Ustad Ahmad Lahori (c.1580–1649)[1], also known as Ahmad Ma'mar Lahori, was a Mughal era architect and engineer during the reign of emperorShah Jahan. He along with Ustad Hameed laid the foundations of the Red Fort Red fort in Delhi, an World Heritage site.[2]
Little is authoritatively known about Ahmad Lahori or the extent of his work as the identity of the architect or architects of the his era are not definitely known because histories of Shah Jahan's reign emphasize the emperor's own personal involvement. In the Islamic world a building was in the first instance associated with its patron and Shah Jahan had himself represented as his own architect.[3]
Unlike Shah Jahan's painters, who were allowed to sign their works and to include their self-portraits. and not a single portrait of an architect from that era including that of Ahmad Lahori is known.[3]
Most information about him comes from a hagiography written by his own son called Diwan-e-Muhandis, however the information in it is uncorroborated by any other official or unofficial record or inscription beyond him having worked as one of the people laying the foundation of the Red Fort, in records such as the Padshahnama when its attributing people by name on work done on the Taj Mahal there are no mentions of Ahmad Lahori.[3]
He is supposed to have belonged to an illustrious family of architects and civil engineers. according to the hagiography written by his son, he was given the title of Nadir-ul-Asar ("wonder of the age") by Shah Jahan.[4]
Even after his family's migration to Delhi, his family is still referred to by the epithet "Lahori".[9] In Muslim India, Lahori was used as a synonym for Punjabi by historic writers: Amir Khusro uses it to refer to the spoken language of the people of Punjab, and the Mughal Emperor Jahangir writes, "In fact they are pure Lahauris and speak the same language."[10][11] However it was also common in Muslim India to keep names of cities they were attached to irrespective of origin, such as Amir Khusro an paternal Turk called as Amir Khusro Dehlvi (of Delhi) and so other theories challenge this origin and portray him as having been from a family of Timurid Architects from Herat[4] that moved to Lahore.
The extent of his work is not known as Shah Jahan's court histories emphasize his personal involvement in the construction, and it is true that, more than any other Mughal emperor, he showed the greatest interest in building new magnificent buildings and holding daily meetings with his architects and supervisors. The court chronicler, Abdul Hamid Lahori, writes that Shah Jahan would make "appropriate alterations to whatever the skillful architects had designed after considerable thought and would ask the architects competent questions."[12]
Ustad Ahmad Lahori's deposit of "Five Qasidas" in Kitab Khana Amrao
In writings by Lahori's son, Lutfullah Muhandis, two architects are mentioned by name: Ustad Ahmad Lahori[13][14] and Mir Abd-ul Karim.[15] Ustad Ahmad Lahori laid the foundations of the Red Fort at Delhi, which was built between 1638 and 1648. Mir Abd-ul Karim counted as the favourite architect of the previous emperor, Jahangir, and is mentioned as a supervisor, together with Makramat Khan,[15] for the construction of the Taj Mahal.[16][17]
Little is known about Ahmad Lahori's work from neutral sources beyond him having been one of the people that laid the foundations of the Red Fort, as Shah Jahan is credited to be the supreme architect of the things built under him. What is recorded is that the planning of Shah Jahan's buildings was carried out by a team of architects who worked under his close supervision. He held daily meetings with them, and, Abdul Hamid Lahori says, made 'appropriate alterations to whatever the skillful architects designed after many thoughts, and asked competent questions' The emperor's historians claim that most of the buildings were designed by his "precious self" .The credit for his buildings, even for their overall concept, had to go to Shah Jahan as theSupreme Architect.[3]
According to the Hagiography written by his son. Ahmad Lahori was learned in the arts of geometry, arithmetic and astronomy. According to his son Lutf Allah Muhandis, he was familiar with the Euclid's Elements and Ptolemy's Almagest.[4]
There is no solid evidence he worked in any major capacity as claimed he did on the Taj Majal beyond the hagiography unlike the many named in documentation such as the Padshahnama,[3]
He is named to have laid the foundations of Red Fort along with Ustad Hameed of whose construction Makramat Khan was named as being the chief overseer.[20]
Ahmad Lahori is popularly misattributed to as having been involved with the development of Jama Masjid. He died in 1649, a year before the foundations of mosque were laid.[21] the misattribution came from a 2015 book called the BLACK TAJ MAHAL: The Emperor's Missing Tomb by I.N Khan[21] which was in turn quoting another source that explicitly made it apparent it was conjecture on the author's part with no evidence - "Although there is no documentary evidence, it is possible that before his death"[22]
Because of the nature of architectural work in Shah Jahan era's and him being credited as the supreme architect, in the remaining vague areas a lot of names pops up with different agendas,[3]
"The lack of information about the identity of the architect of the Taj Mahal has led to all kinds off fanciful speculation. In the 19th century, local informants of the British fabricated the story of an architect from Turkey named 'Ustad Isa', and came up with fictional lists of workmen and materials from all parts of Asia.[3]More attractive to the British was the claim of the Spanish Augustinian friar Sebastian Manrique, who saw the Taj under construction in 1640-41, that an Italian goldsmith named 'Geronimo Veroneo' had prepared the design" for the aims of White Supremacy[3]
the name of Ahmad Lahori is now similarly used for Pakistani Nationalism to claim monuments like Taj Mahal that fell in another country.[23]
A photograph from around 1860 depicts a tomb, believed to be that of Ustad Ahmad Lahori, located in the Ambar complex of Khuldabad[24]Ahmad Lahori is mentioned in Indu Sundaresan's Washington State Book Award-winning novel, The Twentieth Wife.[25]
^ abcdefghKoch, Ebba (2006). The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra. Thames & Hudson. p. 89.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
^Chanchal Dadlani (2016). "Innovation, Appropriation, and Representation: Mughal Architectural Ornament in the Eighteenth Century". In Gülru Necipoglu; Alina Payne (eds.). Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local. Princeton University Press. p. 183. ISBN9780691167282.
Asher, Catherine Ella Blanshard (1992) [2003]. The New Cambridge History of India, Vol I:4 - Architecture of Mughal India (Hardback) (First published 1992, reprinted 2001, 2003 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 368. ISBN0-521-26728-5.
