Read about the daftar Khana at Fatehpur Sikri, India.

Daftar Khana

Much like modern offices, Daftarkhana was built in 1574 as a record room for the king, where files and important documents were kept. Abul Fazl has mentioned it in his work, Ain-i-Akbari. The rectangular building stands on a high platform and has façades on all four sides. The northern façade is most outstanding with six pair of tall double columns with bracketed and a merlon pattern surrounding its roof. There is a room inside with three doorways to its north and beautiful tracery work in red sand stone in the arched windows above the lintels to its south.

The walls of the room have three deeply recessed arches surrounded by two superimposed single arches on the other two sides. There is a small projecting balcony in front of the central window supported by corbelled brackets. Near Daftar khana, one can also see the remnants of cloisters and buildings that were also used as offices such as those of Makhtabkhana or 'palace of writing'. The Makhtab khana was used as the translation bureau and various texts were translated here into Hindi, Persian and Sanskrit languages.