What the misidentification of a mosque in the heart of Delhi says about our approach to heritage

To the south-west of Humayun’s tomb in Delhi stand two domed Mughal monuments from the 16th century CE – one mausoleum and one mosque. Few visitors to Humayun’s tomb venture in this direction, even though the structures have recently been restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Signboards, brochures, and web pages describe them as the Afsarwala complex, built in honour of a nobleman, an afsar.

Eminent scholars of Mughal architectural history such as Ebba Koch and George Michell have subscribed to this nomenclature. So has the respected art historian Subhash Parihar, who has written the only focussed academic inquiry on the structures.

In his study published in Marg in 1998, Parihar suggested that the word afsar was derived from the Turkic afshar, referring to a Transcaucasian tribe, four elite members of which had been appointed by Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp in 1544 to assist with Humayun’s scheme of recapturing subcontinental India from the Suri dynasty. As only three of them are known to have returned to their homeland, Parihar suggested that the complex was likely to have been sponsored by the fourth, Abdul Fateh Sultan Afshar.

While there certainly are plausible elements in this theory, there is mounting evidence to suggest that it should be reassessed. It seems likely that the Afsarwala complex was actually commissioned by a woman – that it did not have a patron but a “matron”.

The sustained institutional endorsement of such misattribution is a reflection of current politics where public funds are used ineffectively, new research is not prioritised and structures of significance are distanced from communities by failing to to describe their significance accurately.

In addition, while heritage – particularly Mughal – is routinely used to humiliate vulnerable minorities, the opportunities they offer to correct their historic misperceptions are squandered.

To begin with, the accepted theory about the complex does not quite satisfy two questions.

Given contemporary codes of hierarchy and propriety, it is not clear why a sub-imperial foreigner would be permitted to construct so close to the Emperor’s tomb, and in a landscape that also includes buildings erected by and at times entombing bodies of Mughal imperial women such as Haji Begum, Mehr Bano, Bu Halima and perhaps also Maham Begum.

Second, if the mosque and tomb had been imagined together as a complex and commissioned by the same individual, why do they appear stylistically so disparate?

The octagonal tomb is clad entirely in stone, ornamented by marble inlay and sparse yet refined red sandstone carving. The triple-bayed mosque, on the other hand, relies on more modest decorative features in painted stucco. It is likely that a band of blue ceramic tiles also ran along the parapet of the mosque originally – a common element in Akbar-era architectural vocabulary.

That is indicated by the hand-painted aquatint of the site that emerged from the studio of the British artists Thomas and William Daniell in 1801. Their print also suggests that the structure was originally provided with 18 guldastas (floral finials, usually in the form of a miniature minaret) articulating its corners, of which only one partially remains.

The same image also shows a low wall projecting perpendicularly from the mosque’s facade to spatially segregate it from the tomb. This once again reinforces the possibility of the units of the complex as being built independently.

Within the tomb, cenotaphs (empty tombs in honour of a person whose remains are actually buried in another place, typically below the plinth at ground level for Mughals) and epigraphic records strengthen the assertion that these structures had female sponsors. It is likely that the primary cenotaph commemorates a woman because it is finished on top with a flat takhti (tablet) and not the raised qalamdan (pen-case) usually reserved for men.

Based on the numbers 974 that appears within the text and is, as per Islamic funerary tradition, the Hijri calendar date marking the death, she is someone who died in between 1566-’67 in the Common Era.

From this date, the materiality and stylistic expression of the tomb, and its proximity to that of Humayun, it may be deduced that this was erected for an imperial matriarch of his generation. Although the exact identity of the deceased remains to be established, she was probably close both in relationship and rank with the matron of the mosque adjacent to it. Considerably more information is available about the mosque and its matronage.

In an early-19th century record of its now-lost foundational inscription, it is identified it as a jami (a mosque for communal prayer, a Friday mosque) constructed in the decade after the tomb. The inscription also allows for its matronage to be safely attributed.

While the stucco panel above the central portal of the mosque is now too damaged to be read, a Persian manuscript at the British Library supplies an inscription for a mosque situated between Arab Serai and Humayun’s Tomb that can only be the mosque of today’s so-called Afsarwala complex.

This manuscript – the Sair al-Manazil – was pioneering in its attempt at documenting the contemporary built environment of Shahjahanabad and Old Delhi. The author Sangin Beg was assisted by Nawab Sham al-daulah, a Persian minister at Emperor Akbar Shah II’s court who was known for his knowledge of history.

It is particularly credible in terms of its epigraphic recording. According to the manuscript, the mosque’s foundational inscription was written during the reign of Emperor Akbar. It reads:

“Valued by the heavens, Nawab Begum,
Was a benefactor of creation and the shadow of divinity.
In Delhi, she built for reward
A mosque, khanqah [a Sufi residential institute], and serai [a caravanserai, inn].
Among them, this is the Masjid-e-Jami,
Captivating like the castles of heaven.
This work was completed under the supervision of the Khwaja
Who is a minister of management and opinion.
When I asked for its date, reason replied,
’This place was built for worship.’”

At the end of this final hemistich, the manuscript provides the number 989. But an independent calculation of abjad (a system assigning numerical powers to alphabets such that a phrase can operate as a chronogram with the summative value of its letters resulting in a Hijri date) provides the number 986. This ultimately places the date of construction somewhere between 1577 and 1581 CE.

Who is this titular Nawab Begum? From the dates, it can be deduced that she was a senior member of the zenana during Akbar’s reign. As names of elite women were often withheld from public purview during this period to sacralise the imperium, this would also explain the provision of only a rather unfamiliar title.

A search for answers in the only primary source from the period that delves into the lives of several contemporary matriarchs, Gulbadan Begum’s Humayunnama, yields no results.

This is likely because Nawab Begum is Gulbadan herself.

As the historian Ruby Lal has pointed out in the ingenious Vagabond Princess published earlier this year, Gulbadan came to be known as Nawab Gulbadan Begum upon her return from the Hajj. In archival sources, the first instance of her title appears in 1580 in the contemporary records of the chronicler Bayazid Bayat.

As Gulbadan performed the Hajj in 1577 and remained in the Hijaz until 1580, it would seem that the Jami constructed between 1577 and 1581 was commemorating her pilgrimage although she herself was absent from Delhi. Perhaps it also advertised her titular elevation, with Nawab acknowledging her political and spiritual performance as a delegate of the Mughal imperium in the holy lands.

The fact that Gulbadan matronised this Jami in Delhi over a period when she herself was gone from the realm draws attention to the sophistication of Mughal communication systems. It also underscores how with the help of intermediate agents, Mughal women were able to contribute to public life across vast distances and circumvent restrictions imposed by their observation of the veil.

The key intermediary for Gulbadan, the Khwaja or noble identified in the inscription, was likely Sultan Khwaja, who also served the princess as her Mir Hajj – the leader of the pilgrimage. However, Sultan Khwaja’s appointment by Gulbadan as supervisor for the Jami was likely not informed by this proximity alone. It also took into account the fact that as a part of the same Hajj mission, he had been entrusted by Emperor Akbar to construct a khana (a house or cell) in Mecca on his behalf as recorded in the Muntakhab al-Tawarikh.

The Khwaja’s ship, the Ilahi, had sailed along with Gulbadan’s Salimi, and it was only after ensuring that her party had safely reached their destination, having performed the pilgrimage himself, and likely arranging for the construction of the Emperor’s structure that he had returned to the Mughal court.

While Gulbadan would remain in the Hijaz for several years, Sultan Khwaja returned after only one, in 1577, carrying with him news from the journey, presents for the Emperor, and evidently another set of building instructions. It is likely in relation to this responsibility that he remained in Delhi at least until 1581 when his meeting with Akbar was recorded in the Akbarnama.

The Jami would have been nearly finished by this time, although perhaps the Khwaja’s career in construction was not. A final remark on his architectural enterprise comes inadvertently from the biographer Badauni’s commentary on the Khwaja’s discipleship with Emperor Akbar. Badauni writes of the unorthodox tomb built by the Khwaja, scathingly described as being “of a peculiar and new-fangled kind”, designed to ensure that the first rays of the sun would fall on him every day and in perpetuity.

Thus, the so-called Afsarwala mosque can almost certainly be re-identified as Gulbadan Begum and Sultan Khwaja’s Jami. But its centuries of misattribution is symptomatic of some wider issues in need of reckoning.

First, it is a matter of commitment – or in this case, the lack thereof – to fact and fact-finding. Not only is the Humayun’s tomb complex nationally protected and a UNESCO World Heritage site, but millions of dollars have also been pouring into it over the past decades through the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Part of the site’s planned development also includes an interpretation centre aimed at showcasing the site’s architectural heritage. However, it remains unclear how this will be achieved when as demonstrated, the restoration appears to have been operating independent of adequate research so far.

Nausheen Jaffery and Swapna Liddle’s English edition of the Sair al-Manazil, with a footnote connecting the Afsarwala Mosque with Nawab Begum’s inscription, has been in circulation since 2017, making it all the more astonishing that these structures within the complex continue to be misidentified. This raises the question about the extent of the effort made to identify what it is that is being conserved and its value to the community.

Second, it promotes an incomplete imagination of the Mughals. The lack of attribution is not only a problem for Gulbadan’s Jami but a wider issue pervading the Humayun’s Tomb Complex, and now also the Sunder Nursery nearby.

Bu Halima’s identity remains shrouded in mystery, the eastern gateway of Arab Serai continues to be attributed to the eunuch Mehrban Aqa even as the inscription clearly identifies the matron as a woman – Mehr Bano. The majority of structures remain lacking in credible identification and interpretation even as they are rigorously restored.

With visual and intellectual focus isolated on the imperial and monumental centrepiece of Humayun’s Tomb, a vacuum is also created around it, decontextualising the tomb and compromising on the information that could have been communicated by the wider complex had its connectedness been acknowledged and comprehensively studied to recognise it as the first dynastic funerary landscape created by the Mughals within the subcontinent.

The complex demonstrates that the dynasty had, by the mid-16th century CE, largely overcome the anxiety surrounding secure and permanent interment – unlike the early Mughals, who willed to be transferred and memorialised back in Kabul upon their death as they likely still perceived it as more familial and favourable to the yet-foreign land of Hind. With the burial of bodies in Delhi, a newer generation of Mughals were being guided to grow roots.

Though they had already conquered large swathes of land, it is with these funerary constructions, rendered more significant by the shared intent of many smaller dynastic tombs than the flamboyance of one, that the Mughal dynasty began to shift shape from coloniser to native, having quite literally subsumed their selves into subcontinental soil. This narrative cannot fully be appreciated in Humayun’s Tomb alone.

Third, it raises a feminist concern. Mughal women have long been misrepresented in mainstream histories as individuals cloistered within zenanas, robbed of individual power to make and execute decisions, and occupied primarily by petty internal jealousies. In the face of such narratives, given the complexity of managing construction projects, Gulbadan’s Jami, among scores of other buildings matronised by Mughal women that also lay unrecognised, offers contradictory evidence.

More widely across the Tomb complex, her endeavours combine with those of Hajji Begum and Meher Bano to also suggest that the approach to construction was more collaborative than competitive, as the women appear to have ultimately been united in their dynastic ambition.

Further, while architectural patronage by men has long been accepted for its autobiographical attributes, matronage has been approached with relatively greater scepticism, especially for Islamic women and the imagined impermeability of their veil.

In Gulbadan’s Jami, the identification of the Khwaja as her agent is particularly important as it demonstrates that women remained perfectly capable of exerting their influence across the farthest reaches of a continent from Mecca to Delhi. It also shows that for this transmission they could use the exact same channel of command as their male counterparts, as evidenced by Akbar’s delegation of construction to the same Khwaja from Delhi to Mecca.

For Humayun’s Tomb this communication is all the more significant, as even though Hajji Begum’s involvement with the construction of the Emperor’s burial is well known, the fact that she had physically been away performing the Hajj through a part of its construction has routinely been used to argue against her matronage, something that Gulbadan’s Jami repudiates.

Enabling the writing of feminist histories more widely, as limited unmediated information is available regarding Mughal women from archival sources alone, the identification of Gulbadan’s Jami also encourages the appraisal of architectural matronage as an alternative primary source where women have been instrumental in determining their own representation.

Parshati Dutta is a final-year PhD candidate at the Department of History of Art, University of York, where she is researching architecture constructed under the matronage of Mughal women.