A walk from Seven Tombs to the Qutb Shahi Funerary Park that takes visitors back in time Premium

Mohammed Saleem crafts copper finials for Qutb Shahi Tombs Complex, part of Aga Khan Trust's conservation project in Hyderabad.

Mohammed Saleem, a coppersmith, works out of a small workshop in the rear portion of the Jama Masjid near Chauk in Hyderabad.

In 2017, he was drafted by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture to create the copper finial for one of the tombs at the 17th-century Qutb Shahi Tombs Complex. He set about the task in his workshop with a small piece of the finial of Hakim’s Tomb that was recovered during an excavation in the crypt of Mohammed Quli Qutb Shah.

By February 2018, Mohammed Saleem stood atop the tomb to hammer and fit in the 14th piece of the finial, which shimmered like it did when the tomb was first built in the late 17th century. Mr. Saleem is just one of the craftsmen who have contributed to the transformation of Qutb Shah Tombs Complex over the past decade in Hyderabad.

“Craftsmen’s wages form 70-80% of the conservation budget. In the process, the Aga Khan Trust is improving the quality of life of the community. We have a crafts-based approach to conservation. In Hyderabad, we have created a million man hours of work in this public-private-partnership effort,” says Ratish Nanda, Chief Executive Officer of Aga Khan Trust for Culture as he and his team prepare to celebrate 10 years of work.

“I first saw the site sometime in the summer of 2010 and we carried out an intense study documenting everything for 18 months before the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by the State government on January 9, 2013,” says Mr. Nanda. On Sunday, July 28, Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy is scheduled to grace the ‘completion ceremony’ as is Prince Rahim of the Aga Khan family. The participation of the Chief Minister will signify continued political backing for the conservation effort which began before the formation of a separate State of Telangana, and continued under the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) regime and is now backed by the Congress government.

Instead of a common entrance with a tin-shack ticket counter and a pathway that gets muddy during the monsoon, the Chief Minister and the guests will enter through a new stone pathway that matches the grandeur of the funerary park. It is a graduated entry, with the tour beginning with the Badi Baoli or the large stepwell on one side, and the green-domed Sultan Mohammed’s tomb on the other side.

For the occasional Hyderabad visitor, it is quite a change. From a rundown heritage site frequented by lovers and others wanting some serenity to a restored funerary park and carefully conserved monuments that are drawing attention of heritage experts, it has been quite a journey. The conservation effort also showed that formal funerary gardens were not a creation of Mughals, and that the Qutb Shahis had evolved them independently. This discovery was made during an archaeological dig of the enclosing garden wall of the first ruler Sultan Quli who reigned between 1518 and 1543. While the tombs get a pride of place and are talked about, the restoration effort has created a green buffer of 40 acres with over 12,000 trees and has led to deepening and use of six wells, making the site self-reliant in terms of water usage.