detail of Humayun's tomb

According to art historian Shobita Punja, "Humayun's tomb shows a very marked Persian influence, and naturally so because of the time he spent in the Persian court during his exile." The tomb's formal symmetry recalls Persia, and the bulbous dome is pure Islamic, covered in the native white marble instead of Central Asia's brilliant azure tiles. But the roof is crowned with small domed kiosks from Indian tradition; the star motifs and finials with inverted lotus are familiar Hindu designs; and the facade is covered with Delhi's distinctive red sandstone.

"Typical of Persian design, it's a square building where the corners have been cut off to make it octagonal," says Shobita, "and it's sitting right in the center of a four-portioned garden on a very high platform. You also have a double dome, which is a very interesting concept, because to gain the height – to have a really huge, inspiring dome from the exterior perspective – the dome would have to be much too large for the inside of the building, so there's an internal lower ceiling and a space between the outside dome and the inside dome. This was a new architectural concept in India."


"Also, in Hindu architecture, we use the engineering principle of the beam on top of two pillars, so a Hindu construction has lots and lots of pillars with beams across the top. And you can't make the space between the pillars too wide or the beam will collapse in the middle.
arches on Humayun's tomb
With Islam came the concept of the arch, where instead of one long piece of stone, many smaller pieces were supported by scaffolding and stuck together with mortar. With this principle you could span very wide spaces, so you had huge doorways and huge spaces within the building. And just that change – from the beam and pillar system to the arch system – transformed Indian architecture completely."

Designed by a Persian architect, Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, Humayun's tomb is both a refinement of the Indo-Islamic architectural style and the first monument of its kind to be built on such a massive scale. "So the really exciting building is Humayun's tomb," adds Shobita, "because it represents all the experimentation. Mistakes were made, but it's got a power and strength behind it because it's playing with new ideas for the first time. It's innovative."

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