out the annual visitor estimate and the museum details. We left out prices, camel safaris and the festival’s schedule, since we found no source we could weigh. We did not name any workshop, guide or guest house.
Roam first. Shop later.