Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam

The Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam stands on the northwestern edge of Multan Fort (Qasim Bagh) and was originally begun around 1320-1324 as a mausoleum for Ghiyath al-Din Tughlaq, the founder of the Delhi Sultanate's Tughlaq dynasty, before he became sultan. After Ghiyath al-Din's death, the unfinished tomb was instead given over to house the grave of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, a revered Suhrawardiyya Sufi saint and grandson of Bahauddin Zakariya, who died in 1335. The structure is octagonal, rising in three tiers from a wide brick base through an intermediate octagonal section to a large hemispherical dome roughly 20 meters in diameter, one of the largest domes surviving from the Tughlaq period. Exterior walls combine exposed red brick with bands of blue, turquoise, and white glazed tilework and carved wooden brackets, a decorative approach that became a template for Multan's later Suhrawardiyya shrines, including that of Bahauddin Zakariya nearby. The tomb has withstood earthquakes and, notably, direct artillery fire during the 1848-49 Sikh siege of Multan without structural collapse, an endurance often cited as a testament to its Tughlaq-era engineering, which used buttressed corner towers and thick brick walls to resist lateral stress. Restoration campaigns through the 20th and 21st centuries, carried out by Pakistan's Department of Archaeology, have focused on repairing damaged tilework panels and stabilizing the dome's brick fabric against Multan's seismic activity. The tomb remains an active Sufi shrine and pilgrimage site, drawing devotees particularly around the saint's urs commemoration.