Moment Of Wonder

By Anil Purohit, *A Sufi's silence* - The Hindu - India; Sunday, December 26, 2010

Many may have lost access to the mosque and the ones who enter may still not get to know who Kamali was. But the architecture will definitely give you a glimpse of the era gone by.

A caretaker down the path from the Jamali-Kamali mosque walked up to us while Ashutosh and I stood peering from behind the locked gate into the courtyard fronting the red sandstone mosque in Delhi's Mehrauli Archaeological Park, wondering what to do next. The caretaker looked at my camera, deduced we were visitors and produced a key from his pocket.

A walkthrough

“We've restricted access to the mosque after some locals forced their way in to offer Friday prayers and lay claim to the protected structure,” he said, leaning his shoulder on the gate before forcing it back just enough for us to pass through.

A tree stood in the courtyard by a dry pool. Peering into the pool it's easy to imagine faces reflecting back from centuries ago when men performed ablutions in the pool before stepping across the courtyard to answer the call to prayer in the large hall approached through an imposing central arch flanked on either side by two ornamented arches before ending in staircases leading to the roof of the single domed structure from whose corners four octagonal towers resembling turrets in forts rise above the trees.

Pointing to the ceiling the caretaker said, “These are verses Jamali composed himself.”

We looked up from the two graves centered in the mausoleum, a square building we had reached from walking along the eastern façade of the adjoining red sandstone mosque said to have been built by Jamali in 1528-29, and were met with an astonishing profusion of the most intricate of patterns arrayed seamlessly in blue, and ochre. It was what I might see on a starry night if I looked up long and hard, stars rearranging themselves into patterns and repeating across the sky as if guided by a divine hand helping the gazing eye make sense of the cosmos.

While the colours had faded in places, the outlines of the designs were easily recognisable, and the proximity of repeating patterns ensured the absence of colours in one was ‘filled in' by colours of another.

It took me a while to actually locate the verses among the exquisite designs set along the ceiling of the mausoleum located in a walled enclosure that also features several cenotaphs. However it is to the element of mystery associated with the identity of Kamali buried with Jamali in the adjoining mausoleum that visitors to the Jamali-Kamali Mosque are drawn to before the mausoleum's ceiling embellished with pre-Mughal art takes their breath away, the tombs of Jamali and Kamali at their feet ceasing to exist in that moment of wonder.

The mausoleum's interior is finished in white plaster and inlaid with floral patterns embellishing the arches that surmount niches built in the walls at corner diagonals, reminding of mihrab niches in mosques. A screen or perforated jaali built into the eastern façade flooded the chamber with light from the winter sun, the perforations weaving patterns on the twin marble graves laid on the floor.

The caretaker had left the door open for the duration we were inside, reducing the patterns to mere hints. But once the door closed behind us, the perforated screen would blanket the graves with light-footed patterns, lengthening through sundown before moonlit nights would return their melodies to the silence of the Sufi, enveloping time with the timelessness of the peaceful.

Jamali, a derivation of Jamal, meaning ‘beauty' in Urdu, and likely earned for his renown as a Sufi and poet in the court of Sikandar Lodi before transitioning to the courts of Babur followed by Humayun after the Mughals eclipsed the Lodis, was actually a pseudo name of Shaikh Fazlu'llah or Jalal Khan.

Variously called a dervish, a Sufi, a wandering minstrel, and a poet, Jamali's reputation as a highly regarded Sufi saint of the Lodi-Mughal transition period is survived in his orks, key among them is Siyar-I-Arfin, his account in Persian of the Sufis in India belonging to the Suhrawardi order.

The Chisti was the prominent Sufi order in 16th century India. Jamali Kamboh died in 1536, not long after the mosque that bears his name was completed, and was buried in the adjacent mausoleum. He is credited with building the mosque in 1528-29 in the period the Delhi Sultanate fell into terminal decline with the Lodis ceding power to the Mughals.

As a result the mosque came to be considered as an important example of pre-Mughal architecture and is credited with influencing in part mosque architecture in the Mughal period.

“Nobody knows who Kamali was,” the caretaker said, pointing to the second grave. The identity of Kamali buried alongside Jamali is a mystery to this day while the name is understood to have originated to rhyme with ‘Jamali'.

Over time Kamali has been variously speculated to be his brother, his son, and his lover among other people. Glancing at the ceiling Jamali's verses rendered in calligraphy amid well preserved coloured tiles and painted decorations convey the persuasion of a man who on being initiated in the Sufi doctrines by Shaikh Samauddin apparently redeemed his mentor's faith in the best traditions of Sufism, its development known to have been influenced by Hinduisim's Bhakti movement of the time. I let my gaze hang about the mausoleum.

Finer details

I could've plucked the silence like a string and let float sounds to the echo of time long past, to when the song of a Sufi likely tempered the turbulence of uncertain times.

To the east of the walled enclosure, with arched niches and gates set in the wall and tombs aligned along its length, rises a gentle swell surmounted by Metcalf's Canopy.

The swell gradually raises the ascending eye above the line of trees, at the Qutb Minar emerging in the skyline opposite. The flecks of white visible in breaks in the canopies reveal the tomb of Quli Khan that was converted by Charles Metcalf into a retreat and named Dilkhusha or Heart's Delight.

It's lost to time, not to memory. Bathed in winter sunshine the swell of green opposite sets off the aging plaster of the walled enclosure securing the Jamali-Kamali mosque and the mausoleum.

Solitary figures sit in silence on the grassy incline, soaking the Delhi sun in Mehrauli's old quarter, home to monuments largely resulting from Delhi's turbulent history following Prithviraj Chauhan's defeat in 1192 at the hands of the invading Afghan marauder Muhammad Ghori, paving the way for the Muslim conquest of India, beginning Delhi. Delighted squeals of children at cricket emerge from behind a patch of trees.

A wicket has fallen. The laughter ceases as the next batsman takes guard, much like the kings of yore. Before long the game will be over, and the sun will set, on the remains of an empire.

Picture: Embellished with pre-Mughal art: Jamali-Kamali. Photo: TH.