Travel to Northern India: Chini-ka-Rauzah The name China-ka-
Rauzah, or tiled mausoleum, is a nickname for the tomb of Shah
Jehan's vizier, Shukrullah Shirazi, who built the tomb while he
was still alive. As the British left India with hundreds of
European buildings, so the Moguls left them with Persian ones.
As the name Shirazi suggests, Shukrullah was Persian. Besides,
the moghuls had acclimated themselves to Persian styles even
before they came to India from what is now Uzbekistan. Did
Shukrullah despise India? You might infer as much from this
building which avoids anything Indian, including pillars and
lintels, brackets, and chhatris--those little umbrellas so often
perched in stone at the corner of monumental Indian structures.
What Shukrullah built, on the other hand, was a riot of color,
best compared perhaps, at least within South Asia, to the Mosque
of Wazir Khan in Lahore. The approach today is a fine
introduction to the local mastery of sandstone. Shukrullah's
tomb. Where's the tile, you ask? The s