The articles by John Burton-Page on Indian Islamic architecture assembled in this volume give an historical overview of the subject, ranging from the mosques and tombs erected by the Delhi sultans in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, to the great monuments of the Mughals in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The buildings erected in the Deccan region of India belonged to a number of pre-Mughal kingdoms that reigned in the Deccan from the middle of the 14th century onwards [to the 18th century]. The monuments testify to a culture where local and imported ideas, vernacular and pan-Islamic traditions fused and re-interpreted, to create a majestic architectural heritage with exceptional buildings on the edge of the Islamic world. Many are still standing - yet outside this region of peninsular India, they remain largely unknown.General publications on Indian Islamic architecture usually devote a single chapter to the Deccan. Even specialist monographs can only cover a portion of the region, due to the sheer number of sites. While it is impossible to encompass the full breadth of the subject in a single volume, this book aims to embrace the visual diversity of the Deccan without sacrificing the rigour of academic study. Structures of historical or architectural significance are placed in their context, as the authors discuss building typologies, civic facilities and ornamental techniques, from plaster and carved stone to glazed tiles and mural painting. A chapter is dedicated to each principal Deccan site, interweaving the rise and fall of these cities with a pictorial journey through their ruins, and each building is accompanied by an overhead plan view.

This book reinterprets the Muslim architecture and urban planning of South India, looking beyond the Deccan to the regions of Tamil Nadu and Kerala - the historic coasts of Coromandel and Malabar. For the first time a detailed survey of the Muslim monuments of the historic ports and towns demonstrates a rich and diverse architectural tradition entirely independent from the better known architecture of North India and the Deccan sultanates. The book, extensively illustrated with photographs and architectural drawings, widens the horizons of our understanding of Muslim India and will no doubt pave new paths for future studies in the field.

Beginning in the thirteenth century and continuing for more than five hundred years, the architecture of India's subcontinent bore the vibrant and ornate characteristics of the Islamic peoples who thrived there. This is the first book to cover the entire history of this architectural era, encompassing all of the subcontinent including Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as a variety of provincial styles that co-existed in various regions of India. Included in this colorful, lavishly illustrated volume are numerous rare photographs of the most notable sites and buildings, all taken by Federico Borromeo during his many years of traveling throughout this area. The clear and authoritative text, by a renowned Islamic scholar, offers a detailed historical background of this period as it explains the evolution of its architecture and clarifies the many and varied regional styles. A valuable book for any student of architecture, this volume will delight anyone with a curiosity about India or Islamic history and art.

Muslim contribution towards evolving and perpetuating a distinctive style of architecture in the South Asian subcontinent has been epoch-making. Different and divergent from its local counterpart, the style was essentially a synthesized assimilation of foreign as well as local elements, which together created marvels both of religious and secular buildings. While foreign elements were introduced by the Arabs, Persians, Turks, and the Central Asians, local characteristics were borrowed from the Hindu-Jaina temples and Buddhist monastic establishments. The Muslims built their habitats according to the dictates of their faith, their taste and resources, and in accordance with the prevailing climatic conditions, availability of materials, and proficiency of technical know-how. During the last hundred years several art and architectural historians have described and evaluated the birth, adolescence, and maturity of these styles. However, a cumulative of the exploration and excavation of several archaeological sites and surveys of hitherto unknown or little known standing monuments, was yet to be attempted. The present book gives a resume of these efforts and researches, putting it in chronological perspective and geographical sequence. The material researched and illustrated by the architectural historians and published in the annual reports, memoirs and journals of the old Archaeological Survey of India and the Pakistan Department of Archaeology, has been generously and extensively adapted and included in the text. For the first time, after analytical treatment it has been presented in order to give a comprehensive picture of Islamic architecture in South Asia, up to the time of the decline and extinction of the grand Moghul Empire.

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