Shrine of Hazrat Baha-ud-Din Zakariya

The tomb of Bahauddin Zakariya stands in central Multan in the northeast corner of the former fort at the heart of the old city. Built in the early-mid 13th century, it represents the earliest example of a distinctive Multani style of architecture which, according to Mumtaz, `with its square plan, octagonal drum, a central dome and corner minarets, establishes a type of mausoleum building which was to endure in the lower Indus valley for 700 years. Although the mausoleum was largely destroyed by British shelling in the siege of 1848, it was faithfully restored upon its original foundations by Makhdum Shah Mahmud a few years later. The tomb houses the mortal remains of Bahauddin Zakariya (1170-1262 CE), a noted Sufi wali (saint). He was also the grandfather of Rukn-e Alam, a noted saint in his own right who is buried at a magnificent mausoleum 500 m to the southwest. The essential features of the tomb are its combination of three geometric forms, a square, an octagon, and a circle which, coupled with its corner minarets and battered walls, synthesized a style of Indo-Islamic architecture that remains influential to the present day. None of these features by themselves were new for instance, Iranian mausoleum had long made use of octagonal and square bases topped with domes, and the nearby tomb of Khaliq Walid already incorporated corner towers and battered walls, but Zakariya`s tomb was the first to combine all of these features into an enduring memorial. The tomb also, according to Suvorova, features the earliest use of blue tile work on the Indian subcontinent; a tradition that may have been imported from Khorana or perhaps Central Asia where blue tiles were beginning to be used in Bukhara and other nearby areas in the decades prior to the Mongol conquests. The base of the tomb measures 15.9 m on each side and its dome rises 23.6 m above ground level. The monument is enclosed in a vast quadrangle measuring 62 x 79 m with entrances on all sides but the north.