Unit 31 Art and Architecture of Delhi Sultanate

1 I UNIT 31 ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF DELHI SULTANATE 31.0 Objectives 31.1 Introduction 31.2 Architecture 31.2.1 New Struaural Forms i 31.2.2 StyliQc Evolution 31.2.3 Public Buildings and Public Works 31.3 Painting 31.3.1 Literary Evidence for Murals 31.3.2 The Qumaic Calligraphy 31.3.3 Manuscript Illustration 31.4 Music 31.5 Let Us Sum Up 31.6 Key Words i 31.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises In Unit 14, you read about the establishment and consolidation of the ruledf the ~urkishSultans in India. The new rulers established a regime thatwas in some' profound respects different from the old. India now witnessed the emergence of a culture which combined elements of both indigenous and Islamic traditions. The most effedve and distinct manifestation of this synthetic culture is to be seen in the art and architecture of this period. After going through this Unit, you should be able to : distinguish between the pre-Islamic and Indo-Islamic styles of building, identify major architectural styles of the period, Rriw the traditions of painting prevalent in the Delhi Sultanate, and learn the major developments in qusic during this period. 31.1 INTRODUCTION Art and architecture are true manifestations of the culture of a period as they reflect the mind and approach of that society. It is here that the ideas aql techniques of a society find visual expression. The adient of the Turkish rule in India is significant in more than one respect;xWhile it gave rise to a new socio-political system which you read about in Units 29 and 30, it also marked the beginning of a new expression in art. The style of architecture that evolved during this time is called Indo-Islamic. Unlike architecture, the art of painting as practised in the Delhi Sultanate is not properly documented. We know that calligraphy and book-illumination in the Islamic world had achieved supreme heights by the close of the 12th century; there also existed a developed tradition of figural murals in the Ghaznavi kingdom. Possibly the same tradition was camed to Delhi by the early Turkish Sultans where it flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries. 31.2 ARCHITECTURE The most important source 'for the study of architecture is the surviving remains of buildings themselves. Thdugh these enable us to grasp architectural techniques and styles peculiar to our period, it offers little help in understanding other related aspects of architecture such as the role of the architects and the drawings and estimates and accomts ~f the buildings. 31.2.1 New StruOYural Forms i) Arch and Dome :Do a careful reading of the reports prepared by General llexander Cunningbam of archaeological sites and remains (Reports of the \rchaeological Survey-of India, vols. I-XXIII, Simla, Calcutta, 1865-77) in Northern I ndip, we observe that the incidence of masonry building-including civilian housing in towns-increases significantly after the 13th century. This was primarily possible due to the use of lime-mortar as the basic cementing material about which you have already read in Unit 22. The building of true arch required stones or bricks to be laid as voussoir$ in the shape of a curve and bound .ogether firmly by a good binding material. TW binding material was lime-mortar. (figure 1 gives the diagram of an arch .) The result of the intioduction of the new technique was that the pre-Turkish forms;' lintel and beam and norbelling, were replaced by true arches and vaults and the spired roofs (shikhad) by domes. Arches are made in a variety of shapes, but in India the pointed form of the Islamic world was directly inherited. And sometime in second quarter of the 14th century, another variant of the pointed form, the four-centred arch, was introduced by the Tughluqs in their buildings.'lt remained in vogue till the end of Ihe Sultanate. (These forms have been illustrated in figure 2.) + The pointed arch was adopted in the Islamic world quite early due to its durability ~sd~mwedumaf Delhi Sultanate and ease of construction. The usual method of raising apointed arch was to erect a light centering and place one layer of bricks over it. This layer supported another thin layer of flat bricks over wtiich radiating voussoirs of the arch were fixed in mortar. These two bottom layers of brick-work would, if needed, act as permanent shuttering for the arch (as shown in Figure 3). It may be noted here that the employment of bricks instead of an all-wood centring was a feature typical of regions deficient in reserves of wood such as West Asia and even India. But the construction of dome demanded especial techniques. The problem was to find a suitable method for converting the square or rectangular top of the walls of the room into a circular base for raising a spherical dome. The best way to overcome this problem was to convert the square plan into a polygon by the use of squinches across the corners (shown in figure 3). Later, in the fifteenth century, stalactite pendentives came to be used for the same purpose. (Shown in photo 1 : Bara Fig. 3 Gumbad Mosque, New Delhi.) Photo 1 Fig. 5 ii) Building Material :It is a curious fact that there are very few instances of early Turkish buildings in India where newly quarried material has been employed by the architects. The fashion was to use richly carved capitals, columns, shafts and lintels from pre,-Turkish buildings. In India, towards the beginning of the 14th century when the supply of such matetial had exhausted, buildings were raised by using 1 originally quanied or manufactured material. t In the masonry work, stone has been used abundantly. The foundations are-mostly of rough and small rubble or, wherever it is available, of river boulders, while the superstructure is of dressed stone or roughly shaped coarsed stonework. However, .in either case, the buildings were plastered all over. Percy Brown (Indian Architecture : Islamic Period,Bombay, 1968) has noted that in the buildings of the Khalji period a new method of stone masonry was used. This consisted of laying stones in two different courses, that is headers and stretchers. This system was retained in subsequent buildings and became a characteristic of the building technique of the Mughals. The material commonly used for plastering buildings was gypsum. Apparently lime-plaster was reserved for places that needed to be secured against the leakage of water, such as roofs, indigo-vats, canals, drains, etc. In the later period, i.e. around - 15th century, when highly finished stucco work became common, gypsum mortar was preferred for plaster work on the walls and the ceiling (as shown in photo 2 below). uildings served the purpose of revealing it. Since the depiction of living beings was b;bnerally frowned upon, the elements of decoration were, in most cases, limited t~: a) calligraphy, b) Bebetry, and c) foliation. It was by their manid lation that a rich and sumptuous effect was obtained in the ' Sultanate buildings. Ik ut characteristically enough no one type of decoration was reserved for a particalar type of building; on the contrary, these pan-Islamic decorative principle8 were used for all kinds of buildings in the Delhi Sultanate. Calligraphy is an imI)ortant element of the decorative art in the buildings of this period. The Qurania sayings are inscribed on buildings in an angular, sober and monumental script, Yeown as kufi.They may be found in any part gf the building-frames of the doors, ceilings, wall panels, niches etc., and invariety of materials-tone, stdcco and painting (See the photos 3 & 4 for suetifftens of stone and stucco calligraptjf respectively). I Geometric shapes in abrstract form are used in these buildings in a bewildering Art and Architecture of Dclhi Sultanale variety of combinations. The motifs indicate incorporation of visual principles : repetition, symmetry, and generation of continuous patterns. It has been suggested 5y Dalu Jones (Architecture of the Islamic World,ed. George Michell, London, 1978) that the generating source of these geometric designs is the circle, which could be developed into a square, a triangle or a polygon. These forms are then elaborated by multiplication and subdivision, by rotation and by symmetrical arrangements (see, for example, photo 2 supra). Of the foliations, the dominant form of decoration employed in Sultanate buildings, is the arabesque. It is characterised by a continuous stem which splits regularly, producing a series of leafy secondary stems which can in turn split again or reintegrate into the main stem. The repetition of this pattern produces a beautifully halanced design with a three dimensional effect (see figure 4 and photo 5). Pig. 6 Check Your Progress 1 1) What was the main reason for a significant increase in masonry buildings after the 13th Century? ................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... Identify the problem to make a dome. ................................................................................................... .............................................: ..................................................... .....................................................*.... ........................................ ................................................................................................... ............................................................................................?....... 3) What were the *in elements of decoration in the Sultanate

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