The ensemble of luxurious silks and embroidery was the quintessential garment for aristocratic Muslim women and generations of brides from my family.
A bride in her ‘nikah’ gharara, a photograph of a couple at a wedding from the 1874 album ‘The Beauties of Lucknow’ by Darogah Abbas Ali and a miniature said to be of “Bahu Begum”, the queen of Nawab of Oudh Shuja-ud-Daula. The backdrop is of a 20th-century silk wedding gown that has been decorated using gilt thread, beads and ‘zardozi’, or embroidery. | Public domain images and Farmina Khan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
My cousin, Tee, relinquished her oath of singlehood, got her ears pierced and was besieged with intense gharara pangs. She would not, like the rest of us, wait for the groom’s family to bring the wedding gharara. Making your own bridal gharara was unheard of in a conservative Muslim family in 2005, but one could only expect the unexpected from Tee. The besotted groom decided to spin a story about a designer friend making the gharara and we, the sisterhood of cousins, busied ourselves in making Tee’s trousseau and the all-important nikah gharara.
The gharara is a pair of wide-legged pajamas worn with a tunic and a dupatta. A farshi gharara, which Tee craved, has a train that would trail behind on the floor – the “farsh”. For a North Indian Muslim bride, the gharara ensemble is the essence of the nuptials. The groom’s family is judged by the bridal ensemble offered and the bride sees it as a testimony of the love of her future family. My mother wept seeing her sister’s too-plain wedding gharara, feeling sure that the sister would have to endure a tough, married life.
Like Tee, I too desired a farshi gharara trailing behind me, held by my teary-eyed sisters as I walked towards my smiling groom. My in-laws got an elaborate farshi of 20 metres of cloth for me – it had sliced my waist in half and contributed to my delirious happiness.
By the mid-19th-century, inspired by Awadh fashions, the gharara became the embodiment of elegance in the aristocratic Muslim families of North India. Abdul Haleem Sharar writes in Guzishta Lakhnau, a historical work on Awadh, that in the early 19th century, ladies’ pajamas had voluminous skirts fitted at the waist and the hems were tucked in at the waist while walking – a precursor of the present farshi gharara.
Rampur, a Muslim princely state under British colonial rule, was deeply influenced by Awadhi culture. Jan Sahib Rekhtigo’s composition, Musaddas e Tahniyāt e Jashn e Benazir, which describes a festival at the Benazir Palace of Rampur in 1860s, has sketches of tawaif courtesans wearing farshi ghararas with short blouses. The book can be said to be a cultural snapshot of Rampur, reflecting the changes in its Rohilla Pathan culture.
By the end of the 19th century, the farshi gharara, or farshi pāyechā, was essential courtly attire for women attending the zenana durbar to pay respect to Her Highness Begum Rampur. It was quintessential dress for weddings and festivities. At home, the noblewomen generally wore a shorter version of the gharara gathered at the knee with an ankle-length frill. This was the gharara my grandmother wore all her life with a mulmul kurta and a crinkled cotton or georgette dupatta. The colour of the dupatta changed to white when she was widowed – she had to give up the gharara altogether when she became bedridden and was made to wear the more convenient petticoats. She knew, then, that life was dwindling to its logical end for her.
For generations, the brides of my family wore intricately embroidered Rampuri ghararas. Heirloom ghararas with real silver work were bequeathed to daughters-in-law. When my grandparents moved from Rampur to Aligarh, a wedding necessitated several trips to Rampur’s narrow gullies for embroidery and stitching of ghararas. My mother and aunts favoured the shorter gharara and the fashionable single skirt – the sharara – for their wedding trousseaus in the 1970s.
For some reason, all married aunts left their ghararas in their rambling maternal home at Aligarh as they busied themselves with childbearing, household duties and shifted locations to wherever fate and husbands took them. A large tin box was the repository of generational masses of silk ghararas, which were sunned every winter.
The ladies of the bride’s or groom’s family are dressed in ghararas – the married ones wear ghararas from their trousseaus and the singletons borrow, or, if they are lucky, get them stitched for the occasion. We sisters dipped into the gharara box trying out and fighting over the garments before every wedding. There was a hectic mixing and matching of ghararas and dupattas, the kurtas were tightened or loosened to accommodate our body types and metamorphosing bodies.
The bridal gharara was out of bounds, only to be worn by married women. It was too heavy, anyway, to negotiate the rituals and festivities in which we were to play an important role – joota churai, rasta rukai, the dancing and eating. Only an NRI cousin had her own ghararas because her mother decided to get her trousseau made years in advance, even though there was no boy in sight.
Photographs of the “dancing girls” of the “Oudh Court of Lucknow”, from the 1874 album, “The Beauties of Lucknow”, by Darogah Abbas Ali. Credit: public domain images, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
About 20 years later, confronted with Covid-19 lockdowns and my son’s sudden decision to get married, I wished I had the NRI aunt’s foresight. My daughter had already laid claim to my nuptial ensemble. The bride and bridegroom to be, working from their respective homes, wanted only a simple ceremony before the impending third wave.
Everything could be arranged within a few days, except the bridal gharara. A gharara is generally custom made but there were no markets to get the material from: the embroiderers were ill or had been forced to close their workshops. The option of a store-bought lehenga was unthinkable. A bride had to have her bridal gharara, even in the middle of a pandemic. I was one of the hundreds of desperate Muslim mothers-in-laws attempting to make a suddenly fashionable – thanks to Pakistani wedding Instagram sites – farshi gharara. I was also trying to demonstrate our love by giving our daughter-in-law the nuptial gharara of her dreams.
I was pondering using my sky-blue Banarasi saree and magenta Kanjeevaram to make a farshi gharara when my cousin Mona, the one and only gharara queen of our sisterhood, entered the fray. “You cannot, I repeat, cannot pair a brocade with a tanchoi!” she screamed.
Over long video sessions, she pulled out her old ghararas and educated me on luxurious silks – poth, kamkhab, atlus – which had to be spruced up with dabka, aari, thread, sequins and bead embroideries. Then came the moving parts of the gharara: two legs with the upper half, called the paat, and the lower half, the goat, each with several sub parts and embroidered ribbons, tassels, and lachkas stitched to the seams. The upper tunic has now – thanks to Pakistani fashion – transformed from a short, plain garment to a long and thickly embellished kurta. And finally, the heavily embroidered dupatta.
Mona sent me a slew of Instagram photographs of farshi ghararas that left me hyperventilating. I didn’t even have the material to begin working and Mona said it took two months to get a decent gharara made. Meanwhile, my daughter had shared Kareena Kapoor’s wedding pictures on the family WhatsApp group and the bride and groom could only think of Kareena’s heirloom gharara.
Even in the 1990s, when I got married, there were few people who could stitch a farshi gharara in Rampur. Now, the Rampuri embroidery work has deteriorated, real zardozi work is hardly done here because it is more lucrative to make sequins and bead work. I contacted a gharara maker in Lucknow and sent him pictures.
“You are the 21st person who has called me for this Kareena gharara,” Mr Lucknow gharara sighed on the phone. After lamenting the sad extinction of the tissue silk – the material of Kareena’s heirloom gharara – he suddenly “found” a similar material that we could use. Mona said the best option was to buy the material from him, but the gentleman was loath to part with the material. We broke off with teeth-gushing politeness from both sides. Now, I had no cloth, no farshi in sight and two months to the wedding.
Mona, in lifesaver mode, introduced Nilo appi, an experienced farshi gharara maker from Lucknow. We could send her the brocade and monitor the work over Zoom calls. We made a life-threatening trip to Delhi, double-masked, grabbed brocades and silks in the manner of surgical strikes and couriered the material to Nilo appi.
The next two months were filled with disastrous pictures from Nilo appi and damage control Zoom meetings. The kurta sprouted stereotypical roses on the stem and had to be hidden in masses of nebulous patterns and the pearl beads on the dupatta were too trite. Finally, the kurta was declared irretrievable and the bride had to cover it by wrapping the elaborate dupatta around.
The sisterhood agreed that the red and sea green ensemble looked magnificent – Mona still mourned the kurta – the opulent skirt trailed behind the bride with timeless perfection, as she glided into our lives buoyed with our love.
Writer Claire Chambers, Historian Siobhan Lambert Hurley with author Tarana Husain Khan and historian Rana Safvi at the Jashn-e-Rampur food festival. Credit: Tarana Husain Khan.
Tarana Husain Khan is a writer and food historian based in Rampur.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> History / by Tarana Hussain Khan / September 22nd, 2024
In central Delhi’s Jor Bagh, lies a holy place that provides a spiritual sanctuary to those unable to visit holy shrines in distant lands
MODEL FOR DEVOTEES: A replica of shrine of Ali in Najaf, Iraq, at the Shah-e-Mardan dargah in Jor Bagh
Moinuddin meticulously sweeps the dusty floors surrounding a grave, his lips moving in silent prayer. With a handkerchief covering his head out of reverence for the “greats”, as he affectionately calls them, he speaks of his steadfast faith in the dargah.
“I have been coming to Dargah Shah-e-Mardan for the last seven to eight years,” he says, a glint of devotion shining in his eyes.
This 700-year-old dargah, nestled in Delhi’s Jor Bagh, holds the distinction of being one of India’s oldest. It attracts people from all walks of life, irrespective of religion, caste, or creed, each hoping for their wishes to be granted within its hallowed grounds.
According to historian Rana Safvi, the dargah’s origins are steeped in legend. It is believed that in the 15th or 16th century, a Shia Muslim man named Arif Shah sought refuge at the spot where the dargah now stands, invoking the name of Imam Ali. Legend has it that Imam Ali himself appeared before Arif Shah, saving him from harm and prompting the construction of the dargah.
ENTRE POINT: The Shah-e-Mardan dargah attracts processions from all over the city during Muharram
Named after Imam Ali, also known as Shah-e-Mardan, meaning ‘King Of Heroes’, the dargah holds immense significance for the Shia Muslim community.
Syed Bahadur Abbas Naqvi, General Secretary of Anjuman-e-Haideri, which oversees the dargah complex, emphasises its importance not only to Delhi’s Shia community but also to those living in neighbouring states like Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
“Tazias from all over the city are buried on our Karbala ground,” asserts Abbas, referring to the commemorative processions marking the Battle of Karbala, a pivotal event in Shia Islam.
Karbala, a city in modern day Iraq is famous as the field of battle between forces of Umayyad Caliph Yazid and Husayn Ibn Ali, son of Imam Ali in 680 AD.
The papier mache replicas, known as Tazias, are carried by mourners during the month of Muharram to honour Imam Husayn Ibn Ali’s sacrifice.
Reflecting on the dargah’s rich history, Abbas notes the impact of the 1947 Partition. The area was initially known as Karbala Colony. Today, it is known as BK Dutt Colony and is surrounded by structures commissioned by Qudsia Begum, grandmother of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zaffar.
Renowned filmmaker and heritage activist, Sohail Hashmi praises Qudsia Begum’s contributions, highlighting structures like Qudsia Begum Mosque and Bibi ki Chakki within the dargah complex.
“She was a powerful regent and administrator in her own right,” he says.
While both shrines draw devotees daily, only women are permitted entry into Bibi ki Chakki.
Devotees flock to Bibi ki Chakki to pray before a millstone believed to have been used by Fatima, daughter of Prophet Muhammad.
Hashmi reveals historical accounts of Timur’s visit to the dargah in 1399 AD, during which a Tazia was buried, marking one of the earliest such burials in the world.
RESTING: The grave of Saiyid Fazl Ali, a former judge of Supreme Court who served as Governor of two states as well as head of States Reorganisation Commission
The regal begum now rests peacefully alongside an odd 111 graves at her mazar (mausoleum) in Karbala Ground.
“It is a great honour to be able to witness and pray to the very footprint of our Shah-e-Mardan,” says a devotee who did not wish to be named.
“Qudsia Begum was very spiritual in her own right and she was the one who brought this important stone to the land,” claims Abbas.
The dargah has also hosted eminent figures like India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Rajiv Gandhi, attesting to its enduring significance.
With lakhs of devotees visiting during Muharram and Chhehlum, the dargah’s complex, adorned with centuries-old graves, serves as a site of spiritual solace for many.
For devotees like Mahfooz Ali from Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, the dargah offers a sacred refuge.
“We don’t have many dargahs to turn to, hence I make it a point to visit here every once in a while,” he shares.
Abbas emphasises the dargah’s role in providing a spiritual sanctuary for those unable to visit holy shrines in distant lands.
“With important religious symbols enshrined here, people get an opportunity to observe their religious practices,” he explains.
As devotees continue to stream into the dargah, seeking solace and blessings, Moinuddin reflects on its inclusive nature.
“Dargahs are an essential feature of the Sufi doctrine,” remarks Hashmi, underscoring their enduring appeal.
“The great Imam will keep inspiring future generations,” adds Abbas, his voice filled with pride.
source: http://www.thepatriot.in / Patriot / Home> Heritage / by Monish Upadhyay / April 11th, 2024
New Book , First ever English translation of Nizami’s invaluable Urdu book Begumat ke Aansoo
pix: amazon.in
Apart from the fifteen years that Sher Shah Suri snatched upon defeating Humayun, the flag of the grand Mughal Empire flew over Delhi undefeated for over 300 years.
But then, 1857 arrived and the mighty sword fell helpless in the face of a mightier British force.
After the fall of Delhi and Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s tragic departure from the Red Fort in 1857, members of the royal Mughal court had to flee to safer places. Driven out from their palaces and palanquins onto the streets in search of food and shelter, the dethroned royals scrambled to survive. Some bore their fate with a bitter pride, others succumbed to the adversity.
Through twenty-nine accounts of the survivors of the Uprising of 1857, Khwaja Hasan Nizami documents the devastating tale of the erstwhile glorious royalty’s struggle with the hardships thrust upon them by a ruthless new enemy.
In vivid and tragic stories drawn from the recollection of true events, Nizami paints a picture of a crumbling historical era and another charging forward to take its place.
With the reminiscence of past glory contrasted against the drudgery of everyday survival, Tears of the Begums – the first ever English translation of Nizami’s invaluable Urdu book Begumat ke Aansoo – chronicles the turning of the wheel of fortune in the aftermath of India’s first war of independence.
source: http://www.amazon.in / Amazon / Home> Books> History> World / as on August 06th, 2022
Stories of kings and queens fascinate all children and we were no different.
We never grew tired of hearing Amma tell us stories about the Kashi Naresh (king of Banares) and her life in Ramnagar, in present-day Varanasi. Stories of how my seven-year-old aunt was on the lead elephant in the Ramlila celebrations, because the Kashi Naresh was studying in Mayo College; stories of her roza kushai (celebrations when a child fasts for the first time) which had a 16-year-old Bismillah Khan playing the shehnai; stories of my Nani, Begum Hameeda Khatoon attending state dinners in chiffon saris and brocade blouses with matching brocade shoes and a dash of Tangee, her favourite lipstick. We heard of Khan Bahadur Syed Ali Zamin, MBE, our teetotaller Nana raising the toast to the very senior British dignitaries who came with a glass of water! We heard of Nana ensuring that there was a constant supply of Ganga Jal for the young Kashi Naresh studying in Mayo College, since he could only use that pure water. We often heard stories from my grandmother of the jewels in the state treasury; Nana must have described the jewels to her—the keys to the treasury were kept with him and he discharged his duties with utmost integrity and honesty. Another story, and my favourite, was that Nana personally chose the piece of brocade and silk, which went from Benares as Queen Elizabeth’s wedding present.
The rulers of Benares appointed many of their dewans and other officers from the Syed family of Kajgaon, near Jaunpur… Benares State was the biggest employer of our family!
Our childhood was shaped by these stories of a land where the Ganges flowed and the Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb, as our syncretic culture is referred to, flourished.
A land where there was a Brahmin king and a Muslim dewan!
The rulers of Benares appointed many of their dewans and other officers from the Syed family of Kajgaon, near Jaunpur. In fact, as my aunt says, back then Benares State was the biggest employer of our family!
A VIEW OF THE GHATS OF BANARAS FROM RAMNAGAR, IN A PHOTO BY RUST, C.1880’S
Ramnagar, which is 18km from Varanasi, was the capital of the erstwhile princely state under the British Raj. Its history dates back to the ancient Kingdom of Kashi and its Brahmin rulers are said to be the incarnation of Shiva.
Mansa Ram Singh founded the Benares estate and in 1740 his son Balwant Singh became its first Raja. It became a princely state in 1911 under the British government.
Maharaja Ishwari Prasad Narayan Singh succeeded his uncle and ruled till his death in 1889.
WWW.COLUMBIA.EDU “The Maharajah of Benares,” from the Illustrated London News, 1876
A family tradition begins
The first dewan from our family was my mother’s great-great-grandfather, Maulana Syed Gulshan Ali, a qualified mujtahid from Najaf in Iraq came in Maharaja Ishwari Prasad Narayan Singh’s reign.
AHMED ZAMIN / Maulana Syed Gulshan Ali
He advised and supported the king’s decision to not get involved in the 1857 Uprising and as chief minister and dewan he was instrumental in getting the estate, which had been confiscated by the British, restored to the Maharaja. According to the family lore, he had the idea of going to England to appeal to the Privy Council for the return of the confiscated land. He took three lakh rupees from the Maharaja and proceeded to the head office of the East India Company in Calcutta (now Kolkata). On the way, he met a British officer associated with Fort William in Calcutta where the head office of the East India Company was located. When the officer discovered that Maulana was a scholar he offered to help him in return for Urdu and Persian lessons. Upon finding out Maulana’s concern, he advised him that there was no need to go to England because the case could be pleaded from India. Maulana stayed in Calcutta for about a year teaching Urdu and Persian to the British officer
His detractors who had spread the rumours that Maulana sahib had decamped with the money were proved wrong when he returned and after deducting his nominal expenses handed over the remaining amount to the Maharaja.
Vignettes to cherish
My cousin Syed Naqi Hasan’s yet-to-be-published memoirs, My Nostalgic Journey, is a storehouse of information and family stories.
His uncle Khan Bahadur Syed Ahmed Hasan CIE was dewan and his grandfather, Syed Ali Sagheer (My Nana’s brother) was a collector in Gyanpur, one of the districts of Benares state. He heard these anecdotes from both our grandfathers and his uncle. Those were the days when elders sat in the courtyard surrounded by the youngsters and told them stories and anecdotes to ensure that family legacies, cultural traditions were carried on. Today’s TV, computers and smart phone have taken this away from us. Oral history will soon die a natural death.
Maharaja Ishwari Parasad Narayan Singh valued Maulana Gulshan Ali’s advice and loyalty so much that when Maulana died, he “wept bitterly and said, ‘Today my father has died.'”
He writes that Maharaja Ishwari Parasad Narayan Singh valued Maulana Gulshan Ali’s advice and loyalty so much that when Maulana died, “Maharaja Ishwari Parsad wept bitterly and said, ‘Today my father has died.'”
Later Maulana Gulshan Ali’s son Syed Ali Mohammad served as Naib Dewan.
AHMED ZAMIN / My grandparents, mother and aunts in their Ramnagar house
My aunt reminisces that amongst the many privileges granted to Maulana and his family by the Maharaja, the most important one was that until the merger of Benares state with India, two white horses were kept in the royal capital of Ramnagar at the State’s expense, and were sent to Kajgaon to be used as Zuljanah (representation of Imam Hussain’s horse) in the Muharram processions.
My elders kept our family’s oral history intact and I share some here.
HTTP://WWW.COLUMBIA.EDU/ “Benares, Maharaja’s Palace,” a professional photo, 1930’s.
Maulana Syed Gulshan Ali’s extraordinary presence of mind and good judgment during the annexation of Awadh by the East India Company in 1856 is still talked about in our family. When the last Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah, was deposed and exiled to Calcutta he halted on his way at Benares. It was customary to offer a nazrana usually in the form of gold coins to a visiting king, which the king sometimes doubled and returned to the giver. The dilemma was that not offering a nazrana meant ignoring the king. Offering gold coins was inappropriate because the king was in no position to double it. Maulana thought of presenting the king with tasbih and sajdigah made of khaak e pak or the dust of Karbala where Imam Hussain was martyred, which the Shias revere. It is priceless in terms of its symbolic value and yet not much in monetary terms, which would make giving something in return unnecessary. What could be a better nazrana for a Shia nawab!
His son Maharaja Prabhu Narayan Singh succeeded Maharaja Ishwari Prasad Narayan Singh in 1889 and was the first maharaja of the newly created princely state of Benares in 1911. He died in 1931, and was succeeded by his only son, Aditya Narayan Singh.
Maharaja Aditya Narayan Singh reigned for a very short time.
AHMED ZAMIN / My grandfather Khan Bahadur Syed Ali Zamin
My grandfather, Khan Bahadur Syed Ali Zamin, MBE joined as Chief Secretary of the State in 1939 and the Maharaja died shortly after that.
As the Maharaja was childless he adopted a distant cousin to succeed him. Vibhuti Narayan Singh, the last Maharaja of Benares, was a minor when Maharaja Aditya Narayan Singh died.
Nana [ensured] that there was a constant supply of Ganga Jal for the young Kashi Naresh studying in Mayo College, since he could only use that pure water.
In My Nostalgic Journey, my cousin Syed Naqi Hasan writes that on his deathbed Maharaja Aditya Narayan Singh summoned my grandfather and his adopted son and placed the hand of his son in Nana’s hand and said, “Syed Sahib, I am placing my son under your protection. Please protect him as well as the throne for him.” There were many claimants to the throne. Against all odds, Nana had Vibhuti Narayan Singh perform the funeral rites as required by the Hindu religion to establish his claim to the throne.
As Maharaj Kumar Vibhuti Narayan Singh, a minor, became the maharaja under regency Council of Administration was formed and C.R. Peters Esq was appointed its President and Nana as the Chief Minister was next in line of authority. Peters had to return to England in 1944 after a sudden illness, and Nana was named to act as President of the Council of Administration.
As the President of the Benares State, Nana was responsible not only for the well being of the state but also of his young charge.
Such was the level of comfort of the Maharaja Vibhuti Narayan Singh with our families that he maintained a friendship with the younger generation and decades later in1979, he stayed in the house of my cousin whose husband S.K.R. Zaidi who was the Chief Officer of Reserve Bank of India in Kanpur, rather than a hotel where he wasn’t sure of the purity of the environment. His young son was very keen on cricket and there was a test match between India and Australia in Green Park, Kanpur.
Their children Atiya and Abid Zaidi have fond memories of his charming manners and how the Maharaja floored the servants with his courtesies.
The Maharaja came with his full entourage and was given the lower floor of their huge house, with a kitchen where he could be comfortable.
Maharaja Vibhuti Narayan Singh ascended the throne, before reaching the full legal age on 11 July, 1947, approximately four months short of his 20th birthday. His ascension was speeded up in view of India’s imminent Independence. Charles Allen and Sharada Dwivedi in their book, Lives of the Indian Princes , quote the young Maharaja Vibhuti Narayan Singh as saying that he wanted to finish his education but was told by the political advisor to the Viceroy, Conrad Corfield, “If you waste a day you may not become a Maharaja.” He goes on to add that that the people of Benares were kind to him and how my grandfather, Syed Ali Zamin, who was presiding over the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers stepped aside and asked him to preside over the meeting so that he “could play a leading part.”
He succeeded to the throne in July 1947 after becoming an adult, a month before India’s independence. The Council of Administration was dissolved after his ascension and the position of President was abolished. Nana became the Dewan.
End of an era
Maharaja Vibuti Narayan Singh signed the Instrument of Accession to India in Oct 1947, and Benares State was merged with the United Provinces now the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
In 1948 my grandfather suffered a heart attack while addressing a meeting in Ramnagar, the capital of Benares State, and had to be carried home on a stretcher. He took voluntary retirement from his position as Dewan because of ill health but after helping the young Maharaja to ensure a smooth merger of the state with India.
The last Muslim Dewan of Benares state passed away on 1 November, 1955 a few days before his birthday on the 5th of November.
The Muslim Dewans of Banares
source: http://www.huffingtonpost.in / HuffPost / Home> The Blog / by Rana Safvi / October 27th, 2016
A journey through the ruins of Phuti Masjid, built by Sarfaraz Khan, in Murshidabad
It is difficult to imagine that Murshidabad, now a small, sleepy town in West Bengal, was among the richest courts of the 18th and 19th century. It hides many conspiracies, power brokers, pawns and fallen emperors in its heart.
One such fallen emperor was Sarfaraz Khan, the maternal grandson of Murshid Quli Khan, the founder of the city and the Nasiri dynasty. Nawab Murshid Quli Khan appointed Sarfaraz Khan as his successor before his death in 1727 as there was no direct heir to the throne. However, his son-in-law (Sarfaraz’s father) Shuja Khan frustrated Sarfaraz’s dreams. He felt that he had a bigger claim to the musnad, or the throne, of Murshidabad. Sarfaraz could only ascend the throne in 1739 with the title Alauddin Haider Jung.
A short-lived reign
But his problems did not stop there. The newly crowned Nawab fell out with his Wazir, Haji Ahmed. The Wazir won over the rich banker Jagat Seth Fateh Chand and Rai Rayan Chand and started plotting against the Nawab. Haji Ahmed invited Ali Vardi Khan, the Nawab Nazim of Bihar, to seek someone from the Mughal empire to replace Sarfaraz Khan. In the battle of Giria, Ali Vardi Khan defeated Sarfaraz Khan. The Musnad of Murshidabad, compiled by Purna Chandra Majumdar, mentions that the Jagat Seths suborned the Nawab’s men to place bricks and clods instead of cannon balls and fodder in Sarfaraz Khan’s magazine. Though the Nawab found out and gave charge of his artillery to a Portuguese, he was killed by a bullet as he rode out to battle on his elephant. Nawab Sarfaraz Khan ruled only for a year.
Inside Phuti Masjid
When I went to Murshidabad, I visited the grand mosques, palaces and imambaras constructed by the Nawabs who ruled for a longer time and in happier circumstances. But it was the Phuti Masjid that I found fascinating.
The mosque is quite large: 135 ft. long and 38 ft. wide with four cupolas at the corners. Only two of its five planned domes were completed. Dangerous looking spiral staircases lead up to the cupolas. As the builder died soon after construction began, the mosque was never completed. And so the name Phuti Masjid, or broken mosque. It is also known rather morbidly as Fouti Masjid. ‘Fout’ means death, and the name was apparently given after the builder’s death.
As I approached the mosque, I first saw brick walls surrounded by small cottages and fields on a dusty road. The walls were covered with moss. I went eastward, which is the direction in which people generally enter mosques. But I found to my dismay that the entrance was at a height and there were no steps leading up to it. My guide was young and he quickly climbed up. With his help, I somehow managed to scramble up the mud incline. I am glad that I did, for I immediately saw a huge hall and soaring arches. There was a sense of desolation, mystery and a strange undercurrent of spirituality in the mosque. An extremely religious and devout Nawab with money, power and resources had wanted to build a house of worship, yet no one ever prayed there. It was more like a scene from a horror movie: there was a semi-open roof, wild undergrowth, and trees and the sun rays peeped in through apertures. Just then I heard shrill voices. Two children from a nearby cottage, aged four and five, had clambered up to ask if they could be my guides!
One legend goes that this mosque was built in one night by Sarfaraz Khan. Another says that a number of workers toiled for several months to construct it. During roll call one day, it was found that one worker was not present. This happened a number of times and as the story became famous, the mysterious workman disappeared leaving his work incomplete and no one could match his skill. Both stories point to the hand of Djinns. Whatever be the truth, this broken structure is still standing despite all the odds, surrounded by houses, fields and hostile elements, a mute testimony to broken dreams.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Opinion> Columns – Where Stones Speak / by Rana Safvi / January 06th, 2019
Nasheet Shadani, founder of social media platform Ishq Urdu. Photo: Ramesh Pathania
It’s got tehzeeb, romance and nuance, drawing a growing number of urban Indians to it
Urdu is in our lives even if we don’t realize it. But it is only recently that this love for the sound of Urdu has extended to its script
It’s on a Tuesday evening in January, under a canopy of incandescent bulbs, that I receive my first lesson in Urdu: the difference between alcohol and mirages.I am part of a small mehfil gathered in the courtyard of Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai. People greet each other with adaab, and the bonhomie that strangers share is palpable.
In this session of a monthly Urdu meet-up called Mehfil@Prithvi, we are listening to people read ghazals and nazms by the late Pakistani poet Fahmida Riaz. She lived in exile in India for almost seven years during Zia-ul-Haq’s rule, and died in November in Lahore. Riaz wrote heart-wrenching lines on female desire and communalism, such as:
Sarab hun mein
Teri pyaas kya bujhaungi
Urdu scholar Ilyas Shauqi, who delivers the lines at the mehfil, explains to me later that sarab means mirage, an illusion, and is often mistaken by non-Urdu speakers for sharab, or alcohol. “Urdu is like this—you have to pay attention to the pronunciation,” he adds.
Such is my introduction to Urdu, a language that appears to conceal more than it reveals. Writer Annie Zaidi, who often leads the Mehfil@Prithvi sessions, says that while Urdu runs in her family, she learnt to write the Nasta‘līq script as recently as 2017. Annie’s motivation was access, both to the past and the present. “I always wanted to know more about Urdu literature, and there is only so much that you can understand through transliterations. Besides, my grandfather (Ali Jawad Zaidi) is an Urdu writer, and it was a shame that I couldn’t read his works in the original. Urdu should have been my mother tongue but, as things stand, I am more fluent in Hindi,” she says.
Despite her familiarity with spoken Urdu, the experience of learning the script was nothing short of confounding. She says, “The ligature—the manner in which letters bond with each other in Urdu—was particularly tough. The letters change shape as they form a word and very few phonetic cues are used. I had a friend teach me that over WhatsApp.”
Urdu’s idiosyncrasies are both its charm and challenge, as a growing number of newly forged admirers among urban Indians will testify.
According to 2011 census data on mother tongues released last year, Urdu dropped from sixth to seventh position, showing a drop of 1.58%. The only other language to record a fall was Konkani. Yet Urdu has found new takers. Many of them are spurred on by an interest to read Urdu texts in the original, rather than translations or transliterations. Some want to learn the script for research, for design, or to write poetry. For others, like Annie, it is the chance to revisit their roots. In this mix are non-Muslims, non-Urdu-speaking Muslims, and Urdu-speaking Muslims who never learnt the language formally.
The country’s non-Urdu-speaking population has been nourished for a long time on a literary diet of some of the best prose, poetry and lyrics that the language offers. Bollywood songs, theatre, even the stray couplets that break the monotony of endless Twitter feed scrolls—Urdu is in our lives even if we don’t realize or acknowledge it. But it is only recently that this love for the sound of Urdu has extended to its script as well. Mumbai-based theatre practitioner Danish Husain, who curates the monthly Mehfil@Prithvi and is known for his dastangoi performances, says that while the interest in Urdu has always been there, what he has seen in the last couple of years is “the interest in the text”, whether it’s people reading works intently or dramatizing them.
The revival is linked to the proliferation of online portals and Urdu-themed events in urban centres, such as shayari clubs, Urdu readings and calligraphy classes. Prominent among them is the Noida-based Rekhta Foundation. Through its website Rekhta.org, it offers an Urdu word-of-the-day along with a dictionary (also delivered to users on WhatsApp); offline, it organizes one of the biggest Urdu festivals in the country, Jashn-e-Rekhta. The festival, which debuted in Delhi in 2015, saw over 15,000 visitors; in 2018, the numbers rose to 170,000 (figures from the Rekhta Foundation ).
Visitors at a Sufi concert by the Nooran Sisters at Jashn-e-Rekhta in December. Photo: Rekhta
In 2017, following multiple requests from festival attendees and online users, the foundation started a beginner’s Urdu course, with calligraphy and poetry appreciation thrown in for good measure. Simultaneously, it also launched an online education portal, Aamozish.com, through which 35,000 people have studied Urdu so far.
Sarover Zaidi, an anthropologist based out of Mumbai and Delhi who works on religion, architecture and social spaces, believes this growing interest in Urdu is a natural progression of the impact of social media and online resources, which have provided people with more access to the script, something that wouldn’t have been easy even a decade ago. “A large number of people have always been interested in Urdu—even those who did not grow up in cultures where Urdu was accessible. But more people are now responding to it, whether it is their interest in the poetry, literature, or the culture it represents—they are interested in the poetics and politics of it. They want to make a statement,” she says.
Writing or drawing?
To explore what’s driving urban Indians to the language, I attended an Urdu calligraphy workshop at Mumbai’s Tarq gallery in December. I realized that learning Urdu through the calligraphic Nasta‘līq script requires nothing less than absolute dedication.
Graphic designer, muralist and typographer Zeenat Kulavoor. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint
The workshop was conducted by Zeenat Kulavoor, a 30-year-old graphic designer and typographer, who has created two murals in Urdu. Both were made in 2017, on the premises of a repurposed mill in Mumbai. One of them is “pehle aap“, evoking the Lakhnavi tehzeeb—the courteous mannerisms once associated with Lucknow. The other mural bears stirring verses that only the mind of poet Nida Fazli—a Padma Shri awardee and staunch critic of the Partition—could have conjured up. As a muralist, Kulavoor refers to the characteristics of not just Urdu but of the cultures that use this language. The reason people are learning Urdu is almost the reason why some of us study French in India—we also consume the culture the language represents.
Kulavoor started learning Urdu at the Sir JJ School of Art in 2008, when she was part of a class project on creating a calligraphy manual. “We had to choose a language from those printed on the Indian currency note. Creating the manual meant understanding the script, breaking it down and then showing users the steps to write the script,” recalls Kulavoor. She arrived late for class, and the other languages were taken, leaving only Urdu. “That’s how Urdu found me,” she says.
Kulavoor tried to find an Urdu mentor—but on the internet, the only available resource she could find at the time was a bunch of videos on Arabic calligraphy.
A decade later, she decided to organize workshops focusing not on linguistics but on the form and design elements of the Urdu alphabet. For most of the participants at her 6-hour, beginner-level workshops were looking for something specific—designing calligrams for their projects, for instance.
Entering the world of Urdu calligraphy, however, means unlearning. One of the participants had been meditatively painting a series of be—the second letter of the Urdu alphabet—but realized much later that instead of going from right to left, as Urdu demands, she had been writing instinctively left to right.
Keeping the language alive
Kulavoor’s calligraphy classes come at a time when the generation of veteran kaatibs (calligraphers), the ones who populated Old Delhi’s lanes and Mohammed Ali Road in Mumbai, is fading. On 30 January, one such noted figure, Shilp Guru Irshad Hussain Farooqi, a resident of Delhi, died.
Zeenat Kulavoor taking participants through Urdu calligraphy at her workshop in December at the Tarq gallery, Mumbai. Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint
Shipra Dutta, 45, got reacquainted with Urdu to save a family legacy. Dutta is a fourth-generation calligrapher—her great-grandfather served as an accountant in the court of Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. The story in her family is that he was chosen to maintain the accounts not because of his mathematical skills, but rather for his penmanship in mahajani (a mercantile script) and thuluth (an Islamic calligraphic script). When Dutta was offered the chance to calligraph a set of Urdu poems for a Kashmiri pashmina-weaver, she realized she also wished to learn what the words meant. “Urdu is led through the qalam (pen), and there is a visual pleasure in watching it move on paper. It is essentially a dance of hairline strokes and thick strokes, a jugalbandi,” she says.
A similar interest drew Dhwani Shah, a 31-year-old designer for publisher Tara Books. She signed up in October for Inktober, an annual Instagram hashtag series in which users respond to a word prompt through visual interpretations. Shah drew Urdu translations of the English prompts. She picked up Urdu as a hobby while studying design at Bhasha Bhavan in Gujarat Vidyapeeth, Ahmedabad. Now based out of Chennai, she believes the only way she can keep her interest alive is to go old school—handwritten letters. She is a member of Quillpal.com, a site that helps people make pen pals in the age of blue ticks and DMs. Shah wanted to write her letters in Urdu, and Quillpal luckily matched her with a pen pal fluent in the language.
As with her writing, Shah also tries to infuse her everyday conversations with a dose of Urdu. “Urdu has several words that are poetic and beautiful, but I try to use ordinary words like mehez (merely), fizool (useless), zikr (mention). I can sneak them into conversations without sounding pompous,” she says.
While calligraphy is one means of popularizing the script, its greatest presence is in the digital form. Urdu printing presses have been on the decline, and have been replaced by a number of apps and digital tools that enable people to type away in Urdu on devices. Nasheet Shadani, a 32-year-old Delhi-based advertising professional, has taken it a step further, harnessing the power of memes to convey some fun facts about Urdu. “People are still learning Urdu in a very 1970s method and I want to make it more contemporary,” says Shadani.
In 2015, he started a social media project called Ishq Urdu, which mainly operates through Instagram and Facebook. Look it up and you will find some thought-provoking posts—what would Bollywood dialogues be without Urdu? Could “Mogambo prasann hua?” ever have the same effect as “Mogambo khush hua?”
Shadani’s latest venture introduces the Urdu alphabet to his general audience through a unique series of posts. On a background of pop colours, he designs phrases such as “Hey, what’s up?” or “Good afternoon” where “hey” and “noon” are, in fact, Urdu alphabets. It’s a simple but smart mnemonic device that he prints on a limited edition series of badges and T-shirts.
Delhi-based historian and scholar Rana Safvi, whose eponymous blog is a great resource for all things Urdu, says: “Urdu uses the same grammar as Hindi. Not that of Farsi.” In her blogpost “My Name Is Urdu And I Am Not A Muslim”, Safvi traces the evolution of the language and recalls Australian linguist Peter Austin’s observation that “Urdu and Hindi have the same roots in the emerging Indo-Aryan language varieties spoken in an area centred on Delhi, and specially the variety called Khari Boli, which spread throughout India under the Muslim armies of the Delhi Sultanate (13th to 15th century).”
In present-day India, Safvi notes: “Associated as it is in people’s eyes with Muslims, it has become nothing but a trap for vote-bank politics, unkept promises and empty dreams. The only silver lining is that it still lives in the hearts of many across religious lines, in our Hindi films and TV serials, the crowds flocking to mushairas, and the number of sites which provide SMS lines on the internet. ”
Love it, hate it
So, what’s the culture that Urdu signifies? That of a genteel past or a polarized present?
The recent Twitter hashtag movement #MyNameinUrdudrew attention to a prevalent prejudice against the Urdu script. Using this hashtag, Twitter handles sported user names in Urdu—many among them non-Urdu speakers. It was a statement against communal hatred and incessant trolling, but there was a catch—the Google transliteration app didn’t always succeed accurately. Those familiar with Urdu came forward on Twitter to do the job instead.
In 2016, signboard painter Akhlaq Ahmad and French street artist Swen Simon were forced by a small group of people in Delhi to deface their mural of an Urdu couplet in praise of the city. Their lines read: Dilli tera ujadna, aur phir ujad ke basna. Woh dil hai toone paya, sani nahi hai jiska. It sounds like Hindi, except it was written in Urdu. The group reportedly questioned the artists’ Nasta’līq script and asked them to replace it with the words “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” and “Narendra Modi”, in Hindi. They labelled the artists “Lahoris”.
The Delhi government, however, has been attempting to promote Urdu. In November, it held Jashn-e-Virasat, a celebration of tehzeeb, with the support of the Urdu Academy. Previously held at Jama Masjid, Old Delhi, this edition took place at Central Park in Connaught Place, a location which brought the event, and the language, closer to a cosmopolitan crowd. But Asad Ashraf, the founder of a community project called Karvaan India, is attempting the reverse—getting people closer to the localities where Urdu is used.
Karvaan’s office, situated in Delhi’s Ghaffar Manzil, a Muslim-dominated area, houses a library and a workspace for creative professionals, writers and “fellow travellers”. In the past year, Karvaan has increased its programming, focusing on topics pertinent to its immediate community, such as the ghettoization of Muslims and talaq, while also opening its doors to a wider public.
It is with the same intent that Ashraf launched Urdu Hai Jiska Naam last year. The title of the weekend classes comes from a famous sher by Urdu poet Dagh Dehlvi. Last year, 35 participants enrolled in the class. This year, there were 300 applicants, but Karvaan has resources enough to register only 100, despite doubling batches. Of these, only eight are Muslims.
The class is conducted by entrepreneur Tanzil Rahman, an Indian Institute of Management Bangalore graduate. He recalls the time when he was first taught the Urdu alphabet in school. “We practised on a wooden plank which functioned as a slate called a takhti, as big as two MacBooks placed side-by-side. On this, we wrote the alphabet in ink. We did this before we switched to paper because kushkhat, or neat handwriting, is very important,” he explains.
As an Urdu mentor, Rahman’s method is different. He prefers to keep the course functional and contemporary, and helps participants recognize Urdu in its popular usage, from film dialogue to signboards at railway stations. “Take Nizamuddin station, for example. Isn’t the iconic yellow signboard a great way to learn how Nizamuddin is written in Urdu?” he says. He delves a little further into the intricacies of Urdu, the manner in which vowel sounds are dropped and how you understand words by contextualizing them.
He says Urdu is taught now only in some public schools but rarely in private schools. “So people have to make use of independent courses like these. The classes are useful also for Muslims whose mother tongue is Urdu because while many may speak the language, not all know how to write it,” he adds.
Savio Pashana, 30, a designer and a spoken word performer, is part of a growing circle of spoken word poets in Thane who organize performances under the banner of Poetry Tuesday. Some of the members performed their Urdu pieces in January at the Spoken Fest in Mumbai. “The biggest disservice we have done to the language is to give it a homeland in Pakistan alone. But think about it—Bhagat Singh wrote letters to his family in Urdu,” he says.
Urdu was once used extensively by Hindus as well as Muslims, and even the British, though it may be mainly Muslim communities that are keeping it alive on a daily basis today. By encouraging participants to come closer to minority communities that still use Urdu as their mother tongue, Karvaan is suggesting that the secularization of Urdu need not mean that it makes Muslims invisible.
Shaikh Aquil Ahmad, director of the National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) in Delhi, says, “People are not learning it for religious reasons alone. It’s because Urdu zubaan mein behad mithaas hai (it is a very sweet language).”
Beyond the politics
“A nukta can make a huge difference,” says Mumbai resident Shirlyn Galbao, 44, referring to the wily dot that is the cornerstone of the Urdu alphabet. Galbao says she was already familiar with the lilt of Urdu, but the urge to master the language was driven by two sources—her job as a voice-over artist and a monthly baithak. Galbao wished to perfect her talafuz (pronunciation), particularly because several Hindi commercials, especially on radio, are sprinkled with Urdu words. Her search led her to Katha Kathan.
Katha Kathan, a series of dramatized readings of Urdu’s best literary names, was initiated by former ad-man Jameel Gulrays, after he felt the need to share Urdu’s literary wealth in a time when it is being offered in fewer schools across India as a second language—they would rather offer French, German, even Japanese. Gulrays has translated several short stories by Urdu writers.
He disliked the Nandita Das film Manto, finding it an inauthentic representation of the Urdu writer, and chooses to commemorate the writer across baithaks—celebrating Manto’s “Bambai”, his short stories and his Marathi translations. Gulrays’ readings are available on YouTube; he has made 1,200 videos so far.
Galbao started with these baithaks and eventually found a mentor in Gulrays, who teaches with a blackboard and a list of primary school textbooks, and recommends reading Urdu newspapers. Galbao has piles of Urdu newspapers, which never fail to catch the attention of her friends. “My Muslim friends don’t speak Urdu and often wonder if I will teach them Urdu when they see the newspapers,” she laughs, adding that some acquaintances have asked her why a Catholic should wish to study an “Islamic” language.
As Shadani says, a revival need not be literary or political. Sometimes, a college student may want to study Urdu simply to flaunt it, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. As Ahmad says, “Urdu is mohabbat ki zubaan—the language of love.”
Urdu in your city
1. The National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) offers a free diploma as well as certificate courses in Urdu in 1,359 centres across India. It has been systematically scaling up centres; currently, 57,301 students have registered for these courses. Additionally, the NCPUL offers calligraphy classes at select centres.
Urducouncil.nic.in
2. The Zabaan Language Institute at Kailash Colony, Delhi, offers two courses in Urdu reading and writing, a basic and a secondary. It also offers home tutors for private classes if you are willing to pay travel costs.
Zabaan.com; 011-40564840
3. The Hindustani Prachar Sabha at Charni Road, Mumbai, offers three levels of programmes. The basic beginner’s certificate is an year-long course.
Hindustanipracharsabha.org; 022-22812871
4. Kitab Khana, one of Mumbai’s largest book stores, has a modest shelf dedicated to Urdu writing. You can browse through it, and if you spot co-owner Samir Somaiya around this section, don’t be surprised. In 2017, Somaiya learnt Urdu from a mentor who also advises the store on the Urdu titles they should be stocking.
Kitabkhana.in; 022-61702276
5. What Che Guevara was to T-shirts in the 20th century, the late poet Jaun Eliya is to Urdu lovers. Sample these and other contemporary designs, all dedicated to Urdu luminaries, at Shiraz Husain’s Khwaab Tanha Collective.
@khwaabtanhacollective on Facebook
6. On Twitter, @Rekhta and Rana Safvi’s @urdualfaz are dedicated to teaching Urdu, one word at a time. You may also want to check out @TimeUrdu, a linguistic project that promotes the language.
source: http://www.livemint.com / Live Mint / Home> Latest> Trending> My Reads / by Benita Fernando / February 03rd, 2019
A translation of one of the many stories collected by Khwaja Hasan Nizami about the survivors of the Mughal emperor’s family.
Khwaja Hasan Nizami wrote numerous books on the events that unfolded in 1857, all based on eyewitness accounts of the survivors. Begamat ke Aansu: Tears of the Begums are stories collected by Khwaja Hasan Nizami from the survivors of the Mughal family after the fall of Delhi in September 1857, when they had to flee from the Red Fort. Begamat ke Aansu was originally published in 1922 and has been reprinted many times since. This story is one of the accounts from Begamat ke Aansu. It describes Kulsum Zamani Begum’s escape from the Red Fort.
This is the true story of a female dervish who suffered through the travails of life. Her name was Kulsum Zamani Begum, and she was the pampered daughter of Delhi’s last emperor, Abu Zafar Bahadur Shah. Although she died a few years ago, I have heard her story from her own mouth many times. She was a sincere devotee of Mehboob-e-Ilahi Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya and was so attached to his dargah that she would often come there. I would talk to her there and listen to her tragic tale. Whatever I have written down has been told to me either by her or her daughter, Zainab Zamani Begum, who is still alive and lives in Pandit ka Kucha.
Her story is narrated below in her own words:
“The night my Babajan lost his empire and the end was near, there was a tumult in Lal Qila. The very walls seemed to be weeping.
“The pearly white marble palaces had been blackened by soot from the gunfire and cannon shots in the past four months. No one had eaten for a day and a half. Zainab, my daughter, was a year-and-a-half old and crying for milk. Neither I nor any of the foster mothers were lactating because of the hunger and trouble all around us. We sat disconsolately when Hazrat Zill-e-Subhani’s special khwaja sara came to call us. It was midnight and the pin-drop silence was broken by intermittent cannon shots. We were terrified, but since Zill-e-Subhani had called us, we immediately left our palace and presented ourselves before him.
“Huzur sat on his prayer mat with a rosary in his hands. I stood before him and presented three salutations. Huzur called me close to him with great affection and said, ‘Kulsum, I entrust you to the care of Khuda. If fate permits, we will meet again. Go away immediately with your husband. I am also leaving. I don’t want to separate myself from my beloved children at this stage, but I don’t want to embroil you in my problems. If you are with me, destruction is certain. Maybe if you are alone, God will open a path of escape for you.’
“He raised his shaking hands in prayer and cried out to Allah, ‘Dear god, I entrust this orphan girl into your care. Brought up in magnificent palaces, they now venture into the wilderness and desolate jungles. They have no friends or protectors. Please protect the honour of these princesses of the Timurid dynasty. Preserve their honour. The entire Hindu and Muslim population of Hindustan are my children and trouble surrounds them all. Don’t let them suffer because of my actions. Give them relief from all troubles.’ With that, he patted my head, embraced Zainab, gave a few jewels to my husband Mirza Ziauddin, and sent us off along with Nur Mahal Saheba, who was Huzur’s begum.
“We left the Qila before dawn. My husband, Mirza Ziauddin, and the Badshah’s brother-in-law, Mirza Umar Sultan, accompanied the three women: myself and two other ladies, Nawab Nur Mahal and Hafiza Sultan, whose daughter was married to one of the emperor’s sons.
“When we climbed into our bullock cart, it was dawn. Only the morning star still twinkled in the sky, and all the other stars had vanished. We cast a last glance at the royal palace. We wept and yearned for what had once been our happy abode. Nawab Nur Mahal’s lashes were laden with tears and the morning star was reflected in them.
“We left the Lal Qila forever and reached Kurali village, where we rested for a while in the house of our cart driver. We were given bajra roti and some buttermilk. We were so hungry that the food tasted better than biryani and mutanjan.
“That night was spent peacefully, but the next day jats and gujjars from nearby areas came to loot Kurali. They were accompanied by hundreds of women who encircled us like witches. They took away all our jewellery and clothes. While these coarse women snatched the jewellery off our necks, we got a whiff of their breath which smelt so foul that we felt nauseous. After this, we didn’t even have enough money to buy ourselves our next meal. We didn’t know what was in store for us now.
“Zainab began to howl with hunger. A zamindar was passing by and I cried out, ‘Bhai, please give some water to this baby.’ The blessed man brought some water in an earthen cup and said, ‘From today, you are my sister and I’m your brother.’
“He was a well-to-do person from Kurali, and his name was Basti. He brought his cart and said he would take us wherever we wanted to go. We asked him to take us to Ijara, where Mir Faiz Ali, who was the shahi hakim and a long association with our family, lived. But when we reached Ijara, Mir Faiz Ali was extremely discourteous and refused to shelter us. ‘I am not going to destroy my house by giving you shelter,’ he told us.
“We were heartbroken and didn’t know what to do. Penniless and homeless, we were scared of the British forces chasing after us. Those who were eager to follow every glance of our eyes and obey even our slightest gestures had now turned away from us.
“And then there was Basti, who didn’t leave our side and fulfilled his covenant of calling me his sister. We left Ijara and set our destination as Hyderabad.”
Kulsum Zamani Begum eventually reached Hyderabad with her family and lived there for some time. For some time her husband made a living by making and selling calligraphic pieces and teaching the Quran but as the British influence spread to Hyderabad and they lived in fear of being arrested they were more or less housebound. Whatever jewellery had escaped loot on the way to Hyderabad had been sold off.
The son of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s spiritual master Kale Miyan Saheb Chisti Nizami Fakhri, heard of their plight and arranged finances for them. They left for Mecca to make the Hajj pilgrimage. Basti, who had stood by them like a rock, was sent home from Bombay with whatever reward they afford for his invaluable services.
“Aboard the ship, whoever heard that we were the Shah-e-Hind’s family was eager to meet us. We were all dressed in the clothes of dervishes. One Hindu, who owned a shop in Aden and had no idea who we were, asked us which sect of fakirs we belonged to. The question inflamed our wounded hearts. I replied, ‘We are the disciples of the Mazloom Shah Guru. He was our father and our guru. Sinners have snatched away his crown and separated us from him and exiled us into the wilderness. Now he longs for us, while we are restless and yearn for a glimpse of his face. That is the truth of our faqeeri.’
“The Hindu began to cry when he heard our story and said to us, ‘Bahadur Shah was our father and guru but what could we do? It was Lord Ram’s will, and an innocent man was destroyed.’”
They lived in Mecca for several years before returning to Delhi.
“When we came back, the British government took pity on us and fixed a sum of ten rupees per month for us. I laughed at this pension. They had taken away my father’s empire and offered us ten rupees as compensation.
“But then I remembered, this land belongs to god and he gives it to whoever he wants and takes it as he pleases. Man can do nothing about that.”
Excerpted with permission from City Of My Heart: Accounts Of Love, Loss And Betrayal In Nineteenth-Century Delhi, Selected and Translated by Rana Safvi, Hachette India.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Book Excerpt / by Khwaja Hasan Nizami & Rana Safvi / November 01st, 2018
In the Bara Imambara which was built to employ people struck by a famine in 1784
I grew up in Lucknow amidst magnificent Nawabi architecture, in the syncretic and gentle culture of Awadh. It was a way of life where others were given more importance over the self. “Pehle aap (you first)” was a commonly used phrase while speaking. It is always a pleasure to return to the city that is said have once been ruled by Lakshman; where excavations show a continuous settlement dating from the first millennium BCE through the early Gupta, medieval and modern periods.
In 1732, Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah appointed Saadat Khan Burhan-ul-Mulk as the governor of Awadh. With Faizabad as his capital, Burhan-ul-Mulk was first in the line of rulers, known as the Nawabs of Awadh, whose contribution to Indian culture and history is invaluable. Asaf-ud-Daula, the fourth Nawab of Awadh, shifted the capital from Faizabad to Lucknow, and from 1775 to 1856, Lucknow was built by the Nawabs as a unique architectural city with a syncretic culture.
Features of Nawabi architecture
The geography of Lucknow meant that stone and marble, the main features of Mughal architecture, had to give way to lakhauri brick-and-lime plaster buildings. The main features of Nawabi architecture were bulbous domes, vaulted halls, chhatris and double arches, with the inner one pointed and the outer one foliated, but the main improvisation given the resources and the unavailability of stone was the beautiful stucco ornamentation on buildings along with plaster decoration in the interior. The stucco work gave a deep relief even on flat walls, but unfortunately, much of it has been lost in repairs and whitewashing. The variety of motifs ranging from floral designs, false arches and false domes that produce an exceptional surface articulation of walls, columns and ceilings remain for us to marvel at.
Many stunning religious and secular buildings were constructed, but as the Nawabs were Shia, magnificent imambaras were their special contribution to architecture. An imambara is the place where congregational assemblies are held to commemorate the sacrifices of Imam Hussain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad who was martyred along with friends and male members of his family in the Battle of Karbala by Yezid, the ruler of Syria.
Of these buildings, nothing is grander than the Bara Imambara, built as a relief measure for a populace stricken by famine in 1784. Construction continued till the famine ended. It was a hard time for all, including the elite. To ensure that they were not embarrassed to be seen working for daily wages, it is said that payment was made at night. This gave rise to the saying, “Jisse na de Maula, use de Asaf-ud-Daula (he who doesn’t receive from Allah is provided for by Asaf-ud-Daula)”.
Nawab Asaf-ud-daula (1775-1797 CE) chose Kifayatullah as the main architect. The place chosen had the hut of an old woman, Laso Saquum, in which she kept a small tazia, a replica of the shrine of Imam Hussain. She was reluctant to give her land but when Asaf-ud-daula promised to keep her tazia in the imambara, she gave the land for free. The tazia is kept there even today. The architect only asked for land for his burial as fees. He is buried, along with Asaf-ud-Daula, in the central hall of the imambara.
Inside the Imambara
One can enter it through one of the two three-arched gateways separated by a grassy forecourt. Once you enter the second gateway, the sheer size and magnificence of the Bara Imambara affects you. On the left is the exquisite seven-level Shahi Baoli (stepwell), initially dug as a well during construction. As it was a perennial source of water, it was built as a guesthouse later. On the right is the Asafi mosque on a raised plinth flanked by minarets with an impressive flight of steps. It faces Mecca.
The main hall with its vaulted roof is one of the largest of its kind in the world. It is unsupported: no column, pillars, wood or iron was used here. Its unique architectural design gave birth to the famous bhool bhulaiyya, which is above the hall and came about unintentionally to support the weight of the building. This is a labyrinth of more than 1,000 passageways and 489 identical doorways. It is among the few existing mazes in the world. Its acoustics are such that a match being struck on the other side of the hall can be heard. I like exploring it but always with a guide. After all, one must live to explore another day!
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Opinion> Columns> Where Stones Speak / by Rana Safvi / October 28th, 2018
In the two volumes of ‘Asar-us-Sanadid’, Sir Sayyid combined anecdotes with rigorous measurements and descriptions.
IntroducingAsar-us-Sanadid
by Rana Safvi
Asar-us-Sanadid by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan is an important book for many reasons. It was the first time that a book on this scale describing Delhi’s monuments had been written. The first volume was published in 1847 and a second volume in 1854. Though both had the same name and were about Delhi, they were very differently written. The first was an anecdotal description of the buildings, while the second took a more scientific approach with historical references, and the dimensions of the monuments.
It was also the first time in India, that a book had lithographically produced illustrations. As many as 130 illustrations of Delhi’s monuments were drawn by Faiz Ali Khan and Mirza Shahrukh Beg. The drawings were probably based on rough sketches provided by Sayyid Ahmad Khan himself. He made many sketches – a fact he mentions in the book – and also copied the inscriptions on each of the monuments, often at great risk to life and limb, as in the case of the Qutub Minar, where he hung down from the top of the minaret in a basket held by ropes. It was the first time that inscriptions on the buildings were noted down.
Asar-us-Sanadid is an invaluable work. Both editions – Asar-1 and Asar-2 (published in 1847 and 1854, respectively) – were written before the Uprising of 1857. As is well known, much of Shahjahanabad changed during and in the aftermath of the events of 1857. The British broke down many structures to make governance easier and there was massive restructuring, in particular, of the Red Fort.
Later, when Lutyens’ Delhi was being built, many more changes were brought about, not to mention the changes that are still taking place today. Thus, in his descriptions of the buildings and monuments of Delhi prior to 1857, Sayyid Ahmad Khan gives us a glimpse of lost glory. For students of history and heritage this is where its greatest importance lies.
The partition and transfer of population in 1947 meant that the landscape of medieval Delhi was changed further. Today urban development has resulted in encroachment and destruction or alteration of many more monuments.
Mehrauli is the first documented city of Delhi and it was from here that the Tomaras, Chauhan and early Delhi Sultans ruled. As it was a hilly and wooded area it become a favourite of the Mughals too, with the last two emperors shifting here during the monsoons. The last Mughal building is the Zafar Mahal, situated in Mehrauli, which was the royal residence during those months.
A unique festival called Phool Waalon ki Sair was also celebrated in the monsoons under the last two Mughal emperors.
The excerpt below describes some of the buildings in Mehrauli.
The Bagh e Nazir is now Ashoka Mission. According to some monks I spoke to there, the family of Nazir Roz Afsun fared very badly in the riots which took place during the partition of India in 1947, and the lone survivor, a young boy, migrated to Pakistan.
In 1948 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru gave the land as a gift to the famous Cambodian monk Dharmvara Mahathera on behalf of the Indian state for the purpose of opening a Buddhist institute. It was he who founded the Ashoka mission there. It is now the Official Buddhist Mission in Delhi, known as Ashoka Mission.
The Hauz e Shamsi is a poor reflection of what it was, and though the pavilions of the Jharna still stand forlorn, they are desolate. The water is a dirty and stagnant pool and gone are the diving competitions or sliding stones. The mango orchard has disappeared and there are only residences in the area. One can only thank Sir Sayyed for a glimpse into that era when emperors and their consort picnicked here.
Bagh-E-Nazir
This is a beautiful, attractive, verdant and luxuriant garden near the waterfall of Qutub Sahib [in the Mehrauli area]. It is still very well maintained, with blooming flowers and green trees. The buildings around it are still intact and thousands of people come here during the Phool Walo’n ki Sair procession, to enjoy its beauty. The spectacle is as entertaining as though one were at a fair. This garden was built by Nazir Roz Afzun during the reign of Muhammad Shah Badshah. I will write down the verses inscribed on the entrance as they give the date of the construction and name of the builder:
By the orders of Muhammad Shah Adil,
Whose head bears the sacred crown.
He founded this garden near [the shrine and tomb of] Qutub Sahib,
And has adorned it with the flowers of paradise.
It should remain green till the Day of Judgment,
By the Grace of the Holy Quran.
The year of its construction,
Was found to be the blessed date,
AH 1116 in the thirty-first regnal year of Muhammad Shah.
Bagh-e-Nazir | Courtesy: National Archives of India, New Delhi
A wall surrounds the garden and there are red sandstone buildings of great attraction built all around, within the wall. There is one building in the middle of the garden that is the biggest and best of all the buildings there. Thus I am attaching its sketch here.
Jharna This is a place for recreation and pleasure; it is exotic and unearthly, elegant and refined, interesting and delightful, happiness-bestowing and heart-pleasing. Qutub Sahib’s waterfall [jharna] is famous for its verdant green trees and reminds one of heaven. Initially, Sultan Firoz Shah had constructed a dam here and the wall of the waterfall is that dam. It is still intact.
He had diverted the excess water of Hauz-e-Shamsi reservoir into Naulakh canal [nala] towards the moats of Tughlaqabad Fort. After some years however, the fort was abandoned and water stopped going to that area. The excess water from the Hauz-e-Shamsi then started flowing into the jungles from this dam and was wasted. Nawab Ghazi-ud-Din Khan Firoz Jung built a tank, water channels, and chutes for the water to flow through. The waterfall is an awesome spectacle and pleases the heart, causing the spectator to involuntarily exclaim in delight. There are various buildings around this waterfall which I will describe here.
Jharna | Courtesy National Archives of India, New Delhi
Pavilion on the western side On the western side, adjoining the wall of the dam stands a pavilion at an elevation of 11 feet and 5 inches. It has three arches, and the waterfall cascades down on it. There is an attractive tank in front of it, into which people jump from the roof of this building. During the Phool Walo’n ki Sair festivities people diving into this tank and swimming in it, make for a huge spectacle. They use various diving styles including somersaulting into the water, they also make a pyramid by climbing onto the shoulders of men standing below until the man at the top of the pyramid reaches tree-branch height. Then those at the bottom dive into the tank and all those on their shoulders plunge into the tank. This is called a “tree dive” [darakht kakudna] or a “wild growth dive” [jhad-jhankar ka kudna].
There are thirteen small water pipes under the roof of this building and water from the waterfall flows down through these, via the pavilion, and into the tank. There is a 3.2-feet wide water chute inside the pavilion which falls from a height of 4.3 feet into the tank. There are niches built under the chute in the pavilion wall, and water flows over lighted lamps that are placed within the niches.
This 25-feet square tank has an opening of 1.7 feet for water to flow into it and is 7.6 feet deep. There is a 22 feet long, 6 feet wide and 3.6 feet deep water-channel, which flows out of this tank in a 5.6 feet cascade and is joined by two smaller cascades from the north and south. There are beautifully carved stone chutes [salami pathar] measuring 3 feet 7 inches, to receive the cascade. The water winds its way down the carvings on the chute creating a mesmerising effect.
The water channel in front of this pavilion is 26 feet long, 6 feet wide and 2 feet deep, while the water channel in front of the smaller cascades is 15.3 feet wide, 2.9 feet wide and 8 feet deep. All the water collects at this point and flows into the jungle. The waterfall passes over all these pavilions and the water channel, and in reality it is a truly spellbinding sight. The sound of the flowing water mingles with the singing of the nightingale, the chirping of doves, peacocks dancing and the sounds of merriment of finely attired men and women. It is a mesmerizing scene, which could put Raja Indra’s assembly in the shade.
Pavilion on the northern side There is a very attractive double pavilion on this side. Muin-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar Shah Badshah built the double pavilion in his reign, around three years ago. These are the most attractive buildings in the place.
Pavilion on the southern side There is a three-arched pavilion in this area, with two smaller pavilions on its sides which gives it the impression of being five arched. In addition to this there are two doors next to it, thus making it seven arched. This pavilion was built around 50 years ago in the reign of Shah Alam by Shahji’s brother, whose name was Sayyid Muhammad.
Pavilion on the eastern side There are only mountains on this side and no buildings, but Muhammad Shah Badshah built a stone slide [phisalna pathar] 18 feet 3 inches long and 7 feet 7 inches wide.
The mango orchard There are many mango trees in this area. People tie swings to the branches and have fun swinging on them. Numerous dancing and singing girls gather here to enjoy themselves. In short, this place is magical and the mind boggles at its attractions. There is also a grave here with the following verse inscribed on it:
Abid who was wise, learned, pious and man of intellect,
Was martyred by a dishonest robber.
The invisible crier told me the chronogram of his death,
The soul of Abid, the martyr entered paradise [in] AH 1209.
Hauz-E-Shamsi This reservoir [hauz] was one of a kind. Sultan Shams-ud-Din Altamash built it during his reign and that is why it is famous as Hauz-e-Shamsi. Once upon a time this reservoir was made of red sandstone but now all the stone has been torn off and it is just a simple reservoir and that’s why people call it Qutub Sahib’s reservoir, while some still call it Hauz-e-Shamsi. The water from here feeds the waterfall and also fed the moats of Tughlaqabad in olden days.
It is difficult to imagine there is a reservoir of this size on the face of earth. It is spread across 276 bighas [a land measurement] and its water reaches eight provinces [subahs]! The pavilion has been built around the mark of a hoof which people call the hoofprint of the Prophet’s celestial steed Buraq, but to me it seems a made-up story. God alone knows the truth.
Auliya Masjid On the eastern side of the Hauz-e-Shamsi is a platform and on it another smaller platform about a gaz or so with a small wall. According to legend, Hazrat Khwaja Qutb-ud-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki and other Sufi saints undertook their spiritual retreat/penance [chillah] on it. They built the mosque with their own hands, bringing baskets [of mud from the reservoir] and that’s why it is called Auliya [The Saint’s] Mosque. Now people have plastered it with mortar and lime.
Excerpted with permission from Asar-us-Sanadid, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, translated and edited by Rana Safvi, Tulika Books.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Book Excerpt / by Sayyid Ahmed Khan & Rana Safvi / August 31st, 2018
Lessons in conservation at the Sibtainabad Imambara
As a young girl, when I was studying in Lucknow, I would often go to Hazratganj to buy storybooks. Browsing through the collection in the market and buying a book would be the highlight of every week. I only had my eyes on the bookshops and never on the name of the market or the dilapidated gateway, which had once been impressive but now looked the worse for wear.
Even on subsequent trips as an adult, I never bothered to think about it till the day a Lucknow-based heritage activist and lawyer, Syed Mohammad Haider Rizvi, invited me to speak at an inter-faith assembly in Sibtainabad Imambara.
As a devout follower of Imam Hussain, I had visited almost every Imambara in Lucknow for the majlis, or assemblies, to commemorate his sacrifice, but never this one. I wondered why I hadn’t even know it existed. I soon found out.
Origin of the Imambara
Amjad Ali Shah was the fourth Nawab of Awadh and ruled from 1842 to 1847. Since he had a religious bent of mind, as a child he learnt Islamic values of faith and piety. His piety as a ruler earned him the sobriquet of Hazrat. The famous Hazratganj of Lucknow is named after him and that’s the area where he chose to build an Imambara which would also house his mausoleum.
It was started in 1847 and completed after his death by his son Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. It was named Sibtainabad as the two Shia imams Hasan and Hussain (grandsons of the Prophet) are known collectively as Sibtain.
When I entered, I found myself inside a huge open area from where I could see a compound with a beautiful Imambara, a congregation hall for assemblies where Imam Hussain is mourned.
The Imambara architecture comprises a main hall (with additional halls depending on the size) where the mourners gather, a raised shahnasheen (platform) where the taziyas and alams (replicas of the shrine of Imam Hussain and his standard) are kept. A pulpit would be kept on one side for the speakers who would speak of the tragedy of Karbala.
The reason I had never been to this Imambara when I was living in Lucknow soon became clear. Once a beautiful Imambara covered with fine carpets, silk curtains, priceless art treasures and exquisite chandeliers, it was vandalised in 1857 during the First War of Independence. Nawab Amjad Ali Khan lay buried here in a vault under the central hall, forgotten by all.
It was even used as a church by the British officers till 1860, while the Christ Church was being built, and Lord Canning attended a service in the building.
In 1919, it was declared a protected monument by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Despite this, it was sold by one Sultan Bahadur in 1921, who claimed to be a descendant of Nawab Amjad Ali Khan, to the Lucknow Improvement Trust (LIT). The LIT, in turn, allotted the surrounding land for residential purposes. The Imambara fell into disuse and disrepair.
The main Imambara post-1947 was used as a workshop and storehouse for furniture as well as by the government census office. A motor workshop had sprung up outside.
In 2008, Rizvi was appointed the joint mutawalli by the Shia Waqf Board and he started the long fight to free it from encroachment and illegal occupation. He took recourse to judicial avenues and slowly, with the help of Right to Information applications and public interest litigations, he succeeded. Then came the task of restoration, which was undertaken by the ASI.
The splendour inside
The approach to the Imambara is through the gateway and into an open space which gives way to an enclosed court. The Imambara stands on a high platform and its arched façade looks very impressive, with its delicate floral stucco and stained glass doors. The inner walls, which had got blackened with neglect and abuse, have been lovingly restored, and its green and white paintings and stucco work are exquisite. The roof and “its beams, which formed a vault over the grave of the late king, had collapsed in a heap of rubble,” according to a 1945 report. It once again supports beautiful glass chandeliers.
A recurring motif on the archways inside the halls is a painting of the Prophet’s celestial steed, the ‘buraq’, that carried him to heaven on the night of ascension. The master mason, Ansaruddin, traced out the designs and restored the paintings and stucco work very carefully.
Preservation of our heritage is our fundamental duty as it is an important source of history of the era in which these buildings were built. If other ‘lost monuments’ received such dedicated and methodical renovation, they could also be rehabilitated and restored to us.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Opinion> Columns / by Rana Safvi / November 26th, 2017
