chapter 6 Patterns of Faith: Mosque Typologies and Sectarian Affiliation in the Kingdom of Ahmadnagar

Pushkar Sohoni

Architectural historians have studied monumen- kingdom. Its commercial and symbolic importance tal and dynastic architecture in the cities of the is demonstrated by the sheer frequency of refer- early modern Deccan, but surveys of even the ences to it in contemporary accounts.2 better-known buildings are scarce.1 Despite this This study highlights five mosques as exemplars lacuna, it is possible to make several observations of the most common mosque typology found in and conclusions by studying the distribution of the city and kingdom of Ahmadnagar. The first is architecture and patterns of settlement. In this the Soneri Mosque in the Bara Imam Kotla, data- short essay, the spatial distribution of mosques in ble on the basis of a detached inscription at the the city of Ahmadnagar, and to some extent site. The second, the Damdi Mosque, can be dated throughout the kingdom as a whole, forms the to the ; its scale is typical of an Ahmadnagar basis for reconstructing a social landscape. mosque. And the last three—the Kali (lit. “black”), The Nizam (r. 1490–1636) ruled from their or Burud Mosque, the Kamani Mosque, and the capital city of Ahmadnagar for a little more than a Qasim Khan Mosque—are typical neighborhood century. It was a new city founded by Ahmad mosques patronized by either a single person at Nizam i (r. 1490–1510) and decisions regarding court or members of the local community that its layout, planning, and construction were all comprised professional or sectarian congrega- deliberate; the settling of a city was economically tions. There are at least ten additional mosques in profitable, but also connected symbolically to the the city whose dimensions and designs are similar models of urban grandeur and political thought to to these five examples, but since they cannot all which the Nizam Shahs aspired. Though the devel- be fully introduced here they are presented as opment of different parts of the city was parcelled examples of a still larger group. The mosques are out to various court nobles and officials, its status integral to the physical fabric of the city and as a capital named after the dynastic founder underscore the political and religious beliefs of makes it likely that settlement patterns and growth the Nizam Shahs in the sixteenth century. fell under royal purview. And besides, the city was too close to the center of political power—the Fort of Ahmadnagar is less than a mile away—for it The Sultanate of Ahmadnagar to take shape according to its own rhythms. In the sixteenth century, the city of Ahmadnagar The Sultanate of Delhi conquered a large part of was one of the largest urban settlements in the the Indian subcontinent in the thirteenth cen- tury. By the mid-fourteenth century, many of the

1 A notable exception is Robert Alan Simpkins, “Golconda Mosque and Tombs: Patterns and Distribution,” in The 2 It appears frequently in the Burhān-i maʾāsiṟ , Tārīkh-i Visual World of Muslim : The Art, Culture, and Society , and the Tadhkirat al-mulk, and we can assume of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era, ed. Laura Parodi that unless it is specified as the fort (qalʿa), the references (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming). are to the city.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi ��.����/�������������_��� 110 Sohoni regional governors had rebelled against the sul- among them poets, scholars, artists, and artisans. tans of Delhi. Among them was Hasan Gangu, The large movement of people from Iranian and later Bahman Shah (d. 1358), the founder of the Central Asian centers into the Deccan allowed Bahmani dynasty in the Deccan, who nominally the Deccan to cultivate their ideological traced his lineage to and Persian lore, a con- affiliation with Iranian lands.4 This relationship ceit that most of his successors continued. His was also fostered to resist the ascendant Mughals, kingdom eventually disintegrated, between 1490 who continued their expansion into the Deccan. and 1520, giving rise to several independent - The sultans of Ahmadnagar, like the later Deccan ates. Prominent among these were the Nizam sultanates, sought an alliance with the Safavids Shahs of Ahmadnagar, the ʿAdil Shahs of , to counter the northern Mughals and main- and the Qutb Shahs of Golconda (fig. 6.1). tained diplomatic relations with Iran to that The Nizam Shahs, kings of Ahmadnagar, fash- very end.5 ioned themselves along the lines of Persian mon- archs. The reasons for this aspiration were many but have in part been attributed to the Shiʿi faith, Physical Layout of the City of Ahmadnagar to which the Nizam Shahs subscribed, centered on Safavid Iran.3 In the context of an expanding The kingdom of Ahmadnagar was named after the Indian Ocean world connected by trade and city founded by Ahmad Nizam Shah i in 1494. The movement of people, several hundred thousand event has been described in at least two major migrants came to the kingdoms of the Deccan, contemporary works, one of them being including Ahmadnagar, from the Middle East, ʿAli b. ʿAziz Allah Tabatabaʾi’s Burhān-i maʾās̱ir:

An auspicious day was selected, and the surveyors, architects and builders obeyed the king’s com- mands, and laid out and began to build the city in with its palaces, houses, squares and shops, and laid around it fair gardens.6

4 Colin P. Mitchell, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Power, Religion, and Rhetoric (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2009), 110–11, mentions the dispersal of Safavid literati in the sixteenth century. While some would travel to faraway lands like South Asia, where they received patronage, others were content to settle on the peripheries of the Safavid state. 5 Sayyid ʿAlī b. ʿAzīz Allāh Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Burhān-i maʾāsiṟ , ed. Sayyid Hāshimī Farīdābādī (Delhi: Maṭbaʿat Jamiʿa Dihlī, Figure 6.1 Map of the Deccan sultanates in the 1936), 286–88, provides details of the diplomatic corre- mid-sixteenth century spondence between rulers Burhan Nizam Shah i and Shah Drawing: Pushkar Sohoni Tahmasp. Also see Mujahid Husain Zaidi, ed., Tārīkh-i Quṭbī (Tārīkh-i Elchī-i Niẓām Shāh) of Khwurshāh Bin 3 George Michell and Mark Zebrowski, The Architecture and Qubād al-Ḥusaynī (New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia, 1965), Art of the Deccan Sultanates (Cambridge: Cambridge which provides details of the envoys and missions between University Press, 1999), 10. Burhan i (r. 1509–53), the second­ the Nizam Shahs and the Safavids. sultan of Ahmadnagar, adopted Shiʿism as the state reli- 6 Wolseley Haig, “The History of the Nizam Shahi Kings of gion, “bringing the Nizam Shahi kingdom into sympa- ,” Indian Antiquary 49 (1920): 108. The article thetic relations with Iran” (ibid.). is a serialized version of the Burhān-i maʾāsiṟ .