Tombeau d’Akbar

Akbar ruled the Mughal Empire from 1556 until his death at Agra in October 1605^2,4. The chronicle Akbarnama names Bihishtabad (Abode of Paradise) at Sikandra as his burial place, and the tomb is said to have been begun in his lifetime^2,3. His son Jahangir wrote in his memoirs that the architects had built to their own design while he was in Lahore dealing with the revolt of his son Khusrau⁵. Visiting in 1608, he found that the work fell short of what he had in mind, had experienced architects lay new foundations, and added a garden and a tall gateway with minarets of white stone⁵. He was told the whole cost 1,500,000 rupees⁵.

Inscriptions on the south gateway date the completion to 1612-1614². They were designed by the calligrapher Abd al-Haqq Shirazi, later titled Amanat Khan, who also designed inscriptions for the Taj Mahal; those facing the tomb praise Akbar, while those over the entrance praise Jahangir as its patron². Two of Akbar's daughters, Shakrul Nisha Begam and Aram Bano, were buried in the tomb². In the 17th century, under Aurangzeb, Jats ransacked it; Britannica says they took its valuables and burned Akbar's bones³. Around 1900 the viceroy Lord Curzon had the mausoleum repaired and restored³. The ASI's Agra Circle looks after it today¹.

The tomb stands in the middle of a square walled garden, a charbagh divided into quarters by causeways and water channels, with a gateway at the centre of each wall². The main gateway, on the south, is faced with red sandstone and inlaid with marble, and four white marble minarets rise from the corners of its roof². The mausoleum rises in five storeys like a truncated pyramid^1,2,3. The lowest is a vaulted arcade about 105 m long on each side, broken at the centre of each face by a tall arched portal (pishtaq)². The upper storeys have arcaded verandahs and clusters of kiosks (chhatris), some with pyramidal marble roofs and others with cupolas^1,2.

The tomb is built of red sandstone except for the top storey, which is white marble¹. This storey is an open court surrounded by cloisters whose outer arches are filled with marble screens^1,6. In the centre, on a raised platform, lies the false cenotaph, carved from a single block of white marble with arabesques, flowers and the 99 names of God^1,3,6. Archnet notes that the stepped, pillared design recalls the Panch Mahal at Fatehpur Sikri².

Visitors enter through the mausoleum's southern portal, the only one of the four that leads to the burial chamber². Archnet describes the vaulted vestibule behind it as the most elaborately ornamented of the four, and Havell described its raised stucco work painted in blue and gold^2,6. From there a long, sloping corridor runs down to the burial chamber, a square room at the heart of the building, high-domed and dimly lit from above^2,6. A plain white marble cenotaph marks Akbar's grave, which the ASI places below ground level, and Archnet records two of his daughters in the same chamber^1,2,6.