Ali Mardan Khan

Ali Mardan Khan (died 2 April 1657) was a Kurdish noble of Persian service who changed sides to the Mughals and became one of Shah Jahan's most powerful officers. He ruled the Punjab as viceroy from 1639, and he is remembered for the canal he built to water the Shalimar Gardens at Lahore.

Wikipedia says he was a Kurd of the Zig tribe and the son of a Safavid official, Ganj Ali Khan, and that Shah Abbas made him governor of Kerman, Sistan and Qandahar in 1624. He corresponded with the Mughal court from 1632 and the likely motive for his defection was fear of assassination by the Safavid ruler Shah Safi.

Key moments

• 1638: he surrendered Qandahar to Shah Jahan, in March 1638 by Wikipedia's dating, and Dawn says 1637. Dawn records that he was received at Lahore, made a commander of 6,000, and appointed governor of Kashmir.
• 1639: he received the title Amir al-Umara, rose to commander of 7,000 and was appointed viceroy of the Punjab. Wikipedia lists his later posts as Kabul from 1641 to 1650 and Kashmir from 1650 to 1657, and the sources differ on the order of his early posts.
• He supervised royal buildings in Kashmir and dug the canal in Delhi between the Red Fort and the old city. Wikipedia credits him with the Chashme Shahi garden at Srinagar and a covered bazaar at Peshawar.
• The Lahore canal: Dawn says a canal was brought from the Madhopur headworks on the Ravi to the Shalimar Gardens at Lahore, with water lifted through a three-tier system about 30 feet above ground level. Wikipedia puts the distance at more than 100 miles.
• April 1657: he died, on the way to Kashmir by Dawn's account and in Lahore by Wikipedia's, and was buried beside his mother in a tomb at Mughalpura, Lahore. Dawn says half of his reported estate of ten million rupees was forfeited to the state.

Punjab and the Sikhs: Dawn says Sikh generals later used the site of the tomb. In 2002 it reported the tomb closed to the public, on land owned by Pakistan Railways.

What he is remembered for: the Shalimar water system and his engineering for the Mughal court. Dawn reported in 2002 that the Shalimar hydraulic system had been demolished and that UNESCO then listed the gardens as endangered.