Deepa Krishnan
I was strolling through the Qutb Complex with my friend, when we came across a little octagonal tomb set prettily in a separate courtyard.
There are many grand monuments inside the Qutb Complex – the tall Qutb Minar, the grand Quwwat-ul-Islam (Might of Islam) mosque, and the ornate Alai Darwaza. Most were built in the early 13th century, by the Slave Dynasty. But this small tomb was added later, in the 16th century.
Who was he, I wondered, this man whose tomb lay next to some of the grandest structures in Delhi? Why was he such a big deal? A Sultan perhaps, or some great nobleman? I looked at the inscription – this was the tomb of a priest, a man named Imam Zamin. It took quite some reading before I found out who he was.
Imam Zamin was a Sayyid, a word that is used to describe male descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. The Sayyids trace their lineage back to Hassan and Hussein, the two grandsons of the Prophet, starting from the 7th century.
In the sixteenth century, Sayyid Imam Zamin came to India from Central Asia (Turkestan), during the Sultanate of Sikandar Lodi. In his book The Delhi that No One Knows, R V Smith says that the Sayyid was appointed Chief Imam of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, and that Sikandar Lodi looked to him for spiritual guidance. The Imam, who was a Sufi, preached disregard for worldly achievements, asking Lodi to strive instead for unification for the divine Oneness. Continue reading →
Mehrauli, a suburb of Delhi was in the news last week as the site of a bomb blast that killed three persons and injured about a dozen people. In this same late monsoon month going back about 170 years, starting in early 1800s, the same Mehrauli, a suburb of Delhi, has been the site of the glorious annual communal harmony event called, “Phool Walon Ki Sair”.
