All we at present know belongs to a series of tombs in the neighbourhood of Tatta, which were erected under the Mogul dynasty by the governors or great men of the province, during their sway. At least the oldest now known is that of Amir Khalleel Khan, erected in or about A.D. 1572, the year in which Akbar deposed the Jami dynasty and annexed Scinde to his empire. No tombs or mosques of the earlier dynasties have yet been edited, though they may exist. The known series extends from A.D. 1572-1640, and all show a strongly-marked affinity to the Persian style of the same or an earlier age. One example must for the present suffice to explain their general appearance, for they are all very much alike. It is the tomb of the Nawab Amir Khan, who was governor of the province in the reign of Shah Jehan, from A.D. 1627-1632, and afterwards A.D. 1641-1650. The tomb was built apparently about A.D. 1640 ([Woodcut No. 326]). It is of brick, but was, like all the others of its class, ornamented with coloured tiles, like those of Persia generally, of great beauty of pattern and exquisite harmony of colouring. It is not a very monumental way of adorning a building, but, as carried out on the dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, in the middle of the 16th or in the mosque at Tabreez in the beginning of the 13th century,[534] and generally in Persian buildings, it is capable of producing the most pleasing effects.
326. Tomb of Nawab Amir Khan, near Tatta, A.D. 1640. (From a Photograph.)
Like the other tombs in the province, it is so similar to Persian buildings of the same age, and so unlike any other found at the same age in India Proper, that we can have little doubt as to the nationality of those who erected them.
CHAPTER X.
MOGUL ARCHITECTURE.
CONTENTS.
Dynasties—Tomb of Mohammad Ghaus, Gualior—Mosque at Futtehpore Sikri—Akbar’s Tomb, Secundra—Palace at Delhi—The Taje Mehal—The Mûti Musjid—Mosque at Delhi—The Imambara, Lucknow—Tomb of late Nawab, Junaghur.
CHRONOLOGY.