Compromises in forms
ZERIN ANKLESARIA
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Surveying the architectural traditions in India in the medieval period.
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The Architecture of The Indian Sultanates; Ed: Abha Narain Lambah and Alka Patel, Marg Publications, Rs. 2500.
HISTORIANS have long used `Sultanate' as a holdall term for several Islamic kingdoms that flourished in pre-Mughal Northern and Central India for about 350 years, from the late 12th to the early 16th centuries. The theme of Marg's latest volume is that each of its units was distinctive, making its own architectural compromises between imported Islamic forms and local decorative and building practices.
The Indus valley was a palimpsest of various religious and cultural streams — the Zoroastrian, the Buddhist, sun and river worship, Hinduism and Islam — out of which grew a discrete architecture. Gradually the heavy, brickwork tombs of the Central Asian tradition acquire a more decorative exterior with waving lines and pearl chains in a darker colour, while tile work and corner turrets soften their militaristic appearance.
New townships
Firuz Shah of the Delhi Sultanate, the greatest of the Tughlaq builders, created new urban townships around the old city with functional structures such as his palace and Haus Khas that have hardly moved away from their Central Asian origins. The thick walls, low domes, sturdy pillars and arches bare of surface ornament exemplify the austere Tughlaq style that found its culmination further east.
It was to Jaunpur that Delhi's scholars, artists and craftsmen fled in the face of the Timur onslaught. Here, under the Sharqi dynasty they built mosques that were stylistically Tughlaq but far more ambitious in conception, with monumental portals of sloping towers framing high arches that dwarfed their Delhi counterparts. The Jhangri Mosque of which only the Western portal survives shows a marked Hindu aesthetic. The eponymous jhanjar or screen spanning the huge arch is entirely covered with floral and calligraphic decoration in finely pierced stonework.
Sher Shah Sur's frenetic building activity was perhaps a power statement since unlike the lordly Mughals he was of humble birth. He constructed four major highways crisscrossing Northern India, the Grand Trunk Road linking Punjab to Bengal being the best known. His grandfather's enormous tomb in modern Haryana was one of the most remarkable structures of the time. Faced with pink and grey stone, it stands next to the smaller shrine of a revered saint from which it derives an aura of holiness. The external decoration is profuse but does not obscure the Islamic simplicity of line.
Continuing old methods
In Gujarat the Sultanate was less a period of iconoclastic zeal than a continuation of older temple building methods. Undoubtedly patronage had changed from Hindu rajas to sultans and their nobles, but the writer does not see a commensurate change in architectural modes. From 12th century temples to 15th century mosques and secular structures she traces a process of adaptation, both formal and iconographic, of building practices rooted in the region. She cites, for example, the transformation by Ahmed Shah of a 12th century Shaiva complex at Siddhpur into the Jami Masjid. Although the main temple was dismantled its minor shrines were untouched, and converted into mihrabs and mihrab projections.
Architects in Mandu worked in a more eclectic style, borrowing forms and decorative motifs such as merlon bands freely from Mewari buildings and the Hindu and Jain temples at Kumbhalgarh and Ranakpur. Mandu lies today in a sad state of ruin, but its Madrasa of the Heavenly Vault was stylistically unique. The remains of the north wall show white marble blocks carved with vertical bands of texts from the Quran inlaid with yellow stone. Persian artisans worked at the building for 20 years, decorating it with cornelian, multicolored jasper and agate, and intricate tile work on the lofty dome.
Much of what we find in this book has been said before, particularly in Bianca Alfieri's more comprehensive though less detailed study of Islamic architecture in the subcontinent. The most seminal essay here is the one on the Charminar, that curious Hyderabadi structure that is neither a mosque though it contains one, nor a gateway since it leads nowhere. Phillip Wagoner sees it as a chaubara or `fourfold house' from which the city radiates in the four cardinal directions, a monument in a hoary Deccani tradition dating to pre-Sultanate times.
In Hinduism it was a well-known symbol for the axis mundi, from which order and creation spread outwards to create a microcosm of the universe. Though the conception is Indic the form is Islamic, and probably derives its symbolism from medieval Persian poetry in which the universe is projected as a vast, domed quadrangular building carried on four arches. This is an outstanding analysis, rounding off an exceptionally scholarly book.
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