Let me begin with 3 questions –
1. Is this really the first recorded (dated) tomb of the Delhi Sultanate?
Going by the date of its construction, 1215 CE, it is the earliest Delhi Sultanate Tomb in India.
2. Is this an extant structure?
Definitely not. A lot of restoration work was carried out, some of which exhibited Mughal elementals. The most significant restoration was carried out in 1902, by Major Stratton, the British Political Agent of the Eastern Rajputana states. He affixed a bilingual plaque (disappeared now) in English and Urdu documenting the date corresponding to Hijri 729, which is 1215 CE.
3. Was there an original inscription?
Apparently yes. It existed until Stratton’s work commenced, but unfortunately, both the original and Stratton’s inscriptions have been lost. The Tomb finds a very brief mention in the Progress Report of the ASI, Western Circle of 1905.
Welcome to Nadbai, a place earlier known as Asafabad or Asifabad after Asaf Khan, the personage of the Tomb in focus. Nadbai has earned a geographical nickname, Chota Kota (Mini Kota), which is not on account of tuition classes for IITs and other elite engineering and medical institutions, but on the number of meritorious students of the secondary and higher secondary school board of Rajasthan.
Let’s unravel if the structure actually dates from 1215.
Asaf Khan, an unusual name for a person (he was a slave under Mohammad Ghori) of that era (earliest decade of the conquest) was a slave and military general under Ghori, who was manumitted after the Sultan’s assassination in 1206 CE. He sided with Bahauddin Tughrul rather than Qutubuddin Aibek, and was thus under the sovereignty of the Sultan of Bayana, Bahauddin Tughrul. He is supposed to have raided Nadbai and reduced it, for which he was granted rights by the Mohammad of Ghor himself. So, that is historically before the assassination of the Sultan in 1206. Nadbai fell under Bayana back then. After the death of Bahauddin Tughrul, it continued to operate under Bayana until 1215, after which a historical hiatus hit the region till the last of the Delhi Sultanate’s Dynasty, the Lodhis’ came up on stage. This part is important as the tomb depicts Lodhi style principally.
Asaf Khan is said to have constructed the Tomb for his two wives, a son and a daughter. After he died, he too was interred here. Along with the graves of the family, a grave of his slave too can be found here, albeit not directly under the canopy, but on the plinth. But instead of the five graves under the canopy, only four are seen, while two are outside the umbrella.
What makes this Tomb unique (though the region of Bayana, especially Khanwa) has such canopies) is the hipped roof (The Qutub complex has a specimen, as well as another one exists in the Lodhi Gardens). The hipped roof is pyramidal in form, and may have two triangular sides and two trapezoidal ones. A hip roof on a rectangular plan has four faces. They are almost always at the same pitch or slope, which makes them symmetrical about the centerlines. The one at Nadbai belongs to the rectangular template. Even the Mansard roofs are similarly categorised. The beginning of hipped roofs in India is credited to the region of Bayana, and is the epitome of the syncreticism of Islam and Regional architecture. Though Lodhis and the Mughals perfected it, its neat fascia originates in the Bayana region during the early decades of the conquest.Â
Now comes the date of the structure. Why was Asaf Khan named so in the 13th century. This is a weird question, right? The name is commonly associated with the Mughals and there are two instances of such a title, one from the Akbar Nama and one from the Jahangir Nama. Akbar had a governor by the name Abdal Majid in Chittorgarh. He died in Burhanpur and was buried there. He was bestowed with the title Asaf Khan. The other was Yamin al-daula, Noorjahan’s brother, who too had this title bestowed upon him, but is buried in Lahore. So, the Asaf Khan in question is definitely not from the Mughal-era. The personage from Nadbai was also referred to as Yusufzai Ghaznavi, again a titular of sorts, but is more apt to the case. The Lodhi connection is more to do with the style of the building. The Tomb is raised on a platform of approximately 12 m square, and this platform supports a plinth of 2.50 m in height. The oblong structure is 6.8 m by 4.7 m on plan, with three columns on the short side, and four on the longer side. Constructed in red sandstone, the hipped ceiling once depicted plasters and paintings of the Islamic kind, making it the earliest structure with such ornamentation in the region. The ASI undertook a restoration and seemingly left it without completing. They also have done a shoddy work on it. Nevertheless, the painting, now overwritten depicts a very early age of the conquest.
So, what do we conclude? By date (if it was accurate, and the reasons are ambiguous at best), the Tomb does point out to an earliest relic. Though, of Lodhi and Mughal influence, questions cannot be overlooked, and are more pertinent as the structure is not extant. Proportionally to how much restoration work has altered the original edifice, the one at Sultangarhi scores a convincing win here, but chronologically, Sultangarhi takes the second spot.
Just to note, there have been graves from the early period of the conquest, especially in Delhi, Ajmer, Hansi, Nagaur, and probably even Bayana (Gujarat even has earlier gravestones), but none of these have been dated, like this one or the one at Sultangarhi. What we have lost is an iconic evidence of history!)
In a most heart warming experience of the visit on an extremely foggy, windy and chilly day, when the locals didn’t know that such a place existed in their midst, they called upon an elderly gentleman, Mr. Alimuddin to inquire. He, an octogenarian took me to the place accompanied by a Katara Panditji, a septuagenarian. Also, it is the same Mr. Alimuddin, who had accompanied Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie Shokoohy in the early 1980s, when they visited the area. Unfortunately, the Mini Kota of Rajasthan gets no visitors to explore the rich history.Â
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Himanshu Damle 