The Delhi Archaeological Society was an organisation active between the years 1847 and 1854 which focused on the history of the city of
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
and its environs. Its first secretary was the editor of the ''Delhi Gazette'', Henry Cope. It eventually grew to have around 120 members which included British scholars such as
E. C. Bayley,
Alexander Cunningham
Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham (23 January 1814 – 28 November 1893) was a British Army engineer with the Bengal Engineer Group who later took an interest in the history and archaeology of India. In 1861, he was appointed to the newly ...
,
Henry Elliot
Sir Henry George Elliot (30 June 1817 – 30 March 1907) was a British diplomat. He was the second son of Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 2nd Earl of Minto. He was most noted for his period as ambassador at Constantinople, and his participati ...
, and
A. Sprenger. It also had Indians on its roll such as
Nawab Zia-ud-din,
Sayyid Ahmad Khan
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan KCSI (17 October 1817 – 27 March 1898; also Sayyid Ahmad Khan) was an Indian Muslim reformer, philosopher, and educationist in nineteenth-century British India. Though initially espousing Hindu-Muslim unity, he ...
, and scholars of
Delhi College. The society maintained a museum and a journal which published only two volumes (in 1850 and 1852).
The society conducted an excavation of Firuzabad in 1847 and undertook the repair of the
Jantar Mantar observatory between 1852 and 1853. Its most notable contribution was a project to map Delhi's archaeological monuments and correlating them with references in Persian sources. One of the by-products of the Delhi Archaeological Society was an account of Delhi's historical buildings, places, and people, collated and published as ''Asar-us-Sanadid'' ("Remains of the Past") by Sayyid Ahmad Khan in 1847 followed by a second edition in 1854.
Notes
References
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* {{cite book, last1=Masselos, first1=Jim, title=Beato's Delhi: 1857 and Beyond, date=2011, publisher=Penguin UK, isbn=9789351181996, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s8GpAfifFvEC&pg=PT36, language=en
Organisations based in Delhi