Along with Qutub Minar, another monument that I would recommend as a must-see in Delhi is Humayun’s Tomb, the burial place of the second Mughal emperor. Humayun’s story is a dramatic tale of failure and redemption. After inheriting the fledgling empire that his father founded, Humayun’s reign started out in a downward spiral that after a series of defeats on the battlefield left him homeless and expelled from India. After persuading the Shah of Iran to give him an army, Humayun conquered the Afghan cities of Kandahar and Kabul (which he had to take from his own brother), and won conquests in present-day Pakistan, before returning in strength to India after fifteen years of exile. He finally recaptured Delhi and Agra, and then looked to consolidate his power throughout India. After working toward quite the comeback story, Humayun disappoints us with one of the most embarrassing deaths imaginable for an emperor. About a year after his triumphant return to Delhi, he died…..falling down the stairs in his library. He was succeeded by his son Akbar, who inherited an empire in shambles at the age of fourteen and went on to become the greatest emperor of the Mughal dynasty.

This tomb, which still stands as one of the world’s first Indo-Islamic architectural masterpieces, likely wouldn’t have existed as we know it if it weren’t for Humayun’s wife, Empress Bega Begum. It is said that Humayun’s death had so grieved the empress, that she dedicated her life to the purpose of creating a memorial to him that would be surpassed by none in the empire. She oversaw and financed the construction herself, which lasted seven years. The story bears an interesting parallel to that of the construction of Taj Mahal (by Humayun’s great-grandson, Shah Jahan) - although the story behind the Taj has the genders inverted: the fifth Mughal emperor was so crushed by his wife’s passing, that he built her a monument; although this time not only surpassing the grandeur of all the tombs of his ancestors, but of any mausoleum in the known world. (I’ve covered my visit to Taj Mahal and the tomb of Humayun’s son Akbar in my Agra post.

One can easily spend hours touring the site of Humayun’s tomb, as every piece of it was planned and crafted with the utmost amount of detail and precision. First passing through the outer walls via a towering gate, one encounters their first glimpse of the massive tomb in the distance. The approach to the red and white tomb is pleasing in its own way, with a gravel pathway lined by hedges, leading past one of four fountain pools characteristic of Persian paradise gardens. The concept known as “char bagh,” meaning “four gardens” in Persian, is persistent across most great Muslim tombs, and references the four rivers and gardens of paradise mentioned in the Quran. The pools and fountains on each side of the tomb are fed by two bisecting water channels that flow through the center of the four pathways leading toward the tomb, at which point the channels disappear and pass underneath the tomb to emerge on the opposite side.

After wandering the gardens, and viewing and photographing the mausoleum from different angels, we took the stone steps up to the monument itself. From here, we circled the outer platform of the mausoleum before entering the magnificent tomb itself, standing inside the magnificent marble dome, below which sits the cenotaph of the emperor.

Humayun’s tomb is an ideal first stop before visiting Agra, because the monument was the first of its kind: the first paradise garden built in India, and the first structure to incorporate red sandstone at such a scale. The tomb set a precedent for Mughal architecture in the decades to come, setting a high standard especially for the mausoleums of Humayun’s descendants. It’s an encouraging thought, that one man, even years after his death, could mean so much to someone that they would set themselves to the task of building a structure so grand, that it would remain an architectural marvel for centuries to come.

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