The name is the Kashmiri equivalent of the Sanskrit sarika-parvata, “the hill of Sarika.”
According to tradition, which is still living, the construction of the Hari Parbat, or, as Akbar named it, Nagar-Nagar, the rampart was started as relief work to alleviate the distress of the people during a famine. The historian Suka states that the emperor, on hearing of the hardship inflicted upon the citizens by the troops, who for want of accommodation had been quartered upon them, had a cantonment built on the slopes of the Hari Parbat hill, which from that time became a flourishing settlement. Bernier, who saw it three-quarters of a century later, speaks of it as “an isolated hill, with handsome houses on its declivity, each having a garden.”
The Kathi Darwaza seems to have been the principal entrance, judging from the fact that the inscriptions have been put up only here. It is a very simple structure, comprising a domed chamber in the middle with two side recesses. Its only external decorations are rectangular and arched panels and two beautiful medallions, in high relief, on the spandrels of the arch1.
1R.C.Kak, Ancient Monuments of Kashmir (Kashmir: Ali Mohammad & Sons, 2005), 87-90.