The crypt-like museum coming up in the Humayun’s Tomb complex will showcase Mughal artefacts hitherto hidden from public view. These includes “architectural fragments, stone pieces, terracotta pipes, hookahs and clay pipes recovered during the past 10 years of conservation work by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture,” according to an official connected with the ambitious project. The Archaeological Survey of India has asked the National Museum to provide a list of objects in its collection associated with Humayun, Akbar and other early Mughal rulers.
The ASI should also get some objects from the Mughal museum in the Red Fort, like the dagger presented to Humayun by Shah Tahmasp of Persia when he took refuge after his ouster by Sher Shah Suri. The Shah had tried to influence Humayun to become a Shia and it was in his realm, incidentally, that the erstwhile ruler took to opium-eating in a big way. Liquor is specifically banned in Islam and the intoxicant that replaced it was opium or hashish. The Old Man of the Mountain and his Hashishans had centuries earlier created a mini-paradise (Jannat) where youths recruited by the wicked Old Man acted at his behest as assassins (from hashishan) without fear of dying as opium made them enjoy the “pleasures of paradise” in their intoxicant state. Babar took opium too and Akbar to a limited extent but Jahangir overdid them without taking heed from Humayun’s tragic death in the staircases in the Sher Mandal of Purana Qila, which was partly the result of his foot getting caught in loose garments and partly the stupor induced by opium.
However to revert to objects of interest to be displayed, some artefacts from the Charbagh at Agra, where Babar’s body was temporarily laid before being taken for final burial at Kabul can be included. So also artefacts from Aram Bagh (now known as Ram Bagh) and, most of all, from the Khana-i-Tilism or house of magic built on “a set of magnificent buildings, the first floor of which housed Humayun’s library,” according to historiographer Thomas Smith, who wrote about this construction in 1970. He went on to say that Humayun was so fond of books that he carried them even to the battlefield and as a result many of them were lost. Love for books was inherited by him from Babar who built a library (as an extension of the Khilji Imperial Library) and to which building Humayun added seven halls, each named after a planet. It was while watching the ascent of the planet Zohra (Venus) in the Purana Qila library that Humayun was distracted by an “Azan”, given before prayer time by an acting muezzin, Miskin, that made him hurry down and fall to his death. Some of the books of Babar, Humayun and Akbar who, though illiterate, added several thousand to his own Agra library, should also find place in the crypt museum, along with those of Dara Shikoh.
From the Red Fort museum the rapier of Shah Jahan, as slick as the builder of the Taj himself, the huge sword of Aurangzeb, looking as blood-thirsty as the ruthless ruler himself, the choga coat of Bahadur Shah Zafar and the gharara of Zeenat Mahal could also find place in the museum, along with the poison plate presented by a medieval Chinese emperor to test the royal food. The plate broke if a dish contained poison. The Mughals were quite scared of being poisoned after the bad experience that Babar had when Ibrahim Lodhi’s mother (after she had been given refuge in the royal harem out of sympathy for the death of her son in the First Battle of Panipat) tried to poison his dinner (through the connivance of a kitchen servant) by administering the deadly concoction kalakutta. Babar vomited and managed to survive but is believed to have eventually died of its effect.
It is worth pointing out that the garments of Bahadur Shah Zafar and his wife were once stolen from the Red Fort by thieves who had scaled the museum wall facing Ring Road. Luckily they were later recovered. The pyjamas of the Last Emperor show that he was quite stout before old age made him a pathetic figure, coughing all the time and filling up chamber spittoons with phlegm, much to the annoyance of his favourite queen. The latter’s skirt shows that Zeenat Mahal was a slim, sexy woman with a narrow waist in her youth, and the gharara she wore was a source of attraction to old Zafar when she tried to arouse his passion at night with a peacock feather.
The sarcophagus at the entrance of the Red Fort museum is also worth displaying as no one knows whose it is though some think it was meant for Zafar’s grave, who wanted to be buried near Hazrat Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki’s mazar in Mehrauli though fate willed it otherwise. The fabulous gems of the Mughals are either lost or now found at different places, mostly in the West, like the Kohinoor but the few still traceable in the country may also add to the attraction of the crypt museum for visitors, for whose benefit the kettle-drums kept in the Agra Fort could also be displayed to showcase the varied interests of the Grand Mughals.
The royal ring that legend says Akbar gave to the kaneez (maid of honour) and Salim may have been lost for ever, like the amulets of Hassan and Husain, two sons who died (sic) in infancy “due to the influence of Iblis” (Satan), while the wine flagons of their brothers, Murad and Danyal may also not be around. But the gold and diamond Orb of Jahangir, auctioned in New York a few years ago, could perhaps be procured by some philanthropist and donated to the museum, which will nevertheless still be bereft of the magnificent Takht-e-Taus (Peacock Throne) taken away by Nadir Shah. However the Kohinoor that formed one of its eyes may hopefully be brought back from London some day as the most prized exhibit.
The author is a veteran chronicler of Delhi
