Humayun's Tomb

In and Around Humayun’s Tomb

Men have not been the only ones who have adorned their beloved Delhi down the ages. Women, too, have played a smaller, but significant role, in constructing tombs, pavilions, mosques, temples and caravan sarais (caravan halts). There is, for instance, the Neeli Masjid, the Khairul Masajid and madarsa on Mathura Road and the tomb of Adham Khan built by his mother, Maham Anagah who was the wet nurse of Emperor Akbar. Construction activities either directly commissioned by women or built under their supervision gained momentum during the Mughal period. The most spectacular building in Delhi commissioned by a woman is, of course, the Humayun’s tomb. Built in 1565 by Humayun’s widow and Akbar’s mother, Hamida Banu Begum, not only is it one of the most beautiful specimens of Mughal architecture in Delhi but it is, in many ways, the prototype of the garden-tomb that was to later show the way for the Taj Mahal. Much ink has been spilt over the Humayun’s Tomb for its inclusion in the World Heritage Sites listing; however few see it as an emblem of married love, a widow’s memorial to the man she married when she was barely fourteen!

Also known as Haji Begum because she had made the Haj pilgrimage, rare for a woman in those days, Hamida Begum is sometimes referred to as Mariam Makkani (one who has been to Mecca) in contemporary chronicles to distinguish her from Akbar’s wife, Mariam Zamani. Hamida Begum commissioned a Persian architect, Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, to construct Humayun’s Tomb at the exorbitant expense of Rs 15 lakh! She died in 1603, shortly before Akbar, and was buried with great ceremony in one of the unmarked graves in the north-eastern chamber beside her husband. The architect Ghiyas is credited with providing India with the first dome in the Persian style – a dome that is a complete semicircle. But, first, let us approach Humayun’s Tomb the way it should be – from the beginning. Remember, that the sprawling complex you are about to enter contains treasures from many periods, each displaying characteristics of different building styles.

You enter through an archway and on your immediate right is an enclosure with a tomb and a mosque. This is the Tomb of Isa Khan, one of the nobles of Sher Shah, and predates Humayun’s appearance on the Indian horizon. Built in 1547-48, this is a typical octagonal tomb in the Lodi style and as different from the Mughal style as apples are from oranges. You come out of Isa Khan’s Tomb and find yourself at a grand archway. Incidentally, the Humayun’s Tomb is still hidden from view. When you do catch sight of it, the suddenness of its appearance and the sheer scale and grandeur coupled with its striking red and white appearance is guaranteed to catch you unawares. {I remember my daughter asking me if it was a palace on one of our early trips, and given its proportions and scale, it seemed a fair question!} But for now, be content to admire the splendid gateway that looms ahead. Once, this led to the Garden of Bu Halima. Situated within the Humayun’s Tomb complex, this is another example of building activity undertaken by a woman. Who Bu Halima might have been is hard to tell, though her dilapidated tomb is tucked away in a corner of the garden ascribed to her. In fact, entry to Humayun’s Tomb is through this gateway to her garden enclosure. The gateway, where the tickets are checked before final entry into the Tomb, has an unusual angular appearance; its sides are splayed back, there are blind arches on the sides and a small balcony with jaali (fretwork) railings in its center. Till 1914 a sweepers’ basti (colony) flourished here; the land was subsequently reclaimed by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and some of the buildings restored. Once, Bu Halima’s Garden stretched from Humayun’s Tomb till the area around Delhi Public School. It included the Sundarwala Burj, Sundarwala Mahal, the Bara and Chhota Batashewala Mahal. 

Having crossed the ticket barrier, you could take a few minutes to go through the permanent exhibition of the restoration work on display. But don’t be in a rush just yet to go up close to the Tomb that you can now see in its full splendour rising above a row of arched niches. Take a few minutes to soak in the sight, rest against the boundary wall with the arched recesses and admire the water channel that runs right down the middle. The garden surrounding the tomb is divided into four main quadrangles by these channels, each square is further divided into a smaller square by pathways in what is known as the charbagh pattern (a ‘four-garden pattern’). Introduced in India by Humayun’s father Babur and said to replicate the design of paradisal gardens, it became a leit motif for all later garden-tombs built by the great Mughals. Akbarnamah and other medieval texts refer to the groves of lemons and orange favoured by the Mughals that once flourished here. The fruit orchards were denuded over the centuries and the grounds turned into refugee camps during the Partition with rows upon rows of makeshift tents occupied by thousands of homeless migrants. The ASI eventually restored the garden and planted hibiscus and sweet-scented chandni trees. A major restoration drive was undertaken by the Aga Khan Foundation in 2004 to de-silt and restore these water channels. About 3.8 km of water channels were “re-created” and the original gradient of 1 cm to 1.5 cm was maintained to allow the natural flow of water down the gentle slope.

It is time now to climb the steep stairs up the platform. Again, don’t be in a hurry to dive into the funerary chamber. Instead stroll around the platform, taking in a bird’s eye view of the many architectural delights tucked away within the Humayun’s Tomb enclosure and in close proximity. Notice the four domed pavilions called chhatris on each of the four corners. They lend balance to the entire construction, especially the dome. Being made of red sandstone, they also provide a striking contrast with the white marble of the large single dome. Notice that on the top of the dome there is just a crescent and not the lotus pattern you see in most other domed buildings. This is possibly because the architect was a Persian.

Once inside the mausoleum proper, you will find a series of bays with spectacular white marble inlay work on red sandstone. Square externally, the mausoleum is octagonal inside and has three arched recesses filled with pierced marble screens called jaalis on the north, east and west sides. You enter the central chamber from the open southern arch. Octagonal chambers mark each of the four corners of the central chambers. Various unmarked graves are located here, said to be of the Emperor’s wives, sons, and later Mughal emperors. Given the sheer number of graves here (there are many more you can’t see in the underground cells hidden inside the platform), Humayun’s Tomb has been called ‘the dormitory of the House of Timur’! Humayun himself lies under a marble cenotaph inlaid with black stars.

The best time to visit the Humayun’s Tomb is early evening in summer, or late afternoon in winter. The Tomb faces west and that is when you get the best light for taking photographs.

Around Sundar Nursery

The area around Sundar Nursery, off Mathura Road, skirting the enclosure wall of the Humayun’s Tomb complex is a treasure trove of tombs and pavilions, some still carrying vestiges of jewel-like craftsmanship and architectural beauty. While most visitors make a beeline for the majestic Humayun’s Tomb, drawn to its fame as a World Heritage Site and the first substantial example of the grand style of Mughal architecture, few bother to look beyond the tourist guide’s prattle or stray off the beaten track. Yet, if one were to go on a short trip into the unknown, armed with little more than genuine curiosity, one is likely to be amply rewarded.

On the roundabout at the intersection of Lodi Road and Mathura Road stands Subz Burj, the Green Dome. The elongated neck and blue-topped dome give it a uniquely Central Asian look. Octagonal in shape, this early Mughal building has four wide walls, interspersed with four narrow walls, making it seem at once angular and perfectly symmetrical. The wider faces have large deeply recessed bays, each studded with a doorway. The inner chamber contains the grave of an unknown person. The traffic on this roundabout being a mad ceaseless rush, you need to risk life and limb to go up for a closer look. The only gate on its fenced periphery is kept bolted, not locked, facing the Humayun’s Tomb entrance. You can slip into its grassy enclosure to look at the original red painted fretwork still visible on the arches over the doorways. Or else, simply stand at the verge and look up at the stunning blue, green and yellow tiles on the neck of the dome. I remember cycling past it from my home in Nizamuddin East to the nearby Delhi Public School in the hoary years when it still retained some amazing blue tiles on its dome. I remember, also, the outrage one felt when the ASI, in its wisdom, decided to peel those off and replace them with hideous bathroom tiles in a vivid purplish-blue.

Across the road, stands the Chakkarwali Masjid, so-called because it stands at a cross-section. This late Mughal-period mosque with three bulbous domes and three prayer chambers has been much renovated and much encroached upon. A madarsa (school for religious training), a dhabha (roadside restaurant), a telephone booth and a gaggle of other ‘extensions’ have marred the original clean lines of its constructions. But despair not, for the beauties tucked away within the Sundar Nursery make up in more ways than one. Park your car in the Humayun’s Tomb’s parking lot and stroll in. If the attendants at the gate stop you, suspecting that you do not look like serious plant buyers, flaunt your knowledge of the law by telling them that you have come to see and admire ASI-owned monuments. The Sundar Nursery occupies public-owned land, is guilty of misusing protected monuments by using them as storehouses for their odds and ends and has the gall to act as custodians of land that is clearly not theirs.

Immediately facing the entrance is the exquisite Sundarwala Burj. From a distance, it looks like a simple, unadorned square building with a single, squat dome. A closer inspection reveals the most detailed and remarkably un-spoilt bands of Quranic inscriptions on the internal walls as well as the underside of the dome. Profuse decorations in incised plaster make you wonder whose tomb this might be. Over the years, the grave has been leveled and there is no plaque or anything else to suggest whom this fine work was meant for. Nor is there anything else to indicate who might lie buried beneath the kutcha (unpaved) floor of this small but very serene tomb. The sunlight flooding in through the open archways on all four sides makes it refreshingly different from the usually dark, cheerless funerary chambers that one finds in most tombs dotted about Delhi.

To the north-east of the Sundarwala Burj, standing amidst a sea of flowering plants and other seasonals, is the Sundarwala Mahal. Like many little-known buildings in Delhi, the ‘mahal’ is a misnomer. Mahal (meaning grand building, such as palace) is used erroneously and interchangeably for any tumble down building when the locals don’t know the exact name of a monument, or who built it and when. This rectangular rubble-built monument with the corners cut off is actually a tomb, whose one doesn’t know. Two staircases lead up to the roof where the remains of a square platform suggest that once there must have been another structure here. A barred gate shows steps leading down to a vaulted underground chamber probably housing the graves though the fear of snakes and other creepies makes it a less-than-pleasant prospect to investigate. What is intriguing and very pleasant is the bhool-bhulaiyan-like (labyrinth), verandah on all four sides. Low ceiling-ed, it has five arches on each of its four sides making it look like a maze or a labyrinth. The Sundar Nursery is guilty of misusing an ASI-owned protected monument of A-class Archaeological Value. Its minions store odds and ends related to their various horticultural enterprises and even park their motorcycles within its crumbling walls.

Along with Sundarwala Burj, the Mahal apparently stood within an enclosure and was entered by a lofty gateway. The enclosing walls have disappeared, though traces of the gateway remain. Several tombs and graves are scattered about giving the impression that this entire area was once a vast graveyard. Of the few monuments still intact is a tomb on a high plinth with arched recesses on its outer walls and some fine ornamental stucco plaster on its ceiling. Close beside is a well and a mosque with only one large central mihrab (a recessed arch, a typical feature found in most Muslim buildings) left. From a distance, it looks like a gateway to something; closer inspection reveals nothing but a pile of fallen masonry and a debris of collapsed arches. A tangle of shrubbery threatens to envelop it in a cloak of oblivion.

But let us draw heart from the truism that till places and buildings continue to be visited, they remain visible; the cloak of oblivion descends only when people stop looking at them, making them invisible, as it were. All ye whose heart beats for a thing of beauty, don’t let that cloak fall just yet; go and see some of these beauties before they disappear; or worse still, before hand-made kiln-fired tiles of the most azure blue are replaced by mass-produced bathroom tiles in the course of ‘restoration drives’!

Arab ki Sarai

The same Hamida Banu Begum who commissioned the construction of the Humayun’s Tomb constructed the Arab ki Sarai to house the three hundred Arabs who came to India at her behest. It is not clear whether the Arabs were invited by the architect Ghiyas or brought back by Hamida Begum herself upon her return from Mecca. There is dispute also whether the three hundred Arabs were artisans engaged in building Humayun’s tomb or Arab maulvis brought back by Haji Begum as a token of veneration.

Be that as it may, a walled enclosure with three imposing gateways, close beside the south-western corner of Humayun’s Tomb, came to be known for posterity as Arab ki Sarai. Historians quibble that being a Persian, Ghiyas was more likely to have invited Persian artisans rather than Arab ones. But, misnomer or no misnomer, Arab ki Sarai has always been known as Arab ki Sarai even in ancient times. Recent years have brought it name and fame in the guise of the over-hyped over-priced Sufi extravaganza touted by Muzaffar Ali under the rather grandiose name of Jahan-e-Khusro. And for those few days in late winter when Delhi’s chatterati flock to see and be seen among the jasmine-scented beautifully lit-up ruins, Arab ki Sarai emerges from the shadows. Festival over, lights, camera, action packed up, it slinks back into invisibility. 

Once divided into two quadrangles by a series of cells, the western enclosure is now occupied by the Industrial Training Institute. At the entrance from Mathura Road to the ITI, are the remains of one of the gateways. With an ornamental cusped arch, hidden under a coat of plaster, it has been encroached upon and an incongruous upper story added to it. Inside, the 12-pillared domed Tomb of Saiyyid Yasin stands forlorn. A Lodi-period building, this was assimilated when the buildings in Arab ki Sarai were first conceived. The eastern gateway of Arab ki Sarai, accessed through the Humayun’s Tomb complex, bears the following legend:

In the name of God who is merciful and clement. There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet. Benevolence (Mihr) the old Mistress of Jahangir the King.

The eastern gateway, built during Jahangir’s reign (1605-28) was actually the entrance to a mandi or market added to the Arab ki Sarai by one Mihr Banu who is said to be an eunuch during Jahangir’s time. The play on the words ‘Mihr’ implies as much. The mandi had a series of recessed rooms or cells. The real gateway, to the north, is a handsome building with medallions in the spandrels of its high, arched doorway. It also has projecting balconies, recessed arches and glazed tiles. 

In and About Bharatiyam Complex

A looping road on the left of Humayun’s tomb brings you to the Bharatiyam Complex. This road has very little traffic; only those heading towards the Boys’ Scouts Camp located inside the complex or to the Gurudwara Dumduma Sahib come here, for beyond there is nothing except the railway tracks and in the distance the shunting sheds of the Nizamuddin Railway Station. Past the Sundar Nursery facing Humayun’s tomb’s parking lot, past the New Horizon School, lies the Bharatiyam Complex and its cluster of oddly-shaped huts and tents. And within its grounds stand the Bara and Chhota Batashewala Mahal.

The Bara Batashewala Mahal is actually not a mahal (palace); it is the tomb of Muzaffar Husain Mirza, a grand nephew of Humayun who was married to Akbar’s daughter. How it acquired its name is an enduring mystery for there is nothing left now to make the link with batashe, round puffed discs of crystallized sugar. It stands on a raised platform and has five arches on each side. From the outside it looks sturdy and simple but the inside walls are beautifully ornamented with incised and painted plaster. At the entrance to the central vaulted chamber a plaque carries the following inscription:

Mirza Muzaffar, who was scion of royal stock and the first fruit of the plant of desire, repaired from the mortal world with longings, lamentation and sighs from the heart. When I enquired the date of his death, Wisdom said ‘He was an effigy belonging to paradise.’ The writer of the (above) letters is Abdunabi Al Hussaini, may his end be good.

Built in 1603-04, the building is showing signs of serious deterioration. The ‘false tomb’ is still there, though the actual grave seems to have disappeared. It resembles the Mahal inside the Sundar Nursery in shape, size and general plan. It also has the same maze of low-ceilinged arches on its four sides. Its outer arches have beautiful red stone fretwork. Staircases lead up to the roof, but the structures on the first floor are all gone.

In the same enclosure, a stone’s throw away stands another early Mughal monument called Chhota Batashewala Mahal. Here, only the platform and parts of some walls remain. It was once an arcaded octagonal building with domed ceiling and stone jaali screens. All of that has disappeared, and the only intact evidence is the decorative incised plaster on the few surviving portions.

East of Bharatiyam Complex is a massive well that once provided water for the canals and gardens of Humayun’s tomb. Close beside, stands a square domed tomb on a high mound. Here, too, there is elaborate ornamentation on the inside walls and the soffit of the dome. Interestingly, there are tiny minarets on the four corners of the square building and the drum of the dome. With time, this architectural device would be honed and perfected by Mughal architects till they would take the form of slender, tapering minarets as seen in the Taj Mahal and the Jama Masjid. The squat dome has an unusual cross-shaped finial. This neglected tomb -- unvisited and invisible behind a screen of scrub vegetation -- is a significant example of the transitional phase of Mughal architecture; it carries in its clean, sweeping lines and rounded dome, the promise of the great architectural renaissance that would take place over the next century and reach its culmination by Shahjahan’s time with the building of the grand Jama Masjid.

Across the road, just a little before Gurudwara Dumduma sahib is a much-revered building known as Chilla Nizamuddin. Chilla refers to forty days of retreat practiced by the Sufis during which they would meditate, observe abstinence and offer special prayers. It is believed that the great Sufi saint, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya meditated and prayed in solitude here, far from the hustle and bustle of his hospice in what is known as Basti Nizamuddin deep inside Nizamuddin West on the other side of present-day Mathura Road. An arched daalan or verandah stands on a raised platform. The place still radiates an aura of quietude and peace.

Past Chilla Nizamuddin, past the BSF wireless and communication station and Officers’ Mess with its tall forbidding gates and the gleaming white Gurudwara, hugging the far south-eastern wall of Humayun’s tomb stands the Barber’s Tomb. Emperor Humayun is said to have built this exquisitely pretty blue domed tomb for his favourite barber. Famous Delhi historian, Narayani Gupta writes, ‘Barbers seem to play a prominent role in the lives of Delhi rulers. Apart from the honour done to this one by allowing him a tomb next to his emperor, Muhammad Tughlaq’s barber appears to have been given his own fort, Nai ka Kot (Barber’s Fort) near Adilabad and Ghiyasuddin’s Tomb. It is tempting to draw parallels with the role of the Barber of Seville as confidant and fixer, and the whole tradition of Italian comic opera.’

Early historians, including Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, could not credit an emperor building a tomb for a barber and so attributed this as being the tomb of a Mughal noble named Fahim Khan who died fighting for Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khanan. INTACH’s Delhi: The Built Heritage clearly lists it as the Barber’s Tomb, though there is no mention anywhere of the fortunate barber’s name. Nothing, however, can take away from its striking visual appeal, coming as one does upon something so singularly beautiful in that wilderness of thorny bushes. Its perfectly proportioned, almost-round dome has spectacular blue tiles. Its outer façade has remains of azure blue, green and yellow tiles. It has no enclosure wall, nothing to protect it from the squatters who seem to have overtaken its grounds. Rickshaw-pullers who ply their trade in the neighbouring Nizamuddin East park their rickshaws here; their families have built shanties and makeshift homes. Being outside the enclosure wall of the Humayun’s Tomb complex it has benefited in no way from the recent makeover lavished upon the Humayun’s Tomb since its inclusion in the World Heritage Site listing. But the Barber’s Tomb, as well as the monuments inside the Sundar Nursery and the Bharatiyam Complex re-affirm my belief that it is the smaller, less-visited, often neglected and practically ‘invisible’ monuments that hold the key to Delhi’s past.

Rakhshanda Jalil