Mazar-e-Shoara: The Forgotten Dead

خاک میں کیا صورتیں ہوں گی کہ پنہاں ہو گئیں

 (In the soil- what faces must be hidden) 

Beauty finds its way at odd places; away from the flamboyant commotion of Boulevard, far from the amorous colours of Zabarwan and distant from the prospects, perspectives and spectre of present. Beauty finds its way at odd places: along the sombre shores of the lifelessness, in the weed, litter and rubbish of a graveyard, the withered tombstones of a cemetery,  

The Cemetery of the Poets   

The cemetery and those who lie buried in the soil of time and fate are the witness to the the lost romance, their epitaphs bear a testimony to a history of prose and poetry.  

 Laala tooram, na humchoon ghuncha gulboo zadaem 

 Shaula jae bakhya bar chaak-e-gereban meezenam 

 (I am the Tulip of Sinai and not the bud borne of a rose 

 To my torn collar, I apply the needle of my fire to stitch it)

Cries out poet Mazhari, having penned down 6000 Persian verses throughout his travels from Iran, Khorasan, Hindustan to Kashmir, but now lost in graves and indifference of another necropolis, Malkhah.  

Founded in year 1587 C.E during by the Mughal emperor Akbar, the cemetery of poets, also called Mazar-e-Shoara is situated along the banks of Dal Lake. The burial ground for the once eminent poets seems to have been selected carefully to give the dead souls a serene eternal sleep. The historical records show that there were five poets and men of letters buried in the cemetery, all of them the eminent avant grade of Iran, associated with the literary upper class of Mughal court. However, as of today only three of the tombstones can be located in the mazar, rest covered in debris of time and apathy. 

There seems to be some confusion regarding the first grave in the cemetery, largely appearing due to the mistakes in copying the previous historical accounts. In this regard the first reference comes from the great historian and author, Mohammad Azam Dedmari in his Waqiat-e-Kashmir. Dedmari was a scholar, researcher, and also a poet of his time and was born during Aurangzeb’s era when Abu Nasr was performing the duties of sobedar (Governor) of Kashmir. Therefore, due to his temporal proximity to the rule of Akbar and his other meticulous documentations, his record can be taken as more authentic. 

According to him the great Iranian savant and scholar of his time, Shah Fatehullah had come from Iran to Deccan. According to M. A Alvi and Abdur Rahman’s seminal work, “Fathullah Shirazi: The great Indian scientist of 16th century” and Mohammad Akmal Makhdum’s, “A Great Man: Shah Fateh Ullah Shirazi”, Fatehullah was brought up in Shiraz and learnt under great teachers like Kamal-ud-din Masood Sherwani and Khwajah Jamaluddin Mahmud, a disciple of the logician Jalal-al-din-Davani. Shirazi furthered his knowledge in medicine, mathematics, and science under the instruction of Mir Ghayasuddin Mansur. After completing his education, Shirazi embarked on a career in education in Shiraz. Among his notable students was Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, who served as the close confidant of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. In 1583, Shirazi received an invitation from Mughal Emperor Akbar and subsequently joined the imperial court in Agra.He soon earned the title of Amir and a rank (mansab) of 3000. Two years later, in 1584, Akbar appointed him as the Amin-ul-Mulk, also known as the Trustee of the State.Shirazi’s first task was to reexamine and rectify the Mughal Empire’s vast transaction records, which he accomplished with diligence and success. Along with his administrative work, Shirazi also undertook the task of regulating the intrinsic and bullion values of coins. He identified and corrected discrepancies in the currency, ensuring its reliability and trustworthiness. Shirazi’s skills and talents also earned him various honors and titles. In 1585 and 1587, the emperor selected him to lead diplomatic missions to the Deccan, where he was recognized for his efforts with the title of Azud-ud-Dawlah, or the Arm of the Emperor. He also received a horse, 5000 rupees, a robe of honor, and the office of the Chief Sadr of Hindustan. 

A great poet, he also made significant contributions to the fields of philosophy and logic, particularly in his work, Takmilah-i-Hashiyah. Additionally, he played a crucial role in compiling the Tarikh-i-Alfi, a thousand-year history of Islam, demonstrating his vast knowledge in the field of history. 

One can try to estimate the scholarship of Shah Fatehullah by the brief introduction Abul Fazal (Grand Vizier of Emperor Akbar the Great) writes about him. Abul Fazal being a royal minister and himself a great scholar did not recognise anybody at par with his own scholarship, but about Shah Fatehullah he writes: 

“if all the books of all the subjects and sciences and crafts are destroyed then Shah Fatehullah, with his scholarship and knowledge, and with his memory, will create a parallel new library of books.” 

Emperor Akbar mourns his death in following words: 

“Had he fallen in the hands of Franks and had they they demanded all my treasures for him, I would gladly have entered such profitable traffic and brought the jewel cheap” 

Shirazi was a great inventor and is credited with numerous innovations like improved cannons and guns, wagon mllls, mirrors that would make far things appear closer, travelling baths etc.  

Two references are made to the death of Shah Fatehullah by Kashmiri scholars, one by Dedmari who says that he developed Typhoid and self treated it by over-eating Harisa. Another reference is made by Hassan Kuehami in his Tareekh-e-Hassan in which he refers to him (probably mistakenly) as Shah Abu Fateh and cites tuberculosis as his cause of death. The mistake (viz a viz name) seems an error while copying from Waqiat-e-Kashmir, where a poet called Mir Abu Fateh is mentioned immediately after Fatehullah, whom Kuehami seems to have skipped and probably mixed with the former. The location of his burial is mentioned atop Takht-e-Sulaiman, in Mazar-e-Shoara. 

M.A Alvi and Abdur Rahman refer to Abdul Qadir Badaoni’s, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, which narrates a story similar to that of Dedmari in which Fathullah Shirazi dies because of over-eating porridge made of meat while having an episode of febrile illness. But there is a very important historical fact that is referred to in this version. According to them Fathullah was buried on koh-e-sulaiman, in the monastery of Sayyid Ali Hamadani. However, today we do not know any such monastery that exists on koh-e-sulaiman (or takht-e–sulaiman). So could this be reference to the lost monastery of Sayyid Ali Hamadani’s student Mohammad Ismael Kubravi which is historically known to exist around the same place. It was a matter of reverence to teachers that the students would name their schools and shrines after them. The great scholars would be buried in graveyards adjacent to these monasteries. So, is the location of the Mazar-e-Shoara the place where the monastery of Mohammad Ismail Kubravi actually stood?

(The lost monastery has a history of its own, allegedly destroyed by Chak rulers, the location where it stood has been a centre of academic debate in archaeological and academic circles.) 

Second grave in the cemetery is of Haji Jan Muhammad Qudsi Mashadi popularly called Qudsi Mashadi. He was a native of the Mashhad in Iran. He joined the court of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan where he rose to become Malik-al-Shura (poet laureate). It is said that Mughal empire had Qudsi weighed in gold, which was then presented to him as a reward for his poetic excellence. On the occasion of the installation of the famous Peacock Throne in 1635, for example, Qudsi composed a dedicatory chronogram that was cast in glazed tile and inserted inside the throne canopy. Qudsi wrote several topographical poems as well, the most famous of which is his description of the journey to Kashmir. 

When his son Mohammed Baqir died in the prime of his youth in Mashhad, Qudsi was heartbroken and decided not to go back to his native land but remain in India. Later he settled permanently in Kashmir. His works includes the poetical composition Zafarnama-yi Shahjahani, devoted to the king’s conquests, containing some 7000 rhymed couplets, and covering the first fourteen years of Shah Jahan’s reign and is by far Qudsi’s longest work, though it remained incomplete at the time of his death it was later completed posthumously by Kalim Kashani; a mathnawi entitled Wasf-I Kashmir. The poet remains buried in the Mazar-e-Shoara. 

The third poet lying at rest in the graveyard is Abu Talib Kaleem. A native of the Persian city of Hamadan when Abu Talib Kaleem heard about Qudsi’s reception at the court of Shah Jahan, he was perturbed and said, “The man who was to be held by neck, it is strange, was weighed in gold”. He travelled Deccan and other Indian cities and later became a courtier of the Emperor at Shahjehani Darbar. Kaleem soon attained fame as a poet. The great Urdu poets Sauda and Mir Taqi Mir have written Tazmeens (poems formed by inserting verses from another’s poem) of his ghazals. Kaleem was assigned the task of writing a history of the Mughals, Padshah Nama or Shahnama Shaham Chugtia, in poetic form and sent to Kashmir so that he could do his work undisturbed. Hw wrote qasidas and mathnawis about every important event of his time, be it the fight of young Aurangzeb with an infuriated elephant, the famine in Deccan or his visit to a paper mill in Kashmir. He also composed a poetic chronicle sahgihannama Like Qudsi, he was a great admirer and friend of Ghani Kashmiri who wrote an elegy on his death (in 1650 C.E) in which he also remembered Qudsi and Saleem as great and noble poets. In the elegy he compared his friend to Moses ‘Kalimullah”, the pen being his miraculous rod, and gives chronograph of his death in the line: 

The Sinai of inner meaning became radiant by Kalim 

The fourth poet, another native of Iran, Mohammed Quli Saleem went to India in the reign of Shah Jahan. He joined the court of the prime minister Nawab Islam Khan. He was a man of high poetic calibre and is famous for his works ‘mathnawi-qadha-wa-qadar’ and another mathnawi in praise of Kashmir. Saleem was accused by the Iranian poet Sa’ib of plagiarising his poetry. During his stay in Kashmir he fell ill and passed away to be buried in the cemetery of the poets. 

The last poet buried in the graveyard is Tughra Mashadi. Nothing is known of Tughra’s childhood and youth, other than that he probably was born in Mashad. Tughra moved to Mughal India and the court of Jahangir towards the end of the latter’s reign. During the reign of Jahangir’s successor, Shah Jahan, Tughra joined the court of one of Shah Jahan’s sons, Murad Bakhsh, and accompanied him on the Mughal campaign in Balkh (1646). Although unsuccessful, this campaign is nonetheless commemorated by the poet as a victory in his panegyric to Murad Bakhsh, Mir’āt al-futūḥ (Mirror of victories), which appears near the end of the present collection. Tughra subsequently settled in Kashmir, where he lived in a shop at Rainawari on the banks of Nayidyar canal, where he died in solitude. Tughra composed verse in all the popular forms of Persian poetry, but he is most famous for his prose works known as risālahs (epistles) which include Risālah-ʼi Firdawsīya and Mir’āt al-futūḥ.  

Every grave in the cemetery has thousands tales to tell. Every epitaph bears signs of a glorious past. However, today the cemetery, just like our past, lies in shambles, withered and perishing.  

References: 

Waqiat-e Kashmir by Muhammad Azad Dedmari 

Tareekh-e-Hassan by GH Khuehami 

Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh by AQ Badyuni 

The Islamc literature of India by Annemarie Shimmel 

Haji Jan Muhammad Qudsi by Prof. Zia-i-Ahmad 

Fathullah Shirazi: A Sixteenth Century Indian Scientist by MA Alvi 

A Great Man: Shah Fateh Ullah Shirazi by MA Makhdum 

Encylcopedia Iranica