Sunrise over Makkah and its environs. Picture taken from the Mountain of Light (Jabal al-Nur) near the Hira Cave.

The entire universe worships its Creator with paramount joy and pride, with neither fatigue nor boredom ever befalling it. This is a truth which humans, owing to their restricted aptitude, will never be able to comprehend. As a result of their arrogance and ignorance though, human beings have developed their own perceptions in relation to many a secret of both the animate and inanimate worlds that surround them. However, most of the existing views and theories are dubious, at best, as they rest on no definite epistemological source. The unsurpassed and only source of trustworthy knowledge in this regard is revelation, that is, the revealed knowledge wherein many secrets of other worlds have been disclosed by the Creator and Sustainer of every creature, as well as the knowledge that derives its authority and orientation from the revealed word. This reality notwithstanding, there are many people who favour the ‘knowledge’ based on assumptions and superstitions over that which is based on the wisdom granted by the Creator and Lord of the universe. Certainly, due to their ideological and epistemological disparities, people’s outlooks on the realities of life vastly differ, often resulting in the creation of not only irreconcilably different but also conflicting cultures and civilizations.

Continue reading Reading the Signs of Allah →

Four towering white marble minarets surmount the gate pavilion of emperor Akbar’s tomb complex. 

Of all the monumental royal mausoleums of the Mughals, domed and vaulted canopies (chhatris), pavilions and, to an extent, turrets were, arguably, most extensively and most ingeniously used in Akbar’s mausoleum. One gets a feeling that such was the case due to the overall design of the building which rendered it a five-tiered structure much like a truncated pyramid enveloped by low galleries. The extensive and creative use of those canopies, pavilions, galleries and somewhat turrets was resorted to in order to accentuate the dissection, orderliness and harmony of the tomb’s spaces. Their abundant and fetching presence gives a beholder liberty to familiarize and move freely his vision from one segment of the building to another without following any particular rigid order or sequence, while at the same time maximizing the experience and absorption of the aesthetic and rhythmical qualities of the tomb. Moreover, a beholder’s vision and thus emotional attachment to the building are at once spontaneous and total, from the beginning of the process of beholding and interacting with it till the end. They are also instantaneous and non-developmental. Apart from the relatively impressive pishtaqs which mark the central bays of the four sides of the tomb, the building has no real focal point towards which a beholder’s attention could develop, or could be drawn. The building’s entire contour of a truncated pyramid is its chief lure. The building in its intricate totality is that focal point to which a visitor’s attention and mind are instantly drawn and from which they last depart when he physically departs from the symmetrical charbagh and its watercourses that house the tomb. It goes without saying that thus built, Akbar’s tomb resembled especially a Dravida style of Hindu temple architecture where the rising tower, or shikhar (mountain peak), consists of progressively smaller storeys of pavilions. Dravidian temples are also called pyramid shaped temples. Lastly, due to their unusual and indeed out-of-place position, the four white marble minarets that surmount the gate of Akbar’s funerary complex rather appear as though they are four massive outgrown turrets crowned by octagonal chhatris. The minarets thus could be viewed as an amalgam, as it were, of the two fundamental functional and ornamental elements generally in Mughal architecture: turrets and chhatris. Furthermore, the minarets thus could be viewed as a sign and symbol of virtually everything that Mughal funerary architecture stood for, as well as a sign and symbol of its strong integration, amalgamation and hybrid disposition.

Continue reading Main Thrusts of the Royal Funerary Architecture of the Mughals (Part Two) →

The tomb of Mariam uz-Zamani, one of emperor Akbar’s powerful wives and the mother of his son and successor, Jahangir. The tomb is located in Agra, India.

Following the advent of the Mughals, their positions and reactions to the existing royal funerary architecture culture in the Muslim world in general and in India in particular, varied. For sure, there was no standardized approach to the matter. There were no established behavioral patterns that were strictly followed. On the whole, it all depended on the personal disposition of each and every emperor and his personality, as well as on the dispositions of some of his immediate family members. Hence, one cannot speak of an evolutionary process or a growth in Mughal royal funerary architecture where, for example, Humayun’s tomb is described as “an outstanding landmark in the development of the Mughal style”, or as a “successful foretaste” of the “perfection” of the Taj Mahal.[1] A careful examination of Mughal royal monuments highlights a number of important facts which defy the laws of purported Mughal type evolution or development in relation to its stylistic homogeny, rationality and chronology, as elaborated by Michael Brand. The first fact is that the Mughals did not construct a single dynastic mausoleum. “If, as is quite possible, Humayun’s tomb was intended by Akbar to serve such a function, then Jahangir’s construction of a tomb for Akbar at Sikandra was an implicit rejection of the notion.” Secondly, none of the Mughal emperors were buried in the same city. Thirdly, there was no one form or style adopted for all the tombs, “although Humayun’s tomb and the Taj Mahal do share similar forms, and certain themes, such as the use of white marble and garden settings, do occur. Furthermore, this diversity of form does not even develop a single direction. There are clearly too many missing links and throwbacks to support a theory of evolution marching resolutely towards the Taj Mahal.”[2]

Continue reading Main Thrusts of the Royal Funerary Architecture of the Mughals (Part One) →

                                   Jahangir’s tomb in Lahore, Pakistan.

When the Mughals arrived and began to assert themselves at the Muslim socio-political scene, the phenomenon of Muslim funerary architecture was more than a thousand years old. They thus inherited a legacy which was instigated and fomented by a variety of historical factors and through the contributions of a great many protagonists from a number of corners of the Muslim vast domain and from virtually all strata of its composite social configuration. It was extremely difficult for anybody to concoct and apply any completely novel ideas and genera, both at conceptual and physical planes. The most conceivable scenario for the Mughals, therefore, was to be ingenious followers and under some unprecedented religious and social circumstances and conditions to bring the ubiquitous funerary architectural trends to some higher level of particularly artistic and architectural refinement and exquisiteness, something like what happened — to a much lesser extent though — to the funerary architectural legacies of the Mughals’ contemporaries, the Osmanlis and Safavids.

Continue reading Contextualizing the Royal Funerary Architecture of the Mughals →