The
body of the building is of red sandstone with marble decorations. It
stands on two noble terraces. Humayun rests in the central hall under
an elaborately carved marble sarcophagus. The head of Dara Shikoh and
the bodies of many members of the royal family are interred in the
side rooms. After the fall of Delhi in September, 1857, the rebel
princes took refuge in this mausoleum. The story of their execution
by Hodson on the road to Delhi is well known, and has been the
occasion of much controversy.
In the original edition a small coloured illustration of this tomb,
from a miniature, is given on Plate 24. See Fergusson, ed. 1910, pl.
xxxiii; _H.F.A._, fig. 240; Fanshawe, p. 230 and plate.
16. The tragic history of Dara Shikoh, the elder brother, and
unsuccessful rival, of Aurangzeb, is fully given by Bernier. The
notes in Constable's edition of that traveller's work and those to
Irvine's _Storia do Mogor_ (John Murray, 1907, 1908) give many
additional particulars. Dara Shikoh was executed by Aurangzeb in
1659, and it is alleged that with a horrid refinement of cruelty, the
emperor, acting on the advice of his sister, Roshanara Begam, caused
the head to be embalmed and sent packed in a box as a present to the
old ex-emperor, Shah Jahan, the father of the three, in his prison at
Agra.
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