The tombs of Ahmed, and Ganj Bhash, his chaplain, or spiritual
adviser, a saintly mortal who admonished him of his sins and kept
his feet in the path that leads to paradise, are both delightful,
if such an adjective can apply, and are covered with exquisite
marble embroidery, almost incredible in its perfection of detail.
It is such as modern sculptors have neither the audacity or the
imagination to design nor the skill or patience to execute. But
they are not well kept. The rozah, or courtyard, in which the
great king lies sleeping, surrounded by his wives, his children
and other members of his family and his favorite ministers, is
not cared for. It is dirty and dilapidated.
[Illustration: HUTHI SINGH'S TOMB--AHMEDABAD]
This vision of frozen music, as some one has described it, is a
square building with a dome and walls of perforated fretwork in
marble as delicate as Jack Frost ever traced upon a window pane.
It is inclosed by a crumbling wall of mud, and can be reached only
through a narrow and dirty lane obstructed by piles of rubbish,
and the enjoyment of the visitor is sometimes destroyed and always
seriously interfered with by the importunities of priests, peddlers
and beggars who pursue him for backsheesh.
The lane from the mausoleum leads into the courtyard of the Jumma
Musjid, a mosque erected by Ahmed Shah at the height of his power
and glory. It is considered one of the most stately and satisfactory
examples of Saracenic architecture.
The most beautiful piece of carving, however, in this great
collection is a window in a deserted mosque called Sidi Sayid.
Perhaps you are familiar with it. It has been photographed over
and over again, and has been copied in alabaster, marble, plaster
and wax; it has been engraved, photographed and painted, and is used
in textbooks on architecture as an illustration of the perfection
reached by the sculptors of India. The design is so complicated
that I cannot describe it, but the central features are trees,
with intertwining boughs, and the Hindu who made it could use
his chisel with as free and delicate a hand as Raphael used his
brush. Fergusson, who is recognized as the highest authority on
architecture, says that it is "more like a work of nature than
any other architectural detail that has yet been designed, even
by the best masters of Greece or the middle ages." Yet the mosque
which this precious gem made famous is abandoned and deserted,
and the courtyard is now a cow pasture.
X
JEYPORE AND ITS MAHARAJA
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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