Unlikely Connections: A Glimpse of Uzbekistan in the Deccan

The idea for this trip through Gulbarga, Bidar and Bijapur was actually born during our visit to Uzbekistan the year before. There were so many connections to India. Everyone knows of Babur, of course, but we saw a Devi unearthed in Fergana 4th century BC. 

Also, images of pre-Durga. As a public health person, I was aware of Ibn Sinna (Avicenna) and his contribution to the medical renaissance in Europe. I discovered that the Deccan lay along this route. Farida, came with her own readings, but we both followed Helen Philon’s Gulbarga, Bidar, Bijapur for this trip.

For us non-historians, however, this trip was daunting. I tried getting help from INTACH but this was not forthcoming. Many of the monuments we saw were utterly neglected, crumbling. It made me weep. 

But then I realise this is how we treat history in india; we have no respect for it, instead, we use it as a political weapon to bash Muslims.

These Muslim kingdoms were always fighting each other, as much as they fought the Mughals. Their battle against the Vijayanagara empire had no religious connotations – British historians introduced that. 

 

Vijayanagara was always playing one of the kingdoms against another, till they finally got together against it. The Vijayanagara kingdom had a hefty presence of Uzbek mercenaries, while the Bijapur army was led by an Uzbek general.

 

Gulbarga’s Jama Masjid is majestic; it is the only mosque in India without a courtyard. There are hundreds of splendid columns and signs of a beautiful painted roof. It can seat 5,000 people for namaz, and the priest has only to whisper for his sermon to be heard all over. 

 

This was demonstrated to us by a young man who recited a beautiful sura from the mihrab. Farida gifted him her copy of Philon, making him promise he will read it.

The word got around and next day, an autorickshaw driver also asked for a copy. Farida took down his contact details.

But there are no roads leading to this site. I do not think the environs have been swept for two years. So you wade through a sea of dirt, plastic and debris to reach this miracle. 

On the other hand, there is the living monument to the Sufi Banda Nawaz. Stunning structures, gleaming white, kept beautifully clean because people use them. They throng to it. 

I met people from all parts of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Telangana here – Muslims and others. At namaz, while Muslims pray, others simply sit silent, some touching their cheeks and ears in Hindu prayer. 

 

Both, the main dargah and the shrine of this Sufi’s son, directly across, have exquisite paintings on their walls that I was not allowed to photograph. On one of the domes is the hand of Fatima – in gold. Attached is a huge library building we were told we could not see because it was being shifted.

At the dargah of Quadir in Bijapur, there were more Hindus than Muslims at the time of my visit. One village woman did a full sashtanga namaskara – a Hindu gesture of respect and a yoga pose where the body aligns with the floor horizontally on eight points of contact. 

I asked her what it was for. She replied, “To our god”.

Another Hindu woman, a graduate, told me she comes here for samadhana, or solace. She is married to a drunk who beats her up regularly. She cannot sleep in peace if she does not come here.

In Gulbarga, we wanted to see Firuzabad or what is left of it and that was a challenge. Farida and I had to be detectives, looking at various sources online, in addition to Helen Philon. 

Nobody knew about it locally. 

So, we took a taxi and two local men, Gautam Burma and Mahadev, farmers both, led us finally to crumbling palaces, hamams, mosques all enshrouded by liana and trees in fields of harvested toor dal. 

 

There are also signs of elaborate waterways from the river Bhima, flowing innocently by.

 

While the Bidar fort is stunning, we discovered some parts of it were not open to us Indians. 

Over the last three days, Farida had been fed up with people asking her if she was a foreigner and where from. However, that turned out to be a boon for us in the end as the guardians opened the doors to Rangeen Mahal and other forbidden palaces, thinking the same. 

Tiles from Uzbekistan, or their sad remnants, adorned the palaces, along with exquisite wood carvings. There were also signs of elaborate waterways to cool the palaces. 

At Bidar too, the stunning madrasa of Mahmud Gawan, a Timurid building, had half collapsed. This is also magnificent and bedecked with tiles from Uzbekistan, some of which have survived. The blues in Uzbek tiles – the neel – of course, came from India.

Just outside Bidar lies the fabulous necropolis at Ashtur. The first of these mausolea is tomb of Ahmad Shah Wali. This is embellished with truly beautiful painting, now splattered with pigeon shit. Can the ASI not even keep pigeons away? 

A net at the entrance would have done the trick. But here was a dreadful guide who claimed to be a descendent of these royals. All our wealth, he said, has been taken away and I have become a beggar.

What is it about Islamic culture and these necropolis projects? In Islam the most egalitarian of religions? Or is it the case that where the elites felt they were “outsiders”, they attempted to seal their power through these magnificent architectural projects? 

These kingdoms fell apart due to tensions between the foreign elite and the locals. These tensions helped the rise of slaves, the Habshis from Ethiopia and the Baridis from Georgia.

But no one knew where the Baridi tombs were either. 

Finally, we met an autorickshaw driver who knew about it – his auto was decorated with a lawn on which gambolled a lion and a tiger. And these were architectural miracles of deceit. You have here two large buildings, separated by a distance, but designed to look like one as one approaches.

This is the pattern in the Gol Gombaz. The anterior building is now a museum, while the posterior one is a truly wonderful glimpse of hell. At this majestic building, the clicking of a watch is said to resonate all over. 

But here was also the screaming of thousands of children. This was bedlam, this was hell. 

The sites in Bidar and Bijapur are less disfigured than those in Gulbarga. They have a watchman during the day, he also sweeps and cleans. 

He has worked for 20 years and now earns Rs 15,000 a month. This is so shameful and we are all responsible for the ASI having no funds. It is even worse than the health sector I am familiar with.

I buggered up our itinerary, so Farida did not come to Bijapur. She left for Hyderabad and from there, back home to Srinagar. 

A Kashmiri today does feel like a foreigner. But so do I.

Bijapur was a sea of monuments, some luckily preserved as they are used as government offices. I was struck by a painting of a pineapple in what should have been Afzal Khan’s mausoleum. However, he lies buried where Shivaji deceitfully killed him. 

I saw the baoli where his 60 wives were reportedly drowned before he went to meet Shivaji – he had had a premonition he would die. 

This is one of the few baolis that exist today, along with the Taj Baoli, being restored by the Tatas. All other baoli and the elaborate irrigation schemes have disappeared. How did they get water to go up four floors at the king’s retreat at Kummatgi? 

There are faint paintings here, including that of the painter, a Mr. Hooda wearing a very colourful hat.

Afzal Khan’s father’s mausoleum is majestically proportioned, as is the unfinished one – Taj Jehan Begum’s grand stairways of hubris. Both have a Bahmani style mausoleum and mosque, with a pool or fountain between.

There is also the spectacular Sangeet Mahal with Nau Ras, with nine gates or nava rasas. I was told Bhimsen Joshi sang there but fund cuts meant no more concerts there. There was also a Nauras cult, a synthesis of a Dattatreya Saint, Narasimha Saraswati and that of the Chishti Sufi Saint, Gesu Daraz.  

It should not be surprising, as Manu Devadevan reveals, there were surprising connections between Shaivism and Sufis that explains why Mohurrum is celebrated in some 3,000 villages in North Karnataka, led by Hindus. The songs sung here are a combination of vachanas and Sufi laments. 

But perfection and awe were in Ibrahim Rouza in Bijapur. Ibrahim Adil Shah was a savant. I was introduced to a poem of his at Kavita Singh’s extraordinary exhibition called Navras at the National Museum some years back. 

This poem read, ‘How lucky am I, Ibrahim, to be born the son of Allah and Saraswati’.  Indeed, there is a small tacky temple – a Narasimha temple – said to have been built by him in Bijapur.

Ibrahim Rouza has the Bahamani feature of a mosque and a mausoleum/maqbara facing each other, separated by a fountain. The beauty here is difficult to describe. I went to see it again the next day in respect for the beauty.

Here too, a sura recited by my guide at the mihrab of the mosque could be heard in the maqabra. How lovely for believers buried there; you can hear every prayer for you. 

From the stunning calligraphy, it is clear that Ibrahim Shah was desperate to announce he was a Muslim. A story I read somewhere is that he was not to be given a Muslim burial since the priests had heard he was a Hindu. 

His family then called him Brahmin priests who proclaimed you cannot be converted into Hinduism, you are born into it.

But Ibrahim Adil Shah had the biggest ateliers for paintings, for translations, for research in astronomy, mathematics and medicine. 

A hundred years before Diderot, the first Encyclopedia had been produced here. Ibn Senna reached Portugal from here via Goa and led to the medical renaissance in Europe.

But no signs of it here at all.

There is a macabre face mask of Rama Raya at the Archeological Museum at Gol Gumbad. So the victors, the British, wrote these histories. We await history from the lamb, not the lion.