Click here for the previous entry in this series
When Emperor Akbar built or rebuilt the Fort in the latter half of the 16th century, he constructed only one gate, which is named after him and stands on the eastern wall on the Fort Road. The Ravi flowed around the northern wall of the Fort, along the current alignment of the GT Road from the railway station to Pir Makki area. The area outside the western wall of the Fort, where the Baradari now stands, would have been the deserted left bank of the river. Akbar lived in the Fort at a stretch from 1585 to 1599, for a period of 14 years, prompting some upper-class construction behind the Fort on the scenic stretch of land along the river. This article is about this area between the Badshahi Mosque and the Shahi Fort, now occupied by the Hazuri Bagh and its Baradari (The royal garden and the 12-door building).
The books referred for this article are Storia do Mogor (vol II) by the Venetian contemporary traveller Niccolao Manucci, Travels in Mughal Empire by the French contemporary traveller Dr Francois Bernier, Maa’sir-ul-Umara (covering the events of 1500-1780) by Nawab Samsam-ud-Daula Shah Nawaz Khan and his son Abdul Haye, Tarikh-e-Lahore by KL Kapoor (1882), Lahore Its History, Architectural Remains And Antiquities by SM Latif (1892) and many online sources. The initial part of the article will trace how the space for Hazuri Bagh, as it exists today, was created, while the later part will recall the history of the Bagh and the Baradari.
The Bagh is enclosed by the Fort on its east, the Mosque on its west, perimeter wall on its south and Ranjit Singh’s samadhi (containing his funeral ashes) in the north. The entire Bagh, excluding the surrounding roads, has a perimeter of a little under half a kilometre with an area of two and a half acres (as measured on google-earth). For such a small area and a little construction, the place has a rich history including eras of Mughal Empire, Sikh Kingdom, British occupation and independent Pakistan.
The book Maa’sir-ul-Umara mentions that when Asaf Khan was on his death bed (1641), he had presented Emperor Shah Jahan with a house that was worth, at that time, two million rupees (millions of dollars in today’s value). Asaf Khan was the father of Empress Mumtaz Mahal; the woman for whom the Taj Mahal was built. Shah Jahan gave the house to his eldest and favourite son, Prince Dara. But Dara later lost the war of succession to Aurangzeb and was beheaded on his behest. Manucci was in Lahore in 1673, masquerading as a physician and doing well. He wrote (ibid, vol II. pp. 120) that by that time people had a dim memory of Dara.
Aurangzeb truly hated his elder brother and ordered that Dara’s house be demolished and a great mosque be built there. Manucci added that the mosque took ten years to build. As the only great mosque that Aurangzeb built in Lahore is the Shahi Mosque, and only this mosque could take ten years to build, it can be deduced that the Mosque was built on the house where Dara lived. This author is amazed that this historical fact has been overlooked and neglected in every story of the grand mosque.
In February-April 1665, Aurangzeb stayed in Lahore on his way to Kashmir, waiting for the snows to melt, and also on his return to Delhi for a break in journey. As the mosque is known to have been inaugurated in 1673 and taken ten years to complete, it must have been during this stay that Aurangzeb ordered its construction. At least, this estimation tallies up the timeline of different narratives.
Till Aurangzeb’s time, the Ravi used to flow between the northern wall of the Fort and Minto Park. The changing course of the river will be discussed in a subsequent article as part of this series but it is known that the river changed its course in the 1670s, much to the chagrin of the local people (Bernier, ibid, pp 383). The wall from northwest corner of the Fort (Sheesh Mahal corner) to the Mosque, with the large elephant sized Roshnai gate, would have been built when the river, having receded, did not provide protection to the area against would be invaders or rebels. Manucci (ibid), writing about Lahore in 1673, names eleven gates but does not include Roshnai Gate, indicating that this large Gate was built after the time of Aurangzeb to provide the rulers and the general public a passage towards the northern direction.
One unintended outcome of the great mosque was that a vast space was created from its front entrance to the Alamgiri Gate. In his time, some sources suggest, Aurangzeb had built a caravanserai (guest house) in this space. The exact nature of the caravanserai is not known. It could be a tented lodging because there are no remnants of rooms there. Additionally, this large empty space was also used by the Emperor and the Subedar of Lahore to commute between their office cum residence in the fort and the mosque. This would have required preventing strangers from loitering in the area. The caravanserai, therefore, could only have been informal and temporary. It was in this space where a century and a half later, Maharaja Ranjit Singh would create an appealing garden and an elegant Baradari.
During the Sikh rule, the Mosque had been turned into an ammunition depot and a stable, and the grounds in front of Alamgiri Gate of the Fort were nothing more than a dusty place for royal forces, camp animals and Ranjit Singh’s security protocol. Meanwhile, the most well-known diamond of the world, the Koh-e-Noor (Mountain of Light) that had been plundered from the Mughals by Nadir Shah in 1739 and stolen from his camp by Ahmad Shah Abdali, had come into the possession of Shah Shuja, who had followed his father as the Amir of Afghanistan. After his deposition in 1809, he, along with his family, ended up under the protection of Ranjit Singh, who put them up in Mubarak Haveli inside Bhatti Gate. Through a tight net of intelligence on the scion of his adversary family, Ranjit learnt that the Afghan prince was in possession of Koh-i-Noor. He extracted the stone from the ex Amir through his wily tactics. Thus, the famed jewel came in the ownership of the Punjab ruler in 1813.
Possession of the great stone was a matter of great rejoicing. To commemorate the event, it was decided to create a grand garden over the dilapidated and – by then – little-used Alamgiri Serai. The task was entrusted to Fakir Azizuddin. However, the deori'dar (chamberlain of the royal household) Jamedar Khushal Singh suggested that a marble pavilion should also be built in the centre of the planned garden. Initially Ranjit was against the idea due to difficulty in acquiring white marble in the Punjab. Khushal suggested stripping Mughal-era monuments to provide the stones for the proposed pavilion.
There is a tomb in Nawankot Lahore, near the Sammanabad mor, which is, perhaps erroneously, attributed to Princess Zaibunnisa, the eldest child of Emperor Aurangzeb. It had plenty of marble. Another tomb outside Bhatti Gate, purportedly of saint Shah Sharaf, also had marble structure. Then there was vast reservoir of marble on the tombs of Jahangir, Asaf Khan and Noor Jahan across the river in Shahdara. It was decided to take away marble from these tombs for use in the proposed Baradari. Fakir Nuruddin, youngest of the three Fakir brothers close to Ranjit, was made in-charge of gathering marble from the indicated structures.
Under the British occupation of Lahore, the Baradari was used as a bandstand where music was played regularly on Sundays
The court architect Tota Ram was entrusted with the task of designing the building. The garden was created as a typical Persian char-bagh (a garden divided into four parts by walkways) with wide sandstone lined walkways starting from the middle of each side and meeting in the centre around the Baradari. A lot of plantation was carried out to create a nice green space. The Baradari was constructed as a triple story pavilion with a basement, a ground floor and a smaller first story. The main building is a square of 45 feet long sides. Looking from any of the four sides, there are three small arches on ground level to provide ventilation to the basement. These arches are framed on each side by stairs of four steps each, which lead up to a walkway all around the ground floor pavilion. The raised ground floor has three large cusped arches supported by finely carved four Roman pillars on each side for a total of twelve entrances and sixteen pillars. Around the pillars, there are two doors on each side. Inside, the pavilion has a mirrored ceiling with motifs of birds and flowers. The flooring within the Baradari is also made of marble. In the northwest corner, there are stairs to descend to the basement and to climb to the first floor. First floor was smaller but similar to the ground floor excluding the doors. The roof edges have marble jali all around along the walls. The basement is approached by fifteen steps but is closed to public and probably in poor repair. Because of non-availability of sufficient marble, only the ground floor was decorated with the available material; the basement and the top floor wore simple plaster. On 19 July 1932, a strong earthquake struck the city that completely destroyed the upper floor of Baradari. City administration removed the debris but only repaired the ground floor, deciding against rebuilding the destroyed upper floor.
Ranjit Singh held his last darbar in this Baradari. By May 1839, his health had deteriorated. He summoned his ministers, generals, large landlords and notable court officials to assemble in Hazuri Bagh. As he was too weak to walk, he was brought in a palanquin that was placed in the Baradari. He rested against a pillow. He was given a 101-gun salute fired from the Fort but was too weak to acknowledge the salutation.
After a little while Ranjit started to speak. However, his voice was too feeble to be heard by anyone. Standing close to him, Fakir Azizuddin, his trusted minister, relayed his message. Ranjit recalled how he had risen from a village and created a state spread over Punjab, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Sindh and Tibet. He said that the blood spilled by his brave soldiers had not gone waste and that he was nominating his son Prince Kharak Singh as his successor. It was followed by the coronation of the prince and announcement of Dhian Singh as the prime minister. This was the last darbar of the Maharaja. The next time he was brought to the Baradari was to lay him in state for public viewing after his death on 27 June. His body was taken from Baradari’s western doors to the banks of the Ravi for cremation.
During the civil war, Hazuri Bagh saw much bloodshed and turmoil. Sometimes, it became the battleground itself. Sher Singh and Hira Singh bombarded the Fort from guns placed in the Mosque minarets, with projectiles flying over and into the Bagh. Another tragic incident in Hazuri Bagh was the death of Prince Nau Nehal Singh by an accident, which had the hallmarks of a murder. As he was entering Hazuri Bagh from the Roshnai Gate, after attending the cremation of his father Kharak Singh, a large block of stone fell on him and his companions. A son of Raja Dhian Singh, the prime minister, died on the spot whereas Nau Nehal died a little later under suspicious circumstances. The Bagh continued to deteriorate thereafter due to neglect. A photograph dated 1909 (displayed here) shows the Baradari standing amidst rubble with no trace of the garden. However, a later picture, definitely of before 1932, because it shows the first floor intact, depicts a restored garden.
Under the British occupation of Lahore, the Baradari was used as a bandstand where music was played regularly on Sundays. When the colonial civil bureaucracy moved out to the Mall Road and the military to Mian Mir Cantonment, the Badshahi Mosque was returned to Muslims and the Fort too became a tourist spot. This was the time when local civilians started to visit Hazuri Bagh for recreation. The Baradari became a place where story tellers and Punjabi folk singers would come to perform as they could gather sizeable crowds and make some money. In his childhood, this author has witnessed such performances in the evenings.
Baradari is the most elegant structure built during the Sikh rule. Set in the well laid out wide garden, it looks like a well-crafted jewel. The single story structure is still graceful and a testimony to the fine taste of Maharaja Ranjit Singh; the one and the only Sher-e-Punjab.