Tomb Buildings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa datable approximately to the Time of the Mughal Emperor Jalal ad-Din Akbar

Abstract

After the death of Humāyūn his elder son, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Akbar (1556 – 1605 CE) ascended the Mughal throne and established his capital at Agra. Akbar mostly used red sandstone in the construction of forts and palaces. His trabeate mode of construction shows restrained ornamentation (Sharma, 1964, 307). Most of his time was spent in consolidating his power so that he could merely initiate the construction of a fort at Agra and at some other places. But even these projects could not create an atmosphere congenial for architectural activities. The tombs approximately attributed to the reign of Akbar in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (Shakir, 2012, 83) were built by nobles, governors or ancestors of the deceased on their own. These include the tombs of Sayyid Hanāna at Chiṛā, Sakhi Ṣāḥib and Shaikh Qutb ad-Dīn (Rahman, 1984, 107). It is unfortunate that no inscriptional record has survived in these buildings leaving as at the merely of a less trustworthy stylistic analysis. These are discussed below.