The province of Gujarat also witnessed the growth of a beautiful style of architecture. A splendid indigenous style had already flourished there before the coming of the Muslims, and the buildings of the conquerors bear unmistakable signs of the influence of that style,though arches were occasionally used for symbolical purposes. Thus we find the use of fine wood-carving and also of delicate stone lattices and ornaments in the buildings of the new capital city, Ahmadabad, which was constructed by Ahmad Shah, during A.D. 1411-1441, out of the ruins of old temples and buildings the Jami Masjid, the construction of which was begun in A.D. 1411, has 260 pillars supporting 15 stone domes, made of hori- zontally projecting courses in the indigenous style.
Dr. Burgess, who has dealt exhaustively with the history and features of ancient and medieval architecture in his five volumes of the Archaeological Survey of Western India, justly describes this style as “combining all the beauty and finish of the native art with a certain magnificence which is deficient in their own works”. In the numerous buildings,these mosques and tombs, built in Gujarat since the accession of the Ahmad Shahi rulers, the tradition of the old Indian art was predominant, though it was modified in certain respects according to the requirements of the followers of Islam.
At Dhar, the old capital of the kingdom of MaIwa, two mosques were built wholly out of the remains of old buildings; the domes and pillars of these mosques were of Hindu form. But the buildings at Mandu, where the capital was soon transferred, were marked by the predominance of Muslim art traditions, as those of Delhi; “the borrowing or imitating” of native forms “seems to have been suppressed and the buildings clung steadily to the pointed arch style”. Among the many buildings of splendid architectural beauty built in the fortified city of Mandu, situated in an extensive plateau overlooking the Narmada, the following deserve mention-the Jami’ Masjid, which was planned and begun by Hushang and completed by Mahmud Khalji, the Hindola Mahal, the Jahaj Mahal, Hushang’s tomb, and Baz Bahadur’s and Rupamati’s palaces. Marble and sandstone were used in many of these edifices.
The Muslim Sultans of Kashmir continued the old tradition of stone and wooden architecture but grafted on it “structural forms and decorative motifs peculiarly associated with Islam”. Thus here also we find a blending of Hindu and Muslim ideas of art.
In South India the architecture of the Bahmanids, who were patrons of art, letters and sciences, was a composite mixture of several elements-Indian, Turkish, Egyptian and Persian-the last of which was well-marked in some of the buildings like the Jami’ Masjid at Gulbarga, the Chand Minar at Daulatabad (1435) and the College of Mahmud Gawan at Bidar (1472). Many of the Bahmani buildings were built on the sites of the old temples and out of their materials, and thus the influence of old Hindu art could not be avoided. Turkish and Egyptian elements entered through West Asiatic and African adventurers, who got employment in the Bahmani kingdom; and the Persian element through the Persians, who poured into that kingdom in the latter half of the fifteenth century.
The native Deccan art, however, began to reassert itself in growing vigour from the end of the fifteenth century. As the monuments which the ‘Adil Shahis of Bijapur built in the next century were constructed by Indian artists and craftsmen, “it was inevitable”, writes Sir John Marshall, “that Indian genius should rise superior to foreign influence and stamp itself more and more deeply on these creations “. We have already discussed the splendid outburst of art and architecture in the Vijayanagar Empire.
Thus we find that, in spite of some bitterness in political relations, the impact of Hindu and Islamic civilizations was producing harmony and mutual understanding in the spheres of society, culture and art, during the Turko-Afghan period. This harmony developed in the time of the great Mughul, Akbar, to an unprecedented degree and was not wholly lost even in the time of his successors and also of the later Mughuls.
The preaching of the saintly teachers of India with their ideal of uplift of the masses, the tolerant ideas of the Sufi saints and scholars, and the growth of Indian provincial literature, might be regarded as signs of modernism appearing as a result of the fusion of two civilisation while medieval Sultanate was hastening toward disintegration. Another noticeable feature of Indian history on the eve of Babur’s invasion was the rise or growth of indigenous States, like Vijayanagar, Orissa and Mewar, as a sort of protest against foreign domination. We should also note that the rulers of the independent Muslim kingdoms that arose on the ruins of the medieval Muslim Empire cannot all be regarded as aliens; the rulers of Gujarat, Ahmadnagar and Berar were of indigenous origin.
Many of the States, whether Hindu or Muslim, that grew up at this time represented local movements for ” self-determination “.But their chances were destroyed by another Turkish incursion, of which the leader was Babur. Thus Babur’s invasion gave a new turn to the history of India.
