BY THE WAY.
At the gate of the thriving town of Shahpoor, a few miles distant,
they were met by the Governor of the fort, an officer of the Beejapoor
Government, and pressed to stay to dinner and such entertainment as
he could provide in the evening; and they consented, and an excellent
house was placed at their disposal. The town lay at the north-east
corner of the great mass of hills which Zóra had seen from the pass
by which they had entered the valley of Sugger; and the curious fort,
surmounting enormous bare masses of granite rock, stood out with
wonderful effect against the sky. Groups of soldiers appeared on the
bastions; the Royal flag of Beejapoor waved from the citadel, which
contained the excellent house of the Killadar, or commander, and it
was evident the place held a numerous garrison. Shahpoor had been
originally built by the Bahmuny Kings of Gulburgah, and contains many
of their inscriptions; and being a natural position of great strength,
in fact, impregnable, it served at once as a frontier fort and to keep
the Beydur population in check. There was a nautch in the evening, at
which our friends excused themselves on account of their religious
duties; and the long wide streets of the town being level and well
kept, Zóra and her grandfather had no difficulty in following their
hitherto practised vocation; and, as before, the invocations were sung,
and the wallet, now a consecrated one, carried from one end of the town
to the other.
The day following, they all went on together to Gogi, where the
mausoleum of the earlier Beejapoor Kings was situated. They found
it a thriving place, full of weavers, and the station of a large
body of cavalry, on account of the excellent forage with which the
neighbourhood abounded; and though by far the greater part were absent,
there were enough to form an imposing force, which received the holy
men as they arrived. Very interesting to them was the cemetery of the
great Kings, and the college attached to it, which was in daily use.[2]
It consists of one large interior, with chapels at the junction of the
sides of the octagon; and the architecture of this, as well as the
gateway and front of the building, is, perhaps, the finest specimen
of florid Gothic in the Dekhan, built entirely of black basalt,
exquisitely ornamented and finished. One by one the graves of the Kings
behind were shown to them by the attendant priests, and these, with the
tombs of their wives and some dependants, occupy a considerable area
enclosed by a wall. When they came to that of Ibrahim Adil Shah, under
whom our old friend had served, he kneeled down beside it and began to
sob and beat his breast. Zóra tried to soothe him, for not, even as
yet, knowing his history, she feared he had been taken suddenly ill,
and would fain have run for medicine; but he put his hand on her arm,
and said--
"I have not forgotten what you said to me when I called for vengeance
upon Osman Beg. Here lies one who did me injury more than thou knowest,
Zóra; at the remembrance of which all my worst passions rise into
active being. And yet I thank Thee, O hearer of prayer," he continued,
reverently raising his turban, "that Thou enablest me to say here I
do forgive thee, O King and Royal master, and pray thou mayest have
been accepted through His grace for all the good works thou didst to
thousands. Peace be with thee, and the blessings of the Most High!"
"What was he to thee, Abba?" asked Zóra, in wonder. "The attendant
tells me that there have been many Kings since he died."
"What he was to me, child, thou wilt know hereafter, perhaps soon now;
but no matter! In the great King Ibrahim I had a friend who loved me.
Since him there have been two Kings, and the present one, whom I may
be spared to see, bears his name. And yet, O once beloved master, my
heart is even now with thee in the grave, where I must follow thee; and
I bless Thee, O my Lord, that I have learned to forgive even through my
child."
On the western side of the cemetery was the embankment of an irrigation
lake of some considerable area, and the rain having fallen plentifully,
it was full of water. Then they went and sat by it, and the soft
south-west wind brought the tiny waves to their feet, and sighed in the
noble trees which shaded the cemetery and the college. They had brought
a slight refection with them, and ate it together, while the old
Dervish discoursed on the mysteries of holiness, or told many a tale of
the past, when he, in King Ibrahim's suite, had halted for the day and
performed ceremonies at the tombs of his ancestors, while the ground
for the college was being measured and the architect explained the work
he proposed to undertake. They attended the afternoon prayer in the
college, which was filled to overflowing with the people and soldiers
from the town; and our old friend addressed them in one of his loving,
persuasive sermons, in which, perhaps from the unlooked-for occurrences
of the day, he was even more eloquent than ever.
The Fatehas at the Kings' tombs could not be made ready that day, and
as their companions had no objection, but, indeed, the contrary, they
remained and formed a little procession to the cemetery, spending a
day of quiet peace, such as Zóra thoroughly enjoyed. She used to say
long afterwards, when she was an old woman, that her second day at
Gogi was one of the happiest of her life, because one of the most
thoughtful and impressive; and how sweet it had been to her to find her
beloved grandfather's mind softening to an habitual cheerfulness and
submission. "Truly," as he said constantly to her, "truly, child, I
feel as if the Lord were leading me in this Turreequt, and that, too,
by means of thee, O beloved! from the first."
The country from Gogi to Gulburgah is uninteresting, but very fertile
and well cultivated, and for some portion of their first march many
of the Royal cavalry and townspeople escorted them; for the fame of
our old friend had gone before him, and all were desirous of paying
him honour and receiving his blessing. Crossing the Bheema river by
the ferry at Ferozabad, Zóra saw the palace fort of the famous King
Feroze Shah, situated on a high bank of the river above one of its long
deep reaches. But it is now only a ruin, and was even then in poor
condition; and towards the close of the following day the minarets and
domes of the holy city of Gulburgah were in sight, and it was quickly
reached.
Nothing could persuade our old friend that it should be treated like
an ordinary town. His heart was full of reverence and thankfulness at
having reached the end of his pilgrimage in safety and honour, and his
new friend was equally reverential. So within a mile of the entrance
gate they dismounted from their litters and performed a prostration
ceremony by the wayside, and walked on together, Zóra, as was her
wont, dressed in her pilgrim's dress, leading her grandfather. Near
the gate the old man had his sheet spread for alms, and it was not
till the time for evening prayer was nigh that he arose and, guided by
one of the Musháekh's servants, followed his friend to the final place
of destination, which was in a suburb which belonged to the spiritual
Prince of the place, the descendant of the Geesoo Duráz family, who
reigned. The noise and bustle of the crowded Bazar was therefore
avoided.
Zóra, whose ideas of a city were of the most limited practical nature,
and to whom Sugger, Shahpoor, and Gogi had appeared immense, was
fairly confounded when, in company with her new friend, they ascended
to the terrace of the house which had been assigned to them by the
Prince. Before them were the fine mausoleums and domes of the original
Geesoo Duráz, and the cemeteries attached to them, the Prince's palace
and pretty gardens, with their fine rows of cyprus trees. In the
middle distance the massive group of the mausoleums of the Bahmuny
Kings, standing apart on an elevated piece of ground, and forming a
picturesque group, with the still populous city lying at their feet;
while to the left was the strong fort, with its regular fortifications,
and beyond a considerable artificial lake, which the King Feroze, the
merry Monarch of Dekhan history, had had constructed for his aquatic
amusements.
Gulburgah was, however, an ancient city, for when Zuffir Khan, the
Viceroy of the then Emperor of Dehly, Mahomed Toghluk, founded the
Bahmuny dynasty in A.D. 1347, the old Hindoo city was selected by him
as his capital in the Dekhan, and continued to be so until, in 1435,
nearly a century afterwards, a new city was built at Beeder, which was
finally adopted as the seat of the Royal Government. During a hundred
years of prosperity, however, under the early portion of the dynasty,
Gulburgah had become a rich and thriving city. It was the mart for
local produce and importations from the coast. Merchants of Arabia and
Persia, nay, of Turkey and the Levant, resided there, and the courts
of the early Bahmunies were magnificent and wealthy. Thus the city
was ornamented with many public buildings, caravanseras, and mosques,
almshouses, hospitals, and the like, and the fort constructed there was
by far the strongest and most regular in the Dekhan; and within it the
great mosque, which was to have been the exact counterpart of that at
Cordova, in Spain, was begun, and roofed in; but never completed.
All these principal edifices are still extant, but much decayed and
ruined. King Feroze's once superb palaces in the fort are masses of
shapeless ruins; but the mosque is as it was left by the masons and
architect, and could be finished were there anyone to undertake it, and
the fort is perfect. The mosques and other buildings in the city are
tolerably preserved; but the mausoleums of the once haughty Kings are
deserted, except by grazing cattle and goats, which shelter there from
the noon-day heat; and no one lives who bestows a lamp and its oil to
light at night the interior of these noble edifices.
At the period of the visit of our friends, the city belonged to the
kingdom of Beeder, which, after the extinction of the Bahmunies,
remained in possession of the capital. Gulburgah was one of the chief
cities of the kingdom, and was garrisoned by a large body of its
troops to guard the frontier of the Bheema river against the armies of
Beejapoor. If not, therefore, equal to its former prosperity, the city
was yet in good condition, and the religious and other edifices were in
perfect preservation and in constant use.
Nearly three hundred years have elapsed since the time we write of, and
Time, the spoiler, has been busy. The city has dwindled to a provincial
town; the buildings are extant, but many of them in decay. The tombs
of the Kings, so solidly built, are, perhaps, with the fine old fort,
the least changed of all, and the lake below the palace of King
Feroze sparkles as brightly as ever in the sun. The only building and
premises as perfect now as they were three hundred years ago are the
mausoleums of the Geesoo Duráz family, for their possessions have been
continued to them, and they live in their old prosperity and religious
honour, and the attendance of pilgrims at their shrine is as large now
as perhaps it ever was--as devout and as full of faith. But Gulburgah
has a new honour never dreamed of, truly, in the dim past. It is now
a station of the railway line from Bombay, and from it diverges one
branch to Madras and one to Hyderabad--the old capital of the Golconda
kingdom.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The college and cemetery are still perfect, but the former is used
no longer, and is forsaken except at the anniversaries of the several
deaths, when prayers are said in it. The tombs of the Kings are covered
by printed cotton cloths, which are renewed annually. Certain families
of weavers and printers in the town, descendants of the original
executers of these articles, still contribute them, and are paid by
the proceeds of certain lands and rice fields with which the tombs
were endowed at first, and certain payments from the Customs dues; and
to the last the Rajahs of Shorapoor were the hereditary almoners of
this bounty, and disbursed it regularly on every anniversary either in
person or by deputy. Gogi now belongs to the Government of His Highness
the Nizam, and it may be hoped that the ancient custom has not been
discontinued, and that the interesting and beautiful remains have been
kept in repair.