The Feroz Shah Kotla or Kotla was a fortress built by Sultan Feroz Shah Tughlaq to house his version of Delhi city called Ferozabad. Feroz Shah Tughlaq (r. 1351–1388), the Sultan of Delhi, established the fortified city of Firuzabad in 1354 as the new capital of the Delhi Sultanate in it the site of the present Feroz Shah Kotla. Kotla literally means fortress or citadel. Due to lack of auditoriums in the capital, most classical music performances were staged here or at Qutub complex in the pre-independence era. Later Ebrahim Alkazi, then head of NSD, staged his landmark production of Dharamvir Bharati's Andha Yug here, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru attended its premiere in 1964.
