BOOK BUILDING
Perfect harmony between purpose and design
D. MURALI
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The beauty of architecture is the beauty of poetry, music, painting, and sculpture, extols Mohammad Mujeeb, in a chapter included in ‘Piety and Politics in the Early Indian Mosque’
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Is it possible to look at a construction and read an architect’s mind? You’d agree it is possible, if you read ‘The Qutb Complex as a social document,’ by Mohammad Mujeeb, a chapter included in ‘Piety and Politics in the Early Indian Mosque,’ edited by Finbarr Barry Flood ( www.oup.com).
It may bring us no joy, says Mujeeb, if we feel from the start that the architect was content to imitate or to follow a fashion, to use the prevalent techniques and the most easily available material. “We may, on the other hand, share the rapture of the artist who discovered the most perfect harmony between purpose and design, and find that the plan, the techniques, the material and the proportions of the created work reduce themselves to a single moment of exaltation.”
The beauty of architecture is the beauty of poetry, music, painting, and sculpture, extols the author. “And the great artist can enable us to overcome our imperfection and realise the underlying unity of all art.” It, therefore, pains Mujeeb that we tend to limit ourselves by first categorising Indian architecture as Hindu or Muslim, and then looking at the size, the cost of the material, the names and dates of the builder and the building, losing sight of certain basic facts of architectural history.
He cites, as examples, the technique of corbelling (projecting stones or bricks of the upper layer over the lower so as to make an arch or a ceiling), and the use of the beam and post, or the trabeate system. “The use of the arch and dome, or the arcuate system, was developed by the Romans and is much older than Islam…”
The author advises that when studying Indian monuments, we have to remember the difference between architecture and sculpture. “Architecture is creation with material; sculpture is creation out of material.”
“The canvas of the architect is space; in space, he creates a form by putting together whatever material he builds with. The canvas of the sculptor is the material itself, out of which he makes a particular form emerge.”
According to Mujeeb, a very small building can be a specimen of architecture, and a very large building, or even a complex of buildings can be an example of sculpture.
The essay takes the reader on a guided tour of the Qutb Complex, with the author highlighting instances of cooperation between the Hindu masons and the Muslim architects.
Mujeeb reasons that the Hindu craftsmen would have insisted that to ensure stability, horizontal pressures should be entirely eliminated. “The minar has, therefore, a very pronounced taper. Its diameter is 46 feet at the base and, as it now stands, 10 feet at the top. As originally built, in four storeys, the top would have had a diameter of perhaps 12 to 15 feet.”
Also, behind ‘the rounded flutes and wedge-shaped flanges’ that give the minar an exquisite character, the author sees the contribution of the Hindu master-masons. “The massing of inscriptional and ornamental bands and decorative mouldings below the balconies reminds us of the decorative treatment of temple walls, but the restraint shown in the spacing out of the other bands on the shafts of the three storeys of the minar is something on which the Muslim architect would have insisted.”
The author describes ‘the result of the cooperation of the Muslim architects and Hindu master-masons’ as ‘one of the most striking monuments of the world,’ with an evident attempt to disguise architectural forms with sculptural effects.
Mujeeb sees in Qutab Minar’s upward surge, the taper and the almost organic emergence of one storey from another, a symbol of power and stability that the Turks wanted to create. “But the Hindu sculptor has also put his stamp on it,” the author adds. “You can have power, he seems to have said, but I shall so suffuse it with beauty that those who see it will know that beauty is the only power that endures…”
Feedback to dmurali@thehindu.co.in
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