A brick mausoleum dated to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, the Columbo Sahib tomb, as it is popularly known, is the most prominent structure in Bangladesh’s historic Dhaka Christian Cemetery. The octagonal tower, noted for its Islamic style and incorporation of European architectural elements, has been a subject of speculation for its unmarked graves and association with an obscure figure known only as Columbo or Colombo. 

Site and structure

The mausoleum is located in an older section of the cemetery, among graves and tombs of English traders and sailors mostly built in the more common Neoclassical style. A large Islamic-style gateway with a cusped arch stands nearby, marking the original entrance to the cemetery, which has since expanded beyond it. 

The tomb is an octagonal structure with a two-tiered facade topped by a dome. It is made of bricks and lime mortar, locally available materials historically used in the Bengal region. The lower level features four double-arched entrances, on alternating faces; these are in the style of iwans seen in Islamic architecture, with a smaller portal recessed within a larger vaulted arch. The spandrels of the outer arches or pishtaqs are ornamented with floral and vegetal designs carved in low relief. Four small corner pavilions extend from the remaining faces of the base, with a large turret rising from each, and carved in diagonal lines in a chevron pattern. 

The next level has a slightly smaller diameter with tall cusped-arch windows in each face; this is topped by a faceted dome and finial with a petal base. Each level is demarcated by a plain stringcourse topped by a frieze showing a crenellations with pointed-arch merlons. Slender turrets rise from each corner at both levels, ending in petalled capitals and sharp finials. While the higher turrets have plain surfaces, the lower ones are carved in diagonal lines. Scholars have noted the mausoleum’s resemblance to similar domed, two-storeyed tombs in the Dutch Cemetery of Surat in western India, many of which feature octagonal plans, chevron patterning, turrets and floral finials.

The interior is a single tall chamber illuminated through the open entrances and the upper windows. It houses three unmarked graves — a larger one in the centre flanked by two smaller ones; as well as headstones that were likely moved here from other graves in the cemetery. 

Historical background

Dated to at least the second half of the seventeenth century, the Dhaka Christian Cemetery, also called the Narinda or Wari cemetery (after the neighbourhood), is considered to be the earliest Christian burial ground in present-day Bangladesh, and has been used by Christians of various denominations from different parts of the world. During the seventeenth century when it served as a Mughal capital, Dhaka was a major trade centre attracting traders from Europe as well as Asia, many of whom worked for the Dutch and British East India Companies and were buried here. The mausoleum’s size and ornamentation have led historians to surmise that it was built for a high-ranking Company official or a European favoured by the Mughal court. 

Attribution

Popular belief attributes the tomb to Columbo, a name that first appears in written records in the travel journal of Reginald Heber, erstwhile bishop of Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). In Narrative of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India, From Calcutta to Bombay 1824–1825 he writes that in 1824, while in Dhaka (then Dacca) to consecrate the cemetery, he was informed by the caretaker that the mausoleum was for a certain Columbo sahib (Mr Columbo) employed by the Company. Based on the name and in the absence of any other information, Heber and others have variously speculated at Columbo being a Portuguese, Dutch, or even Sri Lankan trader — ‘Columbo’ possibly arising from the trading centre of Colombo — who had worked and later died in Dhaka. 

Recent research posits that ‘Columbo’ arose from a corruption of ‘Clerembault’ — a name on one of the headstones in the mausoleum noted by the historian Walter Firminger in 1917. The headstone was dedicated to one Nicholas Clerembault, an employee of the British East India Company posted in Dhaka, who died in 1753. 

Representations in art and photography

The mausoleum features prominently in the oil painting Nagaphon Ghat (1787) by the German-born British painter Johann Zoffany, in a setting that highlights the multi-religious milieu of eighteenth-century Dhaka. It appears on the banks of what might have been the Dholaikhal canal — mostly extinct today — with another building in a similar style behind it; in the distance is a structure identified as the Binat Bibi Mosque, one of the oldest mosques in Dhaka. Nearby is a funeral pyre, thought to indicate an adjacent Hindu cremation ground; as well as a celebration of the Nag Panchami festival, with Naga ascetics, and a Shiva idol placed in front of the mausoleum. The mausoleum has also appeared in an 1875 photograph by the Calcutta-based photography studio Johnston & Hoffman; and in a 1950 photograph by Nizamuddin Ahmed, appearing intact in both. Following the structure’s subsequent deterioration, these visual sources have been crucial references for its restoration in 2024–25.

Restoration efforts

In the late twentieth–early twenty-first centuries, the tomb became severely dilapidated and overrun by vegetation, with trees having taken root in the structure and a number of turrets and finials having collapsed, among other damage. After Bangladesh’s Department of Archaeology identified the mausoleum as a heritage structure and following years of effort to initiate restoration, in 2024 the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA) and the Commonwealth Heritage Forum, along with two individual donors, jointly funded a restoration program for the mausoleum and its surroundings. The project, led by Abu Sayeed M Ahmed, a conservationist and local BACSA official, has involved cleaning the plant overgrowth; fixing the broken turrets and the damaged dome; repairing the walls, interiors and the carvings using original materials; and restoring the original appearance of the facade, as well as repairing the paths and pavements surrounding the mausoleum.