India’s new UNESCO site museum reveals Mughal emperor’s life, legacy

NEW DELHI: The second Mughal emperor Humayun was widely known as an avid reader fond of journeys, architecture, and storytelling. Almost half a millennium after his death, a new museum in the heart of New Delhi highlights his role in shaping India’s cultural heritage.
Opened for visitors on Tuesday, the Humayun World Heritage Site Museum is the newest addition in Humayun’s Tomb complex — a landmark 300-acre area in New Delhi’s Nizamuddin that features dozens of historical monuments and includes Sunder Nursery, a 16th-century heritage park.
The advent of the Mughal dynasty, which ruled the Indian subcontinent between the 16th and 19th centuries, marked the global revival of Islamic architecture, with works that until today are examples of the highest quality and refinement.
Originally from Central Asia, the Mughals carried cultural elements borrowed from Arabs, Persians and Ottomans. As they settled in India, they fused these with the various local styles found in their new domains.
Humayun was the son and successor of Babur, founder of the dynasty, and ruled the empire from 1530 to 1540 and again from 1555 until his death the following year.
The new museum, established by the Agha Khan Trust for Culture and the Archaeological Survey of India, traces Humayun and his descendants’ lives, as well as the 700-year-old history of the whole Nizamuddin locality and its influence on Indian culture.
“There are hundreds of stories to be told, which the stones don’t speak,” Ratish Nanda, conservation architect and projects director at the AKTC, told Arab News.
“The idea is to bring alive 700 years of heritage.”
The museum is located in Humayun’s Tomb, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the first of the grand mausoleums that became synonymous with Mughal architectural innovations and, three generations later, culminated in the construction of India’s most iconic monument, the Taj Mahal.
About 7 million tourists from across India and abroad visit the complex every year.
“The idea is that people who now visit the World Heritage Site come with a deep understanding of the site,” Nanda said.
“We’ve been able to ... combine architectural elements with incredible manuscripts, miniature paintings, calligraphy, textiles, coins, metalware, architectural elements — one is two one scale — with lots of films and digital technology, and models and so on.”
Spanning five galleries, the underground museum has over 500 artefacts sourced from the collections of the National Museum in New Delhi, ASI and AKTC.
“It captures the 700 years of history that is associated with the region of Nizamuddin and the World Heritage site of Humayun’s Tomb ...This museum really captures the history,” said Ujwala Menon, AKTC conservation architect.
“The principal gallery talks about Humayun. There’s very little known about this emperor, and one of the things with this museum is to really address that ... Then we have a second section of this gallery which talks about the personalities that are associated with Nizamuddin.”
Among the famed figures featured in the second gallery are Nizamuddin Auliya and Amir Khusro.
Auliya was an 13th-century Indian Sunni Muslim scholar, Sufi saint of the Chishti Order, and is one of the most famous Sufis from the Indian subcontinent. His shrine and tomb are located near Humayun’s complex.
Khusro was a 13th-century poet and scholar who remains an iconic figure in the culture of the subcontinent.
Both Auliya and Khusro lived during the period of the Delhi Sultanate, which Humayun’s father conquered, leading to its succession by the Mughal empire. The museum shows how the empire did not come to its bloom in a cultural vacuum, but drew from and incorporated the culture of its predecessors.
“There was this idea of pluralism that existed during the Mughal period,” Menon said.
“And this (museum) really captures all of that.”