The
Architecture of the Indian Sultanates/edited by Abha Narain Lambah and Alka
Patel. Mumbai, Marg Pub., 2006, 116 p., ills, $95. ISBN 81-85026-75-0.
The
Architecture of the Indian Sultanates/edited by Abha Narain Lambah and Alka
Patel. Mumbai, Marg Pub., 2006, 116 p., ills, $95. ISBN 81-85026-75-0.
Contents: 1. Revisiting the term "Sultanate"/Alka Patel. 2. The architecture of the Sultanates: a historical prologue/Abha Narain Lambah. 3. Centralizing the margins: commemorative architecture in the Indus Valley/Holly Edwards. 4. The many Delhis: town planning and architecture under the Tughluqs (1320-1413)/Jutta Jain-Neubauer. 5. The Sharqis of Jaunpur: inheritors of the Tughluq legacy/Abha Narain Lambah. 6. Building a legacy: Sher Shah Sur's architecture and the politics of propaganda/Catherine B. Asher. 7. From province to Sultanate: the architecture of Gujarat during the twelfth through sixteenth centuries/Alka Patel. 8. The Sultanate of Malwa/Michael Brand. 9. Problems of reconstructing Bengali architecture of the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries/Pika Ghosh. 10. The Charminar as Chaubara: Cosmological symbolism in the urban architecture of the Deccan/Phillip B. Wagoner. Index.
"The period of the Sultanates is typically defined as beginning with the Ghurid incursions into the plains of North India in the 1190s, and ending with the coming of the Mughals in 1526. Thirty-five sultans ruled from Delhi, and many more in the provinces, effecting the maturation of a style that progressed from an architecture of demolition and recycling to a mature synthesis of East and West, creating one of the finest moments of Islamic architectural history. The role of Delhi as the fountainhead of the Sultanate style is questioned in this volume. An exchange of architectural concepts flourished between the regional capitals as crafts guilds that were well established, moved from province to province. Past studies of the period have concentrated on Islamic political and material histories, implying that little non-Islamic textual or architectural evidence of note survives. This volume includes in-depth analyses of the architecture of the Suri dynasty, Delhi under the Tughluqs, Sindh, Narnaul, Jaunpur, Gujarat, Malwa, Bengal, and the Charminar in Hyderabad as a culmination of regionally based architectural traditions." (jacket)