Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:37:44.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The tomb of Buhlūl Lōdī

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Simon Digby
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The important series of pre-Mughal monuments in the Lodi Gardens (the former Lady Willingdon Park), set in the midst of the residential area of New Delhi, is familiar to most visitors to the city. Apart from a handsome Mughal bridge (the Āṭhpula) and some small and insignificant outbuildings, there are five main structures which lie along a south-south-west to north-north-east axis. The most southerly monument is the domed octagonal tomb thought to be of Muhammad Shāh Sayyid (r. 838–49/1435–46): and the most northerly is another domed octagonal tomb in a square fortified enclosure thought to be that of Sikandar Shāh Lōdī (r. 894–923/1489–1517).

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , October 1975 , pp. 550 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Thomas, E., Chronicles of the Pathan kings of Dehli, London, 1871, p. 332, n.: ‘The present village of Mubārakpūr... in all probability only derived its modern name, as in the case of the village of the “Hauẓ-i Khāṣ”, from the ancient monument, the tomb of Mubārak still standing within its boundaries’.Google Scholar

2 Sangīn Beg, Sayr al-manūzil (see Storey, ii, No. 232, p. 151). MS in the writer's possession, accession no. 27, fol. 48b.

3 (Sir) Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, Āthār al-ṣanādīd, fourth ed., Kānpur, 1901, bāb iii, p. 42.

4 ‘Dehlavī, Abd al-Ḥaqq, Akhbār al-akhyār, Dehlī, Mujtabā’ī Press 1309/1891–1892, 221Google Scholar–2; Yādgār, Aḥmad, Tārīkh-i Shāhī, ed. Husayn, M. H., Calcutta, 1939, 47Google Scholar–8; Allāh, Ni'mat, Tārīkh-i Khīn-i Jahānī wa makhzan-i Afghānī, ed. al-Din, S. M. Imām, Dacca, 1960, 1, 210–11.Google Scholar

5 Hasan, M. Zafar and others, Delhi province: list of Muhammadan and Hindu monuments. Calcutta, 1922, ii, Nos. 179–80, pp. 134–5. Bash012B;r al-Dīn Aḥmad, Waqi'āt-i dār al-ḥukūmat-i Dehlī, Agra, 1919,11, 697.Google Scholar

6 Sangīn Beg, loc. cit.

7 Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, op. cit., bāb iii, p. 46.

8 Carlleyle, A. C. L., ‘Report on Agra’, Archaeological Survey of India. Reports, iv, 1874, 185–6.Google Scholar

9 The writer is indebted to Mr. John Burton-Page, who after the first draft of this paper made an examination of this group of monuments and provided details which would otherwise have been lacking.

10 This may have been the position of the cautra-i yārān ‘the platform of the friends’ in the Dargāh Niẕām al-Dīn, in front of the central bay of the Jamā'at-khāna mosque, where the tomb of the Shaykh now stands. Amīr Khwurd makes clear that Niẕām al-Din's tomb was only built after his death, but it is difficult, in view of the actual location of the tomb, to take literally his statement that it was built dar ṣaḥrā': see Siyar al-awliyā', Dehlī, Muḥibb-i Hind Press, 1302/1885, 153–4.

11 Zafar Hasan and others, op. cit., ii, 289: photographs in Yamamoto, T., Ara, M., and Tsukinowa, T., Delhi: the architectural remains of the sultanate period, Tokyo, 1967-1970, I, figs. 30b and 105b, iii, fig. 74. The current name of this mosque seems to derive from a very much later figure, Sayyid Shāh 'Ālam Husaynī: see Muḥammad ‘Ālam Shāh Farīdī, Mazārāt-i awliyā’-i Dehlī, second ed., Dehlī, 1346/1927, 144–5, which gives a brief biography with the date of his death, 1134/1722.Google Scholar

12 Alone among those large square gumbads that of Shihāb al-Dīn Tāj Khān (Bāgh-i 'Ālam kā Gumbad, near Hawẓ-i Khaṣṣ) has an inscription mentioning the owner and date: it is of 906/1501 (see Zafar Hasan and others, op. cit., iii, 187). The more compact elevation and the additional third ‘storey’ of blind windows seem to develop further the tendencies already visible in the Baṛā Gumbad in the effort to avoid the squatness of the Shīsh Gumbad.

13 Bashīr al-Dīn Aḥmad, op. cit., iii, 52–3.

14 Ibid., iii, 53–5.

15 For readings of this inscription see below.

16 e.g. in Sharma, Y. D., Delhi and its neighbourhood, New Delhi, 1964, 60. The literary evidence upon which this attribution ultimately rests is the claim in the Futūḥāt-i Fērōzshāhī that Fērōz Shāh Tughluq, whom this composition claims as author, repaired the ‘Madrasa of Sultan Shams al-Din Iltutmish’ and the tombs of Iltutmish's sons, Mu'izz al-Dīn and Rukn al-Dīn: see Futūḥāt-i Fērōzshāhī, ed. S. A. Rashid, Aligarh, 1954, 13. The presumption that this ‘Madrasa’ is identical with the fortified tomb built for Iltutmish's eldest son, Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd, is justified by the references to a stone staircase inside the ‘dome’ (dar gumbad nardubān az sang tarāshīda) and four towers (burj). We may also amend Rashid's edition, p. 13, 1. 9, to read ham dar Malikpūr ‘also in Malikpur’, which strengthens the identification of the two lesser tombs. This reading is found in another transcript of the now lost codex of E. Thomas, made for C. E. Delmerick and now in the writer's collection (accession no. 15, fol. 10a).Google Scholar

In the case of another royal tomb with minor structures beside it, that of Sultan Fērōz Shāh Tughluq at Hawẓ-i Khāṣṣ, Sayyid Aḥmad Khān states that two of the near-by pavilions are the tombs of later members of the Tughluq dynasty, Sultans Nāṣir al-Dīn Muhammad Shāh and ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Sikandar Shāh, op. cit., bāb iii, p. 41). His source, as in some of his other attributions discussed in this paper, is not identified.

17 Yazdani, G., Bidar: its history and monuments, Oxford, 1947, 114–30.Google Scholar

18 Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, op. cit., bāb iii, p. 42.

19 Sangīn Beg, op. cit., fol. 50a.

20 BM Add. MS 4595, fols. 72b-73a.

21 ef. the group of anonymous tombs, of‘Baṛē Khān, Choṭē Khān, and Bhūrē Khān’ upon the road to Mubārakpnr Koṭlā; the tomb of Shihāb al-Dīn Tāj Khān referred to above; and the two tombs called ‘Dādī’ and ‘Potī’ upon the road to Ḥawz-i Khāṣṣ.

22 Sir Sharp, Henry, Delhi: its story and buildings, second ed., Oxford, 1928, 65.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 69.

24 Ibid., 115–16.

25 ‘Abd Allāh, Tūrikh-i Dā’ūdī, ed. Sh. 'Abd al-Rashīd, 'Aligaṛh, 1954, 21, reads (incorrectly): India Office Delhi Persian MS611, fol. 20b, reads BM Or. 197, fol. 14b, and BM Or. 1701, fol. 15b, both read for the work see Storey, I, No. 673, p. 515.

26 Allāh, Ni'mat, Tārīkh-i Khān-i Jahānī wa makhzan-i Afghānī, ed. al-Dīn, S. M. Imām, Dacca, 1960, I, 211: Note 2 gives the variant MS readings: the editor is surely incorrect in including after as part of the original text. It is an ‘improvement’ by a copyist, probably from a manuscript with the erroneous reading An intrusive statement is also found in some manuscripts that Islām Shāh, son of Shēr Shāh, built Sikandar Lōdī's tomb there: this is certainly incorrect, as Bābur saw the tomb in 1526 (see below).Google Scholar

27 Jūzjānā, , Ṯabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, ed. Lees, W. Nassau, Calcutta, 1864, 223Google Scholar–4: the correct reading is discussed by Hodivala, S. H., Studies in Indo-Muslim history, Bombay, 1939,1, 229.Google Scholar

28 ‘Iṣāmā, Futūḥ al-salātīn, ed. A. S. Usha, Madras, 1948, 463: The reference to the ‘open space of Jodh (?)’ by the fourteenth-century historian Baranī (Tārīkh-i Fērōzshāhī, ed. S. A. Khān, Calcutta, 1862, 246) is uncertain: some MSS read (Jūn, the river Jamunā) which makes good sense in the context.

29 op. cit., 381.

30 Sangīn Beg, op. eit., fol. 48b. The MS reads .

31 The cerebral r is preserved; the name is written Joṛ Bāgh on the Hindi signposts.

32 Ẕahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur, Bābur-nāma, ed. in facsimile by Mrs. A. S. Beveridge, Leyden and London, 1905, fols. 267b-268a; Baber-nameh, ed. N. Ilminski, Kazan, 1856, 346; Eng. tr. by Mrs. Beveridge, London, 1921, ii, 475; The memoirs of Babur, Eng. t r. by J. Leyden and W. Erskine, revised by Sir Lucas King, Oxford, 1921, ii, 188–90.

33 General Sir Cunningham, A., ‘Report of a tour in eastern Rajputana in 1882–3’, Archaeological Survey of India. Reports, xx, 1885, p. 156 and plate xxxvii.Google Scholar

34 Zafar Hasan, ‘Inscriptions of Sikandar Shāh Lōdī in Dehlī’, Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica, 1919–20, (pub.) 1924, 2–3.

35 Zafar Hasan and others, Delhi province, iii, 34.

36 If the manner in which the tail of the 'ayn curls in is taken to represent a final hē for we should have also to read in 1. 4.

37 This seems the more probable of two readings. If the short group beginning with 'ayn is read ‘ten’, the date 910 would correspond to A.D. 1504: but the legend would be even more defective, viz: .

38 Qur'ān LXXII, 18, ‘The mosques are for Allāh: so do not pray (to anyone) with Allāh alone’.

39 Zafar Hasan in Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica, loc. cit.

40 Masjld-i jāmi' ‘congregational mosque’ is sometimes used for quite small edifices in the Dehlī sultanate: cf. the Kālū Masjid near Begampur.

41 Published inscriptions and coin legends yield no evidence as to what kunya Buhlūl Lōdī may have used. Abū 'l-Muẕaffar was used by many sultans of Dehlī.

42 Bashīr al-Dīn Aḥmad, iii, 52–5.

43 For a notice of Mas'ūd Beg with a few biographical details see 'Abd al-Ḥaqq, Akhbār al-akhyār, 164: for a story showing the popularity of Mas'ūd's Dīvān in a Ṣūfī khānqāh around 875/1470, see Rukn al-Dīn Quddūsī, Laṯā'if-i Quddūsī, Dehlī, Mujtabī';i Press, 1308/1891, 9. 'Abd al-Quddūs Gangōhī quotes the opening couplet of the ghazal in this inscription in a work composed around 885/1480 (Rushd-nāma, Jhajjar, Muslim Press, 1314/1896–7, 25) and Badāyūnī mentions a Brahman of the reign of Sikandar Lōdī who composed a ghazul in the same rhyme and metre (Muntakhab al-lawārīkh, ed. A. 'Alī, Calcutta, 1868, I, 323).

44 In this translation abtar is taken as a synonym for pareshān ‘distressed’, ‘scattered’, ‘spread ’ rather than ‘a venomous serpent’.

45 Five bayts of this ghazal are given in a nineteenth-century anthology, Mirzā Aftāb Beg Chishtī, Kashkūl-i Mirzā, Dehlī, Haqqānā Press, n.d.: but they are somewhat inaccurately transcribed. The ghazal is lacking in the British Museum manuscript of Mas'ūd Beg's Dīvān entitled Nūr al-yaqīn (BM Or. 312): nor does it appear in Mas'ūd Beg's Mir'āt al-'ārifīn, lithographed (at Haydarābād), Mufid-i Dakan Press, 1310/1892. The second bayt of the four in this inscription is not reproduced by Aftāb Beg. Metrically it requires ‘ambered’ in place of ‘amber’.