Delhi wasn't Humayun's capital city: when his relict built his tomb there in the mid-16c she chose the site because it was adjacent to the much-visited shrine of a late-13/early-14c Sufi saint. Nizam-ud-din's tomb would almost fit into one of the alcoves at the base of the emperor's tomb. Rebuilt several times, and gradually surrounded by various other small shrines and a mosque, Nizam-ud-din's entire complex could sit in Madeira Hall with room to spare.
Around the sacred site in the medieval period a mini-city naturally grew, and to reach the shrine hidden in the center (the way Chartres, or Salisbury used to be buried by the town) one must negotiate a maze of alleys, averaging four feet wide and thronged with folk. Ramshackle stalls line the warren, selling starched white prayer-caps, flowers to offer the saint, beads and bangles, and a lot more. Food is being cooked, and on the mounds of dough or raw meat flies (more numerous even than the humans) stroll unhindered. Below the vats and grills the pavement is indescribably dirty: on my way out (luckily after resuming shoes) I narrowly missed stepping on a dead rat lying in the middle of the path. Chickens (in cages) and tethered goats await their fate. Sitting in the filth are beggars, many limbless or deformed; the more agile beggar-children stick persistently to the visitor. Motorcycles and the occasional car somehow force their way through the crowds.
Even in China I haven't been in such a smothering press of people, a ceaseless flow through the chute-like gully, past even tinier, more fetid, alleys to the sides: haggling, eating, touting on the fringes, and pushing on to the holy center. The faces are every shade of brown. Although I've drawn a scarf over my hair and half over my face, I feel irredeemably white and conspicuous. The human stream runs into a covered bazaar, claustrophobic, though actually cleaner and incense-scented. But then one must remove one's shoes. I try not to flinch each time my feel feel something beside the pavement, beneath them.
Milling about, squatting, cradling babies, and praying, in front of the various shrines (Nizam-ud-din's the whitest and most-decorated) are Muslims in an infinite variety of dress. Men wear crocheted, lacey caps, velvety fezzes, casually wrapped turbans (unlike the Sikhs'), or kippah-like colorful skullcaps. The women's scarves are white and deckle-edged (Indonesian?), thin, bright, gauzy chiffon, tightly-tucked black (but from one such sober veil a black braid descending the back is tied with a bright ornamental tassle), or face-covering (but these, too, might be embroidered in gold). The women's dress seems a display of regional costume from the whole sub-continent. Despite the piety of the adherents, there's no attempt at male-female segregation, and in these cramped quarters, no way to avoid brushing against those of the opposite sex. In one corner men are performing ritual ablutions, and I wonder whether the hawking and spitting into a trough is an improvement over the usual street-hygiene.
Before entering one shrine the pilgrims stroke its low, gilded and painted arch (already worn in accessible places) with fingertips, then touch fingers to mouth and eyes--the way medieval Christians might have venerated a relic or blessed themselves with holy water. In fact, except for the amplified muezzin reciting prayers, there's nothing to identify this scene as the 21st, and not the 15th, century.
Around the sacred site in the medieval period a mini-city naturally grew, and to reach the shrine hidden in the center (the way Chartres, or Salisbury used to be buried by the town) one must negotiate a maze of alleys, averaging four feet wide and thronged with folk. Ramshackle stalls line the warren, selling starched white prayer-caps, flowers to offer the saint, beads and bangles, and a lot more. Food is being cooked, and on the mounds of dough or raw meat flies (more numerous even than the humans) stroll unhindered. Below the vats and grills the pavement is indescribably dirty: on my way out (luckily after resuming shoes) I narrowly missed stepping on a dead rat lying in the middle of the path. Chickens (in cages) and tethered goats await their fate. Sitting in the filth are beggars, many limbless or deformed; the more agile beggar-children stick persistently to the visitor. Motorcycles and the occasional car somehow force their way through the crowds.
Even in China I haven't been in such a smothering press of people, a ceaseless flow through the chute-like gully, past even tinier, more fetid, alleys to the sides: haggling, eating, touting on the fringes, and pushing on to the holy center. The faces are every shade of brown. Although I've drawn a scarf over my hair and half over my face, I feel irredeemably white and conspicuous. The human stream runs into a covered bazaar, claustrophobic, though actually cleaner and incense-scented. But then one must remove one's shoes. I try not to flinch each time my feel feel something beside the pavement, beneath them.
Milling about, squatting, cradling babies, and praying, in front of the various shrines (Nizam-ud-din's the whitest and most-decorated) are Muslims in an infinite variety of dress. Men wear crocheted, lacey caps, velvety fezzes, casually wrapped turbans (unlike the Sikhs'), or kippah-like colorful skullcaps. The women's scarves are white and deckle-edged (Indonesian?), thin, bright, gauzy chiffon, tightly-tucked black (but from one such sober veil a black braid descending the back is tied with a bright ornamental tassle), or face-covering (but these, too, might be embroidered in gold). The women's dress seems a display of regional costume from the whole sub-continent. Despite the piety of the adherents, there's no attempt at male-female segregation, and in these cramped quarters, no way to avoid brushing against those of the opposite sex. In one corner men are performing ritual ablutions, and I wonder whether the hawking and spitting into a trough is an improvement over the usual street-hygiene.
Before entering one shrine the pilgrims stroke its low, gilded and painted arch (already worn in accessible places) with fingertips, then touch fingers to mouth and eyes--the way medieval Christians might have venerated a relic or blessed themselves with holy water. In fact, except for the amplified muezzin reciting prayers, there's nothing to identify this scene as the 21st, and not the 15th, century.
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