After that time, the old city of Khazad-dûm began to be populated again, but not by Dwarves.
![khazad-dûm khazad-dûm](https://i.redd.it/rahn2i9fyjr51.jpg)
The monster of Moria - a Balrog of Morgoth, as was later known - lurked alone in Moria for nearly five hundred years. In that time it was given a new name, Moria, the Black Pit. After millennia as one of the richest cities in Middle-earth, Khazad-dûm stood dark and empty, but for the brooding menace the Dwarves had released. In the following year, Durin's son, Náin I, was also lost, and the Dwarves fled their ancient home. The creature wreaked dreadful destruction, and in slaying the then King, Durin VI, became known as Durin's Bane. In the year III 1980, they dug too deep, and unleashed a nameless terror from the depths beneath the city. Much of its great wealth was based on the mithril that was found in its mines, and as the centuries passed, the Dwarves mined deeper and deeper for the precious metal. The friendship of Khazad-dûm and Eregion came to a sudden end, though, in II 1697, when Sauron overran the country of the Elves, and the doors of Khazad-dûm were sealed against his forces.Įventually, Sauron was driven back and Khazad-dûm continued to thrive. Eregion's ruler, Celebrimbor, lent his skill to the making of the famous and magical gate that became known as the West-gate of Moria, and indeed went so far as to present King Durin III with a Ring of Power. A rare friendship sprang up between the Dwarves and the Elves of this new land, Eregion. In the Second Age, Noldor out of Lindon founded a country of their own by the western gates of Khazad-dûm. It even has a passing mention in Quenta Silmarillion, the tale of the Elf-lords and their wars far to the west, though to them it was no more than a distant rumour they heard from the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains on their borders. He named that lake in the Dwarvish tongue, Kheled-zâram, the Mirrormere, and there he started the making of Khazad-dûm.Īs the millennia passed, the descendants of Durin sat upon the throne of Khazad-dûm, and their cavernous city became famous throughout the world. It was founded in very ancient days by Durin the Deathless, who came upon a shimmering lake beneath the mountain Celebdil, with a crown of stars reflected in its waters.
![khazad-dûm khazad-dûm](https://www.lotrfanaticsplaza.com/forum/styles/lotrplaza/theme/images/Khazad-dûm/kd_banner.jpg)
It lay in the central parts of the Misty Mountains, tunnelled and carved through the living rock of the mountains themselves, so that a traveller could pass through it from the one side of the range to the other. The grandest and most famous of the mansions of the Dwarves.