The tomb which Ali Adil Shah commenced for himself was a square, measuring about 200 ft. each way, and had it been completed as designed would have rivalled any tomb in India. It is one of the disadvantages, however, of the Turanian system of each king building his own tomb, that if he dies early his work remains unfinished. This defect is more than compensated in practice by the fact that unless a man builds his own sepulchre, the chances are very much against anything worthy of admiration being dedicated to his memory by his surviving relatives.
320. Tomb or Rozah of Ibrahim. (From a Plan by Mr. Cumming.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
His successor Ibrahim, warned by the fate of his predecessor’s tomb, commenced his own on so small a plan—116 ft. square—that as he was blessed by a long and prosperous reign, it was only by ornament that he could render it worthy of himself. This, however, he accomplished by covering every part with the most exquisite and elaborate carvings. The ornamental inscriptions are so numerous that it is said the whole Koran is engraved on its walls. The cornices are supported by the most elaborate bracketing, the windows filled with tracery, and every part so richly ornamented that had his artists not been Indians it might have become vulgar. The principal apartment in the tomb is a square of 40 ft. each way, covered by a stone roof, perfectly flat in the centre, and supported only by a cove projecting 10 ft. from the walls on every side. How the roof is supported is a mystery which can only be understood by those who are familiar with the use the Indians make of masses of concrete, which, with good mortar, seems capable of infinite applications unknown in Europe. Above this apartment is another in the dome as ornamental as the one below it, though its only object is to obtain externally the height required for architectural effect, and access to its interior can only be obtained by a dark narrow stair in the thickness of the wall.
Besides the tomb there is a mosque to correspond; and the royal garden, in which these are situated, is adorned, as usual, internally with fountains and kiosks, and externally with colonnades and caravansaries for strangers and pilgrims, the whole making up a group as rich and as picturesque as any in India, and far excelling anything of the sort on this side of the Hellespont.
321. Plan of Tomb of Mahmúd at Bijapur. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
The tomb of his successor, Mahmúd, was in design as complete a contrast to that just described as can well be conceived, and is as remarkable for simple grandeur and constructive boldness as that of Ibrahim was for excessive richness and contempt of constructive proprieties. It is constructed on the same principle as that employed in the design of the dome of the great mosque ([Woodcut No. 319]), but on so much larger a scale as to convert into a wonder of constructive skill what, in that instance, was only an elegant architectural design.