Location

The mausoleum is located in a prominent and highly visible location in the Jamshed Quarters locality of central Karachi, along the northern edge of the colonial-era core at the end of Muhammad Ali Jinnah Road. The mausoleum is surrounded by a large garden laid out in a neo-Mughal style in the dense city, with large traffic rotaries at three of its four corners.

History

Muhammad Ali Jinnah died on 11 September 1948 and his resting place was marked by a large white marble slab, which was raised on a plinth accessed by marble steps. In 1949, the Quaid-e-Azam Memorial Fund (QMF) was established, which received numerous suggestions for the establishment of a memorial in Jinnah's honor. By 1952, his mausoleum was capped by a small dome, with a cabinet that contained some of his personal effects along a wall near his grave.The site had an air of neglect which angered many.Fatima Jinnah and the QMF received numerous letters from concerned Pakistanis at the sad state of his tomb, and advocated for a more befitting monument to Jinnah.

In 1952, the QMF proposed to erect 4 monuments across Pakistan to Jinnah's memory - a mausoleum and mosque on the current site in central Karachi, a Dar-ul-Uloom religions school in Punjab, and a University of Science and Technology in East Pakistan.In 1954, an Indian architect was selected to design the mausoleum, but was later dismissed.In 1955, a Turkish architect was hired, but his plan was rejected as well.

President Ayub Khan laid the foundation stone for the monument on July 31, 1960. It was inaugurated by Yahya Khan on 18 January 1971. The gardens surrounding the mausoleum were not completed until December 24, 2000.

Proposed Designs

Numerous proposals were submitted by Pakistani citizens following independence - ranging from a shrine, to a neo-Mughal monument.[4] The idealists suggestions directly from ordinary Pakistani citizens reflected the "radical utopianism" that swept through the Muslims of the subcontinent around the Pakistan Movement.
In 1954, an Indian architect was selected to design the mausoleum, but his design could not gain consensus among members of the QMF, and so was dismissed.[3] In 1955, a Turkish architect was hired, but his plan was rejected as being "too elaborate," and "almost despotic."[3] The QMF's mandate stalled as consensus over the design was lacking.[4] Proposals from the Malay engineer and architect Ainuddin, suggested a complex reminiscent of a Sufi shrine,[6] with mosques, libraries, school, restaurants, and shops to merge into the fabric of the city.

1957, the Government of Pakistan held an international competition to design a new mausoleum for Jinnah. 6 of the 8 jurists were European modernist architects. The 1957 competition was won by William Whitfield of the modernist Reglan Squire and Partners firm. The plan called for an avant-garde neo-futurist mausoleum mounted on an elevated platform in a neo-Mughal garden, with a central parabola and pointed edges at its six corners reaching out "in an exuberant motion towards the sky." Following the 1958 coup of President Ayub Khan, who presented himself as a modernizer, the Whitfield-Squire proposal gained favor among the military elite, although public reception was not warm. Fatima Jinnah opposed Whitfield's plan on several fronts, including its design, its selection by an international rather than Pakistani jury, and the fact that it was awarded to a British national, which challenged the desire of Pakistanis for a de-colonial future. Fatima Jinnah then assumed control of the design process, and chose the proposals of architect Yahya Merchant, a Bombay based architect who was a personal friend of Jinnah. Merchant's design was of a cuboid structure with a dome, clad in white marble. The monument was placed on an elevated platform, set in a 61-acre gardened hill looking over the city. The new design was praised by eminent professor Ahmad Hasan Dani as “not a slavish imitation of the old tradition. Actually it partakes of the Muslim spirit of the past but it is created to meet the new demand of the present in the technique of the present day.”