Tombeau d’Ali Barid Shah (tombeaux des Barid Shahi)

The Barid Shahi tombs lie about ten furlongs (2 km) west of the old city of Bidar, the Bahmani capital from the mid-15th century^1,2. Qasim Barid, minister and de facto ruler of Bidar under the Bahmani king Mahmud Shah, founded the dynasty and died in 1504; his son Amir Barid died in 1542¹. Amir’s son Ali Barid was the first of the family to take the title of Shah and ruled until 1580¹. Yazdani describes him as a cultured prince fond of poetry, calligraphy and architecture, who also built the Rangin Mahal in the fort of Bidar¹. In 1565 he joined the alliance of Deccan sultans against Vijayanagara and fought in the battle at Talikota¹.

Ali Barid built his own tomb; a chronogram on a tile panel gives 984 AH (1576-77) for its completion, three years before his death in 987 AH (1579-80)¹. His son Ibrahim Barid (r. 1580-1587) lies in a similar but unfinished tomb, whose court adjoins the west wall of his father’s enclosure¹. The kingdom shrank after Talikota, and in 1619 Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur took Bidar and annexed it¹. After long neglect, when the gardens were ploughed up, Hyderabad’s Archaeological Department began conserving the tombs in 1918, recovered the land and restored the walks and flower beds¹. The tombs belong to the Bidar component of a serial site on India’s UNESCO Tentative List².

The tomb stands in a square walled court 140 yards (128 m) a side, laid out in walks and flower beds, with paths from gates on all four sides to the steps of its platform¹. The main entrance is a two-storey gateway on the south, whose upper hall, known as the Naqqar Khana (music gallery), has a vaulted stucco ceiling and many small wall niches¹. Each face of the square tomb opens in a single tall arch, 20 ft 7 in wide, flanked by smaller blind arches above a carved stone dado¹. A globe-shaped dome on a decorated drum crowns the building, topped by a gilded copper finial¹. UNESCO’s tentative-list text describes the tomb as standing in the middle of a symmetrical four-square garden².

Yazdani judged the building top-heavy, its dome too large for its base, and noted that the four open arches break with the custom of keeping the qibla side of a tomb closed¹. He attributed these choices, and the miniature copies of the dome in the decorative bands, to Hindu builders, and contrasted the bright interior with the dim halls of the Bahmani tombs¹. A mosque with three arches, two slender minarets and a cistern 36 ft 3 in square adjoins the tomb court on the north-west¹.

Through the four open arches light reaches a hall 37 ft 5 in square, paved with hexagonal stone slabs and lined with a stone dado carved with eight-petalled rosettes¹. Above it, glazed tile panels carry verses by the Persian poet Attar on the passing of worldly glory; one panel gives the chronogram of the building and the name of the calligrapher, Khwajagi of Shirwan¹. Higher up, bands of Qur’anic text in white thuluth script on a turquoise ground, designed by the calligrapher Abd al-Fattah, run round the walls, while squinches turn the square into an octagon and then a 24-sided ring below the dome¹. On a low platform stand five cenotaphs; Ali Barid’s, of polished black basalt, is carved with the creed and the dates of the building and of his death¹.