Place · sultanate tombs · India
Lodi Gardens tombs
Also known as Lodhi Garden
The 15th-century tomb group in central Delhi's Lodhi Gardens, holding the Sayyid and Lodi sultan tombs (1434-1517) along with those of their nobles. The Bada Gumbad (1494, octagonal), Shisha Gumbad (1489, square), Mohammed Shah Sayyid's tomb (1444), Sikander Lodi's tomb (1517) and the ancillary mosques together established the two tomb-type vocabulary — octagonal verandah-tomb (for royalty) and square unornamented tomb (for nobility) — that the Mughals inherited and elaborated into Humayun's Tomb (1572) and ultimately the Taj Mahal (1653). The 90-acre garden was laid out as a landscape park by Lady Willingdon in 1936 (named Willingdon Park until 1947) and renamed Lodi Gardens at Independence. One of Delhi's most-used public parks.
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.593, 77.219
Connections (3)
- Architectural modelHumayun's Tomb
The Sayyid and Lodi tombs in what is now Lodi Gardens set the two types — octagonal with a verandah, and square with a high dome — that the Mughals inherited and enlarged. Humayun's tomb takes the square type, doubles its scale, adds a Persian charbagh and a marble dome, and thereby invents the form that runs through Akbar's tomb at Sikandra to the Taj.
- Power passed toPanipat
Ibrahim Lodi was killed at Panipat on 21 April 1526 and the Delhi sultanate ended with him, three generations after his grandfather Bahlul founded it. Babur's field artillery and the tulughma flanking manoeuvre beat numbers roughly four times his own. The dynasty's monuments in the Lodi gardens are what survives of a state that ended in a single morning.
- Site withinDelhi
Lodi Gardens tombs lies within Delhi — the two sites sit about 3 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Lodi Gardens tombs 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.
On these journeys
Sources
History of India — Wikipedia
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