Civic body plans heritage status for Mughal-era sarai

Beneath the Modi Mill flyover on Delhi’s Mathura Road, amid traffic and concrete, a forgotten ruin may hold the remains of an 18th-century sarai built by a Portuguese woman who once occupied an extraordinary position in the Mughal court. It is an unlikely setting for a building of such history.

Inside a green space maintained by the PWD beneath the flyover, sections of walls, an arched opening, fragments of an old building and a well that still holds water are all that may remain of “Sarai Juliana”, an 18th-century travellers’ inn built by Dona Juliana Dias da Costa.  

Dr Aqil Ahmed, member secretary of the MCD’s Heritage Cell, identified the ruins as the possible remains of the sarai and said the civic body is planning to notify the structure as a heritage site.
Such recognition could give official status to a monument whose name has survived in Sarai Julena, the urban village in southeast Delhi’s Okhla, even as the sarai itself was believed to have disappeared.

Historical research records that Juliana built the sarai in Okhla in 1720, during the reign of Muhammad Shah “Rangeela”, as a rest house for European travellers. The account appears in Juliana Nama, a book by former National Museum director Raghuraj Singh Chauhan and archivist Madhukar Tewari, who traced Juliana’s life through French, Portuguese, Persian and Urdu sources.
The location is the first piece of the puzzle.

Long before Mathura Road became an urban highway, it was part of the overland route connecting the north-western frontier to the Mughal heartland. Developed under Sher Shah Suri, the route was known as the Sadak-e-Azam, or Great Road. It ran through Peshawar, Lahore, Delhi and Agra towards Bengal, later forming the basis of the Grand Trunk Road.
“For someone travelling in the 17th or 18th century, this was a journey across a vast and connected world. Travellers and caravans crossed the Khyber route towards Peshawar and Lahore before moving towards Delhi and Agra. Merchants, soldiers, officials, pilgrims and European travellers used the road network, carrying goods and possessions over distances that today are covered in hours but then took days,” Ahmed said.

The road was supported by wells, trees, kos minars and sarais where travellers and their animals could stop.
“That is why the sarais were built on the main road. People travelling long distances needed a place to stay, and they also needed a place for their animals,” Ahmed said.
He said the structure was a substantial establishment with at least 15 rooms, separate areas for animals and different kitchen arrangements for vegetarian and non-vegetarian travellers.
A circular well a short distance from the ruined walls provides another clue. “The upper portion has been repaired with cement and covered with a metal grille, but the old lining survives and water can still be seen below. Hence, the well is one of the most important identifying factors,” Ahmed said.

The remains also contain Lakhori bricks — small, thin and flat bricks widely used in Mughal-period construction — along with irregular pieces of stone. 
Ahmed said the surviving construction and old arch indicate that the original building was considerably larger.
“The arch work came from these bricks,” he said.

The structure belonged to a chain of important stopping places around Delhi. Arab ki Sarai, beside Humayun’s Tomb, is among the best surviving examples, while Sarai Kale Khan was another important stop on the southern approach. Azimganj Sarai, now inside the Delhi Zoo, also survives.

“Other sarais, including those associated with Lado Sarai and Katwaria Sarai - the urban villages in south Delhi - were situated away from the main arterial route and therefore did not occupy quite the same position as establishments on the main road,” Ahmed said.

Juliana’s choice of location was therefore practical as well as strategic. By then, she had acquired unusual access, wealth and influence in the Mughal court. The woman behind the sarai is considerably harder to place at the beginning of her life.

Juliana Nama records conflicting accounts of her origins. One theory places her family among Portuguese prisoners captured at Hooghly after Shah Jahan’s attack in 1632; another connects them with Cochin; a third suggests that Juliana was associated with a Portuguese surgeon who came to the Mughal court.
What the book does establish is the remarkable position she eventually occupied.

A Christian Portuguese woman with medical knowledge, Juliana treated women of the royal household and was entrusted with the education of royal children, becoming a link between the Portuguese and Mughal courts.

Among the princes whose education was entrusted to her was Muazzam, Aurangzeb’s second son and the future Emperor Bahadur Shah I. According to Juliana Nama, Juliana was 17 and Muazzam 18 when she became his tutor. The authors write that the “seeds of a lifelong affair were sown” between them.