Strange, you will mutter, reading the title. Well, I had been wondering about elephants in Istanbul after I had finished the research on the embassy of Tipu Sultan to the Rum in 1787. In that large effort, four elephants were sent along as gifts to the Ottoman Sultan, accompanied by a wasteful 700-person retinue. Continuing on with that story, I chanced on the marvelous book (The Architect's Apprentice) written by Elif Shafak, a fictional tale about an albino Indian elephant named Chota in the Ottoman stables and the story of its young Indian mahout Jahan. That book takes you from India to Istanbul and back finally to the Taj Mahal and well, this touches on two of the aspects around whom Shafak, whom I admire greatly, wove her delightful caper. More as we go along, but if you have not, please do pick up the book and give it a read, you will not regret it. Following all that, I visited the elephant stables at Guruvayur with our little granddaughter a couple of months ago and regaled her with the sight of many elephants being tended to. That was indeed a marvelous sight, that too, seeing them up and close.
Shafak mentions that it was a palace painting showing an
elephant behind the Ottoman Sultan, which set her mind to the tale. Commencing
with Chota’s arrival in Istanbul sometime in the second half of the 16th
century, the evocative novel takes you through medieval Istanbul, educating you
on the palace intrigues, the scheming of the eunuchs, and Jahan’s collaboration
with one of the world’s greatest architects – Mimar Sinan. For me, it struck
many chords, simply because I had spent over 5 years in that magnificent city
and could follow Shafak through the streets and buildings of erstwhile Constantinople,
feel the smells and sounds she wrote about, just like I was right there. I
still think often about Istanbul, and in our home, I have two large panoramas
of the city, which I look at every time I pass them. Readers, please take note, that this is not a book review, but some aspects of connected history.
In the medieval period, when ships became the camels of the
ocean, large objects could thence be moved from place to place. As traders and
colonizers came across the elephant in India, an animal that had been a source
of amazement since Alexander’s battles with Porus, the desire to take one back
to the West became paramount. The indenter of the elephant, usually a king or a
sovereign, could now boast of something unique and boast of not only his long reach
across the universe but also the extent of his power and wealth with this new
‘larger than life’ acquisition. Many elephants were thus moved across the oceans,
and the Indian elephant was perfectly suited for it, as it was the most docile
of the lot. Tragically many of them died in transit or soon after they arrived,
mainly due to the lack of good attention, bad weather, and wrong diet, as we saw
in the case of Suleiman and Hanno. In the initial dispatches, mahouts were also
sent with the elephants, but I guess many of them suffered from the same amount
of homesickness and perished quickly in foreign lands.
As we read over many articles, the monsoon trade connected
India’s south, especially Calicut and Cochin with many Red Sea ports. Egypt
became an epicenter for imports, with the establishment of the Mamluk
sultanate. Later, when the Ottomans conquered it in 1517, the reins of the
Indian spice trade moved to Turkish masters. The Egyptian government was now
headed by bureaucratic officials sent from Constantinople and supported by
Ottoman troops, though the Mamluks continued to rule as the powerful emirs
under them.
Trade with Malabar did not suffer and continued, with the
marked regularity of the monsoons. Goods arrived at Egypt after being initially
unloaded at Red Sea ports and branched either towards the spice bazaars of
Istanbul or Westwards to Venetian ports for disbursement into Europe. To get to
the finer details, one may peruse this study of mine covering the final years
of the Mamluk era. (See link).
There were powerful forces vying to wrest this trade away from the Arabs and so,
Western interlopers from Spain and Portugal, as also from Easterly China, were
viewing the scene with keen eyes. Spices, textiles, and gems traveled
westwards, while horses moved East to buyers in the Sultanates of Deccan as
well as the Mughals. Space in the small dhows which traversed these oceans was
always at a premium and therefore only prized animals found occasional charter.
Transporting elephants was particularly difficult as they needed huge amounts
of food and water to be carried along during the voyage, and this took away
cargo and crew space. They could as you can now understand, only be afforded by
very rich buyers, typically sovereigns.
After the 1517 sack of Egypt, the Ottoman capital of Constantinople got itself directly linked to the Indian Ocean trade. Tigers, monkeys, rhinos, birds, and of course elephants were in demand, especially for the menageries in Constantinople. These menageries were located near the great Topkapi palace and curiously, within an ancient church, the St Johns Church near the Hippodrome. Pierre Belon du Mans a visitor, mentions that larger animals were located within the palace grounds. It seems reasonable to assume that a mahout (elephant handler) accompanied elephants on their journey from the subcontinent and then remained in Istanbul for at least some time to care for the creatures. There is, moreover, some evidence suggesting that elephant handlers were in demand in Istanbul since Ottoman authorities occasionally sought them out and paid for their travel to and maintenance in the city. The gifting of elephants continued as a diplomatic practice in South Asia and as a sign of power and prestige. Mentions continue through the 16th century of elephants heralding battles and gracing palaces. 16th century Istanbul exhibited two skilled elephants, the sight of which was recorded by European envoys. By the 18th century, there was always at least one elephant in the royal stables and large budgets were allocated for its upkeep as well as its mahout. By all accounts, being a mahout accorded meant a comfortable life, and by 1742, there were as many as fourteen men tending to a single elephant.
Melchior Lorck was one such artist who did many sketches of
Istanbul. N Westbrook writing about Lorck’s panorama explains - The artist
Lorcks, who departed the city in 1559, traveled widely, and spent his time in
Istanbul making many drawings that recorded Ottoman costumes, customs, and
monuments—an elephant and its driver, a funeral procession, women of a harem,
and others depicting building structures. It is not known whether he was
commissioned by the sultan to make his portrait, but there are several
engravings of the Sultan based, presumably, on drawings he made in Istanbul,
and which Melchior Lorck included in his book of views of the city. Lorck
did in his portraits of Suleiman, while his panorama of the city of
Constantinople, was more than 11 meters long. He is also recorded as having painted
twelve portraits of the Sultan, though they were later destroyed in a fire.
Marina Warner reviewing a Lorch book (A view of a view)
states - Lorck had a brief audience with the sultan, which he re-created
afterward in two different prints, both extraordinarily impressive, revealing
his underused capacity for psychological insight: a head and shoulders
portrait, and a full-length figure positioned in front of the Suleimaniye
mosque, completed in 1557 (Lorck was in Istanbul for its opening). In the
full-length portrait, Suleiman is standing with his right hand extended in a
gesture that admonishes all those who are present to remain alert; everything
about him is grave, and imposing; he appears to be 12 feet tall, erect and
majestic, with a curved sword reaching down to the floor, his frame flowing with
gleaming silk, dwarfing an elephant which is entering the palace through the
archway behind him. The painted version, which Lorck sent to the emperor
Maximilian II, seems to have vanished.
So much for the elephant, and though I could gather nothing
about its antecedents, I would assume that like many who preceded them and many
after, they too had been captured near Nelliyampathy or the Anamalai forests
near Palghat, and shipped through a port in Malabar, usually Calicut or
Ponnani.
Now we come to the second part which deals with the
fictional involvement of Jehan and his dome-building skills being put to test
in building the greatest edifice at Agra, the Taj Mahal. But let us see what
that story is about. I won’t spill the beans on what Jehan did in the fictional
account, but he arrived at Agra in 1632. The draftsman in charge of construction
Mir Abdul Karim takes him in, after seeing the seal of Mimar Sinan the great,
with Jahan (Mimar Sinan- The son of Greek or Armenian Christian parents, Sinan
entered his father’s trade as a stone mason and carpenter and rose to become
the most celebrated of all Ottoman architects, whose ideas, perfected in the
construction of mosques and other buildings, served as the basic themes for
virtually all later Turkish religious and civic architecture) takes him in.
Jahan Khan Rumi is then appointed by Shajahan to contribute to the building of
the Taj Mahal. Jahan invites his favorite student Isa and they set about
designing the magnificent edifice and what the Turkish craftsmen were in those days
famous for, building the dome. If only, the story is as pat as Shafak puts it,
though the Taj part of the book is hurried through with an aging Jehan,
becoming a family man.
In reality, the architecture of the Taj Mahal is still a hotly contested topic. For such a prominent monument, there are no clear
records of its architect, and the general conjuncture is that it was the effort of
a huge team (1,000 - 20,000) that worked for 10-22 years from 1632 AD, on land/structure purchased from Raja Jai Singh, with even the emperor Shahjahan contributing
to its design.
Arguments fly, not without sparks, from some who say that it
was a temple complex retrofitted into a mausoleum, with others contesting it
stating that the Taj looks like no other temple, while some experts chime in
saying it cannot be a retrofit (old structure re-laid with marble, with a single
door and decorative minarets around) as there are no clear clues of an earlier
construction in the design or in its structure. Then there are comments that
the dome is based on the Lotus canopy (bulbous dome) - an old temple concept, and
that this dome is unlike any Turkish mosque dome (true, it does look more like
most Samarkand domes), especially Mimar Sinan’s Blue Mosque.
P. N. Oak in his book "The Taj Mahal is a Temple Palace”
opines that it was originally a temple in the 12th century AD, which fell to Rajput
kings during the period of Humayun and was later used as a palace by Raja Man
Singh of Jaipur. This according to him, was then commandeered by Shahjahan from
Raja Jai Singh of Jaipur and converted into a mausoleum. Proponents of this
thinking add further that it does not accurately align (off by 15 degrees) to Mecca, as most Muslim monuments do. Then there is the Aurangzeb letter of
1652 which records that the master architects had no solution to dome leaks,
suggesting they were washing their hands off something they had nothing to do
with, in the first place. Yet others state that Samarkand domes were in the first
place, actually built in the lotus style by Buddhist architects taken as
prisoners by Timur, the lame. Nevertheless, neither side present clinching arguments
or evidence.
After some pottering about, trying to get to the bottom of
this, I realized that I would find no clear answer and that the surviving legends
had taken deep root. Strange also is the fact that the Mughal court had so many
European emissaries and none recorded details of this massive construction
effort – barring a few sparse mentions by Peter Mundy the EIC man in town, Tavernier,
the French gem trader, F Bernier, and also Thevenot, thereby raising questions
as to whether it was a 1,000-person effort spanning 10 years or a 20,000-person
effort spanning all of 20 years. The deeper one went, the more the questions he
ended up with, suggesting that the real truth may be somewhere in the grey
zone.
Two names however stand out to support the traditional argument
that it was built from scratch on Hari Singh’s land – Ustad Isa (Discounting names
such as the Italian Geronimo Veroneo, the Frenchman Bordeaux, and Persian Ali
Mardan) and Ustad Ahmad Lahori. There are even mentions of Shahjahan having
drawn up the design, but then again, in those days like in the case of some
musical compositions, the credit for a building's design also went usually to
its patron, rather than its architects.
There are draftsmen, masons, goldsmiths, and so on named in palace accounts, and Prof Nath in his books, provides details. For example, there are - Mukrimat Khan and Mir Abdul Karim from Shiraz, chief supervisors and administrators, Ismail Effendi (Ismail Khan Rumi) who had worked for the great Ottomans in Turkey as a designer and builder of the dome, Mohammed Hanif, Chief mason as well as other master masons from Iran, Central Asia and India. The list goes on, naming many artisans and craftsmen, but nobody as a chief designer. The world heritage monument register # 252, Oct 15, 1982 states - The monument, begun in 1632, was finished in 1648; unverified but nonetheless, tenacious, legends attribute its construction to an international team of several thousands of masons, marble-workers, mosaicists, and decorators working under the orders of the architect of the emperor, Ustad Ahmed Lahori.
There were mentions, from no lesser an authority than James
Fergusson (supported by Dr Burgess) that Ali Mardan, the Persian refugee was
the designer of the Taj Mahal, perhaps based on the similarity between the
Shalimar Gardens and the Taj’s Garden. This never found any acceptance among
Taj historians. Those in support of Ustad Isa’s name believed the British
explanation, which is considered flawed. One Carlo Basil suggested that Ustad
Isa was actually Geronimo Veroneo! This was echoed by Rev Heras and Vincent
Smith, but contemporary writers also failed to support the theory of a European
designer. As it turned out, Ustad Isa Khan was a draftsman in the team, not a
mimar.
Sometime in 1930, a work in
Farsi, named Diwan I Muhandis was discovered by a scholar in Bangalore, a work penned
by Lutfullah Muhandis which went on to mention that one Ustad Ahmad Lahori from
Lahore designed both the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. The record which also
praised Dara Shikoh (Shahjahan’s son and Aurangzeb’s enemy) was held in secret
as Lutfullah was his follower. Fearing retribution from Aurangzeb the family
went into hiding and died in penury, survived only by the book. It turns out
that Lutfullah was Ustad Ahmad Lahori’s son and he states in the book that his
father was the king’s chief architect who built the Mumtaz Mahal mausoleum and
the Delhi fort. This was formally presented in a paper by Dr. Nadvi and has been
accepted as fact by most historians.
Fergusson, the pioneer in the
field of Indian archaeology and an authoritative historian makes this brief but
startling remark about the Taj Mahal, "When used as a Baradhari, or
pleasure palace, it must always have been the coolest and loveliest of garden
retreats, and now that it is sacred to the dead it is the most graceful and the
most impressive of the sepulchers of the world" making it clear
that he too had doubts about its origins.
Prof R Nath is steadfast in his
works that there may not have been any chief architect (other than perhaps Ustad
Isa), and decries the naming of Lahori, stating that a verse of a son praising
his father’s work, in a private diary cannot be considered factual, without additional
corroborating evidence.
But it should be noted that construction
work in the Mughal dynasty was usually executed under the supervision of a senior
mimar. The term normally denoted a mason but was also used for the chief of
works or its supervisor. Ustad Ahmad and Ustad Hamid, were both expert mimars,
so one or both of them may have been in charge.
A rather pessimistic Robert
Chisholm had this to say in a 1910 paper - In regard to its architectural
merits, buildings can be found in India surpassing it (The Taj Mahal) in every direction:
thus, for size and boldness of construction, the Taj falls far below the Gol
Gombez at Bijapur. In his paper he details at length the various architectural
flaws and explains - It is as if the man with the idea (the so-called chief
architect) had been allowed to experiment with white marble in Shahjahan's
time on Humayun's tomb, and that while he worked, the idea of the Taj grew and
became perfected; that he worked only on those features which he intended the
Taj to possess - the great dome and the facade. That a successor, knowing
Humayun's tomb to be his source of inspiration, but not understanding the
principle on which his predecessor worked, constructed the four smaller domes
and the lighthouse-looking minarets at the angles of their platform after the
man with the idea left.
It will certainly be a never-ending
effort to determine if it was once a temple, just a Baradhari, or built as a sepulcher,
but we do know it turned out to be a lovely building, and certainly each
argument has its merits and demerits allowing us to reach no firm conclusion. For
now, we can conclude that it was a mammoth effort that took many years and
many men to complete, and the result is as we all agree, a lovely edifice, and
one which we are all proud of, irrespective of who designed it.
References
Islamic Culture, Vol 48, 1974 - Ustad Ahmad Lahori – H I S Kanwar
Eastern world, Jan 1958 - Designer of the Taj – H I S (Hari Inder Singh) Kanwar
The Taj Mahal and its incarnation – Dr R Nath
Taj Mahal – An illuminated Tomb – Begley & Desai plus review/ rejoinder by Dr Nath
The Taj Mahal, Agra, and its relations to Indian architecture - Robert F. Chisholm
The Myth of the Taj Mahal and a New Theory of Its Symbolic Meaning - Wayne E. Begley
The Question of the Taj Mahal - P. S. Bhat and A. L. Athawale
Constructing Melchior Lorichs's Panorama of Constantinople - Nigel Westbrook, Kenneth Rainsbury Dark and Rene van Meeuwen
The Animal in Ottoman Egypt by Alan Mikhail
Also read – Maddy’s Ramblings, Historic alleys
A Pope and an Elephant
Tipu’s delegation to Istanbul
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