Armenian cemetery in Hyderabad had Dutch graves too, says historian

Hyderabad: The 400-year-old Armenian cemetery at Uppuguda near Falaknuma in Hyderabad had served as a common burial ground for the Armenians and the Dutch before a separate Dutch cemetery was set up nearby and the graves moved to the new burial ground.The Dutch East India Company had a factory (warehouse or trade post) near the Charminar and the employees, who died during the period were first buried at the Armenian cemetry, according to a new research finding by Prof Salma Ahmed Farooqui, director of HK Sherwani Centre for Deccan Studies, Moulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. According to her, a common burial ground was utilised for the employees belonging to two different nationalities in what is known as the Armenian cemetery. "It can be surmised that the existing Armenian cemetery earlier had transnational character with many more Dutchmen buried there. The bodies were then reinterred to the new Dutch cemetery in the immediate neighbourhood," Prof Salma said. Prof Salma, who is currently doing research on the Armenian cemetery, came across some old documents recently. She said the Armenian cemetery has epitaphs on the graves that range from 1645 CE to 1807 CE. "One grave belongs to Stephen Ysbrantson Visser, a Dutch book-keeper of the Dutch East India Company. He died on May 20, 1662. The epitaph on his grave is in Dutch," she said, adding that it was believed so far that there are 19 graves in the cemetery of Armenians and one of a Dutchman. But, going by the records, Op en Ondergangh van Koromandel (The rise and fall of Coromandel) by Dutchman Daniel Havart, who served as treasurer to the factory in Hyderabad, it becomes known that the English and Dutch merchants in the city originally had one cemetery between them situated close to the Dutch factory near Charminar. The factory was closed down after Mughal annexation of Hyderabad in 1687 CE. But no graves of Englishmen exist in Hyderabad to verify this claim, she said. According to Prof Salma, Stephen Ysbrantson Visser's grave in the Armenian cemetery makes one believe that the Dutch and Armenians had a common cemetery. Havart wrote that Johannes van Nijendaal, chief of the Dutch factory in 1678 CE planted a hedge of milk trees all around the ‘new' Dutch graveyard that also had a stone gate and a small house for mourners. "At the same time, he makes a startling claim that Nijendaal collected bones of all the Dutch who had been buried in the Armenian cemetery and reinterred them in two stone tombs in the new cemetery. Stephen Ysbrantson Visser's tombstone is particularly mentioned as being too heavy to have been relocated and for this reason he still rests in the old Armenian cemetery," Prof Salma said. Referring to a 1907 letter unearthed by historian Ziauddin Ahmed Shakeb in 1970 in the State Archives and Research Institute in Hyderabad, Prof Salma said it had helped officials to locate and identify the neglected Armenian cemetery, which until then had largely disappeared from public awareness. "This letter seems to be a descriptive formal correspondence from a Resident official to a higher authority about what he observed, typical of colonial-era administrative practice. The W Haig, who wrote the 1907 letter referring to the Armenian cemetery in Hyderabad, is very likely Thomas Wolseley Haig (1865-1938) — a British civil servant and scholar in British India. He was the one who got the epitaphs in Armenian and Dutch read and translated, she said, suggesting that the existing Armenian cemetery earlier had transnational character with many more Dutchmen originally buried there.