Graftombe van Ali Barid Shah (Barid Shahi-graftomben)

The Barid Shahi tombs lie about ten furlongs (2 km) west of the old city of Bidar, the Bahmani capital from the mid-15th century^1,2. Qasim Barid, minister and de facto ruler of Bidar under the Bahmani king Mahmud Shah, founded the dynasty and died in 1504; his son Amir Barid died in 1542¹. Amir’s son Ali Barid was the first of the family to take the title of Shah and ruled until 1580¹. Yazdani describes him as a cultured prince fond of poetry, calligraphy and architecture, who also built the Rangin Mahal in the fort of Bidar¹. In 1565 he joined the alliance of Deccan sultans against Vijayanagara and fought in the battle at Talikota¹.

Ali Barid built his own tomb; a chronogram on a tile panel gives 984 AH (1576-77) for its completion, three years before his death in 987 AH (1579-80)¹. His son Ibrahim Barid (r. 1580-1587) lies in a similar but unfinished tomb, whose court adjoins the west wall of his father’s enclosure¹. The kingdom shrank after Talikota, and in 1619 Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur took Bidar and annexed it¹. After long neglect, when the gardens were ploughed up, Hyderabad’s Archaeological Department began conserving the tombs in 1918, recovered the land and restored the walks and flower beds¹. The tombs belong to the Bidar component of a serial site on India’s UNESCO Tentative List².

The tomb stands in a square walled court 140 yards (128 m) a side, laid out in walks and flower beds, with paths from gates on all four sides to the steps of its platform¹. The main entrance is a two-storey gateway on the south, whose upper hall, known as the Naqqar Khana (music gallery), has a vaulted stucco ceiling and many small wall niches¹. Each face of the square tomb opens in a single tall arch, 20 ft 7 in wide, flanked by smaller blind arches above a carved stone dado¹. A globe-shaped dome on a decorated drum crowns the building, topped by a gilded copper finial¹. UNESCO’s tentative-list text describes the tomb as standing in the middle of a symmetrical four-square garden².

Yazdani judged the building top-heavy, its dome too large for its base, and noted that the four open arches break with the custom of keeping the qibla side of a tomb closed¹. He attributed these choices, and the miniature copies of the dome in the decorative bands, to Hindu builders, and contrasted the bright interior with the dim halls of the Bahmani tombs¹. A mosque with three arches, two slender minarets and a cistern 36 ft 3 in square adjoins the tomb court on the north-west¹.

Through the four open arches light reaches a hall 37 ft 5 in square, paved with hexagonal stone slabs and lined with a stone dado carved with eight-petalled rosettes¹. Above it, glazed tile panels carry verses by the Persian poet Attar on the passing of worldly glory; one panel gives the chronogram of the building and the name of the calligrapher, Khwajagi of Shirwan¹. Higher up, bands of Qur’anic text in white thuluth script on a turquoise ground, designed by the calligrapher Abd al-Fattah, run round the walls, while squinches turn the square into an octagon and then a 24-sided ring below the dome¹. On a low platform stand five cenotaphs; Ali Barid’s, of polished black basalt, is carved with the creed and the dates of the building and of his death¹.