Place · Mughal marble tomb · India
Chausath Khamba, Nizamuddin
The 1623 marble sixty-four-pillar pavilion at the Nizamuddin dargah complex, built as the mausoleum of Mirza Aziz Koka — Akbar's foster-brother and the son of Jiji Anga, Akbar's wet-nurse. Aziz Koka died in Agra in 1624 and his body was brought to Delhi and interred in the pavilion his family had built for him. The structure's open-air sixty-four marble pillars with cusped arches, elevated plinth and perforated jali screens make it a transitional work between the austere early Mughal tomb style and the ornamented Shah Jahan period that followed. The 2013 Aga Khan Trust for Culture restoration restored its white marble. The pavilion sits in the Nizamuddin heritage zone with the Nizamuddin dargah, Humayun's Tomb and the Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan tomb.
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.592, 77.242
Connections (2)
- Site withinDelhi
Chausath Khamba, Nizamuddin lies within Delhi — the two sites sit about 4 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Chausath Khamba, Nizamuddin is one of the specific sites that give Delhi its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.
- Life routeV.O. Chidambaram Pillai
V.O. Chidambaram Pillai's 1906 Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company operated out of the Thoothukudi (Tuticorin) port on the Pamban Strait coast. His 1908 Coral Mill strike at Thoothukudi was one of India's first organised strikes. The adjacent Pamban coastline (where Pillai sailed his two ships SS Gallia and SS Lavoe between 1906-1908) frames the setting of the SSNC's brief and heroic challenge to the British India Steam Navigation Company monopoly.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Chausath Khamba”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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