Some Aspects of Indo-Islamic Architecture

This last chapter covers about five centuries of building (13th–17th c.) under the Delhi Sultanate, regional sultanates, the Mughals and the Deccan kingdoms. It is organised by themes — technique, decoration, materials, forts, minars, tombs, sarais — followed by four studies: Mandu, the Taj Mahal, the Gol Gumbaz and the Jama Masjid. As throughout this book, buildings are described historically: who built them, how, and what they meant to people at the time.

• Links in this book: Chapter 6 (temple architecture — the trabeate tradition and the Hindu and Jain building crafts that Indo-Islamic builders drew on).
• Links to Themes in Indian History: Theme Five (Through the Eyes of Travellers — Ibn Battuta and Bernier on Delhi and Agra), Theme Seven (An Imperial Capital: Vijayanagara — its blend of temple and sultanate forms), Theme Eight (Peasants, Zamindars and the State) and Theme Nine (Kings and Chronicles — the Mughal court).
• UPSC: Prelims has asked about the Gol Gumbaz dome (1995), monument–builder matches (1988), the Qila-i-Kuhna mosque (1993), Akbar’s tomb (1992) and whether Babur introduced the arch and dome (2015); Mains 2023 asked about technological changes of the Sultanate period.

• Large-scale building from the early 13th century (Delhi Sultanate). Trabeate (pillar–bracket–lintel) joined by arcuate: arches of voussoirs with a keystone; domes on squinches and pendentives.
• Decoration without living forms in religious buildings: calligraphy, arabesque, geometric patterns, jalis, tiles, tessellation, pietra dura; lotus-bud fringes, foliated arches.
• Styles: Imperial (Delhi Sultanate), Provincial (Mandu, Gujarat, Bengal, Jaunpur), Mughal (Delhi, Agra, Lahore), Deccani (Bijapur, Golconda). Gujarat borrowed temple forms; Sarkhej dargah influenced Mughal tombs.
• Forts: Daulatabad (staggered gates, twin forts), Golconda (concentric walls), Gwalior (height), Chittor. Minars: Qutub Minar (13th c., 234 ft, 5 storeys), Chand Minar (15th c., 210 ft, 4 storeys).
• Tombs as paradise: Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, Humayun, Khan-i-Khanan, Akbar, Itmaduddaula; chahar bagh. Sarais for travellers. Mandu: Hindola Mahal, Jahaz Mahal, Hoshang Shah’s tomb, Jama Masjid.
• Taj Mahal (from 1632, ~20 years, 20,000 workers; Makrana marble; double dome; pietra dura). Gol Gumbaz (Muhammad Adil Shah; 125-ft dome; whispering gallery). Jama Masjid: sahn, cloisters, qibla liwan, mihrab, mimbar.

In the seventh and eighth centuries Islam spread towards Spain and India, arriving in India with merchants, traders, holy men and conquerors over some six hundred years. Muslims built in Sind and Gujarat from the eighth century, but large-scale building began only in the early thirteenth century under the Delhi Sultanate, after the Turkish conquest of northern India.

By the twelfth century India already had monumental buildings using trabeation — brackets, pillars and lintels — to carry a flat roof or a small, shallow dome. Arches existed in wood and stone but could not bear heavy loads. Gradually the arcuate form spread: true arches built of voussoirs and fitted with keystones could carry domes, and domes resting on pendentives and squinches spanned large spaces, leaving interiors free of pillars.

Absorbing and adapting. Builders absorbed many features of local cultures and combined them with their own practices: structural techniques, shapes and surface decoration were accepted, rejected or modified over time. The result is called Indo-Islamic (NCERT also uses ‘Indo-Saracenic’) architecture. NCERT contrasts religious traditions: temples were covered with sculpture and painting of deities, while in Islamic religious art, which avoided depicting living forms, decoration developed through arabesque, geometric patterns and calligraphy on plaster and stone.

For religious and secular needs, new types were built: mosques for daily prayer, Jama Masjids, tombs, dargahs, minars, hammams (baths), formal gardens, madrasas, sarais (caravanserais) and kos minars — additions to the subcontinent’s existing building types. Builders were, in descending order of wealth, rulers and nobles and their families, merchants, merchant guilds, the rural elite and devotees of a cult. Despite Saracenic, Persian and Turkish influences, Indo-Islamic buildings were strongly shaped by Indian architectural and decorative sensibilities, by available materials, resources and skills, and by patrons’ taste; elements were borrowed liberally.

Categories. Historians conventionally group the work into the Imperial style (Delhi Sultanate), the Provincial style (Mandu, Gujarat, Bengal, Jaunpur), the Mughal style (Delhi, Agra, Lahore) and the Deccani style (Bijapur, Golconda) — aids to understanding, not rigid slots. Among provincial styles Bengal and Jaunpur are distinct; Gujarat borrowed from regional temple traditions — toranas, lintels in mihrabs, bell-and-chain carvings, carved panels of trees — for tombs, mosques and dargahs. The fifteenth-century white marble dargah of Shaikh Ahmad Khattu at Sarkhej is a fine provincial example that influenced Mughal tombs.

Decorative forms. Designs were incised or modelled in plaster (stucco), plain or coloured, or painted on or carved in stone. Motifs included flowers of the subcontinent and of Iran; the lotus-bud fringe lined the inner curves of arches; walls showed cypress, chinar and other trees and flower vases; complex ceiling flower designs also appear on textiles and carpets. In the 14th–16th centuries tiles surfaced walls and domes in blue, turquoise, green and yellow; later, tessellation (mosaic) and pietra dura decorated dado panels, and lapis lazuli was sometimes used inside. Other forms: arabesque, calligraphy, high and low relief carving, and profuse jalis. Arches were plain and squat or high and pointed; from the sixteenth century they were trefoil or multi-foliated, with medallions or bosses in the spandrels. Roofs combined a central dome with smaller domes, chhatris and tiny minarets; the main dome was topped by an inverted lotus and a metal or stone finial.

Materials. Walls were very thick, mostly of rubble masonry, then faced with chunam (lime plaster) or dressed stone. Stones included quartzite, sandstone, buff stone and marble; polychrome tiles finished walls. From the early seventeenth century bricks were also used, giving more flexibility, with more reliance on local materials.

Monumental forts with battlements symbolised a king’s seat of power; losing one meant losing power or sovereignty and accepting the victor’s suzerainty. Examples: Chittor, Gwalior, Daulatabad (earlier Devgiri) and Golconda. Commanding heights gave a view of the region, security, room for residential and official complexes, and inspired awe. Golconda had concentric outer walls to be breached one by one. Daulatabad had staggered entrances so gates could not be forced even with elephants, twin forts (one inside and above the other), and a labyrinth in which a wrong turn could send attackers in circles or to their death. Gwalior was invincible because its height made it impossible to scale; Babur, unimpressed by much in Hindustan, was said to have been overawed by it. Chittorgarh, called by NCERT the largest fort in Asia and the longest-occupied seat of power, has stambhas (towers) celebrating victory and many water bodies. Palace complexes inside forts absorbed styles very freely.

The minar is another form of stambha. Its daily use was for the azaan; its height proclaimed the ruler’s might. The Qutub Minar (Delhi), associated also with the saint Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, was built in the thirteenth century: a 234-ft tapering tower of five storeys, mixing polygonal and circular shapes, of red and buff sandstone with some marble in the upper storeys, with richly decorated balconies and bands of inscriptions intertwined with foliage. The Chand Minar at Daulatabad, of the fifteenth century, is 210 ft high in four storeys, now painted peach; it once had chevron patterns in encaustic tile and bold bands of Quranic verses — Iranian-looking, but built by local architects with others from Delhi and Iran.

Monumental tombs over the graves of rulers and royalty were popular: those of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, Humayun and Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan in Delhi, and of Akbar and Itmaduddaula in Agra. Following the historian Anthony Welch, NCERT explains the idea of eternal paradise as a reward for the believer on the Day of Judgement: tombs began with Quranic verses on the walls and were later set in paradise-like surroundings — a garden, water, or both — as at Humayun’s tomb and the Taj Mahal in the chahar bagh style. Such vast designed spaces also displayed the majesty and might of the person buried there.

Sarais ringed cities and dotted the subcontinent: built on a simple square or rectangular plan, they lodged Indian and foreign travellers, pilgrims, merchants and traders — public spaces where people of many backgrounds met, encouraging cross-cultural exchange. Buildings for ordinary people also mixed styles: houses, temples, mosques, khanqahs and dargahs, commemorative gateways, garden pavilions and bazaars.

Mandu, about sixty miles from Indore and over 2,000 ft high, overlooks the Malwa plateau to the north and the Narmada valley to the south. Its natural defences attracted Paramara Rajputs, Afghans and Mughals. NCERT calls it the capital of the ‘Ghauri dynasty (1401–1561) founded by Hoshang Shah’; it is linked with the romance of Baz Bahadur and Rani Rupmati, and the Mughals visited it in the monsoon. It typifies the provincial style: palaces, pavilions, mosques, artificial reservoirs, baolis and battlements; light, airy arched pavilions that do not hold heat; local stone and marble — a fine example of adaptation to the environment.

The Royal Enclave clusters palaces around two artificial lakes. The Hindola Mahal, like a railway viaduct with huge buttresses, was the Sultan’s audience hall; its battered (sloping) walls suggest ‘swinging’ (hindola). The Jahaz Mahal, an elegant two-storey ‘ship palace’ between two reservoirs, with pavilions and balconies over the water, built by Sultan Ghiyasuddin Khilji, was possibly his harem and pleasure resort, with watercourses and a terrace pool. Rani Rupmati’s double pavilion on the southern battlements looks over the Narmada valley; Baz Bahadur’s palace has a wide courtyard. The Asharfi Mahal madrasa is in ruins. Hoshang Shah’s tomb has a fine dome, marble jalis, porticos, courts and towers — robust Afghan form softened by lattice, carved brackets and toranas. The Jama Masjid, for Friday prayers, has a monumental gateway with a squat dome, an open court with columned cloisters on three sides topped by small domes, red sandstone facing, a mimbar on carved brackets and a mihrab with a lotus-bud fringe. NCERT notes that Mandu is often seen as too close to Imperial Delhi to be strongly local, yet its light structures and embellishments were an important contribution.

Built in Agra by Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, from 1632 over nearly twenty years by 20,000 specialised workers, the Taj is the apogee of the evolutionary process of medieval Indian architecture. Its sublimity comes from an orderly, simple plan and elevation, perfect proportions and symmetry, the ethereal quality of marble, the setting of garden and river, and a pure silhouette; its patina changes hue through the day and night. A monumental red sandstone gateway frames the tomb; the garden is a chahar bagh of paths, water channels, pools and fountains; the tomb stands at the northern end of the garden, not its centre, to use the river bank.

A straight path leads to the plinth and terrace, at whose corners stand four tapering minarets, 132 ft high. The main building has a drum and dome and four cupolas; plinth, walls and drum-dome are in perfect proportion. To the west is a red sandstone mosque, balanced by a similar building to the east. The marble came from Makrana (Rajasthan). The tomb is a square with chamfered corners (eight sides), with deep arched recesses giving contrasts of plane, light and shade. The two elevations — floor to roof, and roof to the pinnacle above the foliated crest of the dome — each measure 186 ft, as do all sides. Inside: a crypt below and an octagonal vaulted tomb chamber above, with a room at each angle linked by corridors; light enters through carved, pierced jalis; a double dome allows a ceiling as high as the façade. Four kinds of ornament: relief carving; jalis and volutes; pietra dura arabesques (yellow marble, jade, jasper) and tessellated geometric designs; and calligraphy of Quranic verses in inlaid jasper.

The Gol Gumbaz at Bijapur (Karnataka) is the mausoleum of Muhammad Adil Shah (r. 1626–1656), seventh sultan of the Adil Shahi dynasty (1489–1686), built by the ruler himself and striking though unfinished. The complex includes a gateway, a naqqar khana, a mosque and a sarai in a walled garden. A square building of dark grey basalt with decorated plaster carries a circular drum and a huge dome. Each wall is 135 ft long, 110 ft high and 10 ft thick; with the dome it rises over 200 ft. The single square chamber under a dome 125 ft across covers 18,337 sq ft without a break — NCERT calls it the second largest in the world. The burial places in the chamber mark the real graves in a vault below. The dome stands on pendentives, which shape it and carry its weight to the walls; arch-nets or stellate forms cover the angles where arches meet. A whispering gallery along the drum magnifies and echoes sound. Seven-storeyed octagonal towers at the corners hold staircases; the drum has foliated decoration; a heavily bracketed cornice on corbels crowns the façade. Its dome, arches, proportions and load-bearing suggest Timurid and Persian styles, but it uses local material and Deccani decoration; its corner towers recall those of the Qila-i-Kuhna mosque in Delhi’s Purana Qila.

Large mosques spanning huge spaces hosted congregational prayers every Friday afternoon (NCERT: requiring at least forty adult Muslim men). A khutba was read in the ruler’s name, and his laws were announced. A city had one Jama Masjid, which with its surroundings became the focus of life for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, as commercial, cultural, religious and indirectly political activity concentrated there. Typically it had a large open courtyard surrounded on three sides by cloisters, with the qibla liwan on the west, containing the mihrab and the mimbar for the imam; worshippers face the mihrab, which shows the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca.

Nine short questions and a documentation project. Try each first.

Numbers

One-liners

• Trabeate = pillar–bracket–lintel; arcuate = arch + dome with voussoirs and keystone.
• Squinch and pendentive turn a square room into a base for a round dome.
• Decoration: calligraphy, arabesque, geometry, jali, tiles, tessellation, pietra dura.
• Styles: Imperial, Provincial (Mandu, Gujarat, Bengal, Jaunpur), Mughal, Deccani.
• Sarkhej dargah (15th c., white marble) influenced Mughal tombs.
• Daulatabad: staggered gates, twin forts, labyrinth; Golconda: concentric walls.
• Qutub Minar 5 storeys; Chand Minar 4 storeys.
• Tomb as paradise: garden + water; chahar bagh at Humayun’s tomb and the Taj.
• Mandu: Hindola Mahal (battered walls), Jahaz Mahal (Ghiyasuddin Khilji), Hoshang Shah’s tomb.
• Taj: Makrana marble, double dome, tomb at the river end, mosque west.
• Gol Gumbaz: Muhammad Adil Shah, 125-ft dome, pendentives, whispering gallery.
• Jama Masjid: sahn, cloisters, qibla liwan (west), mihrab, mimbar; khutba.

Traps to avoid

• The arch and dome came with the Delhi Sultanate, not with Babur (UPSC 2015).
• ‘Indo-Saracenic’ usually means the 19th-century colonial style; use ‘Indo-Islamic’ here.
• Concentric walls = Golconda; staggered gates and twin forts = Daulatabad.
• Qutub Minar = 5 storeys (234 ft); Chand Minar = 4 storeys (210 ft).
• Gol Gumbaz = Muhammad Adil Shah, Bijapur — the giant dome (UPSC 1988, 1995).
• Mandu’s Ghuri dynasty was founded by Dilawar Khan; Hoshang Shah made Mandu the capital; Jahaz Mahal is Khalji.
• The Taj stands at the northern (river) end of its garden, not the centre.
• Akbar’s tomb is at Sikandra (Agra) — UPSC 1992 key ‘Sikandra’.
• Qila-i-Kuhna mosque is attributed to Sher Shah (UPSC 1993).
• Glossary slips: Buddhism ‘16th century BCE’ (= 6th); shala/ayatasra is rectangular, not elliptical.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Monuments and builders: Gol Gumbaz dome (1995); Qutub Minar–Iltutmish, Gol Gumbaz–Muhammad Adil Shah, Buland Darwaza–Akbar, Moti Masjid–Aurangzeb (1988); Qila-i-Kuhna–Sher Shah (1993); Akbar’s tomb at Sikandra (1992 — the key is ‘Sikandra’ though ‘Agra’ is also offered; keep the key).
• Technology: Babur did not introduce the arch and dome (2015, key: only the Timurid dynasty statement is correct).
• Likely: features of the Taj (Makrana, double dome, pietra dura), Daulatabad and Golconda defences, Chand Minar, Mandu’s palaces, Sarkhej, the four style categories.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 2023 (technological changes of the Sultanate period and their influence on society): the true arch and dome, voussoirs and keystone, squinches and pendentives, lime-plaster (chunam) facing over rubble, glazed tiles; new building types (mosques, madrasas, sarais) that changed urban life; add other technologies from Theme Five and Theme Eight (paper, the spinning wheel, the Persian wheel — Beyond this chapter).
• Frame for any Indo-Islamic answer: technique → materials and decoration → building type and use → patron → regional variation → synthesis with Indian traditions (Gujarat toranas, Mandu brackets, Gol Gumbaz’s Deccani ornament).

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

Open any question to attempt it in the Question bank — your attempt is saved to your progress.