Spooky Tomb

Hi again, to my favorite students in the world! It looks like I also have time to post what I did yesterday. Many of you know that when I'm not spending countless hours grading your memoirs, I like to play The Sims - World Adventures. (It counts as professional development for the video game design mini-course.) Well, today I got to play the game in real life! We visited the Tomb of Humayun, which was built in the sixteenth century to house the crypt of the Mughal Emperor Humayun (father of Akbar, who was thought to be the greatest of the Mughal's for his military accomplishments and his tolerance of other religions, and great-grandfather of Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal). The tomb was the inspiration for the Taj Mahal; today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Later in the day, we visited the Qutb Minar, also a World Heritage Site, and the oldest mosque in Delhi. To build it, Qutbuddin Aibak, the first Muslim ruler of Delhi, destroyed Hindu and Jain temples that were originally on the site, and used the materials to construct the new building.

This is the minar, or tower, of the mosque - it's a traditional kind of Islamic architecture.



Here is a close-up of one of the towers that Qutbuddin took from the Hindu and Jain temples. If you look carefully, you'll notice that some of the carvings appear to be missing. That's not because the artwork is over a thousand years old; Hindu temples often have images of gods and goddesses to help people pray. However, traditional Islamic art and architecture prohibits using images of human beings. (Think of all of the geometrical shapes you saw adorning the Tomb of Humayun.) So the Islamic carpenters chiseled off all of the images of people so they could still use these beautiful towers in their mosques.



And a larger shot of some of the towers.

Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humayun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humayun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutb_Minar

Questions to Consider:

1. Look up the word "palimpsest." How do you think this term applies to culture and architecture in India? (Then consider - in what ways is this concept present in our lives in the United States?)

2. One of my favorite parts of learning about a new culture is seeing how they handle death. You can tell a lot about a group of people by the way that they treated the deceased members of their community. What can we learn about Mughal India from Humayan's tomb? (Then consider - what do our death rites in America say about us?)