Tomb of Jahangir

• 1. Introduction

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  The Tomb of Jahangir sits on the western bank of the Ravi River, in a quarter of Lahore called Shahdara Bagh. On the 28th of October 1627, the emperor died near the town of Rajauri, in the foothills of Kashmir. His funeral procession carried the body south to Lahore, arriving on Friday, the 12th of November. The Dilkusha Garden, where he was laid to rest, had been one of his favorite spots in the city. Shah Jahan, now the Mughal Emperor, ordered a mausoleum befitting an emperor built over his father's grave. Construction took ten years and cost ten lakh rupees. Among the decisions that shaped the design, one came from Jahangir himself. It set this tomb apart from almost every other monument in the Mughal tradition.

• 2. A Roof Without a Dome

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  Jahangir's great-grandfather Babur had chosen burial in a tomb open to the sky, resting at the Gardens of Babur in keeping with Sunni tradition. Jahangir broke with that practice by enclosing his mausoleum with a roof. To preserve some fidelity to Sunni custom, however, he expressly forbade a dome from being placed above his grave. The roof that resulted was plain and free from ornament. Later, at the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan would embrace domes fully. Domes had first appeared in Mughal funerary architecture at the Tomb of Humayun, then been revived and extended by Shah Jahan.

  The mausoleum stands 22 feet tall as a single-story plinth, with arcades lining all four of its sides. Its facade of red sandstone is inlaid with white marble motifs. From each corner of the building rises an octagonal minaret, each reaching 100 feet. Minarets had been absent from earlier Mughal commissions. Their presence here reflects a renewed interest in Timurid architectural styles from Central Asia that developed during Jahangir's reign. Each minaret divides into three sections and terminates in a white marble cupola. The design also draws on Safavid architecture from Persia. Jahangir's wife Nur Jahan was of Persian descent and may have introduced that influence to the Mughal court. Inside the mausoleum, the surfaces received an entirely different kind of attention.

• 3. What the Interior Holds

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  Mughal buon fresco richly covers the vaulted compartments inside the mausoleum. Carved jali screens pierce the walls, admitting light into the interior in patterns aligned toward Mecca. At the center of the building sits an octagonal chamber lined with carved marble. Below the chamber floor, a crypt holds the emperor's remains. Above the crypt stands a white marble cenotaph inlaid with pietra dura. The inlaid patterns carry two intertwined themes: vegetal motifs and the 99 Names of Allah, a tradition rooted in Islamic mysticism. The surfaces that made this interior so celebrated would not shield the complex from what arrived in the nineteenth century.

• 4. Armies and Floods

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  Sikh court records note repair work at the tomb in 1814, though the complex soon faced a more destructive kind of attention. The army of Ranjit Singh pillaged the site, stripping building materials that were then used to decorate the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The cleared grounds were converted into a private residence for an army officer named Senor Oms, also known as Musa Sahib. Ranjit Singh later ordered Musa Sahib buried on the tomb's grounds after he died of cholera in 1828. By 1880, a rumor had spread that Ranjit Singh's forces had also stolen a dome or second story from the structure. No evidence has ever supported that claim.

  A railway line was laid between the tombs of Asif Khan and Nur Jahan under British rule, cutting through the ensemble. Between 1889 and 1890, British authorities undertook repairs. Floods from the Ravi River struck or threatened the site across fourteen different years between 1867 and 2010. The 1988 flood was particularly severe, covering much of the site in 10 feet of water for five days. During the 1950 floods, Major General Azam Khan deployed the Pakistan Army to aid relief efforts and protect the tomb from encroachment by the river. Khan commanded the 10 Division in Lahore from 1949 to 1957. Author Shuja Nawaz recorded that Khan's response endeared him to the local population. The monument that survived these centuries of damage sits northwest of the Walled City of Lahore. That area was once a rural landscape known for its numerous pleasure gardens.

• 5. Garden, Setting, and Survival

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  The garden surrounding the tomb follows the Persian Chahar Bagh plan, a paradise garden design. Paved walkways called khiyabans, together with two bisecting water channels, divide the garden into four main squares. Those channels represent the four rivers said to flow through jannat, the Islamic concept of paradise. Each of the four squares is further subdivided, creating sixteen squares in total. The outer quadrangle measures approximately 500 metres on each side.

  Three monuments stand alongside Jahangir's tomb in the Shahdara Bagh precinct. Immediately to the west stands the Akbari Sarai, built in 1637. It serves as the western entry to the complex and contains a small mosque. Just west of the Akbari Sarai stands the Tomb of Asif Khan, completed in 1645. Asif Khan was Jahangir's brother-in-law, and his tomb shares the east-west axis that aligns the entire ensemble. Slightly southwest of Asif Khan's tomb stands the mausoleum of Nur Jahan.

  Pakistan enacted the Federal Antiquities Act in 1975, forbidding construction within 200 feet of protected sites. Despite that law, private homes have been built just metres from the tomb's boundary walls. Pakistan issued a postage stamp commemorating the mausoleum in 1954, and the tomb appeared on the thousand-rupee banknote until 2005. The site, along with the Akbari Sarai and the Tomb of Asif Khan, was inscribed on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list in 1993. The Dilkusha Garden in which the tomb stands was first laid out in 1557, long before the mausoleum was built.