Beautiful Green Valleys in North India
The old Lodi capital of Agra provided the first of the Mughals with the immediate requirements of his royal condition, but no relief from the unbearable heat of mid-summer. He lost no time in seeking out a retreat and found it on the relatively open left bank across the cooling waters of the river Yamuna.
Babur’s passion for gardens is a recurring theme in his inimitable memoirs. In his ancestral home of Fergana, water flowing from the surrounding hills was a central feature of the landscape. Exiled from its green valleys, he found North India a region “of few charms and lamented its lack of fine fruits, ice and cold water”. There was no refuge except in taking to the bath — but the mind still needed invigoration and the spirit, revival.
It was with this intention that, a few days after distributing the defeated Sultan Ibrahim Lodi’s captured treasure to his wilting followers, Babur crossed over from the fort. He was disgusted with the barrenness of the area, but in these unprepossessing surroundings Babur hastily laid two gardens, to which he gave the emotive names of Gul Afshan (flower scatterer) and Zar Afshan (gold scatterer). With his begs or nobles following suit, the whole area was covered with gardens. “The people of Hind”, Babur wrote with pride, “who had never seen grounds planned so symmetrically and thus laid out, called the side of the Jun [the river Yamuna] where [our] residences were, Kabul”.
These delectable retreats languished after Babur’s early death in 1530, four years after his victorious arrival. His successors spread the empire far and wide, discovering other pastures further afield. “Kabul” in Agra had served its immediate purpose. It was rediscovered nearly 100 years later by the nobles of the fourth emperor, Jahangir, for gardens of their own. A number of these sprang up, doubling in the usual way as tombs.
In recent years, an attempt has been made to retrieve these sites from further ruin. Some of which were architecturally and decoratively innovative.
#1 Arambagh
One of the two gardens Babur laid on the north bank is now known as Arambagh (garden of leisure), a more prosaic name than the one given to it by Babur himself. There is no positive identification, but of the two it is probably Gul Afshan. Much of it had been buried by rubble and encroached upon on three sides by the spread of untidy urban sprawl, but an attempt has been made to restore it. (When Babur died in 1530, this is where his body was laid until his son Humayun, after his defeat by Sher Shah, carried it away to Kabul. In accordance with Babur’s wishes, he was buried there in his favourite garden in a grave open to the sky. These last rites were enjoined on Humayun by filial duty and even more so because Babur, in a remarkable act of self-renunciation, carried away his son’s illness by insistent prayer.)
The solution to the problem of water came from a bullock lift which filled a reservoir from where water flowed into the channels over ribbed stones to simulate the sparkle of a mountain stream. This became a characteristic feature of the numerous formal gardens created in India by some of Babur’s pleasure-loving successors. Dependence on river water led to another garden feature — the open river front. Walls on the other three sides effectively excluded the outside world.
But one element was still lacking —the flowers and delicious fruits of Transoxiana. When a melon was brought to Babur from Balkh, “to cut and eat it affected [him] strangely: [he] was all tears”. He had them grown in Agra and was able to enjoy there both the melons and grapes of his Central Asian home. “Then in that charmless Hind were seen laid out with order and symmetry, with suitable borders and parterres in every corner, and in every border rose and narcissus in perfect arrangement”.
The honeycombed corbels of the modest pavilions on a terrace overlook-ing the river contain paintings of unusual interest in the development of Mughal art in India. Murals of figures, birds and ducks fill the spaces. Some of the figures are winged, suggesting Persian inspiration, while two half-figures in the outer panels have distinctly Central Asian features. There is no obvious link with the art of paint-ing later developed in his grandson Akbar’s ateliers which assimilated Indian traditions with amazing sureness of touch.
#2 Chini ka Rauza
Downstream from Arambagh is the Chini ka Rauza. The first part of the name refers to the bril-liant display of glazed titles all over the outer surface of this small gem of a tomb set in a garden. Hidden from the main road by nursery gardens, the Rauza in recent years has been successfully retrieved from the desolation which had overtaken it. Large portions of tile deco-ration had already disappeared, but what has been saved gives some idea of its former beauty.
The Rauza is the river front tomb of Shukrulla, one of Shahjahan’s finance ministers. As in many tombs of the period, both husband and wife were buried there. This unusual Rauza must have been a striking addition to the tomb architecture of Mughal Agra. The technique of firing tiles had already been perfected in Multan and Lahore, where several fine displays still exist. The stucco interior is covered with floral and conventional designs, while the soffit of the double-dome corbel, and cut in seven concentric rings.
#3 Itimad-ud-daula
Lower downstream, close to a river crossing, is the tomb of the empress Nurjahan’s father, Mirza Ghiyas Beg. He arrived at the court of the emperor Jahangir a penniless immigrant from Persia—with, however, one prize asset: his very intelligent 34-year-old daughter. The emperor immediately succumbed to her charms and married her in 1611. This single event led to the subjugation of the Mughal court by the culture of Safavid Persia. Many Persian courtiers rose to important positions in the governing class. Ghiyas Beg was made prime minister, with the title of Itimad-ud-daula (Confidence of the State), and his son’s, Asaf Khan’s, daughter was married to the third son of Jahangir, Prince Khurram. (After a ruthless war of succession, Khurram was to seize the throne as Shahjahan, and Nurjahan’ s niece was to become the empress Mumtaz Mahal, whose tomb is the Taj Mahal.)
The riverside tomb which Nurjahan built for her father at the height of her ascendancy marked a transition from the rugged sandstone buildings of the earlier Mughals, with their distinctive Indian inspiration, to the jewelled marvels of his son. This rauza is a miniature casket, lacking some of the spatial harmonies of the Taj. But every inch of the marble surface is covered by coloured stone inlay with relieving touches of sinuous decoration. A nota-ble feature is the use of stones such as marble and jasper of different colours, and the soothing tone of the ochre-coloured cenotaphs in the midst of this profusion. The mortuary chamber is at ground level, reproduced in the cenotaph chamber above.
While the Taj impresses with its stately elegance, Itimad-ud-daula’s tomb captivates with its accessible brilliance. Thus the corner minarets, which seem disproportionately short, do not overshadow the low, square roof with its intricate lattice walls covering the cenotaph chamber below. Even at the height of the Persian ascendancy, the departure from indigenous features was never complete. Corner kiosks and bracket-supported eaves acknowledge the authority of Indian artistic styles as much as the compulsions of climate.
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