Architecture in Medieval India : Forms Contexts Histories
Content: Introduction. I. Indigenous initiatives, colonial aesthetics, nationalist views : 1. Asar as-sanadid/Sayyid Ahmad Khan. 2. Indian saracenic architecture/James Fergusson. 3. Indian architecture/E.B. Havell. 4. An historical memoir on the qutb : Delhi/J.A. Page. 5. Monuments of the Mughul period/Percy Brown. 6. The Qudsia Bagh at Delhi : key to late Mughal architecture/Hermann Goetz. 7. Tomb of Nizamuddin/Maulvi Zafar Hasan. 8. Mosque of Shaikh ‘Abdu-n Nabi/Maulvi Zafar Hasan. 9. Symbolism of the dome/Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. 10. A family of great Mughal architects/M. Abdullah Chaghtai. 11. The Qutub Complex as a social document/Muhammad Mujeeb. II. Imperial forms, regional structures : 1. The ‘Two-and-a-half day’ mosque/Michael W. Meister. 2. From tamerlane to the Taj Mahal/Lisa Golombek. 3. The baluster column—a European motif in Mughal architecture and its meaning/Ebba Koch. 4. New light on the history of two early Mughal monuments of Bayana/Iqtidar Alam Khan. 5. The architecture of Raja Man Singh : a study of sub-imperial patronage/Catherine B. Asher. 6. Royal architecture and imperial style at Vijayanagara/George Michell. 7. The architecture of Baha al-Din Tughrul in the region of Bayana, Rajasthan/Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H. Shokoohy. 8. Temple Niches and Mihrabs in Bengal/Perween Hasan. 9. Ancient Asian building techniques in Hindu and Muslim structures of the Vijayanagara empire and in subsequent Indo-Islamic monuments/Klaus Fischer. III. The architecture of everyday life : 1. Characteristics of a stepwell/Jutta Jain-Neubauer. 2. Four Mughal caravanserais built during the reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan/Wayne E. Begley. 3. The city as an image of the king : some notes on the town-planning of Mughal capitals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries/Attilio Petruccioli. 4. Hanging gardens in the princely capitals of Rajasthan and in renaissance Italy : sacred space, earthly paradise, secular ritual/Jan Pieper. IV. Art and politics : 1. Sources and determinants of the architecture at Fatehpur Sikri/Ram Nath. 2. Indian art objects as loot/Richard H. Davis. Glossary. Bibliography.
"The architectural history of medieval India has been the subject of very diverse writings. The present book pulls together the most significant of these, revealing an impressive array of ideas about India’s past through the study of its monuments.
A long introduction examines the intellectual importance of architectural history, showing how buildings and their histories have frequently been polemical and instrumental: they have been politically deployed to construct or fabricate a past. They have been used to provide symbolic meanings which have helped subjugate or unify heterogeneous communities and nations. The architectural history of India's misnamed 'Muslim' period is revealed as the site of tensions between Hindus and Muslims, colonialists and nationalists, traditionalists and postmodernists.
The writings reproduced here are also located within the specific intellectual, political, and socio-cultural contexts within which they emerged, making this 'reader' a major contribution to Indian history."
