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Jodhpur is a city in the Indian state of Rajasthan and formerly the seat of a princely state of the same name. Jodhpur was the capital of the Kingdom of Marwar, which is now part of Rajasthan. Jodhpur is a popular tourist destination, featuring many palaces, forts and temples, set in the stark landscape of the Thar Desert. It is popularly known as Blue city and Sun city among people of Rajasthan and all over India.

The old city circles the fort and is bounded by a wall with several gates. However, the city has expanded greatly outside the wall over the past several decades.

Jodhpur city was founded in 1459 by Rao Jodha, a Rajput chief of the Rathore clan. Jodha succeeded in conquering the surrounding territory and thus founded a kingdom which came to be known as Marwar. As Jodha hailed from the nearby town of Mandore, that town initially served as the capital of this state; however, Jodhpur soon took over that role, even during the lifetime of Jodha. The city was located on the strategic road linking Delhi to Gujarat. This enabled it to profit from a flourishing trade in opium, copper, silk, sandalwood, dates and other tradeable goods.

After the death of Rao Chandrasen Rathore in 1581, the kingdom was annexed by the Mughal Emperor Akbar. Marwar became a Mughal vassal, owing fealty to them while enjoying internal autonomy. Jodhpur and its people benefited from this exposure to the wider world as new styles of art and architecture made their appearance and opportunities opened up for local tradesmen to make their mark across northern India.

Aurangzeb briefly sequestrated the state (c. 1679) after the death of Maharaja Jaswant Singh, but the prior ruler Maharaja Ajit Singh was restored to the throne by Veer Durgadas Rathore after Aurangzeb died in 1707. The Mughal empire declined gradually after 1707, and Marwar descended into strife and invited the intervention of the Marathas, who soon supplanted the Mughals as overlords of the region. This did not make for stability or peace, however: 50 years of war and treaties dissipated the wealth of the state, which sought the help of the British and entered into a subsidiary alliance with them.

There was a major revolt in 1857 by some Rathore nobles of Pali led by Thakur Kushal Singh of Auwa. The rebels were defeated by the British army under colonel Holmes and peace was restored.

During the British Raj, the state of Jodhpur had the largest land area of any in the Rajputana. Jodhpur prospered under the peace and stability that was a hallmark of this era. Its merchants, the Marwaris, flourished and came to occupy a position of dominance in trade across India.

In 1947, when India became independent, the state merged into the union of India and Jodhpur became the second largest city of Rajasthan. At the time of partition, the ruler of Jodhpur, Hanwant Singh, did not want to join India, but finally due to the effective persuasion of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Home Minister at the time, the state of Jodhpur was included in Indian Republic. Following the State Reorganisation Act, 1956, it was included within the state of Rajasthan.

The handicrafts industry has, in recent years, eclipsed all the other industries in the city. The items manufactured include textiles, metal utensils, bicycles, ink and sporting goods. A flourishing cottage industry exists for the manufacture of such items as glass bangles, cutlery, carpets and marble products.

After handicrafts, tourism is the second largest industry of Jodhpur.

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It was a cold, wet February morning in 1886 when Dave and Billy Babbitt stepped down off the passenger train in the raw, boisterous town of Flagstaff. Actually, there wasn’t much left as the town had been ravaged by a fire three weeks earlier. The train depot was a converted boxcar. Flagstaff at the time had a population of 600 and proudly boasted that it was professionally served by, “able lawyers, skillful doctors, honest preachers, and scientific gamblers.” The town also had more saloons than all other businesses combined. One saloon owner kept the peace in his establishment by sitting in a loft above the crowd, armed with a sawed-off shotgun.

Dave and Billy might have been a bit skeptical on this first visit, after all, they’d never heard of Flagstaff until a railroad clerk at Albuquerque told them it might be a good place to acquire a cattle ranch. The two young men were representing themselves and three other brothers, George, Charlie, and Edward of Cincinnati, Ohio. The five brothers were proprietors of a mercantile store and had become enamored with becoming cattle ranchers so they took their life savings and entrusted Dave and Billy with the task of finding a cattle ranch, “somewhere out West.”

The ranch land in most of the better-know areas was out of their price range. After a railroad clerk in Albuquerque suggested that since the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad had just completed the transcontinental line across northern Arizona there might be some rangeland less expensive they decided to go to Flagstaff.

The two brothers recovered from their initial shock they began to see the potential of raising cattle on the virgin grass lands of the Colorado Plateau. They planked down nearly all of their $20,000 and bought a ranch east of Flagstaff. They needed a brand so they chose to stamp their cows with a CO and a bar, the letters for their hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.

For the next few years, Billy and Charlie ran the cattle end of the business while the other brothers went into other ventures. Three of the boys, Charles, Dave, and Ed had courted and married the lovely daughters of a wealthy Dutch merchant, Gerald Verkamp. He admired the industrious work ethic of his son’s-in-law and gave them some sound business advice. In a word, it was “diversify.” He knew the market for cattle speculative so he advised them to get into other businesses. Soon the Babbitts were involved in everything from mercantile stores and trading posts to theaters, drug stores, and real estate.

Over the next few years the CO Bar became one of Arizona’s biggest outfits with ranging from Ash Fork on the west to the New Mexico border on the east, and from the Grand Canyon on the north to the Mogollon Rim on the south. Billy and Charlie spent most of their time in the saddle, as active as any working cowboy. They dressed like hired hands and often times were mistaken for range bums by their own employees.

The heyday of the Babbitt cattle empire was 1907 to 1919. During those years they entered into partnerships, held in interest in, or financed most of the cow outfits in northern Arizona. During the 40 years after the founding of the ranch in 1886, nearly a hundred ranches came under Babbitt management. Usually the Babbitts put up the money and the ranchers supplied the management. Small ranchers needed a partner with money and by and large the Babbitts were benevolent landlords, giving their partners almost unlimited credit.

The Babbitt’s were the first cow outfit in northern Arizona to run sheep on the same range. By World War I they owned more than 100,000 of the wooly critters.

The brothers were always willing to invest in any business venture when they saw the potential. An example was a mortuary. They opened in 1892 with an operating partner whose only experience was that he was an ex-buffalo hunter. In spite of the man’s dubious qualifications, the business prospered for years.

It was said, “God made northern Arizona, and then he turned it over to the Babbitts to run.” That might sound presumptuous but it is a fact that for more than five generations they “fed and clothed and equipped and transported and entertained and buried Arizonans, and they did it more efficiently and more profitably than anyone else.”

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Pondicherry architecture is highly influenced by the history and culture of the city. The city is divided into two quarters: one is French, the other Tamil. The two sectors reflect the diverse lifestyle and practices of the people now and formerly living there. There are also some extraordinary structures in Pondicherry that represent the fusion of the two dominant architectural styles.

In the Tamil section of the city a visitor can notice houses with 'thalvaram' and 'thinnais'. The thalvarams are street verandas with a leaning roof which is supported by wooden posts. Vertical columns and pillars with ornamented parapets are characteristic features of typical Tamil style of houses. The thinnais are public verandas with masonry seats for guests and visitors.

The interiors of the houses in the French quarter are more embellished than the exteriors. French architectural influences are marked by the tall arched windows and door along the with high ceilings. The French houses were generally built with street frontage. The window shades were generally made of wood or light metals.

The most interesting Pondicherry architecture is a fusion of the two styles. There are some houses in the Tamil streets where the architecture reflect remarkable French influence, and vice-versa.

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