*Cover image courtesy of the Yıldız Holding Collection. Details of the artwork can be found at the end of the article.
In a series I wrote a while ago about my GOYA trip to India, I realised I had left out the Mughal sites and museums we visited while tracing the empire’s legacy in New Delhi. The initially fragile state founded by Babur grew into a great empire under his son Humayun and grandson Akbar. To follow the Mughals’ footsteps in Delhi is to explore one of the most significant periods in India’s history. Humayun’s Tomb represents early Mughal architecture, while the Jama Masjid reflects the splendour of Shah Jahan’s reign in the 17th century. Together, they show how Mughal architecture evolved over roughly a hundred years. Then there is the Humayun Museum, built by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which I found even more intriguing…
Looking at India’s history, you soon realise that it has never followed a single, unbroken path, nor has it been the history of just one people or one empire. India has been more of a geographical and cultural concept encompassing the Indus and Ganges basins and, at times, the entire subcontinent. From the Indus Valley civilisation to the Vedic period, from the Maurya and Gupta empires to regional Hindu kingdoms, from the Delhi Sultanate to the Mughals and, finally, British colonial rule, India’s history is one of continually changing powers and cultures coming together.
THE MUGHAL EMPIRE: 331 YEARS
Here, we need to distinguish between India as we understand it today and historical India. When the Mughal Empire was founded in the 16th century, there was no nation state called India with the borders, citizenship and central sovereignty we associate with it today. Hindustan, or India, was more of a geographical and cultural concept encompassing the Indus and Ganges basins and, at times, the entire subcontinent. The lands once ruled by the Mughals now lie within several countries, principally India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Nepal, Sri Lanka and other neighbouring political entities continued to exist outside Mughal rule or maintained varying relationships with the empire. To read Mughal history solely as the history of today’s Republic of India would therefore be misleading. We are talking about part of the shared past of South Asia as a whole.
Today, the countries of the Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), Sri Lanka and the Maldives, are home to distinct religious and cultural communities, notably Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. An Indian food manufacturer I know once told me, “Muslims are beautiful because they have mixed ancestry.” At the time, I did not understand what he meant. Northern India, in particular, has been a vast area of cultural exchange, where communities arriving through Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan have encountered local populations over centuries.
Traces of this exchange can also be found in language. In Urdu today, we come across many words of Turkish, Persian and Arabic origin that we can readily recognise and that carry similar meanings. Urdu is now an official language of Pakistan. Its name comes from the Turkish word “ordu”, meaning army, through the Persian expression “zaban-i urdu”, meaning the language of the army or military camp. Although it developed under the influence of soldiers of Turkic origin, particularly the military elite, Urdu is not a Turkic language. It is an Indo-Aryan language influenced particularly by Turkish, as well as Persian and Arabic. The armies, courts and major cities of the Delhi Sultanate and, later, the Mughal Empire were places where Turkish, Persian, Arabic and local languages continually came into contact. The local language spoken by rulers and soldiers of Turkic origin gradually developed into Urdu. The language spoken today is one of the most vivid examples of the cultural synthesis the Mughals left behind.
From the 13th century onwards, the Muslim dynasties ruling the Delhi Sultanate established a strong centre of political power in northern India. The Mughals, who emerged in the 16th century, would become one of the most influential Muslim dynasties in Indian history.
It is important to get the historical sequence right here. India’s encounter with Islam began long before the Mongols arrived. Arab merchants had been trading with India’s coastal regions for centuries. The Arab conquest of Sindh took place in the eighth century, followed by Ghaznavid and Ghurid campaigns in the 11th and 12th centuries and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in the early 13th century. By the time the Mongols reached India, a strong Muslim political order was already in place in the north. Nor is there a single date when India “became Muslim”. Islam took root across the subcontinent over centuries, through conquest, trade, migration, marriage and, especially, Sufi networks.
Then came the great Mongol invasions. Genghis Khan’s armies reached the Indus in 1221. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Chagatai Mongols repeatedly attacked northwestern India. Although the Mongols inflicted terrible destruction on cities and settled centres of civilisation in Iran, Khorasan and Central Asia, they did not succeed in conquering most of India and devastating it in the same way. The Delhi Sultanate became one of the major barriers to their advance.
Yet the Mongol invasions had an unexpected cultural consequence for India: scholars, artists, Sufis, statesmen and craftspeople fleeing Central Asia and Iran sought refuge in Delhi. Curiously, the Mongol advance that destroyed centres of civilisation elsewhere helped enrich another civilisation here.
In fact, not all the Mongols went back. In 1292, during the reign of Jalaluddin Khalji, Sultan of Delhi, some of the Mongol groups that had invaded India converted to Islam after their defeat and settled around Delhi. Historical sources refer to them as the “New Muslims”. Some served in the Delhi Sultanate’s army, married local people and gradually became part of the region’s society. A process of conversion to Islam also took place in some of the Mongol khanates of Central Asia. Within a few generations, the boundaries between Mongol, Turkic, Muslim, Persian and Indian identities were no longer so clear.
I previously discussed the influence of Muslim Mongols on civilisation, culture and art in my article about the Islamic Art galleries at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art:
https://muratulker.com/the-met-yeni-bir-kitanin-insanlarina-dunya-tarihini-aktarmak-nasil-olur/
The dynasty’s founder, Babur, was a Central Asian ruler descended from Timur. In 1526, he defeated Lodi, the last sultan of the Delhi Sultanate, at the Battle of Panipat, laying the foundations of a new dynasty in northern India. On his father’s side, Babur was a fifth-generation descendant of Timur; on his mother’s side, he traced his ancestry to Genghis Khan. His native language was Chagatai Turkish, and he wrote his celebrated Baburnama in that language. His cultural outlook, however, was shaped largely by Timurid and Persian culture.
It would therefore be misleading to regard the dynasty that Europeans later called “Mughal” or “Mogul” simply as a Mongol dynasty. This was a dynasty of Turkic and Mongol origin, carrying the Timurid political tradition, steeped in Persian culture and becoming increasingly Indian within a few generations. The Mughals’ extraordinary achievements in art, architecture, miniature painting, gardens, literature and the culture of books grew out of this synthesis.
A GOYA VISIT TO JAMA MASJID IN OLD DELHI AND HUMAYUN’S TOMB IN NEW DELHI
Commissioned by Shah Jahan and completed in 1656, this great mosque immediately conveys the splendour of an empire. Its monumental main gateway, arches, minarets and vast courtyard, built in red sandstone and white marble, made us feel from the outset that we were standing before a truly distinctive building.
The successive layers of cusped arches, delicate floral carvings on the red stone, white marble mihrab and subdued light beneath the domes give the building an atmosphere that is both powerful and serene. Best of all, the mosque remains a living centre of community life, full of people praying, resting and chatting, and, of course, children’s chirping happily…
Humayun’s Tomb, in New Delhi’s Nizamuddin district, represents an earlier period of Mughal history. Humayun was the son of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire, and the father of Akbar. The tomb built for him was completed in the second half of the 16th century. What stands before us is more than a ruler’s burial place: it foreshadows the grandeur Mughal architecture would later achieve.
As you enter the complex, the first structure to greet you is the great West Gate. We see buildings of this kind in Turan, particularly those with domes and glazed brick decoration. Combining red sandstone with pale stone, this monumental gateway prepares you for the main building before you even enter. Then, as you follow the garden’s central axis, Humayun’s Tomb suddenly comes into view in all its splendour. The great central dome, symmetrical façade, raised platform and gardens extending in all four directions form a carefully planned and balanced whole.
The key concept here is charbagh, a garden divided into four parts. In this tradition, inherited from Iran and Central Asia, the garden is separated into four main sections, with water channels and paths arranging the building within a geometric scheme. This is more than an aesthetic choice. We are told that, in the Islamic garden tradition, this layout is associated with descriptions of paradise.
Humayun’s Tomb is therefore considered one of India’s most important early Mughal garden tombs. Walking through it, I could not help thinking of the Taj Mahal, which I had visited on an earlier trip. Calling Humayun’s Tomb “the architectural ancestor of the Taj Mahal”, as some do, hardly seems an exaggeration. The resemblance is clear.
After exploring the gardens of Humayun’s Tomb, I thought our visit was over. It turned out that an important part of the story was waiting for us underground. Right beside the tomb complex, between Sunder Nursery and Humayun’s Tomb, is a very new museum that opened in 2024: the Humayun World Heritage Site Museum.
From outside, it is impossible to guess the scale of what awaits inside. This is a deliberate architectural choice. To preserve the appearance of the historic site, most of the museum has been built about six metres underground, tucked into the landscape without disturbing it. The message is clear: the new should not overshadow the old. A similar principle applies in marketing, for example: every new product should cannibalise existing products as little as possible! It was interesting to see this principle applied to a city’s architecture.
The museum opened on 29 July 2024. It is the result of many years of work by the Archaeological Survey of India and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Humayun’s Tomb, the Nizamuddin neighbourhood and Sunder Nursery Heritage Park together form part of a major cultural heritage and urban renewal project covering 120 hectares.
Rather than stopping at the restoration of historic monuments, the project has sought to preserve buildings, gardens, the neighbourhood, living traditions, crafts and the human relationships that have developed there, all as parts of the same whole.
The museum answers the question “Who was Humayun?” while also exploring some 700 years of the Nizamuddin area’s history, the Mughal world, its architecture, astronomy, poetry and books, as well as travel, craftsmanship and Delhi’s transformation. The collection contains hundreds of objects, from miniature paintings and manuscripts to coins and astrolabes, celestial globes and stone inscriptions, glassware and textiles, and architectural fragments. It presents the ruler through more than his battles; it also gives us a sense of how he thought.
One of the first things we encountered was a large map headed “Humayun’s Travels”. Over his lifetime, Humayun travelled approximately 34,000 kilometres, visited 122 cities and took part in 27 battles.
The map on the display panel shows a vast area stretching from India to Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. Humayun’s life was, in effect, one of constant movement. He gained a throne, lost it, went into exile, sought refuge in Iran, raised armies again and eventually returned to Delhi. He inherited an empire from his father, but his is hardly the story of a ruler enjoying one success after another. Quite the opposite: Humayun’s story is one of defeat, exile, learning, return and starting again.
To understand how the Mughal Empire took shape, you need to know Humayun’s story. His father, Babur, laid the foundations of the dynasty in India in 1526. Humayun ascended the throne in 1530, but after his defeat by Sher Shah Suri, he was forced to leave India. Following years in exile, he recaptured Delhi in 1555. He died a year later. His son Akbar would turn this fragile inheritance into one of the most powerful empires in Indian history.
The museum’s account of Humayun’s years in Iran is important to understanding his story. Having lost his throne in the 1540s, he sought refuge at the court of the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp. This period shaped not only his political life but also the future of Mughal culture. He later brought to India the art, book production, painting, architecture and court culture he had encountered in Iran. Sometimes, even a ruler’s defeat can prove culturally productive. When Humayun returned from Iran to India, he brought more than military support: he brought ideas, artists and a way of thinking. We see that Iranian influence in Indian culture.
There is, in fact, a broader historical transformation at work here. The initial Mongol conquests under Genghis Khan and his grandsons in the 13th century inflicted immense destruction on the great centres of civilisation in the Islamic world, from Bukhara and Samarkand to Merv and Baghdad.
In later generations, many Mongol dynasties embraced Islam and became carriers of the Persian Islamic culture they had once confronted. This makes for a remarkable historical transformation: from the “Mongols” who destroyed centres of civilisation to the “Mughals” who, a few centuries later, produced gardens, libraries, miniature paintings, works of astronomy and buildings such as the Taj Mahal in India.
Yet it would also be wrong to regard the Mughals as a direct continuation of Genghis Khan’s invading armies. The Mughal dynasty’s principal political and cultural inheritance came from the Timurids. Babur’s world brought together Chagatai Turkish and Persian high culture. When the Mughals arrived in India, Indian traditions became part of that world, ultimately giving rise to a distinct Mughal civilisation.
The Mughal dynasty lasted 331 years, from 1526 to 1857. The rulers’ connections with the Nizamuddin area are particularly striking. The district is associated with the great Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya.
The shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, who lived in the 13th and 14th centuries, had become one of the area’s spiritual centres long before the Mughals arrived. The museum’s section on pilgrimage recounts visits by Mughal rulers: Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan… The rulers changed, but the connection endured. The decision to build Humayun’s Tomb here was deliberate. As a sovereign’s burial place, it brought worldly power and spiritual authority together in the same setting. The museum explains this relationship particularly well. Its account of Indian history shows Persian, Turkic, Central Asian and Indian elements blending rather than one prevailing over the others. Indian culture has evolved through this continuing exchange.
Another display that caught my attention concerned the six-pointed star, a shape we would immediately recognise today as the “Star of David”. But there is an important reminder here: throughout history, the six-pointed star has not been an exclusively Jewish symbol. It has served as a geometric and cosmological motif in many different cultures, from India to the Islamic world. You can also see it on the façades of Humayun’s Tomb.
If we project today’s symbolic meanings back onto the past, we risk misunderstanding a great deal. A symbol’s meaning can change across time and place. As you explore the museum, you also realise that the Mughals’ interest in geometry went beyond decoration. Stars, polygons, symmetry and repeating patterns give the architecture an almost mathematical order. This brings us to another, very different side of Humayun: his interest in astronomy.
Humayun was extraordinarily interested in astronomy and astrology. The museum places particular emphasis on his interest in astrolabes, celestial globes and astronomical texts. The astrolabe was one of the advanced scientific instruments of its time, used for purposes ranging from determining time and direction by the positions of stars to making astronomical calculations. One example in the museum’s collection is a brass astrolabe made by Muhammad Muqim, with the positions of 44 stars marked on it. On another celestial globe, stars are represented by silver dots of different sizes.
Looking at the open book in the display case pictured above and the writing set beside it, I would say: do not think of the 16th century simply as an age of horses, swords and battles. People were measuring the heavens, compiling star catalogues, making mathematical calculations, collecting books, writing poetry, designing gardens and constructing highly complex buildings.
Humayun was deeply passionate about books, and, strangely enough, his death was connected to that passion. In 1556, he died after falling down the stairs of his library in Delhi. A ruler who had spent much of his life on battlefields and taken part in 27 battles died not in combat, but following an accident in the place where he kept his books.
His son Akbar then ascended the throne. The museum calls its section on Akbar “Building an Empire”. Akbar transformed the state that Humayun had first lost and then re-established into an empire. During his reign of almost half a century, from 1556 to 1605, he did more than expand its territory. He established an administrative system, brought different communities into government and sought to develop his own model for governing an empire of many religions, languages and cultures. Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb followed. Of course, the dynasty’s history also includes many other rulers, princes, wives and members of the court.
When we speak of the Mughal Empire, we are not describing a single, unchanging entity. No empire remains the same for 331 years. Its rulers, ideas of government, religious policies and architecture all changed. Even its relationship with India evolved from one generation to the next. Babur was still very much a Central Asian ruler. By Akbar’s reign, the dynasty was becoming increasingly Indian. Under Shah Jahan, a distinctive Mughal aesthetic emerged that could no longer be attributed entirely to any other region. The Taj Mahal is its most famous example. Humayun’s Tomb is one of the starting points of this transformation.
The first generation came from Central Asia to India; within a few generations, they had become rooted in their new home. Members of the dynasty, soldiers, administrators, artists and their children became part of the region. People of Persian, Turkic, Afghan and Central Asian origin mixed with local Indian populations through marriage, military service, court life and trade. As generations passed, the question of who was Indian and who was foreign began to lose its meaning. As the Mughals changed India, India changed the Mughals. History offers many examples of cultures emerging through mutual transformation rather than through one side prevailing over another.
Good museum practice means allowing the exhibits to be seen and understood without overshadowing them. Another pleasing feature here is that the museum itself is no architectural ego trip. Built approximately six metres below ground, it is covered with landscaping reminiscent of a Mughal garden, preserving the appearance of its historic surroundings. Inside, 270-degree digital presentations sit alongside architectural models, objects and traditional display cases. There is a 100-seat auditorium, space for temporary exhibitions, a library and other public spaces. The museum is a contemporary building that respects the past rather than imposing something new, it is an innovation that tells the story of the old.
The Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s work here goes well beyond establishing a museum. Restoration of Humayun’s Tomb and its gardens has apparently been under way since the late 1990s. After 2007, extensive conservation work began on the tomb itself. Carried out with traditional craftspeople, the restoration was intended not only to preserve the monument but also to help sustain building crafts that were disappearing.
Looking at a map of South Asia today, we can see that modern national borders do not always align with the territories of former empires. The borders that emerged following the partition of India in 1947 and the end of British colonial rule played an important part in shaping some of the region’s disputes. In this respect, they remind me of certain disputes in the Middle East.
During the great uprising against the British East India Company in 1857, the last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, became the rebels’ symbolic leader. After the British recaptured Delhi, he was arrested, tried and exiled to Rangoon. This brought the Mughal dynasty’s political rule to an end. The rule that had begun with Babur in 1526 ended 331 years later, when the 1857 uprising was suppressed and the British deposed the last emperor. Yet nearly five hundred years after it all began, people in Delhi still walk through their gardens, follow their traces and remember them with respect.
SOURCES
https://www.pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/232
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-between-india-and-pakistan
*On the cover, I present a work of art from the Yıldız Holding collection depicting an episode in the history of the East India Company.
GEORGE FREDERICK CHERRY (1761–1799), THE EAST INDIA COMPANY’S REPRESENTATIVE IN BENARES, AND WAZIR ALI
Company School, Calcutta, India, circa 1800
Gold and gouache on paper
Dimensions: 53 × 44 cm (framed), 33.5 × 24 cm (unframed)
The work depicts the meeting between George Frederick Cherry, the East India Company’s representative in Benares, and Wazir Ali, Nawab of Oudh, on 14 January 1799, which resulted in Cherry’s death.
After being deposed as Nawab of Oudh by the British, Wazir Ali settled in Benares. When the British sought to send him to Calcutta, he arrived at George Frederick Cherry’s residence in Benares with a retinue of around two hundred men to discuss the decision. During an argument that broke out while Cherry was hosting him for breakfast, Wazir Ali drew his sword and attacked him. The work captures this very moment, showing Wazir Ali striking George Frederick Cherry with his sword.
Cherry died in the attack. Wazir Ali fled and, months later, was handed over to the British on condition that his life be spared. He spent the rest of his life in captivity.
Note: This open-source article does not require copyright and can be quoted by citing the author.
