The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s4.92.1

v4.c23.s4.92.1

The plan of isolating one’s burial place from the outer world by means of a sheet of water had already occurred to Ghiyās-ud-dīn Tughluq some two centuries earlier, when he designed his tomb like a barbican thrown out from the fortress at Tughluqābād and surrounded it with a lake. Inspired no doubt by the originality and significance of this, by now, historical monument, Sher Shāh’s mausoleum was designed on somewhat similar lines, except that instead of the irregular lake, it rises from a large rectangular tank, the cemented sides of which measure each approximately fourteen hundred feet in length. The tomb building itself occupies the centre of this body of water, forming a grand pyramidal mass of diminishing tiers, mounting up from a stepped plinth of over three hundred feet wide, and crowned by a semi-spherical dome. The plinth and the high terrace above it, which comprise the foundations of the composition, are square in plan, while the tomb building above is an octagonal structure in three storeys, a slightly elaborated form of the Lodī tombs at Delhi, but made vastly more imposing by its size, situation, and particularly by the massive and spacious character of its stepped and terraced basement. Much skill has been expended on the design and disposition of the architectural details, which break up the mass of the building with admirable effect.