From Archives - Akbar, MUZ and Fatehpur Sikri with rare pictures - Page 3

Originally posted by: history_geek

Shagun,

Wherever wars have occurred, destruction has also come along with it. The policy which most kings adopted was this - they used to confiscate the treasures of the defeated rulers and added their libraries into their libraries. That is also a reason why Mughals had richest libraries.

Just for example. Over 5000 manuscripts were added into library of Abu'l Fazl after the conquest of Gujarat.

But some rulers were hell bent on deliberate destruction for revenge. Like Tipu Sultan destroyed the library of Wodeyars. The library of Sawai Jai Singh of Jaipur is said to be richest. It was destroyed too. Many more cases.

I am sure you know that the libraries of Nalanda University were so huge that they burnt for 3 months to be completely destroyed. (end of 12th century AD)

Like wise, Mughal libraries were destroyed by British. They were very furious after the 1857 revolt. Lucknow and Delhi was completely ransacked. It was deliberate. Another thing why they looted were because almost every other painting was made using gold etc.

There are many examples. We perhaps don't have even 5% of manuscripts left with us. They consider the best revenge to be the destruction of culture. And that is done by destruction of literary treasures. Modern examples exist. I need not give examples. We all know.

We don't actually bother much about these, unless we need them. 2 weeks back i was searching a miniature from Akbarnama. That painting is not having open source use license, and is in the collection of British Library. Tried to obtain that. Finally, after a process of 1 more week i came to know how to obtain the picture. But i was supposed to pay 19 pounds to get JUST the JPG file of that SINGLE picture of Akbarnama, as per the rate list!

That time we think, today we need to pay to access treasures which belong to our land.

Originally posted by: RadhikaS0

Thanks everyone!

Thanks Jia - missed your shayari past few months 😊 How have you been?

Abhay: You mentioned cultural treasures being looted for gold - this reminds me - a guide at Akbar's tomb mentioned that the walls had been charred to remove the gold that had been used on the walls. The blackening can be still be seen. But why blame only war mongers and invaders? We Indians are no less. Shah Jahan's apartment in Agra Fort where he spent the last years of his life was enclosed by barriers when I visited it because apparently tourists were removing the semi-precious stones embedded in the walls.

V interesting comment btw about the educational system during Mughal times. I feel we cannot compare eastern and western education as after the advent of western education in India, we have lost much of the cultural richness we had earlier. :)

I agree Radhika. As mentioned in the original reply above, the reference was to anyone who follows a policy of deliberate destruction after war. Equally true that the local population also left no opportunity to fill their pockets when administration / empire vanished.

However, the mention of Shah Jahan makes me write one more point here. The hamam of Agra Fort was intact even till the 19th century. Even after lying in disuse for a long time it was so beautiful that the then Viceroy of India got it uprooted and sent it to England as a present to the King of Britain, whose name i do not remember now.

Just like the Tomb of Akbar, there is the Diwan-i-Khas of Red Fort. Its ceiling was completely gold plated. Gold was melted from its ceilings and taken away by Nadir Shah in 1739. Now it is replaced by wood which is getting repaired. Most of the treasures taken in this invasion ultimately found their way to Iran and some in Russia, where they are displayed in museums now. You won't believe even crockery pieces are in the museums, now. Such was the grandeur.

Such things can be said about many monuments / places. That is a part of our history which we can not change. Rest of the points, i agree.

Originally posted by: -AkDha.Lover-

So much has been destroyed, burnt and lost! Somebody just get a time machine now...

How can people be so blind in revenge? Taking away books is another thing, burning them is another! And what to say about Britishers, they're looters and nothing else. 😡 They're making us pay to have a look at what rightfully belongs to us, and what we are doing is nothing. I wish someday we get everything that's ours back.

And yes I know how furious the British were after the 1857 revolt. I am a resident of Lucknow, we have such stories all around us. Makes me all the more '😡'!

By the way, I agree with RadhikaSO that we Indians are no less. The Musamman Burj palace of the Agra Fort, where Shah Jahan was kept during his last days, is now inaccessible to us just because people were interested in removing the precious stones studded in its pillars!! Not only this, the original graves in the Taj Mahal are also now closed for public for the same reason.

And I thought that checking the veins and diagnosing the disease was all imaginary. 😆 Thanks for the info, on both this and the education system.

We can't imagine. Simply can not! The amount of wealth taken from India, and the manner in which it was taken. I can go on and on and pages after pages can be written to tell the amount which has been looted from India.

For example : Jhansi was looted for complete 4 days, after the mutiny of 1857. The amount looted from Jhansi after defeating Rani Lakshmi Bai on the first day by the British led by Dalhousie is this - all valuable property, jewellery, gold, silver and money. By the end of the fourth day, they had taken all the rich clothes, beds, mattresses, sheets, blankets, carpets, hinges and bolts on doors and windows, pots and pans, cereals and lentils, farm animals, chairs, charpoys (string beds), bedsteads and even water wheels and ropes with which the people drew water from the wells. "Not a single useful thing was left with the people."

^^ Why i am writing like this is because, the scale of such plunder was not known earlier.

But since you mentioned Agra Fort, Shah Jahan and Taj Mahal. Let me offer a glimpse of the extent of plunder Taj Mahal (and some other monuments) has seen.

The magnificent forts of Agra and Delhi were turned into military garrisons. Marble reliefs were torn down and shipped to England, gardens were destroyed and lines of barracks were erected in their place. In the Delhi fort, the Diwan-i-Aam was turned into an arsenal, the arches of the outer colonnades were bricked over or replaced with wooden windows { gold was melted and taken out from the arches and even from the windows!!! }.
You talked about the mutiny of 1857. After the mutiny, it was proposed that the Jama Masjid of Delhi be destroyed. Though, this did not happen.

But destroying the structures using explosives and taking out marble and sandstone was a common practice. There was a lavish palace in Delhi called Salimgarh {not related to Jahangir}. It has almost disappeared. There was a time when the Red Fort of Delhi touched the banks of Yamuna. All that part has gone. The Diwan i khas of Allahabad Fort was used as a stable for horses!

The grounds of the Taj Mahal become a favourite haunt for young English couples. Open air balls were held on the marble terrace in front of the main door and beneath Shah Jahan's lotus dome, brass bands played as lords and ladies danced the night away.

The minarets became a favourite place for suicide leaps (many suicides happened at the Taj Mahal, and it is said to be haunted on "some days") . The mosques on either side of the Taj Mahal were rented out to British honeymooners, as their rooms!!

Picnic parties were held in the gardens of the Taj. The English "gentlemen" used to come with the chisel. After the lunch, using the hammer and chisel, they spent afternoons chipping out the fragments of agate and carnelian from the cenotaphs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz.

The Taj became the preferred drinking haunt of Englishmen and its parks were strewn with the figures of inebriated British soldiers. The local population was not behind in the plunder of the Taj, when ever possible because the Taj Mahal area was used as a public park and they conducted their festities in the Taj Mahal garden , sullying the premises with orange peels and other debris.

During British Raj, it was a practice of Rich British families to visit decorated Mughal buildings and dig precious stones to be taken back as souvenirs.

Lord William Bentinck, went a step further. He announced his plan to demolish the best Mughal monuments in Agra and Delhi and remove their marble facades, which would be shipped to London where they would be sold to members of the gentry who wished to decorate their estates.

Finally, plans were made to dismantle the Taj Mahal and wrecking machinery was moved into the garden grounds. Just as the demolition crew was getting to work, word came in from London that the first auction was a failure and all further sales stood cancelled. It was not worth the money to demolish the Taj Mahal. This was in 1830s.

Even after this, he made plans to sell it in India. He sold the Taj Mahal to a local merchant of Mathura, but the merchant could not demolish the Taj. Reason was - The amount of labour required to destroy the Taj was many many times more than the auction cost of Taj. Moreover, the local residents were up in arms against the British for this, because for them it was an emotional affair! They were descendants of the artists who had constructed the Taj.

Several of Shah Jahan's pavilions in the Red Fort were stripped to the brick and shipped off to England. In fact, part of the shipment included pieces for George IV himself - the King of England. { The hamam of Agra Fort which i mentioned in above reply to Radhika was sent for King George IV as a present by William Bentinck.}

Fast forward to 1900. Lord Curzon loved Indian monuments. He was shocked at the monument's dilapidated state, restored it to its present condition as we all see now. In Delhi and Agra alone, more than 50,000 pounds was spent on renovating the dilapidated monuments. Military units were evacuated from the forts of both cities and a multitude of marble mosques and tombs, which had been turned into police stations, ticket offices and kitchens , honeymoon rooms, etc were returned to their proper use. Though, he too had auctioned the precious stones, paintings etc from the Taj Mahal!

When Curzon left India he famously remarked about the Taj Mahal and Agra region in general - "I have writen my name all over here with a living joy." Even in this post, we have seen it was due to his efforts that Fatehpur Sikri is at least present for all of us to see. Else, the paintings of 18th and 19th century in the blog post, clearly show that it was turned into a dumping ground and nothing was left there.

Lord William Bentinck demolished many many Mughal structures from 1833 to 1835 to take out the marble, sandstone, precious stones etc from them to be sold off for profits to real estate agents in England. I remember we had a conversation about the Tomb of Jagat Gosain. Now i remember. It was demolished by Bentinck. The reason being the expensive marble and stones which was used to construct it, and the record is present in an old ASI Report. The person who made this report was also a British but he remarked that such a beautiful monument does not deserves this fate, no matter how profitable the venture was. I will include this snippet in the MUZ Tomb post if i find the source once again.


Actually after writing all this i wonder, how beautiful the Taj would have been when it was in its prime ? If it is so beautiful after taking away all the jewels and other decorations, and continuous loot of hundreds of years, then how it was that time! Same question goes for the other monuments.

There is enough which can be written about the Mussaman Burj of Agra Fort, and various other monuments. But some other time. We are "lucky" enough to see the Red fort and the Taj and other monuments at least standing , else our colonial masters had complete plans to take away every single brick from here and ship it to England.

But i find it strange that there is something left in the Mussaman Burj to be stolen. How did they leave it ?

What we saw above was the wealth from just one monument. During the 200-250 years of British rule in India, vessels sailed daily for Britain from ports all along India's coasts. They were laden with incalculable quantities of wealth and other valuables such as icons, statues, scrolls and books looted from the treasuries of Indian kings, businessmen, temples, landlords, schools, colleges, charitable institutions and the common people. None was spared!

If we read our textbooks, we criticize Lord Curzon for sowing the seeds of communalism by dividing Bengal in 1905. And, praise Lord William Bentinck for criminalizing the practice of Sati. We do not see the contribution of Curzon in field of preservation of our heritage, and the contribution of William Bentinck has been blown out of proportion.

History - you see, is not so clean and clear. It has a taste of its own and generates myriad range of emotions.


But do give a thought.

Do we have sufficient museums to store all these artifacts ? Can we provide enough security and prevent their theft ? There are so many organized gangs who steal such artifacts and sell them to International Galleries.

The literary treasures which we have in our museums, are also not kept nicely. The archival records of the Red Fort Museum are dying a slow death, due to the seepage etc. problems. The best govt libraries do not have enough space to keep the books on shelves. Most of the books are kept in the storage. I am telling from experience, because most of the times i get the books taken out from storage, some are in really bad condition.


You are right. Most destruction was seen by people of Delhi and Lucknow, when compared to others. The old timers still have horrible tales to narrate here. I do not know about Lucknow but for Delhi there is a book called "Begamaat Ke Aansu" / "Tears of royal ladies" , which give a vivid description of what the British did in Delhi post 1857. It is in Urdu and was written that time only.

BTW, good to know you are from Lucknow. I was there for almost 2 weeks very recently. The people were really courteous. The conduct of everyone i met did complete justice to their "Awadhi Tehzeeb" fame. It was a great experience.


Ending with this brief information :

Those Mughal Hakims of our show were not complete jokers, as we used to think about them. Here is the evidence of existence of similar Hakims in medieval times. See the 3rd one. It is the same which i mentioned in my reply to Devki on the previous page.





I wanted to write about another thing related to the hakims. Remember the famous dialogue in the Tiger track - "Jism mein zeher phail raha hai. Zahar ko jism se nikalna padega." Though, those scenes are funny.

However, there is a separate literature of the hakims of Mughal era which talks about the means and methods to remove poison from blood. They list various purgatives and strange methods. The mother of Babur was the one of whom this method was used.

I ended up writing a lot. But such is history. One can have endless discussion.

Thanks for sharing the pictures