Graftombe van Hoshang Shah

Hoshang Shah, born Alp Khan, was the son of Dilawar Khan, the Tughluq governor of Malwa who declared the province independent of Delhi². He took the throne in 1406^3,4. In his reign the fortifications of Mandu, a hill city renamed Shadiabad (“the city of joy”) in his father’s time, were completed². He was at war with Gujarat, Delhi and other neighbours for most of his reign, and was once held prisoner in Gujarat before being restored^2,4. He died in July 1435 within a day’s march of Mandu, and his body was taken there for burial^3,4. Day writes that Hoshang had conceived the mausoleum in his lifetime and supervised part of its construction³.

Mahmud Khalji, the son of Hoshang’s minister, seized the throne in 1436 and finished the tomb^2,3,4. In 1440, while he was campaigning near Delhi, a crowd in Mandu took the gilded umbrella from Hoshang’s tomb and raised it over a pretender⁴. Yazdani records that the tomb soon came to be venerated and that a fair held there on the anniversary of the sultan’s death lasted into the 1850s². An inscription on the doorway records a visit in December 1659 by four architects whom Yazdani places at Shah Jahan’s court, among them Ustad Hamid, whom he links with the building of the Taj Mahal^2,3. The Archaeological Survey of India lists the tomb among its ticketed monuments¹.

The tomb stands in the middle of a walled court built against the west side of the Jami Masjid^2,3. The court is entered from the north through a porch crowned by a marble dome, and pavements faced with red sandstone run along its north and south ends². The tomb rises from a square marble platform nearly 100 ft (30 m) across, edged with a carved border that Yazdani attributes to Hindu sculptors; thirteen steps on the south side lead up to it^2,3. Marshall called it the first great tomb in India made wholly of white marble, and noted the broad expanse of its dome over the chamber⁵.

Its walls rise 9.6 m above the platform, divided by horizontal mouldings, a projecting eave (chhajja) on brackets shaped like elephant tusks, and a frieze of small carved arches^2,3. The south doorway is framed by bands of half-open lotus flowers, with rosettes in the spandrels and blue enamel stars set in the stone above; pierced screens of geometric design flank it and fill the windows of the other three walls^2,3. The dome is rather flat and heavy, which Yazdani compared to the Tughluq domes of Delhi, with small domed turrets at the four corners and a finial ending in a crescent². Day saw in the tomb an assimilation of Hindu and Muslim forms³.

The chamber is about 15 m square inside, with walls 11 ft (3.4 m) thick². Arches about 30 ft (9 m) high across the corners turn the square into an octagon, and squinches higher up give a sixteen-sided base for the dome; along its rim runs a band of small arches on a deep blue enamel ground^1,2. Hoshang Shah’s cenotaph stands on a low marble base inlaid with small squares of black and yellow stone; it is carved like a casket with receding bands and topped by a small moulded mihrab^1,2. Several other graves lie under the dome: three with marble sarcophagi, one of pink stone and the rest finished in lime plaster^1,2. Light enters through the pierced screens^2,3.