The fort at Bathinda is a brick mound rising abruptly out of a flat town, and it is claimed as one of the oldest surviving forts in India, with foundations attributed to the Kushan period and much of the visible brickwork to later rebuildings.
Razia Sultan, the only woman to rule from the throne of Delhi, was imprisoned here in 1240 after being deposed, and was killed shortly afterward.
Guru Gobind Singh Ji is recorded as having visited, and a gurdwara stands inside the fort.
It was held by the Bhatti Rajputs, then by the Phulkian house of Patiala.
It is one of the few pre-Mughal structures standing in Indian Punjab and it sits in the middle of a working town in a district known for thermal plants and cotton.
The mound is built of small kiln-fired bricks of a type used before the Mughal period, and some accounts date the earliest work to the Kushan centuries on that evidence. There has been no systematic excavation to settle it.
Its height comes from the debris of successive rebuildings on one spot, which is how mounds in the plain are made. There is no natural rise anywhere near Bathinda.
The Archaeological Survey holds the site and restoration has gone on intermittently. Parts have collapsed and parts have been rebuilt in modern brick, and there is no published record of which is which.