Place · Mughal emperor's tomb · India
Aurangzeb's Tomb, Khuldabad
Also known as Aurangzeb Alamgir, Aurangzeb's Tomb, Aurangzeb's Tomb — Khuldabad, Khuldabad
The 1707 tomb of Aurangzeb at Khuldabad in Aurangabad district, Maharashtra — the deliberately spartan tomb of the sixth Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1618-1707) in the Chishti Sufi dargah complex of Zainuddin Shirazi. Aurangzeb specifically asked to be buried in the simplest possible grave — an uncovered marble screen open to the sky, within the dargah of a Sufi master whom he venerated. The tomb's austerity reflects Aurangzeb's own ascetic sensibility (he lived on a tiny personal expense throughout his 49-year reign) and his explicit rejection of the Mughal garden-tomb tradition that had culminated in his father Shah Jahan's Taj Mahal. The grave is open to the elements with no roof. The current grave is maintained by the Khuldabad Municipal Council. ASI partial protection since 1951. The post-2015 political controversy about renaming the complex (dropping Aurangzeb's name) has been ongoing.
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.000, 75.190
Connections (7)
- Tomb in townKhuldābād
Aurangzeb chose burial at Khuldabad in a plain open grave beside the Chishti saints he venerated, paid for from money he had earned copying the Quran, with no dome over it. The town sits four kilometres from the Grishneshwar jyotirlinga and from Ellora's Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves — so the emperor most associated with religious severity lies within a short walk of the most thoroughly shared sacred landscape in the Deccan.
- CampaignBijapur (Vijayapura)
Aurangzeb took Bijapur in September 1686 after a fifteen-month siege conducted in person, ending the Adil Shahi line; Sikandar Adil Shah was pensioned to Daulatabad. The annexation doubled the empire's Deccan territory and its costs, and the Maratha war that followed kept the emperor in the field until he died twenty-one years later and was buried a few miles from this camp.
- CampaignGolconda
Golconda fell in September 1687 after eight months, when an officer was bribed to open a postern; Abul Hasan Tana Shah was imprisoned at Daulatabad for the rest of his life. The Qutb Shahi treasury, the diamond trade and the Telugu and Dakhni literary patronage all ended together, and Aurangzeb's own strategists had argued the conquest was not worth the garrison.
- CampaignAhmadnagar Fort
Ahmednagar was the first of the five sultanates to be annexed, by Shah Jahan in 1636, and the last place Aurangzeb slept: he died in camp outside it on 3 March 1707 and was carried to Khuldabad. The Mughal Deccan project begins and ends within sight of the same fort, seventy-one years apart.
- CampaignKhushāl Khān Khattak
Khushāl Khān served Shāh Jahān, holding the Attock road for the empire, and was imprisoned by Aurangzeb at Delhi and then Ranthambore. On his release he spent the 1670s in open revolt, trying to weld the Pashtun tribes into one force against the emperor and writing about the attempt as it failed — his bitterest verse is about Pashtun disunity, not about Mughal power. Aurangzeb came north himself in 1674 and spent a year and a half at Hasan Abdal managing the frontier, which is the measure of what the revolt cost.
- Site adjacencyZainuddin Shirazi Dargah, Khuldabad
The Zainuddin Shirazi dargah and the tomb of Aurangzeb stand within the walled Sufi burial town of Khuldabad, a few steps apart in the same compound-rich settlement on the Deccan plateau; they are neighbouring sites of Khuldabad rather than one inside the other.
- Buried atAurangzeb
Aurangzeb was buried at the Chishti dargah of Zainuddin Shirazi at Khuldabad, about twenty-five kilometres northwest of Aurangabad, as he had instructed — in a plain earthen grave open to the sky, financed by caps he had sewn himself and copies of the Quran he had made for sale. The deliberate humility of the burial stands against the architectural extravagance of his father's reign; the dargah's walled compound is the Chishti silsila's Deccan anchor.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Tomb of Aurangzeb”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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