Humayun's Tomb in Delhi, Which UNESCO Listed in 1993 as the First Garden Tomb on the Subcontinent, Took 200,000 Days of Master Craftsmen's Work to Restore Between 2007 and 2013

UNESCO put Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi on the World Heritage List in 1993 under criteria (ii) and (iv), and its short description calls the tomb, built in 1570, the first garden-tomb on the Indian subcontinent. A marble double dome 42.5 metres high rises over a red sandstone mausoleum in the middle of a four-part garden. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) restored it between 2007 and 2013, and the Trust says the work took more than 200,000 days of labour by master craftsmen.

What UNESCO inscribed

The tomb stands within a 27.04 hectare property on UNESCO’s record, with a 53.21 hectare buffer zone. The 1993 listing covered the tomb and its gardens. A minor boundary change inscribed in 2016 added 5.44 hectares holding more 16th century garden tombs, and UNESCO’s current text describes a whole ensemble that includes Nila Gumbad, Isa Khan’s tomb, Bu Halima’s tomb, Afsarwala’s tomb, the Barber’s Tomb and the Arab Serai, where the craftsmen who built the tomb stayed.

ICOMOS, the advisory body that evaluated the site in October 1993, recommended criterion (ii) because Humayun’s Tomb is the first garden tomb on the subcontinent and brought in architectural innovations that led to the Taj Mahal. It recommended criterion (iv) because the garden tomb is the symbol of the Mughal dynasty that unified most of the subcontinent.

UNESCO’s text calls the tomb the “dormitory of the Mughals”, because over 150 members of the family are buried in its cells. It also places the tomb beside the shrine of the 14th century Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Burial near a saint’s grave was considered auspicious, UNESCO says, so seven centuries of tomb building made the area the densest group of medieval Islamic buildings in India.

The emperor, the widow and the architect

Humayun was the second Mughal ruler, according to Britannica, and reigned from 1530 to 1540 and again from 1555 to 1556. Sher Shah of Sur defeated him at Chausa in 1539 and Kannauj in 1540. He reached Iran in 1544, took Kandahar in 1545, recovered Delhi and Agra in July 1555, and died in January 1556 after a fall on the staircase of his library in the Purana Qila.

ICOMOS’s 1993 evaluation says his widow Biga Begum, also called Hajji Begum, built the tomb in 1569 to 1570, fourteen years after his death, for 1.5 million rupees, and that the architect was Mirak Mirza Ghiyath. The ASI gives the same cost as 15 lakh rupees and the same architect, a Persian. AKTC’s 2003 brief says Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, as it spells him, came from Herat, in present-day Afghanistan.

The sources name the patron differently. The ASI calls her Hamida Banu Begam, also known as Haji Begam. Britannica names her Bega Begum and describes her as Akbar’s stepmother, and Incredible India calls Bega Begum Humayun’s first wife and chief consort. UNESCO’s own statement says only that the tomb was built with the patronage of Humayun’s son Akbar, whose administration is covered in the article on the Mughal state.

The dates differ as well:

• ICOMOS (1993), the ASI and Britannica give 1569, or 1569 to 1570.
• UNESCO’s summary says 1570, and its later statement of value says the 1560s.
• AKTC’s 2003 brief says begun around 1565 and built over nearly a decade.
• Delhi Tourism and a 2013 IANS report say 1565, and Incredible India says it was commissioned in 1558.

Every one of these dates falls after Humayun’s death in 1556 and within Akbar’s reign.

A tomb in the middle of a paradise garden

The ASI describes a square garden divided into four main parterres by causeways, with shallow water channels running along the middle of the causeways. A high enclosure wall has two double-storeyed gateways, on the west and the south. A pavilion (baradari) stands in the centre of the east wall and a bath chamber (hammam) in the centre of the north wall. UNESCO says the layout is a char bagh, a four-quadrant garden representing the four rivers of paradise in the Quran.

The mausoleum stands on a terrace the ASI puts at 7 metres high, over a series of cells. UNESCO describes an irregular octagon in plan, clad in red sandstone with white and black inlaid marble borders, and says the domes of its central chhatris, the pillared kiosks around the main dome, carry glazed ceramic tiles. AKTC’s 2003 brief gives a platform 120 metres square and a total height of 47 metres, which is not the same measurement as UNESCO’s 42.5 metres for the dome.

The ASI reads the building as a mix of Persian and Indian features. It credits the arched alcoves, corridors and high double dome to Persian practice and the kiosks, which give a pyramid outline from a distance, to Indian tradition. Britannica explains that the inner dome is hemispherical, which lets the outer dome be shaped and raised independently. It adds that the plinth, which houses the burial chamber, became a feature of later Mughal buildings, including the Taj Mahal.

One claim is read differently. UNESCO’s description and ICOMOS call Humayun’s Tomb the first garden tomb on the subcontinent, and ICOMOS’s criterion (iv) wording says it is the first important example in India. The ASI says Sikandar Lodi’s tomb was the first garden-tomb built in India, and that Humayun’s tomb set the pattern that the Taj Mahal completed.

The garden comes back, 1997 to 2003

The Aga Khan pledged the garden restoration in 1997, the 50th anniversary of independence, according to the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). AKTC’s April 2003 brief calls it the first privately funded restoration of a World Heritage Site in India. It ran under the National Culture Fund with the ASI, began on the 12 hectare garden site in 2000 and finished in March 2003, at a stated cost of US$650,000.

The brief lists what the money bought: 3,000 truckloads of earth removed (12,000 cubic metres) to restore the original garden levels, 3,000 metres of hand-dressed red sandstone slabs cut by some 60 stonecutters to edge the water channels, 128 ground-water recharge pits as part of a rainwater-harvesting scheme, and 2,500 trees and plants, including mango, lemon, neem, hibiscus and jasmine, chosen according to Mughal texts. Excavation turned up aqueducts, terracotta pipes, fountain mechanisms, wells, siphons and copper pipes, which showed where the original water ran. UNESCO’s statement says the effort ended with flowing water in the garden again.

The ICOMOS mission of 1993 had found the gardens in need of attention, drinks stalls inside the enclosure and graffiti on the tomb at a level it called unacceptable. Ratish Nanda of AKTC writes that restoring the water led to a 1,000 per cent rise in visitor numbers.

The mausoleum itself, 2007 to 2013

AKTC began conservation of the mausoleum in 2007, co-funded by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and carried out in partnership with the ASI. Its condition assessment found the structure relatively stable but badly worn in its materials, with Mughal details covered by 20th century repairs in modern materials. A conservation plan followed in 2008. The ASI’s core committee held 43 reviews of the work. The tomb stayed open throughout, because AKTC puts annual visits at almost two million.

The quantities come from AKTC’s brief and the AKDN’s completion note:

• A million kilograms of concrete, 40 centimetres thick, was removed by hand from the roof, and cement plaster up to 15 centimetres thick came off the gateways, the pavilions and the ground-level facade of the mausoleum.
• 21,000 square metres of lime plaster went on, mainly inside the double dome and on the 68 small mausoleums at ground level. The lime was ground in a lime wheel with additives such as molasses, egg white, fruit pulp or marble dust, and the final coat was one millimetre thick.
• 5,400 square metres of terrace sandstone was reset to its original patterns and slopes, and 3,700 square metres of plinth stone was lifted. Some blocks weighed over 2,500 kilograms and needed up to 15 craftsmen to move.
• The brief counts 42 collapsed arched recesses of the enclosure wall reconstructed, while AKTC’s website says 40 arches.
• 760 square metres of the marble dome’s outer surface was repaired.

The roof tiles took longest. AKTC’s brief says four years of experiments, guided by master craftsmen from Uzbekistan who trained young people from the neighbouring Nizamuddin Basti in tile making. Nanda’s paper says more than three years and 20,000 samples before the right colours were made. The ICOMOS evaluation of 2016 adds that the programme re-established parts of the structures and enclosure walls that had been demolished in 1989.

On 18 September 2013 the restored complex was inaugurated by the Prime Minister, the Union Minister of Culture, the chairman of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Aga Khan. The Prime Minister’s speech, released by the Press Information Bureau, credits the project with 200,000 man-days of employment for master craftsmen and calls the public-private partnership a good model. The AKDN counts six years of conservation; the Prime Minister said almost seven.

What the work found, and what it cost

Under the cement, AKTC says, the crews restored the star-shaped plaster patterns on the faces of the 68 small mausoleums, where 160 family members lie, including Dara Shikoh. On the roof they uncovered buried architectural elements.

The finial on the dome was studied too. AKTC reports that analysis of its copper vessels found 99.42 per cent pure copper in 8 inch strips joined with a toothed joint, along with inscriptions that mention earlier repairs. On 30 May 2014 a sandstorm with winds above 150 kilometres an hour snapped the finial’s wooden core, which AKTC says had virtually turned to dust after decades of rainwater. The original vessels were to be repaired and displayed in the site’s interpretation centre. A traditional workshop in Shahjahanabad, Delhi made 11 copper vessels to match them, and Titan Company supplied the copper sheet and the gold. Nanda puts the gold at six kilograms of 24 carat.

None of the AKTC, AKDN or PIB pages opened for this article gives a rupee total for the 2007 to 2013 work. Nanda lists grants for the wider Nizamuddin project from the Ministry of Tourism, the Delhi Development Authority, the Tata Trusts, the Ford Foundation and the governments of the United States and Germany, among others. For comparison, the ASI and ICOMOS give 15 lakh rupees for the 16th century construction.

Who lies here, and 1857

The count of graves varies with the source: over 150 on UNESCO’s record, 160 in AKTC’s account and over 100 on Incredible India. AKTC adds that six later Mughal emperors are buried here and that Akbar made nine recorded visits to the tomb. The ASI says Bahadur Shah Zafar took refuge here with three princes during the 1857 uprising, an episode covered in the article on the British reprisals.

Visiting

The ASI lists opening from sunrise to 9 pm, while Incredible India and Delhi Tourism say sunrise to sunset. Children below 15 enter free. The ASI lists Rs 50 cash or Rs 35 online for visitors from the SAARC and BIMSTEC countries, and Rs 600 cash or Rs 550 online for other foreign visitors. Its page does not separately list a fee for Indian citizens, and the line for other foreign visitors reads “Indian Rs. 600”, which looks like a slip. Delhi Tourism’s older page gives Rs 40 for Indians and Rs 600 for foreigners. Fees change, so the ASI’s current notice is the one to check.

The Ministry of Tourism’s compendium, drawing on ASI data, counts 1,005,606 domestic and 158,043 foreign ticketed visitors at Humayun’s Tomb in 2024-25, up from 886,740 and 116,904 in 2023-24. The foreign figure is the fourth highest among centrally ticketed ASI monuments.