What Syed Ahmad Khan’s 1847 architectural history of Delhi says about contemporary India

As Aligarh Muslim University marks the birth month of its founder, one aspect of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s life remains severely underappreciated – his passion for architecture and his pioneering work in architectural history.

How did a jurist in service of the East India Company, coming from a lineage of Mughal courtiers, come to write the first modern architectural history of India? And what is significant in the way that he did it?

Syed’s book Asar-us-Sanadid (Remnants of Heroes), published 1847, is a rigorous survey of the historical buildings of Delhi. It was produced as a lithograph and contains 130 illustrations made by artists Faiz Ali Khan and Mirza Shahrukh Beg. It has a preface by the Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib. Imam Bakhsh Sahbai, a professor of Persian at Delhi College, also contributed to the writing.

It was translated into English by Rana Safvi in 2018.

The lithograph – a new revolutionary technology then – enabled the inexpensive reproduction of the Urdu-language book, taking the architectural history of Delhi to a broad reading public. The illustrations meant that even those who were not literate could still access this comprehensive documentation of the historic buildings of Delhi.

As British power grew towards the end of the 19th century, the book became an essential...

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