Dynastic History | Humayun's Tomb — Where the Last Emperor Surrendered

The first of the great Timurid garden-tombs in India was built here between 1565 and 1572, nearly three centuries before the day this memory is about. Who ordered it is reported two ways: UNESCO credits the patronage of Humayun's son Akbar, while Indian accounts credit Humayun's widow Bega Begum, said to have brought the architect Mirak Mirza Ghiyas from Herat. Both versions are in print, and the building carries no inscription that settles it.

In September 1857, with Delhi retaken by East India Company forces after the rising, Bahadur Shah Zafar left the Red Fort and came out here with part of his family. On 20 September Major William Hodson took his surrender at the tomb, on terms that spared his life. The next day Hodson shot three of the royal house — two of the emperor's sons and a grandson — at a city gate afterwards known as the Khooni Darwaza; Hodson acted on his own authority.

A military commission then sat in the Diwan-i-Khas of the Red Fort. Its printed record is titled "Proceedings on the Trial of Muhammad Bahadur Shah, Titular King of Delhi ... held at Delhi on the 27th day of January 1858, and following days"; the finding of guilt came on 9 March. He left Delhi under escort on 7 October 1858 and died at Rangoon on 7 November 1862, where he was buried the same day.

The complex is run by the ASI and has been restored in partnership with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture since 1997, the garden returned to its char-bagh plan in the early 2000s.

📸 Cover: The tomb photographed in 1858 by John Murray, with the Barber's Tomb in the foreground — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons