Humayun's Tomb

• 1. Introduction

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  Humayun's tomb stands in Delhi, India, as a structure that changed the course of an entire architectural tradition. It was the first garden-tomb on the Indian subcontinent. It introduced the Persian double dome to India. And it served, centuries later, as the final refuge of a dynasty's last emperor. How did a grieving empress come to build something so consequential? What happened to its gardens when the empire that created them began to fall? And how did a monument that once grew turnips in its flowerbeds become one of the world's protected heritage sites?

• 2. A Widow's Commission

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  After Humayun died on the 27th of January 1556, his body was first buried in his palace at Purana Qila in Delhi. It was then taken to Sirhind in Punjab, and in 1558 his son Akbar came to see it. Bega Begum, Humayun's first wife and chief consort, had been so consumed by grief that she dedicated her remaining life to a single goal: building the most magnificent mausoleum in the empire.

  Construction began in 1565 and was completed in 1572. The cost came to 1.5 million rupees, paid entirely by Bega Begum herself. The 16th-century document known as the Ain-i-Akbari records that she supervised the project personally, having returned from Mecca after undertaking the Hajj pilgrimage.

  The architect she selected was Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, a Persian brought from Herat in northwest Afghanistan, who had previously designed buildings in Herat and in Bukhara. Ghiyas died before the tomb was finished. His son, Sayyed Muhammad ibn Mirak Ghiyathuddin, completed the work. Akbar visited the site in 1571, just as it was nearing completion.

  The site itself was chosen with deliberate care. It sits on the banks of the Yamuna River, close to the mausoleum of Nizamuddin Auliya, the celebrated Sufi saint of Delhi who was deeply revered by the city's rulers. His residence, Chilla Nizamuddin Auliya, lies just to the northeast of the tomb.

• 3. A New Architectural Language

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  Mirak Mirza Ghiyas looked to Samarkand for inspiration. Humayun's tomb was modelled on Gur-e Amir, the tomb of Timur, who was both Humayun's ancestor and the conqueror of Asia. That debt is visible in a single structural feature: the Persian double dome on a high neck drum, used here in India for the very first time.

  The outer layer of this double dome supports the white marble exterior. The inner layer creates the soaring interior volume. The dome itself measures 42.5 metres and is topped by a six-metre brass finial ending in a crescent, a form common in Timurid tombs. The entire structure reaches 47 metres, and the plinth stretches 91 metres wide.

  Red sandstone makes up the body of the building, with white marble reserved for cladding, lattice screens, door frames, eaves, and the dome. The combination of red sandstone and white marble was not entirely new to Delhi, having appeared earlier in the Alai Darwaza gatehouse in the Qutub complex, built in 1311 under the Khalji dynasty. But at Humayun's tomb it appeared at a scale and ambition that had no precedent.

  The interior floor plan presents a sharp contrast to the simple exterior. Eight two-storeyed vaulted chambers radiate from the central domed chamber in a ninefold square plan. From those eight main chambers, eight smaller chambers each radiate outward, producing 124 vaulted chambers in all. Many of those chambers contain the cenotaphs of Mughal royalty and nobility, which is why the complex came to be called the Dormitory of the Mughals.

  Underneath the white dome lies the central octagonal burial chamber, housing a single cenotaph aligned on the north-south axis as Islamic tradition requires, with the head placed to the north and the face turned toward Mecca. The actual burial chamber is underground, beneath the upper cenotaph, accessible through a separate passage that remains mostly closed to visitors. The mihrab design above the central marble lattice is distinctive: instead of carrying the traditional Surah 24 inscription, it is left as an outline so that light enters directly from the direction of Mecca, a gesture that elevated the emperor's status above his rivals.

• 4. The Paradise Garden

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  While the main tomb took over eight years to build, it was also placed at the centre of a 30-acre Charbagh, a Persian-style garden with a quadrilateral layout. It was the first of its kind in South Asia at such a scale. The garden is divided into four squares by paved walkways and two bisecting central water channels, a layout meant to echo the four rivers of jannat, the Islamic concept of paradise. Each of the four squares is further subdivided into eight smaller gardens, producing 32 miniature gardens with the mausoleum at the centre.

  The central water channels appear to disappear beneath the tomb and reappear on the other side, a visual reference to a Quranic verse describing rivers flowing beneath the Garden of Paradise. A quote preserved in scholarship on the site captures the garden's symbolic weight directly: "The garden is about sovereignty, and the mausoleum is about dynasty. When the mausoleum is implanted in a garden, as it is at Humayun's tomb, sovereignty and dynasty are combined in a teleological statement that the king is king as he always has been and always will be."

  The fourth side of the enclosure was originally meant to be bounded by the Yamuna River. The river has since shifted course away from the structure. The west gate is the entrance used today; the south gate, which served as the main entrance during the Mughal era, is now closed. On the eastern wall, aligned at the centre, lies a baradari, a building with twelve doors designed to allow free passage of air.

• 5. Decline, Refuge, and Ruin

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  When the Mughal capital shifted to Agra in 1556, the gardens at Humayun's tomb began their long decline. The expensive upkeep of the Charbagh proved unsustainable. By the early 18th century, the once-lush plantings had been replaced by the vegetable gardens of people who had settled within the walled area.

  The Indian Rebellion of 1857 brought a new crisis. The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, took refuge at the tomb along with three princes. He was captured by Captain Hodson and later exiled to Rangoon. British forces then took Delhi, and by 1860 the Mughal garden design had been replanted in an English garden style, with circular beds replacing the four central water pools and trees planted profusely in flowerbeds.

  The reversal came under Lord Curzon. Between 1903 and 1909 a major restoration project was carried out on his orders, restoring the original garden and lining the plaster channels with sandstone. A 1915 planting scheme added trees along the central and diagonal axis. In a letter to his wife written in April 1905, quoted in Ronaldshay's biography of Curzon, the Viceroy described returning after a trip to England to find his restoration work undone: "The garden has been let to a native and is now planted with turnips and the work of four years is thrown away! I shall drive out there, and woe betide the deputy commissioner whose apathy has been responsible."

  The partition of India in August 1947 caused another wave of damage. Purana Qila and Humayun's Tomb became major refugee camps for Muslims migrating to the newly founded Pakistan. The camps stayed open for about five years, harming both the gardens and the water channels. To prevent further vandalism during the early partition days of 1947, the cenotaphs inside the mausoleum were encased in brick.

  Until 1985, four attempts to reinstate the original water features failed.

• 6. Modern Restoration

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  The declaration of Humayun's tomb as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993 marked the beginning of its most thorough modern restoration. Research began in 1997. Restoration work by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, in collaboration with the Archaeological Survey of India, ran from around 1999 until March 2003.

  Around 12 hectares of lawns were replanted. Over 2,500 trees and plants were introduced, including mango, lemon, neem, hibiscus and jasmine. To enable water to flow naturally through the channels and pools without hydraulic assistance, the water channels were re-laid to a grade of one centimetre every 40 metres, a slope of 1:4000. Dormant fountains began running again after several centuries of disuse. The project also established a rainwater harvesting system using 128 ground water recharge pits and desilted old wells discovered during excavation. Funding included $650,000 from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, with additional support from the Oberoi Hotels Group. It was the first privately funded collaborative effort under the aegis of the National Cultural Fund.

  In 2009, the ASI and AKTC removed from the roof a thick layer of cement concrete that had been exerting approximately 1,102 tons of pressure on the structure. The cement had originally been applied in the 1920s to prevent water seepage; each subsequent leak led to a fresh layer being added, building to an accumulated thickness of about 40 centimetres. It was replaced with a traditional lime-based roof layer.

  On the 30th of May 2014, a heavy storm knocked the finial off the dome. India's Union Culture Minister Dr. Mahesh Sharma unveiled the restored finial on the 19th of April 2016. The original finial is now displayed at the Humayun Tomb World Heritage Site Museum.

• 7. The Complex Around It

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  Before visitors reach Humayun's tomb itself, they pass through a series of older and smaller monuments. The most notable stands roughly 20 years older than the main tomb. The tomb complex of Isa Khan Niyazi, an Afghan noble in Sher Shah Suri's court who fought against the Mughals, was constructed in 1547 CE. Its octagonal tomb sits within an octagonal garden, built during Isa Khan's own lifetime. A three-bay wide mosque in red sandstone stands on the tomb's western side. Architectural details present here reappear in Humayun's tomb on a much grander scale.

  Bu Halima's Garden greets visitors arriving from the west. Little is known about her, and the tomb or its raised platform is not centred in the garden, suggesting it was a later addition. Southwest of the complex stands the Afsarwala tomb, dedicated to an unknown person; one of the marble graves inside is dated 1566-67 CE. Adjacent to it, and built by Bega Begum around 1560-1561, is Arab Serai, a resthouse that could accommodate 300 Arabas, built ostensibly for the craftsmen who came for the construction work.

  Outside the boundary of the complex stands Nila Gumbad, the Blue Dome, named for its striking blue glazed tiles. Abdul Rahim Khan-I-Khana, son of Bairam Khan and a courtier in Akbar's court, built it for his servant Miyan Fahim, who died alongside Rahim's own son Feroze Khan while fighting against the rebellion of Mughal general Mahabat Khan in 1625-26.

  Toward the southeast corner of the Char Bagh lies the Barber's Tomb, known locally as Nai-ka-Gumbad. An inscription inside dates it to 1590-91 CE. An 1820 watercolour now held at the British Library carries a Persian caption reading Maqbarah-i-Kokah, meaning Tomb of Kaka; in Persian, kokah or kaka means foster-brother. The identity of whoever is buried there remains uncertain.