Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGN OF MULTAN
complicity in yet another Mongol invasion of Multan and on the
pretext of this wholly fabricated charge of high treason Baha’uddin
Zakaria’s great-grandson was put to death. From his martyrdom
began the decline of the khānqāh in Multan, and the centre of
the Suhrawardiyya fraternity shifted to Ucch, where Jalaluddin
Surkhposh Bukhari’s descendants were in charge.
The cult of Baha’uddin Zakariya, Rukn-i ‘ālam and other members
of this family is one of the most authoritative in today’s Pakistan. In
Multan, which is indeed famous for its tombs, reminders of the saints
are everywhere – from the fort mound from where the city came into
being to the Baha’uddin Zakariya University in one of the new
localities. Rukn-i ‘ālam’s tomb, a universally recognized masterpiece
of Islamic architecture of the times of the Delhi Sultanate, dominates
the city landscape, being its highest point, and from where Multan
can be seen spread before the eyes. The dome of the tomb, being
twenty metres in diameter, is the second largest in the subcontinent.
Ghiyathuddin Tughluq, who had earmarked it for himself, erected the
tomb in the year 1320. However, Muhammad bin Tughluq arranged
otherwise, having buried the father in Tughluqabad (near Delhi), he
gave the grand mausoleum to his favourite saint.
Ruknuddin’s mazār is a model of the so-called Multani architectural
style, no analogies of which exist in South Asia. It is a three-storeyed,
domed building, consisting of octagons of different diameters, placed
one over the other. Eight round buttresses that taper gracefully upward
support the lower tier, built of delicate salmon-pink bricks. They
resemble the Central Asian corner columns, or guldasta and impart
a powerful, heavy monumentality to the base of the mausoleum. The
upper octagon, smaller in diameter, is thickly inlaid on pink
brickwork with bands of blue and turquoise glazed tiles decorated
with a floral pattern: these are the window frames and wall
medallions. The eight arched openings of the second tier look like
windows from below; actually they are arched doors, through which
one can reach the roof of the lower octagon, enclosed with a fretted
parapet. The roof of the upper tier is decorated with small cupolas
having dark blue tops, which in their shape and colour are a replica
of the tower cupolas of the lower tier, and they in their turn represent
variations of décor of the main sphere of the mausoleum. Two
wooden fretwork windows let light in at ground level, while eight
windows of the second tier illuminate the inside of the huge dome.
Ruknuddin’s tomb is one of the few ritual structures in the
subcontinent which has not been totally rebuilt since the fourteenth
century, yet at the same time it looks as if it has been erected recently.
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