Baoli, tomb of Shah Daulat (1616)

(Maner)Twenty-five kilometers west from Patna on the Danapur-Daltonganj road lies the sleepy town of Maner, or Maner Sharif, perhaps the most significant medieval site in Bihar after Biharsharif. Maner was a bridgehead for the sultans of Delhi, as they pushed their frontiers eastwards towards Bihar and Bengal in the early 13th century; and with their armies came scholars and preachers who, having left Delhi for one reason or another, settled in Maner, when they did not drift further east towards Darbhanga, Lakhnauti, Sonargaon, or Rajshahi. In later medieval history, and especially under the Mughal empire, Maner was replaced by Azimabad (or, Patna City) as the political center of Bihar, where resided the imperial governors and faujdars. Still later, Bankipore would replace Azimabad as the political hub of Bihar under the East India Company’s rule. But despite these changes, Maner’s position as among the chief spiritual centers of Bihar has not suffered in the last eight centuries, and to this day the leading khanqahs of Patna defer in matters of ritual and doctrinal authority to the khanqah of Maner, which is one of two main centers of the Kubrawiya-Firdausiya sect in India, the other being Biharsharif.The principal shrine at Maner, popularly known as Bari Dargah, has the humble open grave of Shaikh Yahya Maneri (d. 1291), the founder of the Firdausiya sect in India, and the father of Makhdum-ul-Mulk, Shaikh Sharfuddin Yahya Maneri, the celebrated author of the Makhtubaat-e-Sadi, whose grave is in Biharsharif. Bari Dargah stands within a walled garden on top of a mound that according to some archaeologists conceals an old Buddhist site. Bari Dargah also has a small mosque that dates from the late-thirteenth century, a pillared court built in the fourteenth century, and the graves of Shaikh Maneri’s disciples and descendants.Some two hundred meters north from this shrine is the imposing and well preserved mausoleum of a later Firdausiya shaikh, Shah Daulat, built in 1616 by his disciple Ibrahim Khan, the Mughal governor of Bihar under Jahangir. Shah Daulat’s mazaar, which is popularly known as Choti Dargah, is built in the high Mughal style using Chunar sandstone, and it is perhaps the finest medieval monument of Bihar with its elegance of conception, size and remarkable stone ornamentation. The two-storied Choti Dargah, with its one central dome and four cupolas on the four corners stands on a raised pediment, within a large walled courtyard and garden after the classical charbagh style. The formal gateway on the north of the mausoleum and the three-bay mosque on the west were added some years later by Jahangir himself. To the south of the courtyard is a vast water tank, or baoli, with ghats, stone embankments, and chatris. The shrines of Maner, which lie outside the town and are surrounded by lush farms, are still an important pilgrimage, where once Babur and Jahangir came for ziyarat.