The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India Authors: Pushkar Sohoni 9781784537944, 9781786724199, 9781786734198

The Deccan sultans left a grand architectural and artistic legacy. They commissioned palaces, mosques, gardens and tombs

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Table of contents :
Cover
Author Biography
Editorial
Title page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. Locating Architecture: Social History and Historiography of the Deccan
The Deccan: A Brief History
Hindustan and the Deccan as Diverse and Unified Landscapes
The Visual Culture of the Deccan Sultanates
Continuities and Ruptures: The Purity and Hybridity of Architecture in the Deccan
Methods to Study Architectural Remains
Guilds and Movements of Craftspeople Recovered
Sultanate Architecture and Regional Variations
Extra-regional Architectural Programmes and Building Typologies
Global Architecture and Local Construction
The Urgency to Study, Research, and Recover
2. Multiple Pasts: The Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar
Drawing Boundaries: Historiography of the Nizam Shahs
The Nizam Shahs
Paintings
Coins of the Nizam Shahs
Literature at the Court
3. Urban Patterns, Water Supply Systems, and Fortification
Urban Design and Settlements
Junnar
Daulatabad
Ahmadnagar
Chaul
Parenda
Sindkhed Raja
Urban Systems: Water Supply and Civic Buildings
Military Design and Fortification
4. Palaces and Mansions
Farah Bakhsh Bagh
Hasht Bihisht Bagh
Manzarsumbah
Palace near Bhatavadi (Kalawantinicha Mahal)
Architecture of Palaces for the Sultan
5. Mosques: Piety and Prayer
Soneri Mosque in the Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar)
Agha Bihzad or Kari Masjid (Ahmadnagar)
Damdi Mosque (Bhingar)
Mosque of Sanjar Khan (Dharur)
Mahdavi Mosque (Rohankheda)
Mahdavi Mosque (Fathkheda/Sakharkheda)
Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar)
Qasim Khan’s Mosque (Ahmadnagar)
Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar)
Kamani Mosque (Shivneri)
Jamiʾ Mosque (Chaul)
Dilawar Khan’s Mosque (Rajgurunagar/Khed)
6. Tombs
Bagh Rauza – Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I (Ahmadnagar)
Saudagar Gumbaz (Junnar)
Sarje Khan’s Tomb – DōBōti Chirā
(Ahmadnagar)
Tomb of Changiz Khan (Ahmadnagar)
Tomb of Bava Bangali
Tomb of Salabat Khan
Rumi Khan’s Tomb
Tomb Attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah I (Khuldabad)
Shah Sharif’s Tomb (Ahmadnagar)
Tomb of Haji Hamid (Ahmadnagar)
Bhonsale Memorials (Verul)
Dilawar Khan’s Tomb (Rajgurunagar/Khed)
Lakhuji Jadhav’s Tomb (Sindkhed Raja)
Malik Ambar’s Tomb (Khuldabad)
7. Miscellaneous Buildings
The Water System of Ahmadnagar
The Waterworks at Manzarsumbah
Āb Anbār and Bā
dgir at Savedi
Hammam at Chaul
Shahi Hammam at Daulatabad
The Dam near Daulatabad
Khufiya Bavdi
The Caravanserai at Chaul
Chini Mahal
Chitakhana
Conclusion: End of an Old World
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
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The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India Authors: Pushkar Sohoni
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Pushkar Sohoni is an assistant professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, and an architectural historian focusing on the medieval and early modern architecture of the Deccan. Trained as a conservation architect, he received a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania for his research on the architecture of the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar. He was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia before returning to the University of Pennsylvania as the South Asia Studies Librarian. He has published extensively on aspects of the material culture of the medieval and early modern Deccan, including architecture, numismatics and socio-linguistics. He has recently coauthored an architectural guide on Jewish architecture in the region, and written another on Aurangabad and its surrounds.

‘In Pushkar Sohoni’s hands, architectural remains become a palimpsest for the political, aesthetic and social history of the Nizam Shahi kingdom. An exhaustive survey of the remains is glimpsed through a bifocal lens. Whilst one lens captures the entangled political and aesthetic registers that inform the design choices of different edifices, the other lens details how social realities of the sixteenth-century Deccan shaped the execution of those designs. What emerges by blending these two visions is a unique history of the Deccan that is profoundly local without being essentialist and, simultaneously, resolutely cosmopolitan without being rootless.’ Projit Bihari Mukharji, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania ‘This book deals with a period of Indian Islamic architectural history that is of outstanding interest, but has previously been overlooked. Not only is this a significant contribution to architectural history, it also adds to a more complete understanding of medieval Indo-Islamic culture.’ George Michell, The Deccan Heritage Foundation

Islamic South Asia Series Series Editor Ruby Lal, Emory University

Advisory Board Iftikhar Dadi, Cornell University Stephen F. Dale, Ohio State University Rukhsana David, Kinnaird College for Women Michael Fisher, Oberlin College Marcus Fraser, Fitzwilliam Museum Ebba Koch, University of Vienna David Lewis, London School of Economics Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London Ron Sela, Indiana University Bloomington Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam

Titles Sexual and Gender Diversity in the Muslim World: History, Law and Vernacular Knowledge, Vanja Hamzic The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India, Pushkar Sohoni

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India

PUSHKAR SOHONI

Published in 2018 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2018 Pushkar Sohoni The right of Pushkar Sohoni to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Library of Islamic South Asia 2 ISBN: 978 1 78453 794 4 eISBN: 978 1 78672 419 9 ePDF: 978 1 78673 419 8 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

To Ria and Aarav

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Preface 1.

2.

Locating Architecture: Social History and Historiography of the Deccan The Deccan: A Brief History Hindustan and the Deccan as Diverse and Unified Landscapes The Visual Culture of the Deccan Sultanates Continuities and Ruptures: The Purity and Hybridity of Architecture in the Deccan Methods to Study Architectural Remains Guilds and Movements of Craftspeople Recovered Sultanate Architecture and Regional Variations Extra-regional Architectural Programmes and Building Typologies Global Architecture and Local Construction The Urgency to Study, Research, and Recover Multiple Pasts: The Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar Drawing Boundaries: Historiography of the Nizam Shahs The Nizam Shahs Paintings

xii xvii xix

1 1 5 7 9 12 13 16 17 18 20 22 22 28 33

x

3.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

Coins of the Nizam Shahs Literature at the Court

50 60

Urban Patterns, Water Supply Systems, and Fortification Urban Design and Settlements Junnar Daulatabad Ahmadnagar Chaul Parenda Sindkhed Raja Urban Systems: Water Supply and Civic Buildings Military Design and Fortification

65 65 68 71 73 78 83 86 87 89

4.

Palaces and Mansions Farah Bakhsh Bagh Hasht Bihisht Bagh Manzarsumbah Palace near Bhatavadi (Kalawantinicha Mahal) Architecture of Palaces for the Sultan

98 102 109 114 123 131

5.

Mosques: Piety and Prayer Soneri Mosque in the Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar) Agha Bihzad or Kari Masjid (Ahmadnagar) Damdi Mosque (Bhingar) Mosque of Sanjar Khan (Dharur) Mahdavi Mosque (Rohankheda) Mahdavi Mosque (Fathkheda/Sakharkheda) Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar) Qasim Khan’s Mosque (Ahmadnagar) Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar) Kamani Mosque (Shivneri) Jamiʾ Mosque (Chaul) Dilawar Khan’s Mosque (Rajgurunagar/Khed)

133 135 137 140 143 145 148 151 153 155 157 159 163

CONTENTS

6.

7.

Tombs Bagh Rauza – Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I (Ahmadnagar) Saudagar Gumbaz (Junnar) Sarje Khan’s Tomb – Do¯ Bo¯ti Chira¯ (Ahmadnagar) Tomb of Changiz Khan (Ahmadnagar) Tomb of Bava Bangali Tomb of Salabat Khan Rumi Khan’s Tomb Tomb Attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah I (Khuldabad) Shah Sharif’s Tomb (Ahmadnagar) Tomb of Haji Hamid (Ahmadnagar) Bhonsale Memorials (Verul) Dilawar Khan’s Tomb (Rajgurunagar/Khed) Lakhuji Jadhav’s Tomb (Sindkhed Raja) Malik Ambar’s Tomb (Khuldabad) Miscellaneous Buildings The Water System of Ahmadnagar The Waterworks at Manzarsumbah A¯b Anba¯r and Ba¯dgir at Savedi Hammam at Chaul Shahi Hammam at Daulatabad The Dam near Daulatabad Khufiya Bavdi The Caravanserai at Chaul Chini Mahal Chitakhana

xi

165 167 169 172 174 176 178 181 181 184 188 189 192 194 195 199 200 201 202 202 203 206 207 208 211 212

Conclusion

215

Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

220 236 266 278

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

All maps, photographs and plans were made by the author.

Preface Map 1 The location of Ahmadnagar in South Asia.

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Chapter 1 Map 2 The major settlements of the Deccan Plateau in the sixteenth century.

2

Chapter 2 Figure 2.1 Battle scene from the Tarif-i Husain Shah. Figure 2.2 Dohada scene from the Tarif-i Husain Shah. Figure 2.3 Sultan Husain Nizam Shah I and his queen from the Tarif-i Husain Shah. Figure 2.4a Sultan Husain Nizam Shah I and Khunzada Humayun from the Tarif-i Husain Shah. Figure 2.4b Hoysala sculpture of S´iva and his wife Uma¯. Figure 2.5 Portrait of Murtaza Nizam Shah I in the Bibilotheque National, Paris. Figure 2.6a Gold coin of Burhan Nizam Shah III, 3.36 gm. Figure 2.6b Gold coin of Murtaza Nizam Shah I, 2.90 gm. Figure 2.7 Silver coin of Burhan Nizam Shah II, 6.85 gm. Figure 2.8 Manuscript of the Kita¯b-i hasha¯’ish at the ˙ University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

35 36 37 43 44 47 54 54 55 62

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xiii

Chapter 3 Figure 3.1 Detail of column in mosque in the fort of Parenda.

84

Chapter 4 Figure 4.1 The portal to the estate of Ni’mat Khan, Ahmadnagar city. 101 Figure 4.2 Elevation of Farah Bakhsh Bagh. 103 Figure 4.3 Plan of Farah Bakhsh Bagh. 104 Figure 4.4 Farah Bakhsh Bagh, section. 105 Figure 4.5 Stucco plaster finishes in Farah Bakhsh Bagh. 106 Figure 4.6 Timber framing in the construction of Farah Bakhsh Bagh. 107 Figure 4.7 Hasht Bihisht Bagh, Ahmadnagar. 109 Figure 4.8 Plan of Hasht Bihisht Bagh. 110 Figure 4.9 Plan of entrance pavilion and octagonal pavilion, Hasht Bihisht Bagh. 111 Figure 4.10 Badgir close to the Hasht Bihisht Bagh. 112 Figure 4.11 Construction detail of roof, Hasht Bihisht Bagh and Manzarsumbah. 113 Figure 4.12 Lakkad Mahal. 114 Figure 4.13 View of the palace buildings at Manzarsumbah. 115 Figure 4.14 Plan of the Manzarsumbah site. 116 Figure 4.15 Gatehouse at the site of Manzarsumbah. 118 Figure 4.16 Stone vaulting of the gatehouse, Manzarsumbah. 120 Figure 4.17 Threshold of the gatehouse, Manzarsumbah. 120 Figure 4.18 Buildings. 121 Figure 4.19 Plan of Kalawantinicha Mahal, near Bhatavadi. 124 Figure 4.20 Plan of northern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal near Bhatavadi. 125 Figure 4.21 Large stones with tether-holes around Kalawantinicha Mahal. 126 Figure 4.22a Eastern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal. 127 Figure 4.22b Northern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal. 127 Figure 4.22c Southern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal. 128 Figure 4.22d Western pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal. 128 Figure 4.23 Bhatavadi dam, built under the Nizam Shahs and repaired by the British. 130

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Chapter 5 Figure 5.1 Plan of the Bara Imam Kotla complex. 135 Figure 5.2 Soneri mosque, Bara Imam Kotla, Ahmadnagar. 136 Figure 5.3 Interior of Soneri mosque, Bara Imam Kotla. 136 Figure 5.4 Entrance portal to the Bara Imam Kotla enclosure. 137 Figure 5.5 Rear fac¸ade of the Agha Bihzad mosque, Ahmadnagar. 138 Figure 5.6 Plan of the Agha Bihzad mosque. 138 Figure 5.7 Husaini mosque, now the Kotwali Police Station. 139 Figure 5.8 Interior of the Agha Bihzad mosque. 140 Figure 5.9 Damdi mosque, near Bhingar. 141 Figure 5.10 Plan of Damdi mosque. 141 Figure 5.11 The richly carved stone interior of the Damdi mosque. 142 Figure 5.12 Mosque of Sanjar Khan, Dharur. 143 Figure 5.13 Plan of the mosque of Sanjar Khan. 144 Figure 5.14 The ruinous interior of the mosque of Sanjar Khan with remnant column bases. 144 Figure 5.15 The mosque at Rohankheda. 146 Figure 5.16 Exterior of the enclosure walls of the mosque at Rohankheda. 146 Figure 5.17 Plan of the mosque at Rohankheda. 147 Figure 5.18 Gatehouse in the enclosure wall of the Rohankheda mosque. 147 Figure 5.19 Mosque at Imampur, 10 km east of Ahmadnagar. 148 Figure 5.20 ‘Idgah at Rohankheda. 149 Figure 5.21 Mosque at Fathkheda (Sakharkheda). 150 Figure 5.22 Plan of mosque at Fathkheda. 150 Figure 5.23 The front fac ade of the Fathkheda mosque. 151 Figure 5.24 Interior of Kali mosque in Burud Ali, Ahmadnagar. 152 Figure 5.25 Plan of Kali mosque, Ahmadnagar. 152 Figure 5.26 Gateway to Qasim Khan’s mosque, Ahmadnagar. 153 Figure 5.27 Interior of Qasim Khan’s mosque, Ahmadnagar. 154 Figure 5.28 Plan of Qasim Khan’s mosque. 155 Figure 5.29 Plan of Kamani mosque, Ahmadnagar. 156 Figure 5.30 Interior of Kamani mosque, Ahmadanagar. 156 Figure 5.31 Plan of Kamani mosque, Junnar fort (Shivneri). 157

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xv

Figure 5.32 The early historic cisterns above which the Kamani mosque at Shivneri is constructed. 158 Figure 5.33 The Kamani mosque at Shivneri. 158 Figure 5.34 Elevation of the mosque at Chaul. 159 Figure 5.35 Plan of the mosque at Chaul. 160 Figure 5.36 The large bulbous central dome of the mosque at Chaul. 161 Figure 5.37 Wooden dowels inside the stone voissoirs, mosque at Chaul. 161 Figure 5.38 Fac¸ade of revetted stone, mosque of Dilawar Khan, Khed (Rajgurunagar). 162 Figure 5.39 Mosque of Dilawar Khan, Rajgurunagar. 163

Chapter 6 Figure 6.1 Site plan of Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I), Ahmadnagar. Figure 6.2 Elevation of the tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I and gatehouse. Figure 6.3 Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I at Bagh Rauza, Ahmadnagar. Figure 6.4 Saudagar Gumbaz, Junnar. Figure 6.5 Plan of Saudagar Gumbaz, Junnar. Figure 6.6 Elevation detail. Figure 6.7 Plan of the tomb of Sarje Khan, also known as Do Boti Chira. Figure 6.8 Tomb of Sarje Khan, Ahmadnagar. Figure 6.9 Plan of the tomb of Changiz Khan, near Savedi. Figure 6.10 Double-storied interior of the tomb of Changiz Khan. Figure 6.11 Tomb of Changiz Khan, near Savedi. Figure 6.12 Plan of the tomb of Bava Bangali, Ahmadnagar. Figure 6.13 Tomb of Bava Bangali, Ahmadnagar. Figure 6.14 Tomb of Salabat Khan, south of Ahmadnagar. Figure 6.15 Plan of the tomb of Salabat Khan. Figure 6.16 Ambulatory gallery on the upper floor, tomb of Salabat Khan. Figure 6.17 Tomb of Rumi Khan, Ahmadnagar. Figure 6.18 Plan of tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad.

168 169 170 171 171 172 173 173 175 175 176 177 177 179 180 180 182 183

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Figure 6.19 Interior of tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad. 183 Figure 6.20 Tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad. 185 Figure 6.21 Site plan of Dargah Dairah, including the tomb of Shah Sharif, Ahmadnagar. 186 Figure 6.22 Plan of the tomb of Shah Sharif. 186 Figure 6.23 Tomb of Shah Sharif, Ahmadnagar. 187 Figure 6.24 Plan of the tomb of Haji Hamid, Savedi. 188 Figure 6.25 Interior of the tomb of Haji Hamid. 189 Figure 6.26 Memorial attributed to Maloji Bhonsale, Verul. 190 Figure 6.27 A tomb or a memorial just north of Ghrishneshwar temple, Verul. 191 Figure 6.28 Tomb west of the Ghrishneshwar temple at Verul. 192 Figure 6.29 Detail of the memorial T2 north of Ghrishneshwar temple. 193 Figure 6.30 Memorial to Lakhuji Jadhav, Sindkhed Raja. 194 Figure 6.31 Tomb of Malik Ambar, Khuldabad. 195 Figure 6.32 Plan of the tomb of Malik Ambar, Khuldabad. 196 Figure 6.33 The carved stone jalis on the tomb of Malik Ambar. 196 Figure 6.34 Unattributed tomb next to the tomb of Malik Ambar, around Khuldabad. 197

Chapter 7 Figure 7.1 Plan of the hammam at Chaul. Figure 7.2 Interior of the hammam at Chaul. Figure 7.3 Plan of the Shahi hammam at Daulatabad. Figure 7.4 Interior of the Shahi hammam at Daulatabad. Figure 7.5 Dam north of Daulatabad, close to old Kagazipura on the Khuldabad plain. Figure 7.6 Balcony projection on the building near the dam north of Daulatabad. Figure 7.7 Plan of Khufiya Bavdi, west of Daulatabad fort. Figure 7.8 Khufiya Bavdi. Figure 7.9 Plan of the Caravansarai at Chaul. Figure 7.10 Chini Mahal in the Kala Kot enclosure, Daulatabad. Figure 7.11 Chitakhana, Aurangabad. Figure 7.12 Plan of the Chitakhana, Aurangabad.

203 204 205 205 206 207 208 209 210 212 213 213

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This has been a project in the making for a decade, and there have been several people without whom this would never have been completed, though some of them are blissfully unaware of it. To thank and acknowledge them is the least that I can do, and this includes several phases of living in Philadelphia and Pune. To begin, without the encouragement of Michael W. Meister and Renata Holod, my research would neither have commenced nor have been completed. In Philadelphia, at the University of Pennsylvania, good friends like Beth Citron, Mandavi Mehta, Leslee Michelsen, Julia Perratore, Milind Ranade, Yael Rice, Gregory Tentler, and Elif Unlu, among others made difficult times very easy. Holly Pittman facilitated my visit to Iran, when I needed that experience, and David Brownlee provided every kind of imaginable support in his capacity as chair of the History of Art department. In Pune, I had the pleasure of having several friends at Deccan College, such as Abhijit Dandekar, Shrikant Ganvir, Amol Kulkarni, Girish Mandke, Hrushikesh Oka, Shrikant Pradhan, Reshma Sawant, Gurudas Shete, Abhijit Vaidya, and others. Prof. M.S. Mate provided guidance whenever it was needed. Rahul Sakhalkar was ever ready to accompany me on another trip to yet another place that no one had ever heard of before. In Ahmadnagar, I first met Girish Kulkarni of Snehalaya, and it was through him that I met Bhushan Deshmukh, who was kind enough to introduce me to various people and show me around the city and its environs. The one wonderful year in 2010–11 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver introduced me to Ross King, Anne Murphy, Harjot Oberoi, Adheesh Sathaye, Francesca Harlow,

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and many others who were willing to discuss my research. Green College was truly wonderful, as were the people I met there, including Florian Ehrensperger, David Prest, and Amanda Perry. Anne Murphy, Raghu Rao, and their son Aiden, were my family in Vancouver. Having students like Timothy Lorndale and Julie Vig made it a very happy period. Over the years, Richard Eaton, Deborah Hutton, George Michell, Laura Parodi, Helen Philon, Philip Wagoner, Laura Weinstein, and several other scholars of the Deccan have been most supportive. Back at the University of Pennsylvania, Daud Ali, Projit and Manjita Mukharji, Deven Patel, all kept my spirits high when they were flagging. Having the Mukharjis as neighbours made everything much easier, as I could rely on them to provide me with everything from company to victuals. With Sara Simon, I have spent many evenings, sounding ideas and answering her curious questions. Robin Seguy and Aditi Chaturvedi were real companions for several years, and it would be impossible to explain the relevance of their presence. At the University of Pennsylvania Libaries, I particularly thank my colleagues Brian Vivier and Molly Des Jardin, along with several other people in the libraries. Now in Pune at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research since 2016, I am lucky to have colleagues like John Mathew, Venkateswara Pai, Aditi Deo, and Pooja Sancheti. Prof. L. Shashidhara’s encouragement was reassuring in Pune, and allowed time for this project. Of course, it would be impossible not to thank my parents, who never really asked me what I was doing, and my sister, who made sure that they never did.

PREFACE

The history of South Asia has largely been narrativised as the domination of polities based in the Gangetic plains over several frontiers: in the northwest (Afghanistan), west (Gujarat and Sindh), east (Bengal), and the south (Deccan). For the Deccan, the successive waves of migration of people from the north resulted in cultural developments that are often read as derivative of fashions and trends from the north. While it is true that the Deccan has received crafts, ideas, and peoples from the north, that is only part of the story. The deep connections of the Deccan with West Asia, completely independent of Northern India, along with the autonomous cultural and historical developments in the south have shaped the Deccan very uniquely. Detailed studies of the polities of the Deccan, therefore, of architecture and statecraft, need to be undertaken in order to explain how, in moments of disengagement with the north, unique formations were created independent of developments in North India. While strong connections of learning and literary networks, or pilgrimage circuits, connected the north and south, these connections were not uniformly relevant or equally strong throughout all periods. Similar circuits also connected North India with present-day Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by scholars like Scott Levi.1 Yet the exigencies of nationalism have carefully curated and strengthened some connections while denying others. Thus the Deccan became a part of the grand narrative of North India, while regions that became independent nations were written out. In the seventeenth century, as the Mughals swept across South Asia, regional idioms and a distinct visual court culture in the Deccan were

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replaced by a hegemonic Mughal form. The delightfully quaint architecture and medieval sensibilities of behaviour and building seen in the sultanate Deccan were replaced by the grand standardised buildings schema of the Mughals. It is important to note that the self-fashioned Timurid idealism of the Mughals was vastly different from the postTimurid architectural world of the Deccan sultanates. While both were inspired by the architectural tropes and forms of the Timurids, they had their own independent evolution. Over the past two decades, regional architectural idioms are being increasingly recognised as the basis of architectural history, and defining these requires extensive fieldwork in a region where most buildings from different periods have not even been systematically identified and documented. Three large academic conferences, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and several monographs dedicated to the architecture and art of the Deccan demonstrate the region’s emergence as a centre, at least of scholarship. This book on the courtly architecture of the Nizam Shahs is the first and only survey of its kind and is presented in tandem with their achievements and aspirations in other realms of cultural production. The transliterations used here follow the rules of the Chicago Manual of Style (seventeenth edition) for all languages, including Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Marathi, and Dakhani. The period of the Ahmadnagar sultanate is accepted as 1490 to 1636 CE [Map 1], though their capital city of Ahmadnagar was lost to the Mughals in 1600 CE .2 Ruling from various other fortified locations, they eventually held court at Daulatabad during the regency of Malik Ambar until his death in 1626 CE . Malik Ambar’s Habashi and Maratha generals resisted for a decade, but in 1636 CE , the Mughals signed a treaty with the kingdom of Bijapur and forced Malik Ambar’s commander, Shahaji Bhonsale (d. 1664 CE ), to surrender. The last claimant to the Nizam Shahi throne was captured by the Mughals and sent to prison in Gwalior Fort. The Nizam Shahi dynasty was the shortest-lived of the three larger Deccan sultanates, which all arose as a result of the slow collapse of the Bahmanis around 1500 CE . The trajectory of the Nizam Shahs is a key to understanding their role in transmitting an earlier medieval sensibility of kingship until the early modern period ushered in by the Mughals, when they took over the Deccan through the seventeenth century.

PREFACE

xxi

Ahmad Nizam Bahri (reg. 1496– 1510 CE ), the governor of a Bahmani province in the northern Deccan, defeated the army of sultan Mahmud Shah Bahmani (reg. 1482– 1518 CE ) and declared independence, assuming the title of Ahmad Nizam Shah I. By 1600 CE Ahmadnagar was assimilated into the Mughal Empire, and puppet kings under the regency of Malik Ambar (d. 1626 CE ) continued a nominal survival of the kingdom. The origins of the Nizam Shahi kingdom may be understood, at one level, as emerging from the divisions at the Bahmani court. Malik Naib Nizam-ul-Mulk (d. 1486 CE ), the father of Ahmad Nizam Shah I, was reportedly from a Brahmin accountant family (Kulkarni) of the village of Pathri, and converted to Islam as a young companion of the Bahmani sultan.3 Khwaja Jahan Mahmud Gawan (1411– 82 CE ), the clever and able minister of Sultan Mahmud Shah Bahmani, played the various factions (the Deccanis and the new Persian e´migre´s, the Afa¯qis) at the Bahmani court against each other, attempting to neutralise them. The important nobles in this equation were Yusuf Adil Khan, Quli Qutb-ul-Mulk, and Malik Naib Nizam-ul-Mulk, along with Fath-ullah Imad-ul-Mulk, Qasim Barid-ul-Mulk, and others. Yusuf Adil Khan (later founder of the kingdom of Bijapur) and Quli Qutb-ul-Mulk (later founder of the kingdom of Golconda) were both from Persianate Central Asia. Nizamul-Mulk was the only Deccani amongst this powerful group of nobles and acted against the Afa¯qi (foreign-born) faction, which he felt was favoured by Mahmud Gawan, who was the powerful chief minister of the failing Bahmani state. He was instrumental in the conspiracy against Mahmud Gawan, which led to the latter’s execution. Because of his alleged high-handedness and arrogance at court, Nizam-ul-Mulk was isolated and finally murdered by the nobles and amirs in 1486 CE .4 But he had set the stage for his son to declare independence and proclaim himself Shah, which Ahmad Nizam Shah I did soon thereafter, in 1490 CE . It was reported that soon thereafter, the latter had a khutba ¯ read in his own name and started using royal insignia, such as a parasol.5 Ahmad Nizam Shah I was at the time the decorated governor of Junnar for the Bahmanis, controlling key territories and a number of forts like Shivneri, Jivdhan, Lohogad, Kondhana, Jond, Tung, Tikona, Purandhar, Pali, and Danda Rajapuri, which had all been vested in his name as a ja¯gir (hereditary land grant) when he captured them in the name of the Bahmani sultan.6 After his self-proclamation as a sultan, he mounted an

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expedition from his capital of Junnar every year to try to capture the strategic and affluent fort city of Daulatabad, for which he founded the city of Ahmadnagar (between Junnar and the fort of Daulatabad).7 The account of the founding of this city suggests that all the builders, architects, masons, and other tradesmen were summoned from Junnar. The foundation of the city is described thus in the translation of Burha¯ni Maasir: ‘When it was finally decided to build a city in that spot, the king halted there and, having ordered the astrologers to select an auspicious day for the beginning of the work, summoned architects, surveyors, and builders from Junnar to lay out and build the city.’8 It is quite possible that many of the Afa¯qis were unwilling to associate with Ahmad Nizam Shah I because of the association of his father Malik Naib Nizam-ul-Mulk’s seditionary activities at court, Ahmad Nizam Shah’s rebellion, and the subsequent proclamation of independence. As a result, initially few foreign-born tradesmen or designers would have been available to him. Unfortunately, little remains in Junnar from that early period and almost all the buildings that survive were heavily modified later. Ironically, Ahmad Nizam Shah I and his descendants tried to assume a distinctly Persian lineage and culture, particularly after 1490 CE , thus appropriating the symbols and emblems of kingship that were acceptable to Persianate nobility. This was also in order to attract new immigrants, who brought cultural capital with them. The only significant architectural commission that can be definitively attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah I is the layout of the fort of Ahmadnagar, which was built on the spot where he defeated a strong Bahmani force when he declared independence. Upon his death in 1509 CE , Ahmad Nizam Shah I was succeeded by his son, Burhan Nizam Shah I. Burhan Nizam Shah I was a great patron of the arts. He came under the influence of the Shiʾi ʿalim (learned teacher) Shah Tahir al Husaini and sometime in the 1530s officially changed the state religion to Twelver Shiʾism. It is now believed that Shah Tahir was actually a Nizari, and his reasons for the propagation of the Twelver Shiʾism are unclear.9 Shah Tahir founded the academy of Bara Imam Kotla in the 1530s; as a result, a steady stream of scholars and men of letters from the Middle East and the Persian Gulf came to Ahmadnagar. Bara Imam Kotla was built as a fortified stronghold just outside the city of Ahmadnagar. Burhan Nizam Shah I even exchanged a few embassies with the Safavid monarch.10 Burhan Nizam Shah I’s generous patronage of migrants

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became more liberal over time, coupled with Shah Tahir’s fame, and several soldier-adventurers also came to Ahmadnagar to make their fortunes. Many of them, such as the master gun-caster Rumi Khan and the chief minister Salabat Khan, also good engineers and designers, came to the court from West Asia. As a result, an architecture based on Persianate design ideals flourished in his reign. The attachment and connection of the Nizam Shahs with Pathri as their ancestral home was made clear when Burhan Nizam Shah I (reg. 1510– 53 CE ) proposed a treaty with Allauddin Imad Shah of Berar in 1518 CE , in which the town and district of Pathri were to be given to the Nizam Shahs in exchange for another, on the grounds that their ancestral town was still home to many of their relatives. When this treaty was turned down, Burhan Nizam Shah I made war and annexed Pathri. Being rooted in the Deccan, the Nizam Shahs were initially firmly in favour of Deccani control of the Bahmani court, as opposed to ‘foreign’ Afa¯qi domination. Over the course of the sixteenth century, as new immigrants from Persian lands became important players at the Nizam Shahi court, the tensions between immigrant and ‘native’ groups came to a head. Husain Nizam Shah I (reg. 1553 –65 CE ) ruled for a shorter time, and his main contributions were improvements in the Ahmadnagar fort, particularly the replacement of the mud walls of the fort with stone in 1562 CE . He was instrumental in leading the coalition of the Deccan sultanates in the consequential battle of Talikota (1565 CE ). The Damdi Mosque and Sarje Khan’s tomb are from his reign and attest to the large presence of stonemasons in that period. Murtaza Nizam Shah I (reg. 1565– 88 CE ) was the last of the sultans who commissioned large building projects. His reign, as mentioned by contemporary sources, was marred by several massacres of the Afa¯qis,11 and though many of his court nobility were originally from the Middle East and Central Asia, this phase saw several Habashi, Deccani, and Maratha nobles rise to military and political prominence. Architectural activity was stylistically very mixed, as it was late in his reign that Mughal architectural forms were also slowly becoming naturalised in the northern Deccan. The kingdom of Ahmadnagar expanded in his reign but also became increasingly factionalised. Burhan Nizam Shah II (reg. 1591–95 CE ) did commission a few buildings, such as the Kamani Mosque in the fort of Junnar (Shivneri), but his short reign did not allow time for any significant building

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campaigns. He had been imprisoned under the Mughals and was released as a strategy to make him pliant. He decided to resist the Mughals and was quite antagonistic to them. This period can be understood as the last of the cultural dominance of Persian e´migre´s in the affairs of the Nizam Shahi court. By the end of the sixteenth century, Portuguese control of the seacoast also contributed to diminished sea-based immigration from Iran and the Middle East.12 Moreover, the now-stabilised Safavid and Mughal states could offer patronage to artists, intellectuals, and soldier-adventurers from the wider Islamic world. The kingdom of Ahmadnagar was becoming increasingly unstable because of factional wars, succession battles, and the military pressure of the Mughals from the north.13 Many of the eminent literati and courtiers fled to the Bijapur, Golconda, or Mughal courts, and their Persianate connections easily allowed them this mobility.14 It is important to note that the borders between various courts were merely political in terms of who gathered revenues from certain lands and occasionally on the basis of sectarian differences, but the Deccan courts shared practically everything else, such as court rituals, language, and routines. This commonality was not limited to the Muslim sultans but to all kings in the Deccan, including the kingdom of Vijayanagara.15 The lack of new e´migre´s, coupled with the factional pressures and consequent massacres that the foreign faction had to face, changed the demography of the Nizam Shahi court in the late sixteenth century: it was now dominated by Deccanis, Habashis, and Marathas. The symbols of kingship and legitimacy, however, did not undergo any significant changes and still conformed to Persianate ideals, though these ideals themselves were slowly being modified to suit local sensibilities. After the Mughal takeover of the city of Ahmadnagar in 1600 CE , the capital of the Nizam Shahs moved to Daulatabad and Khadki (later to be renamed Aurangabad) under the stewardship of Malik Ambar. In the interim, from 1600 to 1607 CE , was a turbulent period when the capital was moved from Ahmadnagar to Junnar, Ausa, and Parenda.16 Murtaza II was crowned at Parenda in 1600 CE , but was only a puppet king under Malik Ambar. Junnar became the capital of the Nizam Shahs from 1603 to 1607 CE . Ausa was very briefly an interim capital, probably only because of the presence of the royal family there, as mentioned in Portuguese sources. Building activity was eventually resumed on a grand scale only under Malik Ambar, who added

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significantly to Daulatabad and settled the new city of Khadki nearby. Malik Ambar’s architectural commissions are largely limited to an area in the core of the territory he controlled as the regent of the kingdom, around Aurangabad and Daulatabad. Almost all the Afa¯qis had now fled the Nizam Shahi court. The few Iranians who remained behind were known for their steadfast loyalty. A well-known example is that of Afzal Khan, a Nizam Shahi officer of Iranian origin (under Malik Ambar). The Mughals, through Prince Murad, tried to win him over to their side by invoking racial and other cultural affiliations (since Malik Ambar was ethnically Habashi).17 At this point, many of the grand Persianate architectural designs that proclaimed the grandeur of the Nizam Shahi court faded away and were replaced by utilitarian construction, as seen in the fortifications and waterworks under Malik Ambar. Technologies were increasingly local, and only in the case of large-scale waterworks did Middle Eastern technology survive for a couple of centuries more in its original form.18 Otherwise, in terms of architecture, Mughal idioms and designs gradually become the norm, as seen at most of the early-seventeenth-century sites patronised by Malik Ambar and his contemporaries, such as Dilawar Khan’s tomb (built around 1612–13 CE ). The Mughals had brought with them their own version of architecture, which had a serious impact on the Deccan. Right from 1591 CE , when Burhan Nizam Shah II ascended the throne, a Mughal influence is discernible in the visual culture of the Nizam Shahs. This is not surprising, considering Burhan Nizam Shah II had spent some years in the service of the Mughal court while waiting to take over the reins of the Ahmadnagar kingdom. He was the last builder of the dynasty, having commissioned some works of civic, religious, and military importance, such as direction-stones,19 mosques, and fortifications, respectively. Malik Ambar is credited with a number of innovations in administration, military strategy, and revenue assessment that would eventually become the hallmark of the Maratha state founded by Shivaji Bhonsale (1630–80 CE ). From the early seventeenth century onwards, under the stewardship of Malik Ambar, the tombs and palaces of his family and the memorials of the court nobility (such as the chhatris of the Bhonsale family at Ellora and the memorial of Lakhuji Jadhav) were constructed. These are all very interesting transitional buildings which

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bridge the gap between the Nizam Shahs and the Mughalized Deccan in terms of architectural style. In the western Deccan, Persianate ideals of kingship and the associated material trappings partially lost their significance toward the middle of the seventeenth century. The rise of local chiefs and landholders without a strong central power and the successive conflicts in the region decimated many of the existing architectural traditions, and new urban developments on a significant scale were not seen in the region again until the eighteenth century. Political events affected the choice of architectural designs and techniques. The architecture of the Nizam Shahs does not follow a linear development from its Persian origins to the creation of a regional style. The buildings are variously of broadly Persianate and Indic characteristics, at times both, but to call them derivative is unfair, as the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs was trying to create a new architectural language as a regional claim. The ethnic and political tensions of the court between ‘foreigners’ and locals (Afaqi and Deccani factions) would have been a factor in the determination of architectural designs, the building commissions being designed and discharged to imply favours for and against the various factions. The Farah Bakhsh Bagh (built in its current form in 1583–84 CE ), for example, is a direct descendant of Timurid garden palaces in terms of planning, possibly the only one outside ‘greater Iran’ (Iranshahr). The story of its design and construction, as reconstructed from textual accounts, reveals the court intrigues, politics, and factionalism surrounding architectural commissions, as will be narrated later. The closest extant comparable monument is the later Hasht Bihisht Palace in Isfahan (built late, in 1669 CE ). On the other hand, the architectural vocabulary of an earlier period, as seen in the Damdi Mosque, built around 1562 CE , is local: the stone carving shows direct continuity from earlier building traditions in the region, such as the temples constructed under the Yadavas, with motifs like the decorative bands of lozenges seen in Chalukyan and Yadava temples. If the conscious decisions made by the Nizam Shahs regarding architectural designs from diverse sources can be understood as a parallel to composite languages in the Deccan in the sixteenth century, then the use of local architectural idiom might be argued as a ‘choice that aristocratic men of letters made to invoke domains of affection and loss’.20 The notion that the buildings constructed in the reign of the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar constitute a set of conscious design decisions itself

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suggests a deliberate idea of state architecture. Architecture as an embodiment of state authority was very cleverly embodied in the design, and the subaltern nature of its construction was inadvertently embodied in its realisation. Construction technology is often the key to recovering local agents. Purely Timurid traditions of design and layout are often seen in Nizam Shahi buildings, as also completely indigenous modes of design and construction. Some of the characteristic features attributed to the architecture of the post-Bahmani Deccan sultanates more generally occur much earlier in Ahmadnagar than in the other sultanates.21 In Ahmadnagar, Ahmad Nizam Shah’s tomb and the Damdi Mosque contain excellent examples of carved-stone decoration, much earlier than the flowering of a similar craft at Bijapur. The primacy of architectural forms in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar is particularly true of military structures, but military architecture deserves specialised study and will not be treated here. It should suffice to note that architectural innovations in fortification are seen earlier at Nizam Shahi sites than at the other Deccan sultanates.22 The kingdom of Ahmadnagar, much like Malwa and Gujarat, attempted to formulate an architectural language as an identity marker to represent the state; unlike the latter, however, it could never reach an adequate solution to the problem. Bijapur and Golconda had almost a century more to achieve the same.

Map 1

The location of Ahmadnagar in South Asia.

CHAPTER 1 LOCATING ARCHITECTURE: SOCIAL HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE DECCAN

The Deccan: A Brief History The Deccan plateau has had an important role in the cultural and political history of South Asia [Map 2]. The Deccan (also spelled Dakkan, Dekhan, etc.) is a term broadly used to describe the lands south of the Narmada river, and specifically meant the areas bounded by the Vindhya ranges to the north, the Western Ghats (Sahyadris) to the west, the Bay of Bengal to the east, and the Mysore plateau to the south. Today, the Deccan is comprised of the plateau regions of Maharashtra, northern Karnataka, and Telangana. Below the Mysore plateau is the region historically called the Carnatic, but in the North India-centric view, everything south of the Vindhyas was often called the Deccan. The Carnatic comprises the states of present-day Tamil Nadu, southeastern Karnataka, southern Andhra Pradesh, and northeastern Kerala. The name Deccan is a corruption of the Sanskrit daks´ina, literally ‘right_ hand’ or ‘south’, suggesting that it was employed by early IndoEuropean settlers who traversed the North Indian plains from west to east in the Indian Iron Age (c. 1200– 600 BCE ), for whom ‘right-hand’ and ‘south’ therefore connoted the same direction. Most historical narratives of India written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the South Asian subcontinent became increasingly imagined as a nation,

2

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

Map 2 The major settlements of the Deccan Plateau in the sixteenth century.

have been centred on North India (known as Hindustan since the early second millennium CE ) as the heartland; the Deccan has usually been represented as an important frontier and region to be subjugated. A large intermediate zone about 300 miles wide extends across South Asia from Gujarat to Orissa, separating the Indus and Gangetic river basins and alluvial plains from the Deccan. As Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund astutely observe, ‘But for military intervention, this intermediate zone has always been a major obstacle.’1 Traditionally, few routes connected the North Indian riverine plains to the Deccan. As this buffer zone was historically traversed only in a very few places, the connection between Hindustan and the Deccan remained quite tenuous till the early modern period. Under the Delhi sultanate (c. 1206– 1526 CE ), the Mughals (c. 1526– 1857 CE ), the British (c. 1857 –1947 CE ), and the Republic of India (c. 1950–present), efforts were made to meld these large regions of South Asia – Hindustan and the Deccan – into a single political entity. The first two efforts lasted less than a century each, and only the British and Indian Republic continuum has seen Hindustan and the Deccan comprise a single political state for over a hundred years. The Deccan and regions further

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south have therefore always had a distinct cultural development vis-a`-vis the northern regions, Malwa, and the Gangetic plains. In the first millennium CE , the western seaboard of the Deccan, along with Gujarat, grew in importance for overseas trade, particularly connecting West Asia with South Asia. The western seaboard of peninsular India has been mentioned in Greek and Arab sources from the first century CE , as seen in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and in works by Ptolemy, Arrian, Maʾsudi, and others.2 As the emergent Buddhist and Jain networks spread across Asia, the Deccan became an important centre for facilitating mercantile, missionary, and monastic networks. The port cities of the west coast became significant entrepots in facilitating exchanges between the Deccan and West Asia, even as far as Africa. From the early historic period onwards, Buddhist and Jain sites are found profusely throughout the Deccan, including the inscriptions of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (c. 304–232 CE ).3 However, there is little evidence of direct Maurya authority in the Deccan, and the empire must have controlled the region only through feudatories. The geographical variations in Mauryan inscriptions suggest regional cultural identities, including the Deccan. After this period, the next important dynasty known in the region was that of the Satavahanas (c. 230 BCE -220 CE ). They were based in the central Deccan, and were challenged by the trans-local Indo-Scythian Western Satraps (c. 35 –405 CE ) located in the northwestern Deccan, primarily at Junnar and Nasik. Within a few hundred years, the imperial Guptas (c. 320– 550 CE ) demonstrated their presence in the Deccan, usually through marital alliances with the Vakatakas (c. 250– 500 CE ), a local dynasty in the Godavari basin. These relationships allowed the Guptas to make nominal claims over the Deccan as their extended domain, much as the Mauryas would have done more than half a millennium earlier, but the real extent of their prowess in these regions is unknown. From the sixth century onwards, the Chalukyas of Badami (c. 543– 753 CE ), followed by the Rashtrakutas (c. 753– 982 CE ) and the Western Chalukyas (c. 973– 1189 CE ), ruled over large areas of the Deccan. Eventually, the latter two polities were succeeded by several smaller states, such as the Hoysalas of Dvarasamudra (c. 1026– 1343 CE ), the Yadavas of Devagiri (c. 1173– 1334 CE ) and the Kakatiyas of Warangal (c. 1158–1195 CE ). These late kingdoms have been commonly misunderstood as the political and cultural basis for the three

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modern linguistic states of Republic of India, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh (now bifurcated further into Andhra and Telangana), with linguistic identities projected retrospectively upon them. The three medieval polities were eventually subjugated by the campaigns of the Delhi sultanate in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The kingdom of Vijayanagara (1336 – 1565 CE ) and the Bahmani sultanate (1347 – 1547 CE ) were the survivors to the Khilji-Tughluqs of the Delhi sultanate until their decline in the sixteenth century, when a host of new sultanates dominated the landscape of the Deccan. If the Deccan is to be understood as the area that constitutes the drainage basins of the Godavari and the Krishna rivers (including all their tributaries), there emerged two very strong sacred geographies centred about these two rivers [Map 2]. The Godavari has been considered a homology of the Ganges. Nasik and Paithan (Pratisthana) emulated aspects of Varanasi, from hosting Sanskritic learning traditions to being the locus of festivals like the Kumbh Mela. The familial networks of learned Pandit families that moved between the Ganges and Godavari basins in the north and south, respectively, kept alive this connection for over a thousand years. The creation of homologous places and shared toponyms between Hindustan and the Deccan provided the mechanism for a religious unification of the two landscapes of the north and south. On the other hand, the basin of the upper Krishna, with its tributaries such as the Tungabhadra, became the locus for another sacred geography, with towns such as Pandharpur and Hampi that saw the emergence of new cults focused around the newer forms of devotional religions (e.g., Bhakti traditions) and temple Hinduism. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw many new players, including the Portuguese, the Mughals, the English, and the emergence of the Marathas as an independent political force. The mid-eighteenth century saw a political consolidation of the Deccan between the Marathas in the west and Nizam-ul Mulk Asaf Jah in the east, both operating nominally as vassals of the Mughals, but in reality independent and rival kingdoms. The Marathas at Pune were finally subjugated by the British in the Anglo-Maratha wars (1775 to 1782, 1803 to 1805, and 1817 to 1818 CE ), and the Nizams of Hyderabad became British allies and eventually vassals after their first signing of a subsidiary alliance treaty in 1798 CE . Under the colonial patchwork of British territories and

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princely states, the Deccan ceased to be a single cultural region. Only geographical realities, fauna and flora, and the Deccani language (understood as a dialect of Hindustani) kept it alive in people’s imaginations as a shared zone.

Hindustan and the Deccan as Diverse and Unified Landscapes With the emergence of the Delhi sultanate and its conquests in the Deccan, new forms of Islamicate culture came to the region. These forms of Islamicate kingship borrowed heavily from Timurid models of kingship, building technology, and visual culture. Models of architecture and planning from Central Asia and Iran in a style indebted to the Timurid dynasty found local expression in the emergent kingdoms settled by the emergent Turco-Mongol dynasties in South Asia. Most such transmissions of ideas, materials, and people came in largely through the coastal networks, as the independent kingdoms of the Bahmanis (c. 1347– 1527 CE ) and Vijayanagara (c. 1336– 1565 CE ) relied on sea routes to facilitate such an exchange. It is important to note that these states, which shared the Deccan between them, were both founded through a rebellion against the Delhi sultanate that had briefly subjugated the Deccan in the fourteenth century. In early modern accounts, the Hindustan of the Mughals referred to the Gangetic plains and parts of north-central India. It was surrounded by various other vila¯yats (regions) including those of Bengal, Malwa, Gujarat, and Afghanistan. Beyond Malwa was the vila¯yat of the Deccan ruled from the su¯bah (province) of Ahmadnagar (the su¯bah was later ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ called Daulatabad and eventually Aurangabad). In the large and important frontier province, Mughal princes were often deputed as viceroys and governors of Daulatabad. Under the emperor Aurangzeb, the kingdoms of Golconda and Bijapur were also annexed in 1686 and 1687 and added as new su¯bahs to the empire. ˙ ˙ As late as the eighteenth century, the Deccan still was understood as a separate cultural and geographical entity vis-a`-vis Hindustan. Partly as a result, independent kingdoms in the Deccan defined themselves in contrast to North India and the Hindustanis. Therefore, many of the regional polities from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the Deccan sultanates (Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, Golconda) and the

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Marathas, saw themselves as regional resistance against Hindustani Mughal expansion. Regional habits and distinct cultural expressions reinforced this sense of being Deccani. In the interests of realpolitik, the Deccan sultanates usually were content to congratulate the powers at Delhi and try to use them to settle scores with their neighbours. From Firuz Shah Bahmani I (reg. 1397–1422 CE ), who sent a letter of submission to Timur in 1398 to 1399 CE , and received a firma¯n confirming his kingdom in return, to the sultanates of Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, and Golconda, which all sent congratulatory letters to Babur upon his takeover of Delhi in 1526 CE , the kingdoms of the Deccan were interested in the affairs of Hindustan.4 Particularly for the Nizam Shahs, this was an ongoing fascination, since it allowed them to participate in the court intrigues of Gujarat, Khandesh, and Malwa, all kingdoms that bordered them to the north. On several occasions, particularly under Ahmad Nizam Shah I and Burhan Nizam Shah I, there were confrontations with the Muzaffarid sultans of Gujarat, usually over the issues of succession in the sultanate of Khandesh.5 The independent identity of the Deccan as intimately connected with Shiʾi Iran was being challenged by new pan-continental networks that were patronised by the Mughals. The proliferation of Islamicate practices, while understood as a great unifier, also allowed for a nuanced understanding of regional differences. The cultural sensibilities of the Deccan were in part shaped by the landscape and the climate, and along with its unique historical contingencies had resulted in the genesis of distinctive cultural forms. It was eventually not just the economic and military might of the Mughals but the dominant cultural hegemonic practices that helped their expansion into the Deccan. It was eventually the new north– south axis of the Naqshbandi Sufi order that integrated the Deccan into a Timurid– Mughal imperial geography in the sixteenth century, one of the factors in explaining the eventual expansion of Mughal Hindustan into the Deccan. In terms of physical networks, Hindustan could be connected with the Deccan by only two relatively easy routes: either the Burhanpur gap controlled by Asirgarh Fort, or the Sendhwa pass after the fort at Mandu. These two axes, through the regions of Khandesh and Malwa respectively, were the easiest ways of moving people and goods from north to south across the Vindhyas and the Narmada-Tapti basins. To the west, coastal routes ran along marshlands, and to the east, the dense forests of Gondwana prevented such a conveyance. As pointed out

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by B.G. Gokhale and Stewart Gordon, Burhanpur therefore became an important trading centre and manufacturing location, connecting various trade routes, including one from Surat to Agra.6 Therefore, it was hardly surprising that control of the Deccan by any power in Hindustan first meant control over the regions of Malwa or Khandesh, in order to maintain communication and supply lines. These two areas had been independent kingdoms for over 200 years after the decline of the Delhi sultanate in the fourteenth century; it was only under Akbar (reg. 1556 – 1606 CE ) that the Mughals annexed the Malwa sultanate in 1562 CE and the Faruqi sultanate of Khandesh in 1601 CE . The Mughals could only then think of expanding into the Deccan, a task that would have been impossible without first taking control of these kingdoms. Thus, as the sultanates of Gujarat, Malwa, and Khandesh were conquered by the Mughals, the emperors Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb all made forays into the Deccan, with varying levels of success.

The Visual Culture of the Deccan Sultanates The sultanate at Delhi, under the Khiljis and then Muhammad bin Tughluq (reg. 1325– 1351 CE ), territorialised a large part of the Indian subcontinent in the fourteenth century, either by direct conquest or through tributary rulers. After Muhammad bin Tughluq’s reign, most of his territories rebelled and declared independence from the empire that he had tried to consolidate. The sultanates of Bengal (c. 1342– 1576 CE ), Deccan (Bahmani: c. 1347– 1518 CE ), Khandesh (c. 1382–1601 CE ), Malwa (c. 1392– 1562 CE ), Gujarat (c. 1391– 1583 CE ), and Jaunpur (c. 1394–1479 CE ), along with the kingdom of Vijayanagara (c. 1336– 1565 CE ), were all the successor kingdoms to the Khilji-Tughlaq empire. The mid-fourteenth century saw a rebellion against the Delhi sultans by various regional governors, one of the strongest to emerge being Hasan Gangu Bahman Shah (d. 1358 CE ), the founder of the Bahmani dynasty. He succeeded in establishing a provincial sultanate at Daulatabad (later shifted to Gulbarga and then to Bidar) in c. 1347 CE and controlled a large part of the northern Deccan. This declaration of independence caused logistical problems for the new Bahmani kingdom in terms of recruiting manpower and military hardware from people loyal to the Delhi sultanate. As a strategy, Bahman Shah emphasised his Persian

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roots. With his nominal lineage being traced to Iran and rooted in Persian lore,7 it was not surprising that he succeeded in attracting a large number of emigrants from the Middle East to his kingdom in the Deccan. Among them were poets, scholars, artists, and artisans. The architectural and artistic production of the Bahmani dynasty itself was much like its polity: initially derived from a North Indian sultanate culture but later shaped by an infusion of people from Persianate lands, along with local Deccan traditions. A direct import of Persian customs and visual culture implied a political denial of the North Indian sultanate, from which the Bahmani sultanate had seceded. Architectural, literary, and artistic production flourished at the Bahmani court and even later in the region, after the kingdom disintegrated into the smaller principalities, the five sultanates of the Deccan. They all declared independence between 1484 and 1520 CE and effectively ended the sovereignty of the Bahmani kings. Coeval with the rise of the Bahmani kingdom was the kingdom of Vijayanagara. Also originating in the declining control of the sultans of Delhi over the Deccan, the brothers Harihara and Bukka founded a kingdom in 1336 CE which would survive through three dynasties (Sangama, Saluva, and Tuluva) at their capital of Hampi. After 1565 CE , when Hampi was destroyed by an alliance of the Deccan sultanates, the kingdom of Vijayanagara survived nominally under the Aravidu dynasty till 1656 CE , but from other locations in the south Indian peninsula. In terms of visual culture, the architectural traditions of Malwa, Khandesh, and Gujarat, though connected, had their own evolution. Despite a common start with post-Delhi sultanate kingdoms in these regions, each of the regions formulated its own language of political power and cultural expression. Similarly, the Deccan, from the Bahmanis to the post-Bahmani sultanates, had cultivated its own visual traditions and architectural language. Eventually, through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the Mughals reduced to vassalage and eventually annexed the sultanates of Gujarat, Malwa, Khandesh, and the Deccan, their imperial style of architecture became popular and widespread. Mughal architecture was partially shaped and formulated as a response to encounters with regional architecture, but after Shah Jahan (reg. 1528–1558 CE ) it ossified into a collage of stock elements, such as baluster columns, multifoil arches, and curvilinear roofs on pavilions and kiosks, as shown by Ebba Koch in her seminal work.8

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Continuities and Ruptures: The Purity and Hybridity of Architecture in the Deccan In recent years, the political ramifications of history-writing in South Asia have become increasingly obvious. Many of the arguments are expressed in terms of simple binaries, such as indigenous versus imported or pure versus hybrid. In this environment, it is important to stress the continuities and ruptures in regional traditions, particularly architectural, which do not neatly map on to the political changes. In the medieval Deccan, royal commissions of architecture emulated specific visual forms and literary tropes in order to legitimise the rulers, local custom and imported Persianate habits being of equal importance in this projection of political power. Philip Wagoner and Richard Eaton have expounded on the moment when broader Islamicate ideas of legitimacy and local modes of sovereignty created a regionalised architectural language of kingship.9 The visual projection of power required the transmission of potent architectural forms that could evoke a communal literary memory, shaping architecture with a bias toward the conceptually ideal cities of Baghdad and Cairo or ideal buildings of mythical lore and poetic tropes (both partly based on historical sources). For example, after the city of Ahmadnagar was founded in 1496 CE , Firishtah declared that ‘great exertions were made in erecting buildings by the king and his dependents, that in the short space of two years the new city rivalled Baghdad and Cairo in splendour’.10 This memory was not unlike the ‘period eye’, as argued by Michael Baxandall for Renaissance Italy, and was partly comprised of a communal visual culture that was accessible to most of the subjects of these kingdoms in the Deccan.11 It could be argued as ‘the images and recollections of ancient buildings that find their way into the collective conscience of a culture’; more importantly, the ‘imagery used by medieval poets and other[s] . . . was often invoked’.12 Literary works also display this curious amalgamation of regional tradition and Islamicate ideals in varied languages such as Persian, Sanskrit, Deccani, Marathi, Telugu, and Kannada. Identity-building for these new states was important as a tool of legitimation, and the creation of a new visual identity has often been referred to in past scholarship as the genesis of ‘hybrid’ styles of architecture. Such notions of hybridity assume the ‘purity’ of styles, an ontologically suspect categorisation that is only a heuristic device for a stylistic study of architecture.

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It would be erroneous to attribute the development of architectural ideas to singular events as previous scholarship had argued: Hermann Goetz, in his essay ‘The Fall of Vijayanagara and the Nationalisation of Muslim Art in the Deccan’, posited that the defeat of Vijayanagara at the battle of Talikota was the singular catalyst that resulted in the development of the architecture of Bijapur.13 Elsewhere, the personality of Ibrahim Adil Shah II (reg. 1580–1627 CE ) has been considered the singular pivotal factor for the development of the art and architecture of Bijapur.14 However, events in neighbouring states, political instability in faraway lands, modes of construction of local ‘guilds’, methods of architectural transmission, the availability of building materials, the expectations of the populace in terms of royal emblems and visual grandeur, and the level of involvement and patronage of the arts by the sultan were some of the important factors that shaped the architecture of the Deccan in this period. The local traditions of architecture, both in design and construction, were also important factors in the visual culture of the region, as has been demonstrated by Richard Eaton and Philip Wagoner.15 The late medieval Deccan was thus a palimpsest of various administrative, architectural, and social systems that had accreted over the years – a mosaic of cultural practices from a multitude of sources. It is in this context that the sultanates of the Deccan, namely the Adil Shahs of Bijapur, the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, and the Qutb Shahs of Golconda, need to be studied. Their architecture was of a style which, though problematically called ‘hybrid’, differentially varies in conception and execution from a wider Persianate world and relies on local design and construction habits. Similary, the other cultural artefacts of their reign, including coinage, literature, and painting, also demonstrate a new claimmaking by the Nizam Shahi dynasty. The idea of hybridity is the result of reifying certain periods of cultural production, assuming that the muchfetishised purity of earlier cultural forms provides a key ontological moment. It is therefore fruitful to examine in detail the circumstances and conditions of the emergence of the Deccan sultanates in order to understand the independent nature of their cultural expression, as opposed to a simple discourse of derivative hybrid. Though this book is focused on architectural history, it presents the Nizam Shahi sultanate as an important piece in the larger cultural history of the early modern Deccan. Paintings, gardens, guns, coins, manuscripts, and other artefacts, along with the important architectural

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and town-planning legacy of the Nizam Shahs, comprise a corpus of evidence that allows a conceptualisation of the political state. The Nizam Shahi sultanate later formed the basis for the nascent Maratha state that emerged in the mid-seventeenth century under Shivaji Bhonsale (1630– 80 CE ). Most of the important nobility of this early Maratha state had served at the court of the Nizam Shahs. It was therefore not surprising that many of the administrative and cultural forms of the Marathas were derived from those of the Nizam Shahs and their contemporary sultanates. An understanding of the Nizam Shahs and the material world that they created and inhabited changes our understanding of the early Maratha state, and disabuses the notion that the latter was a revivalist indigenous state that had no connections with the regional past. The material culture of the Nizam Shahs reflected their cosmopolitan concerns, their rootedness in the Deccan, and other cultural traits that were common to the Deccan before the region was subjugated by the Mughal administrative and military juggernaut in the late seventeenth century. This worldview of the Deccan sultanates was also partially shared by the early Maratha state, though some aspects of it were muted. Eventually the Maratha state transformed into a confederacy that ruled over a large part of South Asia in the eighteenth century, but this later phase of Maratha history was culturally shaped by Mughal practices. The colonialist and nationalist narrative of ‘Muslim invaders’ upsetting indigenous practices until the ‘Hindu revival’ under the Marathas in the seventeenth century is a simplistic and naı¨ve model of regional history. Unfortunately, this stress on political and regime changes through the historiography of the medieval and early modern periods has undermined research regarding the strong regional continuities that need to be recognised as a dominant theme. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were seminal for the Deccan: completely new administrative and cultural paradigms were created in this period. The eighteenth century witnessed another reconstitution of the Deccan under the Peshwas of Pune and the Asaf Jahs of Hyderabad, both nomimally subservient to the Mughals but independent powers in reality. It was only in the nineteenth century, when South Asia was completely reimagined by both colonial and nationalist intellectuals, that the history of the Deccan was completely reworked into a grand North-centric South Asian narrative.

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Methods to Study Architectural Remains Existing studies on the architectural and architectonic qualities of the previously recorded buildings and sites in the medieval Deccan have been largely repetitious, not making bold claims for social history.16 The roles of the patron, architect, and builders have been understood only partially. There have been very few attempts to explain the social relationships between all these agents in the sixteenth-century Deccan. For example, while explaining the ambiguity surrounding the roles of Taj Sultana and Malik Sandal in the construction of Ibrahim Rauza, Deborah Hutton suggested that ‘the design most likely evolved out of continuous negotiations between the patron, sar-i-kar, master stone carver or other senior artisan, and the various levels of craftsmanship participating in the project’.17 These negotiations cannot be unravelled for lack of evidence – neither the evidence for discussions between the patron and the designer nor the records of transactions between the architects and the local guilds of builders survive. Using material remains, it is possible to partially model these systems that used middlemen or negotiators, even if only to fulfil the role of translators, bridging the gap between Persian-speaking designers and often indigenous craftspeople. Though contemporary chronicles from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, such as the Burha¯n-i Maasir and Tarikh-i Firishtah, place the late medieval Deccan well within a historical context, there is hardly any commentary upon the art and architecture.18 The lack of such extant architectural internalisation and verbal articulation of design makes it necessary that a large part of this study be within the realm of archaeology, with insights into the construction processes and technology. Because of the lack of comprehensive sources within a single discipline, the history of architecture in the Deccan sultanates is a prime case calling for the convergence of archaeology and history to understand these issues. The material remains of the Deccan sultanates in India have suffered from insufficient interpretation precisely because the archaeological record has been overlooked and the emphasis has been on the limited textual evidence alone. If carefully studied, the material record has the potential to provide a richer understanding of the artistic, artisanal, economic, and social processes of the period. Such an approach was suggested by M.S. Mate more than three decades ago when he said:

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This very abundance of written records perhaps led scholars to treat purely archaeological studies as redundant. The realization that archaeology provided a tool useful not only for verification of these records but also for discovering new facts dawned only slowly. It can hardly be claimed that the full potential of archaeological studies for the Islamic period has been appreciated even today.19 In this book, art-historical methods of visual inspection and formal analysis, along with the documentation of architecture and construction, expand on earlier attempts to overcome the limited interpretations of previous text-based histories. The limited available archival documentary evidence eventually makes more sense and becomes useful supplementary material in conjunction only with architectural and other material remains. Thus, this work uses material evidence to propose the sources and means of transmission of architectural ideas, identifying the role of local craftsmen and quantifying their engagement. In the process, the social realities of the kingdom and their effects on architectural preferences are partially uncovered. The primary sources for this study are the structures themselves, supplemented with references to their construction and maintenance in contemporary histories. Architecture may be viewed as the material expression of these transactions. We can make general inferences based on the scanty information and extant monuments, and understand the architecture as a means of establishing sovereignty and legitimacy for the king or his court.

Guilds and Movements of Craftspeople Recovered In form alone, the architecture of the Nizam Shahs was not always radically different from that of the earlier Bahmanis or the other postBahmani sultanates in the region (the Qutb Shahs, Adil Shahs, Barid Shahs, and Imad Shahs). Therefore, a morphological typology alone is not sufficient to differentiate Nizam Shahi architecture exclusively, as many of their buildings share common traits with those of other regional sultanates in the Deccan. Stylistically, the architecture of the Nizam Shahs is not always consistent, yet their architectural production has been grouped together because of its dynastic pedigree. One way it can be more cohesively understood is through its construction technology

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and planning logic. This book, for the most part, is consciously limited to dynastic and courtly architecture. Even though the history of architectural forms is not strictly bound by the political history of dynasties, the systems of patronage and construction teams are invariably rooted in socio-political realities. The ‘subaltern’ aspect of architectural history is possible through a study of construction technology. Details of construction practices and techniques can reveal more about the relationships between various agencies that contributed to architectural creations. While partially acknowledging the limitations of assigning dynastic values to architecture, it is still possible to defend a dynastic classification for a focused study. Pika Ghosh discussed some of the methodological issues when she suggested that the classification of architecture by dynasties, . . . inevitably impl[ies] a ‘top down’ approach which ignores subaltern histories. The inadequacy of this approach is also apparent when we consider that constructions in less expensive and less permanent materials by a host of lower classes have been erased from the historical record.20 Yet, even with dynastic and court-related architecture, it is possible to recover ‘bottom-up’ processes through understanding building construction, as demonstrated by the archaeological building research of the Bauforschung school. Each building and site has been considered and studied as an independent entity while relating it to its cultural and temporal context, thus providing new evidence for historical arguments. Stylistic considerations are therefore important, but comprise only one aspect of this study. The diagnostic features of construction and structural details are important in order to theorise the design and construction of buildings. These social aspects of architectural processes are used to better understand the architecture wherever possible. Most of the architecture under study is connected by local ‘guilds’ and technical expertise rooted in the region, along with their choice of building materials. The word guild here is used to suggest a consistent base of local building knowledge, not necessarily an organised consortium or trade association as seen in medieval Europe – though that might be the exceptional case. The surviving architecture commonly carries an impression or some index of these ‘guilds’. Arches, for instance, were

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built in unique ways by artisans who did not always fully appreciate the structural logic of the arch and arcuated systems. The arches at the mosque at Chaul, the Saudagar Gumbaz, and the gatehouse at Manzarsumbah demonstrate various levels of understanding arcuated systems. It is clear that local masons who worked alongside and under master masons and designers from West Asia had a different understanding, and therefore execution, of designs imported from a larger Islamicate world. To illustrate, let us consider the double-safety standards of construction workers who did not trust the implicit structural logic of the true arch but instead reinforced it with wooden dowels, as seen at the mosque in Chaul. It is clear that the local masons improvised on a design and construction technology that was foreign to them. Such improvisation hints at some elements of a dialogue between designers and craftsmen, as it is indexed in the material itself. The use of massive timber beams in conjunction with dressed and rubble stone masonry is another characteristic of regional architecture. This type of timber framing is characteristic of seismic zones and might suggest construction technology from Central Asia; however, in this case, the alternative explanation that this technique of timber-framed buildings was employed for expediency is more plausible. Timber-framed architecture continued as the mode de rigueur in this region through the eighteenth century, when building design and practice were far more localised.21 The technique was even used for buildings built in dressed stone. Timber framing can then be read as a modular solution in the service of expediency, as it functioned as formwork that was left in situ. For fast-growing polities like the Nizam Shahs and the Marathas that were involved in settling new groups of people in their territories, the technique was probably employed for constructing individual buildings, and by extension larger settlements, quickly. Building designers would commission the forms, which local masons would use as the threedimensional blueprint around which to build. Already with such examples, we can uncover socio-political reasons that favoured specific construction techniques. Our understanding, following the trail of material evidence, unfolds the course of causality in reverse. The other contemporary sultanates in the eastern and southern Deccan did not use wood framing within stone buildings, at least not on this scale, suggesting regional specificity in defining the relationships between the patrons, designers or architects, and building masons.22

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Sultanate Architecture and Regional Variations The twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, a period that has been conveniently albeit somewhat erroneously suggested as a monolithic period of ‘sultanate architecture’ till the Mughals, did bring to the South Asian subcontinent certain architectural programmes not realised locally before, along with new ideas of political legitimacy. But the local realisation of these architectural programmes, however new, distinguishes various regions and kingdoms. Mosques and ʿidga¯hs, tombs, hammams (baths), certain types of pleasure palaces, and other architectural programmes were built on the Indian subcontinent for the first time under the sultanates. The new typologies came with structural requirements that were only partially addressed by local crafts and traditions. For example, large congregational spaces were a part of the new architectural programmes for the mosque, and true domes were the obvious symbolic and structural solution. But the technology for constructing such true domes was not always widespread, and several creative and hybrid solutions were adopted. Although a few of the architectural design elements (as opposed to architectural programmes) were completely indigenous, the sources of architectural forms were various and often also came from Central Asia or Iran: broadly speaking, Persianate lands. Idioms of construction were commonly local, mostly employing craftsmen from the immediate region. The slippage between the local idiom of construction and an imported architectural form provides pointers for the sources and patterns of transmission of architecture. Until the latter half of the twentieth century, the term sultanate was applied to a period as large as 400 years before Mughal rule, and to an area geographically so diverse as to cover most of South Asia. This crude categorisation is now being increasingly questioned through detailed studies of individual sultanates, and this book is part of the larger trend of understanding this period as architecturally diverse, rich, regionally specific, and nuanced.23 This study of the architecture of the Nizam Shahs thus provides a model for better understanding the smaller sultanates in India over a period of six centuries, disabusing prevalent notions of homogenous ‘sultanate’ architecture through the subcontinent. Studies on the architecture of sultanate Gujarat and Bengal, for example, have

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already highlighted regional exigencies and variations in the various sultanates.24

Extra-regional Architectural Programmes and Building Typologies The extant architecture is of a large variety and can be functionally differentiated into military, residential, religious, and commemorative, though none of these categories are necessarily mutually exclusive. Barring the typologies of the mosque and waterworks (including the hammam), other architectural programmes did not have a unique design or construction limited to a functional typology. Even tombs, which appeared to have certain commonalities, were not all purpose-built as such, and many buildings were converted into memorial structures only after their patrons had died. Particularly in the case of tombs, the ease of creating pious trusts (waqf, pl. awqa¯f) to retain property within control of the patron’s family was instrumental in creating such mausolea.25 If the lands and estates were grants from the state, the creating of a quasi-religious trust would ensure that it never reverted to the state. The trustees were usually the descendants of the person who had been given the land grant. This process of transforming empty palaces into tombs, and eventually shrines, is still ongoing. One can witness it in the palace at Manzarsumbah, where since 2006 one of the rooms within the palace is being promoted as the shrine of a local pir (holy man, usually of a Sufi affiliation); increasingly, stories of his miracles are being attributed to the site, even though no one had even heard of this holy man a decade ago. Local and sectarian politics, and also the rising value of real estate, have led to this form of cultural and physical appropriation of many sites. The garden pavilion could therefore have the same basic design as a tomb, a watchtower, a palace, or a library. The use of an architectural programme as the sole taxonomical tool, though common, is therefore inherently limited. This functional taxonomy must be cautiously used to classify Nizam Shahi architecture internally, since there are almost no stylistic or technological differences within the functional categories. More complex factors, such as the location of a site with respect to urban settlements and the wider geography of the region, might be useful in the creation of a complex typology. However, in the case of this book,

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the convention has consciously triumphed over innovation, and a taxonomy based largely on architectural programmes has been adopted.

Global Architecture and Local Construction In the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, local idioms of construction technology were used to build or mimic design ideals from the larger Islamic world. Yet, as mentioned earlier, construction itself was a bottom-up process, involving guilds and workmen who had learned their craft through practice and gesture and passed it on regionally through many centuries. The designers and patrons were nobility or literati, and their design principles were theoretically derived from geometry or literary memory, or drawn from a larger Islamicate imaginaire. The imposition of designs that were not indigenous was a top-down process. The friction between design and construction sets up a variety of binaries: imported and indigenous, elite and vernacular, theoretical and practical, ideal and realised. These binaries created ‘slippages’ in the buildings themselves. The resultant incongruities between design and construction facilitate studies that are not limited to stylistic appraisal. Investigating construction practices with respect to idealised, imported designs is useful in recovering the social history of a region using nondestructive archaeological investigations. Construction technology and stylistic attributes are important tools to understand social relations and aesthetic choices in a regime, because together they reveal something about the different classes of the peoples involved in building construction. Alone, each presents either a guild-based or an elite view of construction, respectively. Thus, textual histories and material documentation are by themselves inherently limited sources. Construction technology often defines and dictates stylistic forms. However, the construction of these forms is a sociopolitical act, reflecting realities greater than what stylistic or technological studies alone could reveal. Architecture in medieval and early modern societies was a very complex social and physical activity involving patrons, designers, foremen, artisans, and even translators. The roles of all these constituents kept shifting and changing depending on the architectural commission. It is possible, to a certain extent, to conjecture what the roles of these agencies would have been in the execution of projects, but the social

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processes and relationships between them are harder to unravel. In the realisation of architecture in late medieval South Asia, there were two distinct processes. One was the commission and conceptualisation of the design (whether as a patron or as a designer), and the other process comprised the actual construction. For the architecture in question, design was an elite process informed by theoretical discourses about philosophy, gnostic beliefs, geometry, or literary memory. This tended to be a top-down process, initiated by court nobility or literati. The discourse was transmitted through exograms (memory devices that are external to the human body, such as paper). These top-down processes were connected with the knowledge of the larger ‘global’ world of the sixteenth-century Deccan. On the other hand, construction was usually a bottom-up process in which the expertise and habits of regional guilds and artisans were definitive elements. The (master) craftsmen were usually trained through gesture and practice. The mode of transmission of this knowledge and expertise was through engrams (memory devices within the human body). The slippages expand the possibilities of understanding architecture beyond the simple linear evolutionary mode typical of stylistic studies. The dichotomisation of architecture into these two processes is not an attempt to suggest that one has any superior intellectual value over the other, but to give both processes equal agency. The history of architecture has often tended to privilege the design aspect because of the more durable methods of transmission that recorded this process. Such a bias is also aided by documentary evidence, wherein the agendas of patrons and the designers are always given a dominant voice and recorded because of their social status and connections with literary production. The actual construction required local trades and artisans, partially for the sheer logistics of labour requirements. These individuals and groups belonged to a different social register and were conversant with the regional habits of construction technology, and therefore contributed their own traditions in the architectural design. This process was based on local, indigenous (or naturalised) building knowledge. Such knowledge was transmitted through gesture and imitation, both localised and ‘local’, and provides the other component of the binary. Thus, two buildings that may have appeared identical in their final form could in fact have been constructed very differently. This limitation

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of conventional architectural history is easy to address in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, where most of the architecture under study is adequately ruinous to provide ready cross-sections that are invaluable in understanding construction technology.

The Urgency to Study, Research, and Recover Though the material remains at Ahmadnagar are limited in comparison to other Deccan sultanates such as the Adil Shahs of Bijapur, the urgency and necessity for studying them is now far greater. The pressures of urban expansion and lack of historic consciousness threaten the architectural record. No more than eight monuments connected and identified exclusively with the Nizam Shahs have ‘protected’ status.26 Over the last few years alone, at least half a dozen important buildings, all over 400 years old, have been demolished. Significant historic structures such as Changiz Khan’s palace have been slated for demolition soon. Many other structures of the period are being ‘modernised’. Many of these buildings still serve the same use that they were adapted for more than a hundred years ago under colonial rule.27 The Husaini mosque and college were turned into the Criminal Jail, the Adhai Ghumat (acquired recently by a private developer, slated for demolition) became the residence of the District Judge, Salabat Khan’s tomb was converted into the Collector’s residence and later used as an infirmary. The precincts of Rumi Khan’s tomb are still part of a college hostel, and the fort of Ahmadnagar is still being used by the army as a supply depot and garrison. Mashhadi Mosque is the main police station, the Mengni Mahal is being used as the Civil Jail, Qasim Khan’s mansion (in its modified form) is the Collector’s residence, and Changiz Khan’s mansion is the District Judge’s Court (to be demolished soon). The old building used as offices for the Municipal Corporation of Ahmadnagar has a core that was originally Niʾmat Khan’s mansion. The finite resources for architectural history are being decimated, as the few ‘protected’ monuments are being subjected to crude and whimsical repairs carried out or sanctioned by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The corpus of buildings constructed in the reign of the Nizam Shahs has not been studied together as a group before. One of the reasons is that the custodians of the sites are different administrative and private entities: the ASI, Maharashtra State Archaeological Department,

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Ministry of Defence, Maharashtra Forest Service, Land Revenue Department, and many private owners. All these entities have their own agendas and operations, which are not necessarily in keeping with the recovery of archaeological and historical data. The city of Ahmadnagar has been sacked at least half a dozen times since the late sixteenth century, and large sections of its physical fabric have been decimated. A preservation bias toward religious buildings creates a distorted or skewed representation of the total architecture, and, as a result, mosques and tombs survive in disproportionate numbers. As expounded earlier, many of the extant royal palaces and noble residences are still partly occupied by government offices or by squatters and have often been modified beyond recognition, thereby barring many of them from this study. This book collates the material remains of much of the extant architecture of the Nizam Shahs, irrespective of current custodian or location, and, while not a complete catalogue of their architecture, provides a representative survey of the significant architectural remains.

CHAPTER 2 MULTIPLE PASTS:THE NIZAM SHAHS OF AHMADNAGAR

Drawing Boundaries: Historiography of the Nizam Shahs The history of the Nizam Shahs has always been mentioned as a marginal component of the broader history of the Deccan. While it is undeniable that the other kingdoms and their connected political histories shaped the kingdom of Ahmadnagar to a great degree, the latter was never the focus of any substantial research until recently.1 A historical narrative centred on Ahmadnagar was constructed only in the second half of the twentieth century. Until this book, there has been no architectural history of the kingdom based on primary sources and extant structures. The historic events at the court of the Nizam Shahs were recorded by three authors in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Sayyid Ali bin Aziz ʿullah at-Tabatabai, Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi (known as Firishtah), and Rafiʾi al-din Shirazi. Sayyid Ali Tabatabai was born in Semnan and came to the Ahmadnagar court via Iraq (sometimes parts of the Safavid kingdom are called by that term) and Golconda.2 He wrote his history of the Bahmani dynasty and the sultanate of Ahmadnagar in the early seventeenth century. He was an eyewitness to many of the events that he described, and on occasion was also employed in the administration.3 He fled Ahmadnagar for Golconda early in the seventeenth century. The other author, Firishtah, was also an insider in the court of the Nizam Shahs. Firishtah’s father, Ghulam ʿAli, was part of the e´migre´ nobility in Ahmadnagar. Firishtah went to the Bijapur court after the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah II and produced

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the work Gulshan-i Ibrahimi (better known as the Tarikh-i Firishtah) in 1606–07 CE .4 This work, in the tarikh genre, attempted to cover the history of the various sultanates and Islamic kingdoms in India, with different sections (maqalas) dedicated to each kingdom. Firishtah’s origin and patronage in the Deccan and his life at the Ahmadnagar and Bijapur courts make his book a valuable reference. Both these histories were couched in the conventional rhetorical style. Though they are the contemporary sources for the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, they unfortunately do not contain much information on architecture and building processes. Buildings were mentioned only when political events were associated with them. The Farah Bakhsh Bagh, for example, was mentioned in connection with the reception of a diplomatic embassy. Building sites were described with the usual metaphors and tropes, which makes it almost impossible to recover any real details of the architecture from these texts. The Tadhkirat ul-Mulk by Rafiʾi al-din Shirazi (written around 1608 CE ) exists only in manuscript form; it refers to the Ahmadnagar sultanate and makes passing mention of events in the kingdom.5 There exist a number of later works in Persian and Urdu, but they are mostly based on passages from these earlier histories and do not reveal anything new in terms of architectural details.6 Translations of Firishtah appeared in English as early as 1794 CE in the form of Jonathan Scott’s Firishtah’s History of Dekkan.7 However, the most widely circulated translation of Firishtah, by John Briggs, was published in 1829 CE as Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India.8 Tabatabai’s writings, specifically on the Nizam Shahi kings, in contrast, were translated and published only in the first half of the twentieth century by Lieutenant Colonel (later Sir) Wolseley Haig. The text initially appeared in a serialised form in Indian Antiquary between 1920 and 1923 CE , after which it was published as a book.9 In the twentieth century, at least a dozen papers pertaining to research relevant to the Deccan sultanates were presented in the medieval section of the Indian History Congress.10 Through these efforts, Ahmadnagar was finally recognised as an important entity in mainstream historical research. The reasons for this trend were an emerging emphasis on regionalism and the rise of local historians in academic positions, most notably in Marathi-speaking regions.11 Sardar N.Y. Mirikar published a Marathi book called Ahamadanagara s´ahara¯ca¯ itı¯hasa (History of the City of Ahmadnagar), which was a compilation of information from various

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published sources in English and Urdu along with snippets of local information. Similar ‘histories’ were written in Marathi and English. Radhey Shyam authored The Kingdom of Ahmadnagar in 1966 CE based on translations of Firishtah and Tabatabai, supplemented by other similar sources.12 But there was no attempt at writing a history based on primary sources. In 1974 CE , P.M. Joshi and H.K. Sherwani edited a two-volume work entitled History of Medieval Deccan.13 This work had inputs from various experts on different topics such as literature, architecture, political history, etc. These two volumes were the first attempt at writing a comprehensive history of the medieval Deccan, using different academic disciplines and cultural loci as their organising principle. This was the first time in the twentieth century that the kingdom of Ahmadnagar was treated as a significant political entity, on par with the other, better-studied sultanates in the Deccan. As opposed to earlier works (such as Percy Brown’s Indian Architecture),14 Joshi and Sherwani demonstrated an awareness of the futility of separating ‘Hindu’ and ‘Islamic’ periods. Only the sections on literature and epigraphy were organised on the basis of sectarian religious identity, because of the affinities between religion and language that they perceived. It is remarkable that Joshi and Sherwani resisted the temptation of recognising the three major linguistic zones as generators for the three major sultanates and the three Hindu kingdoms preceding them. The kingdoms of the Nizam Shahs, the Qutb Shahs, and the Adil Shahs roughly correspond with the kingdoms of the Yadavas, the Kakatiyas, and the Hoysalas respectively, which are then often seen as the prime sources for the Marathi, Telugu, and Kannada cultures – an idea that resonates with the national project of the Republic of India since the 1960s of recognising linguistic zones as monolithic administrative and cultural zones. Joshi and Sherwani’s avoidance of such simplistic analogies is even more creditable since this was a period of great popular belief in the linguistic basis for modern Indian states (Andhra Pradesh was established in 1956, Maharashtra in 1960, and Karnataka in 1973, and recently Telangana in 2015). Joshi and Sherwani realised that the heart of the sultanate Deccan was in the ‘shatter zone’15 between the three major language areas and the three corresponding kingdoms. The two kingdoms in the medieval period that controlled almost the entire Deccan, at the height of their

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respective regimes, were the Western Chalukyas (973–1200) and the Bahmanis (1347– 1527). Kalyani, the capital of the Chalukyas, was based in this shatter zone, as were Gulbarga and Bidar, the two capitals of the Bahmanis. The city of Vijayanagara was also in the same area. Not only did these rulers of the Deccan prize this zone, but the capital cities of the later regional kingdoms were also located around this area. The central Deccan was a key zone between north and south India and existed as a significant political centre through the early historic, medieval, and early modern periods,16 though it does not retain the same political potency today. The contribution of Joshi and Sherwani was the creation of a regional history not limited to just a singular polity and period, thus emphasising the unified character of the Deccan. The most important book focusing solely on the Ahmadnagar of the Nizam Shahs was Pramod Gadre’s Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar.17 This research was a preliminary catalogue of the pottery, coinage, architecture, and epigraphs, but limited only to the city of Ahmadnagar and not the whole kingdom. It provided a good starting point for understanding the urban growth of the city, but the development of the kingdom and the patterns of architecture were not explored. The author himself admitted that it was ‘not intended to present an intensive study of the architecture that has been attributed to the Nizam Shahi period’.18 The Marathas 1600 –1818, by Stewart Gordon, admirably explains some of the social and political structures in the sixteenth-century western Deccan, though the focus of the book is on the seventeenth century.19 The semifeudal and prebendal systems of the region and the means and methods of war are presented clearly in the initial chapters of this book. The continuity of political and revenue systems from the sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries, and how the failing Nizam Shahi state provided the basis of the Maratha kingdom, is elucidated in the book. Recently, M. Siraj Anwar has written a book on the polity of the Nizam Shahs, with special reference to their relations with the Mughal Empire.20 George Michell and Mark Zebrowski’s Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates is a recent comprehensive work.21 In this book, the authors group the architecture and paintings of all the dynasties in the Deccan, from the Bahmanis to the Marathas. Some of the sites from the kingdom of Ahmadnagar are discussed in detail, providing an appropriate context within which to place the architecture of the

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kingdom. Recently, three conference publications and a major exhibition have refocused interest on the individual Deccan sultanates, ascribing greater agency to individual kingdoms and celebrating their vibrant artistic endeavours.22 In terms of architectural documentation, most of the buildings built under the Nizam Shahs have never been catalogued. Drawings are available for almost none of the sites, some of which are physically difficult to access. Most surveys of the architecture of the Deccan have overlooked Ahmadnagar because it did not possess the numbers of recorded buildings found in Bijapur, Gulbarga, and Golconda.23 Buildings from the kingdom of Ahmadnagar have only found occasional mention as convenient comparanda. Since most of the sites and settlements of the Nizam Shahs were later appropriated by other kingdoms and rulers, their association with the dynasty has been conveniently overlooked. The nineteenth-century model of Indian history, based along religious periods in India, was in part reproduced in the twentieth century by Robert Sewell’s History of the Vijayanagara Kingdom, which glorified it as a ‘Hindu kingdom’ against Islamic invaders.24 The premise of such narratives was that a great Hindu civilisation and golden age had been vandalised and replaced by an Islamic one (with the implication that the ‘Islamic period’ in turn was displaced by an enlightened colonial regime). This deceptive, simple, tripartite chronological division of Indian history into Hindu, Islamic, and British periods still haunts some popular textbooks, though a lot of latetwentieth-century scholarship has successfully challenged this notion.25 Many of the historic chronicles of the other Deccan sultanates with regard to Bijapur and Golconda were translated by the mid-nineteenth century and their histories reconstructed.26 Bijapur and Hyderabad retained their status as regional capital cities under the Mughals and later as large provincial cities under the British. The capital cities of the Nizam Shahs, first Ahmadnagar and eventually Daulatabad, did not retain this prestige and were marginal and lesser towns. The Bombay Presidency and the Hyderabad State contained within them almost the complete kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda, respectively. This enabled an easier administrative and political patronage to investigate the history of these kingdoms. The Bombay Presidency and the Nizam of Hyderabad’s government carried out extensive surveys of the material

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remains from the two kingdoms. The kingdom of Ahmadnagar did not benefit from such research because it did not survive in its entirety as an administrative unit; its domains were distributed between various princely states and the British Presidencies. Sites associated with the Nizam Shahs have recently been hijacked by more popular or valourised narratives, as is the case with the forts of Daulatabad and Shivneri. The Nizam Shahs controlled Daulatabad for over a hundred years and made significant contributions to its built form, but Muhammad bin Tughluq’s fourteenth-century association with the site is always invoked, and popular literature remains silent on the role of Daulatabad in the sixteenth century. At the same time, the ‘pre-Islamic’ layers of sites are being vigorously and disproportionately emphasised as part of a nationalist project. Shivneri, the fortress controlling Junnar, the first capital of the Nizam Shahs, served as their capital on more than one occasion, and was one of the strongholds of the Ahmadnagar kingdom. The complete site is now being reconstructed, physically and in literature, as only the birthplace of Shivaji Bhonsale, the founder of the Maratha state, at the expense of all other layers of history. The fort of Junnar, Shivneri, is correctly the birthplace of Shivaji. His father, Shahaji, held the area as a ja¯gir for the Ahmadnagar kingdom, then for the Mughals in 1630 CE . When the Mughals asked for the land to be part of the Mughal empire, Shahaji tried to revive the Nizam Shahi dynasty by putting forth an imposter and fighting the Mughals in the latter’s name. Eventually, when the Mughals and the Adil Shahs signed a treaty in 1636 CE , he was forced to resign and his territories of Junnar and Sangamner were handed over to the Mughals. Shahaji himself was assigned to the Bijapur court. Ironically, the independent Maratha state (founded by Shivaji) did not control the site of Shivneri till the eighteenth century. Yet the fortress of Junnar has a legendary status in early Maratha history. This rewriting of history is not limited to texts but is also being implemented on the actual sites as they are reappropriated. The accompanying politically motivated ‘restorations’ on various sites make the recording of architectural data increasingly difficult for future scholarship. The elevation of certain historical figures as regional heroes and the generation of a mythology surrounding them have reached unprecedented levels in the Deccan because of the present-day politics of the region. The assertion of regional languages, the rise of militant right-wing groups, and other

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such events all conspire to create the loss of historical and archaeological evidence. These agendas are being realised through complete apathy and mismanagement, if not through direct activism.27 A serious reconsideration of the history of the Deccan has been a project only in the late twentieth century, and it competes with the chauvinistic regional histories being generated. Yet material evidence in the form of architecture undermines the latter. The sections of this book devoted to the architectural history of the Nizam Shahs will make a case for regional continuities with regional dynasties like the early Marathas and a disjuncture with the Mughals (survived by the late Marathas in the Deccan).

The Nizam Shahs The Nizam Shahi sultanate of Ahmadnagar (c. 1490– 1636 CE ) was one of the key kingdoms in the sixteenth-century Deccan. As one of the first sultanates to emerge from the crumbling edifice of the Bahmani kingdom (c. 1347 –1527 CE ), its rich material record remained relatively unstudied as compared to its contemporaries, the Adil Shahs of Bijapur (c. 1490–1686 CE ) and the Qutb Shahs of Golconda (c. 1518– 1687 CE ). The Nizam Shahi state witnessed an architectural and artistic efflorescence earlier than its two contemporary neighbours, yet, due to various later political and historical events, the kingdom was never reconstructed as the important polity it had been. Through the course of the sixteenth century, the successor states of the erstwhile Bahmani kingdom (Nizam Shahs, Qutb Shahs, Adil Shahs, Imad Shahs, Barid Shahs) fashioned themselves along the lines of other Persianate kingdoms in the post-Timurid lands of Iran and Central Asia. The reasons for this aspiration were many, in part attributed to the Shiʾi faith centred on Safavid Iran, to which the later rulers of the Deccan sultanates often subscribed.28 The Shiʾi connection of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar was the most consistent, unlike the courts of Bijapur and Golconda, which vacillated between Sunni and Shiʾi profession, particularly from the latter half of the sixteenth century. The kings of Ahmadnagar were firmly Shiʾi from the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah I onwards, after he converted to the ithna ʿashari (twelver Shiʾi) faith under the instruction of Shah Tahir al Husaini around 1537 CE .

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The Bahmanis had imagined their own status as a post-Timurid state, going as far as capitulating to Timur and getting a diploma of investiture from him. As a result of their self-fashioning as post-Timurid courts, many of the arts that flourished in the Bahmani courts therefore found willing patrons in the Deccan sultanates. The three prominent successor dynasties in the Deccan – the Adil Shahis of Bijapur, the Qutb Shahis of Golconda, and the Nizam Shahis of Ahmadnagar – became centres of greater Persianate culture. By the sixteenth century, the Deccan had long been a central ground for the cultural interaction between African, Arab, Central Asian, and South Asian lands. Rarely was this contact one of conflict; on the contrary, it was centred on trade, exchange, and migration, including the transmission of tangible crafts and trades. Many of the ports mentioned in the earliest documents, such as Chaul (called Semylla or Chemula in the classical and Sheool in the early medieval Arabic sources), Dabhol, Bhatkal, and Goa were active right through the seventeenth century,29 demonstrating the importance of this region to Indian Ocean trade into the early modern period. The courts at Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, and Golconda received a considerable influx of people from Central Asia and Iran through the sixteenth century, the continuation of a trend in the Deccan that began earlier under the Bahmanis. In fact, the nominal suzerainty of the Bahmanis was maintained as convenient fiction for several decades after the end of the Bahmani dynasty. For example, the coinage of the Nizam Shahs was unusual, as they chose to continue with Bahmani coinage for as many as 80 years after declaring independence. Their behaviour was not anomalous if studied together with the coins of the other post-Bahmani sultanates in the Deccan, who also chose to carry on with similar practices. The Adil Shahs and the Qutb Shahs also did not mint any coins with their own kings’ names till the Mughal expansion and monetary policies affected them in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. They all continued to mint and use coins in the name of the Bahmani sultans, as expounded upon in a later chapter. The conversion of Burhan Nizam Shah I particularly amplified the attraction of Ahmadnagar for scholars, literati, poets, adventurers, and others from Safavid lands. The sectarian affiliation of the Nizam Shahs shaped the physical fabric of their cities and the architecture therein. For example, the distribution and role of mosques in the Nizam Shahi state was very closely modelled along that of the Safavids, whose nominal

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religious hegemony they accepted, partly as a foil to the expansionist Mughals who threatened from the north. Even the settlement patterns of the Nizam Shahs reinforced this connection with Safavid Iran; Ahmadnagar, their capital, does not have any congregational mosque on a large scale, almost as a response to the debates in early Safavid Iran against such an architectural programme.30 Such political reflections were not limited to architectural expression, but were also found in other classes of artefacts. The flow of emigrants intensified in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as the empire of the Timurids was dissolving and the Safavids had not yet completely consolidated theirs; large numbers of artists, craftsmen, and literati migrated to western India in search of patronage, usually south by the sea routes that ended at Chaul, Dabhol, Bhatkal, and Goa, among other ports.31 Chaul was the most important port controlled by Ahmadnagar, and the Nizam Shahs were directly involved in its shipping trade. Not only were the ports commercially important, but they were also prestigious, since they handled most of the traffic of pilgrims from the Deccan on their way to Mecca. The port of Chaul is mentioned in the travels of the Russian Afanasy Nikitin in the mid-fifteenth century and the French Franc ois Pyrard de Laval in the early seventeenth century. The large movement of people from Iranian and Central Asian centres to the Deccan was responsible for materially fulfilling the ideological affiliation that the Deccan sultans continued to cultivate with Iran. Ironically, the decentralisation and devolution of power of the Timurid courts, which created the conditions for this exodus, were mirrored by a similar loss of central control of the Bahmani tarafs (provinces), resulting in the post-Bahmani Deccan kingdoms.32 A new network of patronage emerged in which court nobles and local fief-holders had the resources and the privileges to patronise artists and craftsmen, as can be seen with the Jadhavs of Sindkhed Raja. The fact that a significant number of the buildings are not just royal commissions but can also be attributed to or associated with other nobles at the court is testament to such a pattern. As court officials assumed more power and destabilised the polity, they broadened the bases of patronage. As opposed to the Timurids in Central Asia a century earlier, where decentralisation of power did not result in destabilisation of centres of patronage and allowed the Timurids to survive another half a century under Abu Saʾid, Sultan Husayn, and Shah Rukh, the devolution

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of power in the sultanate Deccan contributed to the instability of patronage in the Deccan kingdoms. The Timurids under Ulugh Beg (1394– 1449 CE ) outsourced the expansion of an agricultural basis to generate revenue and outsourced this enterprise and tax collection to greater shrines. In the Deccan, the nobility at court were entrusted with this activity, and these court nobles became semi-autonomous regional commanders, ready to defect for greater titles and rights. The rise of the Maratha fief-holders in this period is particularly notable. A large number of Persian scholars had been forced to migrate to the Deccan under Muhammad bin Tughluq when he became the Sultan of Delhi and shifted his capital to Daulatabad (the erstwhile Devagiri, capital of the Yadavas) in 1327 CE . He shifted his capital in another forced migration in 1335 CE , but the forced migrations were unsuccessful and his empire collapsed shortly thereafter. But the aborted attempt at ruling the subcontinent from Daulatabad had unintended cultural repercussions: a Turco-Persianate cultural complex became established in the Deccan. The earliest specimens of Persian poetry in the region belong to this period, and these literati were one of the groups that made up the Deccanis. In addition, new flows of men of letters from Persianate lands reinforced the literary culture of the Deccan. As the Deccan sultanates established themselves, they became the magnets for attracting immigrants from the Turco-Persianate lands. Most sixteenth and seventeenth-century poets, such as Firishtah, ʿUrfi, and Zuhuri, were at the Ahmadnagar court en route to Bijapur, Golconda, or the Mughal courts.33 The Deccan courts in the sixteenth century also had a large population of Sunni Deccanis, Indian-born Muslims (some of whom had been settled in the Deccan since the time of the Khiljis and Tughluqs), often pitted against the Shiʾi Afa¯qis, newly arrived foreigners from Persianate and Turkic lands and Transoxiana.34 The Habashis, Abyssinian slaves brought from the area around Ethiopia in Africa, usually sided with the Deccanis. The local Koli and Maratha chiefs, who eventually sided with the Deccani-Habashi coterie, were the other key ethnic constituencies. All these factions variously allied and fought against each other, but the rift between the Deccanis and the Afa¯qis was fairly consistent. Since the Marathas were local landed gentry, their power bases tended to be secure, stable, and loyal to them. The situation was summed up by P.M. Joshi when he observed that ‘the king’s sovereignty was limited by his feudal nobility . . . . The perpetual

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struggle between the nobles and the king over the question of sovereignty is the keynote of the history of the Deccan sultanates’.35 When the Nizam Shahi kingdom was on the verge of collapse in the late sixteenth century, the millenarian Mahdavis transformed into an important sectarian faction.36 By the early seventeenth century, under Malik Ambar, the Deccani-Habashi-Maratha axis was largely in control of the kingdom. Through this period, the caste identity of the Marathas was consolidated, not unlike the Rajput identity formation in North India a few centuries earlier. The court nobles also comprised representatives from the local clans who had land grants with ‘nested’ rights, particularly among the Maratha faction at court.37 These were mostly the various deshmukhs (the local appointed fief-holders and officials, now a common last name) who held ja¯girs and other types of land grants in return for allegiance and maintaining and furnishing troops and fighting men on demand.38 The royal court did not usually have a significant presence in the countryside; barring the central administrative presence in tax assessment and collection, all functions at the local level were managed and discharged by the fief-holders and ja¯girdars (landed gentry with hereditary fiefs). Their patronage of architecture emulated the royal court, albeit on a more modest scale. The relatively short life of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar provides convenient boundaries for the study of their polity (formally from 1490 to 1636 CE , though after 1600 CE Malik Ambar and others controlled the kingdom with nominal monarchs of the Nizam Shahi dynasty). The first four sultans commissioned large buildings from 1494 to 1595 CE , followed by Malik Ambar in the early sixteenth century. In this book, the name Ahmadnagar has been commonly used to refer to three entities: the walled city, the kingdom, and also the fort in close proximity to the city. Today, the administrative district (county) is called Ahmadnagar, as is the city. To avoid confusion, the use of the term Ahmadnagar is specified as the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, the city of Ahmadnagar, or the fort of Ahmadnagar. The ‘Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar’ means the ‘Nizam Shahs of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar’. It must be mentioned here that the Nizam Shahs are commonly confused with the later Asaf Jahs of Hyderabad (reg. 1724 – 1948 CE ), popularly known as the Nizams of Hyderabad, because of the title as Nizam-ul Mulk of the Mughal court. This later

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dynasty, the Asaf Jahs, has little to do with the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, other than the fact that the Aurangabad-Daulatabad region was central to the foundation of both dynasties more than 200 years apart.

Paintings Painting must be seen as a visual strategy attempting ideological goals, much like architecture. Unfortunately, there are no extant paintings associated with the architecture – neither architectural representations on paper nor large painted surfaces in the buildings, both of which could have made for a strong case in explaining the intersection of these visual media. The paintings produced under the patronage of this kingdom are arguably very similar to its architecture with respect to the process of merging at least two traditions: regional Indic and an international Persianate, local and imported, respectively. It is now recognised that amongst the earliest extant schools of painting in the Deccan, Ahmadnagar was an important centre which flourished very briefly but brightly. As Mark Zebrowski remarks, ‘Ahmadnagar [preserved] . . . its independence for a shorter time than Bijapur or Golconda. Under Iranian influence, the court converted to the Shi’i sect of Islam . . . . [Ahmadnagar painting] is the rarest of all Deccani schools and has been the most elusive to reconstruct.’39 Unlike other centres at Bijapur and Golconda, it faded before it could be affected by the style of painting at the Mughal court. Approximately 20 paintings can be ascribed to the school at Ahmadnagar, or at least associated, and they provide a convenient control group.40 They are not necessarily representative of the paintings produced at the court of Ahmadnagar, since the invasions of the kingdom in the seventeenth century resulted in the looting and destruction of most of the art produced. As explained by Stuart Cary Welch for paintings in the Deccan in general: Reasons for the Deccani muddle are not hard to find: Aurangzeb [the Mughal emperor] for instance. His lack of respect for painters and pictures is now legendary, evoking nightmares of destruction . . . visions of burning Ahmadnagar ragamala sets and shredded portraits of Ibrahim Adil Shah. Assuredly the losses were frightful but small, intimidating problems by the survivors are far more

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insistent, occasionally making us wish that Aurangzeb had been more thorough.41 It is now suspected that the Marathas, not the Mughals under Aurangzeb, vandalised the libraries and art in Ahmadnagar. However, Aurangzeb tends to be vilified more easily. All the paintings now associated with this court are attributed to the latter half of the sixteenth century, under the aegis of Husain Shah I (reg. 1554– 65 CE ) and his sons Murtaza I (reg. 1565– 88 CE ) and Burhan II (reg. 1591–95 CE ). All scholarship on these paintings, including that of Stella Kramrisch, Karl Khandalavala, Stuart Cary Welch, Richard Ettinghausen, Douglas Barrett, and Mark Zebrowski, agrees that the paintings were produced in the latter half of the sixteenth century. However, there is minor disagreement on the precise dating of some of the folios. Twelve of these paintings are part of a codex that is a panegyric chronicle in praise of the king Husain Nizam Shah I, and accompany the verse composed by the poet Aftabi.42 Six depict military scenes [Figure 2.1]. The other paintings are individual folios that have not yet been recognised as a part of an album or codex. These are distributed between museums and private collections in North America, Europe, and Asia. In the past century, the tendency to designate all paintings from the Deccan sultanates as Bijapuri has slowly been replaced by a more enlightened attitude. The poor provenance of most of the paintings from this region can also often cause them to be misidentified with Rajput, Mughal, or Persian works.43 As Karl Khandalavala has observed, ‘The tendency to ascribe all the best work of the late 16th and the early 17th centuries to Bijapur has been halted and it is now recognised that Golconda was an equally important centre of painting and that the Nizam Shahi court of Ahmadnagar also had painters of high merit.’44 The paintings suffer a similar, if not worse, fate regarding their study as compared to the architecture in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar. The only significant observation for architecture that can be gleaned from these paintings is that not a single one shows a real architectural setting for the king, his entourage, or the court. Almost all the paintings of the king, his courtiers, and other nobles are set on a plain white or coloured ground. A garden landscape setting, which is seen in only three of the paintings from the Ta¯rif-i Husain Shah, shows the queen in the famous doha¯da [Figure 2.2] or depicts the king, Husain Nizam Shah I, sitting with his

Figure 2.1

Battle scene from the Tarif-i Husain Shah.

Figure 2.2

Dohada scene from the Tarif-i Husain Shah.

Figure 2.3 Sultan Husain Nizam Shah I and his queen from the Tarif-i Husain Shah.

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wife, Khanzade Humayun, on a takht set on a stone platform in a garden [Figure 2.3]. No other paintings from sixteenth-century Ahmadnagar depict architecture or landscape to this extent. This observation has implications for understanding how the Nizam Shahs governed, and where the seats of the court and ceremonials were located, which will be discussed later. The only potential argument against the inference is that the painting draws heavily upon Tabrizi Turkoman painting, which, very similarly, depicts figures against blank or sparse grounds. There is good evidence that Central Asian Persianate artists shaped the Ahmadnagar school of painting, as demonstrated by Mark Zebrowski with two illustrations: one from the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C., and one from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.45 It is speculated that these sketches were produced to face each other in the same album and formed a pair. Each sketch has a fierce Central Asian warrior; both had been ascribed to the Timurid school and dated as around 1430 CE , suggesting an origin in the greater Iranian cultural zone. But now a number of small traits have placed these drawings in the space between the Deccan and Central Asia. The sinuous curves and the emphasis on weight and volume are typical of Indian paintings. Zebrowski points out the fashions of the Ahmadnagar sultans with respect to headgear and the speckling on the clothes and shields of the warriors as characteristic of the late Ahmadnagar style.46 Even if produced by a Central Asian artist, he or she must have been an e´migre´ to the Deccan. Even if the origins of some of these conventions are Central Asian, their deployment within part of a larger scheme would typify them as characteristic of Ahmadnagar painting. The ontological status of these paintings would be established through an understanding of which cultural space they are located in. Mere geographical classification or simple stylistic analysis is not adequate to unravel the layers of complexity that these provincial schools of painting evolved, nor do those categories define the essence of such schools of painting. The cultural location can be determined only if their visual appearance or their thematic elements (or both) are defined as determinants of their cultural tradition. If the defining characteristics of Persianate painting are to be understood as a combination of cultural production contexts and visual material, the issue would be to understand how the paintings produced

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at a court in south-central India would relate to this model; especially since the paintings are rooted in a local tradition but also strive toward assuming certain Persian qualities. The issue would involve locating these paintings in a cultural space, since no extant contemporary documents from that period theorise them. Perhaps the lack of such documents could be overcome by the body of historical information about the court and the political context out of which this tradition of painting emerges. That would enable at least a partial intellectual history of what has so far been seen only as an enigmatic provincial style. For example, it is evident, from looking at the paintings produced at Ahmadnagar in the latter half of the sixteenth century, that there was not only one school of painting but many. Arts in the Deccan seem to have flourished in a multiracial, multiethnic society. ‘The rhythms of Persia, the lush sensuality of southern India, the restraint of European and Turkish portraiture’47 sums up the mood for the art produced in the Deccan and also sets the tone for recreating a context in which to locate these objects. Could the cultural topoi and themes, along with the standardised protagonists that Persian paintings employ, be used as being defining characteristics of Persian painting? This argument is proposed by Eleanor Sims, who argues that Iranian painting has consistently maintained certain elements and themes throughout, in the flexible and imaginary cultural entity of Iranshahr. To her, the visual composition of these paintings is not as significant as the underlying themes; therefore, Persian painting is not rooted in the discourse of stylistic history.48 Her categories are the protagonists of the beardless youth, the hero, the noble prince, and the sage or scholar, and the settings are the garden and the forest. However, the premise that certain paintings, which she considers for her study of themes, are to be recognised as Persian is itself rooted in an understanding of history and style. Therefore, to deny these parameters in the evaluation of Persian painting in an effort to uncover the underlying absolute and conceptual entities that permeate all Persian painting becomes a paradox. Sims argues that stylistic questions are not urgent anymore, given the number of publications on styles and the wealth of new paintings and collections being discovered. Instead, she argues that Persian painting should be understood in the light of the study of standard themes, protagonists, settings, and landscapes that recur throughout time.

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If paintings are to be called Persian only on the basis of themes and types, how does the non-Persian content of a non-Persian manuscript fit this paradigm? The Kha¯mseh of Amir Khusro Dehlavi contains stories that are set within Persian models of kha¯mseh literature. Using Persian tropes, the characters are loosely modelled on the people around the poet in India. Amir Khusro’s Kha¯mseh was composed between 1298 and 1302 CE .49 The congruency between the political events in the courts of the patrons of Amir Khusro and the timing and themes of Khusro’s literary works is explored by Barbara Brend. Loosely modelled on Nizami’s Kha¯mseh, Amir Khusro’s Kha¯msah localises many of the stories with references to local geography and politics. In the first chapter of the Kha¯msah, the ‘Matla-i-Anvar’, he describes a Brahmin protagonist’s pilgrimage to Somnath in Gujarat, a reference to a local place and people, also corresponding with the military campaign of his patron that year.50 The fourth chapter, the ‘Ainah-i-Iskandari’, contains a story of a dervish offering advice to a young Alexander. Amir Khusro’s patron at this time was Ala-ud-din Khilji, who often saw himself as a world conqueror a´ la Alexander. The story seems to be a metaphor for the sultan seeking counsel from the poet’s patron saint, Nizam-ud-din Awliyah. Stories of Persian origin were given a local twist in order to serve a dual counselling and sycophantic function for the patrons.51 Is an illustrated manuscript for such a literary work to be called Indian, if it is produced in India and if the text references an Indian location, even if the text and the illustrations are thematically and stylistically Persian? The mode of collection of paintings and manuscripts in Indian courts was based on the system of commissioning and collecting albums. These compilations of calligraphy, paintings, and other arts as an album was part of the Persianate culture that permeated India. But no one would suggest that the mode of commissioning and collecting alone would qualify such albums (muraqqa¯) as Persian, given that they were produced in India.52 The geographical and cultural contexts of the production, therefore, cannot be recognised as being definitive of Persian painting, at least by themselves, whether those are the court culture that commissions them, the mode of collection, the location of the production, or the references to local narratives. Neither do the thematic descriptions of paintings, as outlined by Sims, provide an answer.

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However, the importance of all these factors in the conjectural construction of a court culture is important, since such constructions of history are the key to recreating the circumstances under which an intellectual deconstruction of the paintings would have occurred. The patterns of patronage visible through the circumstances of production would prove useful in situating these paintings within a social context, and their visual characteristics, in Morellian ways, would help locate the affinities and attachments of the artists’ schools. The treatment of visual space was often dictated by the school of painting. Tabriz, for example, had a vigorous style in which all elements seem animated. Herat, Tabriz, Qazvin, and Shiraz all had schools which had unique traits, such as the system of using the mathematical ratio of 3:5 to define the highlights and strong lines of the composition.53 Even the palettes used in the various centres of artistic production were different. Yet, transcending the colour palettes and theoretical bases for the composition, there were certain visual elements that most Persian painting had in common. Painting on paper with human figures of a certain acceptable relative scale with respect to the size of the folio, all the paintings render human figures with a very similar attitude. The visual characterisation of Persian painting is also a matter of studying details, and then tracing their lineage. Some ateliers of Persian painting moved to India in the period between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and transfer of these techniques and technologies to local artists are potentially responsible for many of the formal similarities with indigenous iconography, as seen in the Ta¯rif. Multiple factors seem to suggest that there was a large movement of artists from the Persian world who immigrated to the Deccan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Only about 20 paintings are attributed to the court of Ahmadnagar, many of them only stylistically. The most famous paintings produced at Ahmadnagar are the illustrations that accompany the masnavi written by Aftabi, Kita¯b-i Ta¯rif-i Husain Sha¯h Pa¯dsha¯h-i Dakan, suspected of being commissioned in the middle of the seventh decade of the sixteenth century. These are the only paintings from Ahmadnagar that appear within the context of a codex manuscript. Curiously, this bound book does not have strong connections between the images and the text. According to David Roxburgh, this combination of painting and

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calligraphy in a single codex was popular in Persian courts since the Bahram Mirza album in the mid-sixth century, the absence of such providing another proof of the early date of the Ta¯rif.54 This is in keeping with Ahmadnagar paintings in general, which are neither intimately connected with any text, nor do most of them have any writing at all. The book originally had 14 paintings of which only 12 remain. Stella Kramrisch suggests that the indigenous style suggests that it was not produced with royal patronage.55 This seems to be a case of imposing twentieth-century tastes on the fifteenth century. They are undoubtedly a royal commission, given the lavish use of material, but whether the manuscript was completed in the life and reign of Husain Shah I is controversial. The paintings can be thematically categorised as court and battle scenes (‘feasting and fighting’, razm va bazm), a distinctly Persian paradigm for royal paintings. The mode of transaction between the royal patron and the artists also is distinctly Persianate. However, the paintings can visually be recognised as Indian, with indigenous elements. Of the 12 extant paintings, five feature a historic queen, Humayun Shah, an anomaly in paintings commissioned by Islamic courts. The representations of the queen were later erased, commonly speculated as being by the order of her son.56 The queen appears with Sultan Nizam Shah I in characteristically Indic poses, seated by his side. The portrayal of a royal or divine couple seated next to one another on a couch or a bedstead, or with the queen on the king’s lap, was a common Indian prototype [Figure 2.4a, b]. In reading this as an Indian theme, suggestions have been made that a logical extension of this theme would suggest that the king was caressing the breast of the queen or touching her navel (as would be commonly found in Indian art).57 Numerous such representations are found in the Deccan since as early as the second and third century CE . This is a typical theme in Indian art known as a doha¯da scene. In one of the paintings, the queen is touching the tree, which is shown in full bloom [Figure 2.2]. She is surrounded by six women, all of whom are dressed in saris. The shapes of the eyes and the rendering of their garments is evocative of the tradition of painting in Malwa. The image of a beautiful lady touching a tree and making it blossom is an idea rooted in classical Sanskrit literature from the fourth century CE onwards. The earliest representations of this theme are found at Bharhut from the first century BCE . Khandalavala saw in this scene a continuity of

Figure 2.4a Sultan Husain Nizam Shah I and Khunzada Humayun from the Tarif-i Husain Shah.

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Figure 2.4b

Hoysala sculpture of S´iva and his wife Uma¯.

the mural painting tradition of Vijayanagar Vijayanagara, claiming that the composition was well suited for an alcove.58 The issue here is to understand the representation of the king and the queen as deified entities, depicted in postures and actions that equate them with divinity. The striking beauty of the queen and her immortal love of the king are the themes painted; this is in keeping with suggestions that the manuscript was commissioned by the queen after the death of Husain Nizam Shah. However, the incomplete verses and the lack of mention of the king’s death suggest that it was commissioned in his lifetime and abandoned when he suddenly died. The manuscript is also a metaphor for the queen’s accession to power, probably finished during the period when she was regent for the young prince. The queen was scraped off and painted over with thick washes, though it is possible to make out the outlines of her original figure, mostly as a silhouette. It is speculated that her images were ordered to be scraped off upon the ascension to the throne of her son, the young prince Murtaza I.59 Six of the paintings depict the battle of Rakshas Tagidi of 1565 CE , in which Nizam Shah I led the armies of the five sultanates in victory against the Raja of Vijayanagar. The Ta¯rif is a panegyric that details this battle. All the battle scenes are in strict alignment, with three tiers of soldiers or cavalry across the composition. The feet of the soldiers are

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deliberately imposed upon the frame, reminiscent of similar Persian devices, although here it is more restrained. The animals, horses, and elephants are richly covered with brocaded cloth. The animals are set against monotone backgrounds of blue, pink, or green, bringing them into relief. Husain Nizam Shah is depicted in five of the paintings, accompanied by his standard bearer in three of the scenes. Visually, the paintings are all in a vertical format, ranging in size from 18 by 12 cm to 18 by 15 cm within the demarcated frame. The palace scenes depict interior architecture, but not with the finesse of Persian masters such as Bihzad (1455 – 1536 CE ). Stella Kramrisch claims that there are subtle attempts at using techniques of shading to overcome this inadequacy,60 but this is not evident in the reproductions of these paintings. Kramrisch has described these paintings as possessing ‘Turkish compactness, Vijayanagar influence in their sinuosity and Safawi [sic, Safavid] vegetation’.61 The colours are vibrant, geometric designs are absent for the most part, and the paintings lack fine detail in the way that later illustrations from Ahmadnagar do. The paintings are related to painting traditions from Malwa and Mandu in central India, but these links merely point toward similar sources, not necessarily a sequence of evolution and transformation. The common Rajasthani themes of hunts, court ceremonial, or Hindu ritual are not common, but a general connoisseurship of poetry, music, and the arts is reflected. The difference between paintings from this manuscript and the later paintings from Ahmadnagar is remarkable. The artistic tradition of the Ta¯rif continues only in certain themes later on, such as the series of ragamala paintings. The divergence between the two schools within such a short time suggests either the existence of multiple schools of painting or a sudden infusion of artistic traditions from elsewhere. Though the preclassical formative stages are not identified in any extant manuscripts in India, traces of stylistic origins are found in drawings from Central Asia and also local painting traditions. Thematically and stylistically, these paintings are a curious synthesis of Persian and Indian sources, almost a microcosm of social and literary changes and products in the period. The Ta¯rif itself is a precursor to the fully flourished style of the Ahmadnagar court, and the link between the two is provided by a sketch in the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad. The sketch depicts a male figure dressed in a long skirt-dress, gesturing to an elephant with its

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mahout. It is unclear if the difference in scale between the elephant and the gesturing figure is meant to evoke illusions of spatial distance or if they represent a hierarchy. The sketch appears to be a portrait of Husain Nizam Shah, and the wavy lines of the Sultan’s skirt hem and the cloth on the elephant seem to suggest calligraphic strokes without any actual writing.62 There is a floral design rendered as a light wash in the background, similar to the margins in Persian paintings. The other paintings attributed to Ahmadnagar are in collections dispersed throughout the world. Two paintings, one in the library at Rampur and the other at the Bibliothe`que Nationale in Paris, are thought to be portraits of Murtaza I painted by the same artist, to whom is also ascribed a third painting [Figure 2.5]. Zebrowski argues, with lots of good evidence, that the sultan depicted is Murtaza and not Burhan, though Barrett has proposed these as portraits of Burhan from the 1590s.63 These three paintings attest to the high quality of portraiture at the Ahmadnagar court, for which no precursors are found in the region. If Zebrowski’s argument is to be accepted and these paintings are attributed to the year 1575 CE , then there were arguably two schools of painting at the Ahmadnagar court. The Ta¯rif was produced around 1565 CE , given that it mentions the battle of Rakshas Tagidi (January 1565) but does not mention the death of Husain I later in the year. The illustrations in the Ta¯rif, where the portraiture does not reach the same standards as these paintings just ten years later, have a very earthy and basic form. It could also be that under Murtaza, more painters moved to Ahmadnagar, a real possibility given that, under his relatively longer and peaceful reign, many poets (such as ʿUrfi) moved to his court from Iran.64 But even these later sophisticated portraits have traits characteristic of the paintings of Ahmadnagar. It might be worth exploring the links with Shiraz and Tabriz in these later paintings, given the circumstances of those centres of artistic production. Barbara Brend has also suggested that the Chester Beatty manuscript defines the sultanate as being a part of the ‘Shiraz orbit’.65 Though it is not possible to ascribe most of the paintings from Ahmadnagar based on historical evidence or colophons, the visual clues in many of the paintings are distinct. The ‘magical Deccan breeze’ is noted in many of the paintings, as seen in the sketch of a running elephant from around the last decade of the sixteenth century. The rider has a long skirt-dress which is gently rippling at the hem. This kind of

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Figure 2.5 Portrait of Murtaza Nizam Shah I in the Bibliotheque National, Paris.

effect is not seen in the Ta¯rif but is common to all the later works of Ahmadnagar art. The sketch of Husain Nizam Shah at the Salar Jung Museum is an important link because it details this feature for the first time, though in a very controlled and inhibited way. The forms of yakshas, local pre-Hindu demonic deities, which form an almost continuous style of anthropomorphic representation throughout Indian art, are seen in paintings from Ahmadnagar. The yaksha characteristic is a slightly pot-bellied countenance (later associated with affluence, but a symbol of demonic strength) as opposed to the idealised

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human forms in classical Persian painting. Zebrowski also notes that certain paintings seem to bear the characteristics of paintings by Abdʾus Samad, Mir Sayyad ʿAli, and Dost Muhammad.66 Perhaps these stylistic attributions are possibly more a function of having artists trained in the schools of these artists. Other visual cues for paintings from Ahmadnagar are the contemporary fashions of Ahmadnagar, usually depicted in the art.67 The sketch of the young seated prince in the Edwin Binney collection in San Diego clearly depicts the bullet-shaped amulets worn across the upper arms, the purse hanging around the waist from a belt, and a jama with widely crossed lapels, all distinctive fashions from the Ahmadnagar court. This drawing shows a young prince being embraced by a small girl. The same question arises with respect to scale; is the difference in the relative size of the prince and the girl attributable to hierarchy? The headgear with the feathered brush and the rippled sash ends are unmistakable symptoms of Deccani painting. Using these cues and fashions alone, it is possible to locate another sketch historically; the geographical location of this other drawing is however presently unknown. Zebrowski sees the hand of Mir Sayyid ʿAli in this drawing, suggesting that the master himself, or one of his pupils, made it in India or Iran.68 However, he also detects a feebleness of line not evident in the reproductions, which casts the suspicion that this is a latter-day copy. The pupils of eyes depicted in the portraits are rendered as small vertical lines in some of the pictures. It is proposed that this mannerism is derived from Mughal sources, suggesting that these paintings are from the latter part of the sixteenth century and therefore that the portraits represent Burhan II.69 However, if they were influenced by early Mughal ateliers, the portraits would be of Murtaza I who ruled from 1565 to 1588 CE . If the portraits are indeed of Murtaza, it might be speculated that the young prince with the little girl (in the Edwin Binney collection) is his son, Husain, who was married to a young girl in 1582 CE . The most important but abstract visual clue in the painting tradition of the Deccan was the handling of the body to convey mass and weight, unlike the light and idealised Persian bodies. There is an effect of bulkiness that is conveyed through the representation of people. This emphasis on the weight of the body is not found in Persian painting, nor in any indigenous tradition before the sixteenth century.

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The school of painting that carries on the pictorial tradition of the Ta¯rif is the series of ragamala paintings attributed to Ahmadnagar and dated to the 1590s. The illustrations are not Persian derived and neither are the themes. Created as pictorial expressions of musical ragas, these painting folios depict women in the same dress as the Ta¯rif, and the only Persian influences are minor elements such as the decorative ornament shown on the couch. Of course, the format and the material (paper) are Persian influences. The paintings in the Deccan, particularly at Ahmadnagar, are best described as paintings in a Persian mode in an Indian setting, if taxonomical operations are required to locate them. However, mere taxonomy would obfuscate rather than clarify the context of the production of these works of art, since multiple classes of paintings were simultaneously produced under the same patronage. Since the material is scattered, not only stylistically but also in its physical form, ranging from a codex to individual folios and sketches, a typological analysis as a means of understanding the culture would have limited value. Locating these paintings in the milieu of the court culture of Ahmadnagar in the sixteenth century would be the method to understand the circumstances of their production and hence their intended meaning. Visual space is embedded in cultural space, and only a combination of the two can be considered characteristic of a style of painting. Thus, a style is not to be described only visually. The visual culture of a place has to be understood as a material manifestation of society. The stylistic and thematic changes in painting, as also the material and technological (there were no paintings on paper in the Deccan before the sultanates), were reflective of the larger changes in polity and society in the kingdoms of the medieval Deccan. As a result, the region was in a temporal space of flux, shifting between the traditional models of patronage and artistic traditions, resulting in the creation of a new period eye. Unfortunately, there is no internal theorisation of the painting tradition available, thereby subjecting these painting traditions to processes of archaeology. In the absence of such literary evidence, they have to be recognised as the product of organic processes, and not the results of a theoretical discourse. This fits well with the understanding of these painting traditions as syncretistic, and might explain the

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parallel schools of painting that could coexist without the baggage of a canonical aesthetic theory. The paintings can be read in correspondence with the social and political milieu of the Ahmadnagar sultanate (as opposed to an understanding of the art as objects by themselves, studying only their physical elements and processes of production.) The paintings can thus be based on a core of iconography that was rooted in Indian art, with the superficial stylistic elements of Persian painting. The overarching mode of commissioning and collecting them was rooted in the Deccani Persianate environment of the Ahmadnagar court. These paintings, therefore, were exploring liminal spaces, cultural as well as geographical, which set the tone for Persianized courts in central and southern India for over half a millennium. Though the paintings are not a central part of this study, they deserve attention for at least two reasons: the act of painting has an agenda that overlaps with that of architecture, and that the paintings corroborate some of the physical evidence from the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs. Another group of paintings that are not attributable to the Ahmadnagar kingdom, but circumstantially could be understood as such, are the ragamala paintings that have long been attributed to the northern Deccan.

Coins of the Nizam Shahs The coins of the Nizam Shahs70 pose an interesting conundrum, as they were not minted until at least 1580 CE , though the kingdom was established almost a hundred years before that date. This is all the more unusual because the two prerogatives of kingship in medieval and early modern Islamic kingdoms were the khutba¯ and the sikka¯, both potent symbols of sovereignty.71 The former was the Friday prayer sermon read in the name of the ruler, and the latter was the right of the sovereign to strike coins. These were often the first actions of any rebel who wanted to declare independence and sovereignty. In South Asia, various sultanates made it a point to mint coins bearing the name of the ruler and have the khutba¯ read in their name, along with the appropriation of other insignia and actions associated with royalty, such as rights to have an umbrella over their head (chutr) and the privilege of announcing their arrival with drums (naqqar). Several

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kings are known to us only through the numismatic evidence that yields their names, even if other documents are silent about their rule, thus confirming the symbolic potency of the act of minting coins.72 Rulers in the Deccan, such as Daud Shah II (reg. 1397 CE ) and Mujahid Shah (reg. 1375 – 78 CE ), both Bahmani sultans, had coins minted in their names even though they ruled for insignificant periods of time.73 The striking of coins had precedents in the practices of early Islam, which were borrowed from the Byzantine and Sasanian empires to which the Arab caliphate was heir, but the right of placing the ruler’s name on coins did not appear immediately in the seventh and eighth centuries.74 By the ninth century, it was a well-established custom that any person desirous of staking a claim to sovereignty struck coins carrying his own names and titles to authorise his legitimacy. Theologically, the ruler was only the lowest in the hierarchy below God, the Prophet, and the Caliph, all of whom had to be mentioned before the former in any document or pronouncement. However, a large number of coins retained only the names of politically favourable entities.75 Minting coins bearing the insignia or the names of other dynasties or rulers meant either vassalage or a form of subservience, at least nominally. Such an occurrence is seen in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century South Asia, when the rulers of Khandesh minted coins as vassals of the Gujarat sultans.76 The symbolic and psychological implications of such practices cannot be underestimated and are seen in many periods of history in South Asia as a means of appropriating the authority of the old regime, as described by Deyell and Frykenberg in their essay on sovereignty and coinage: Authority stamped its seal on the coin . . . depended for its acceptance (a) upon the ability of people to recognise the device of the issuing authority [and] (b) degree of confidence of people in the integrity and longevity of the issuing authority . . . This feature of the sikka¯ gave rise to two psychological phenomena, . . . taste in coinage devices and styles was conservative, and refined. There was a constant pressure to maintain and preserve. Familiar forms appeared on the coinage of new or unstable regimes . . . . [Minting privilege] came to be regarded as prestige-enhancing and as a sign of authority and power.77

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Beyond the symbolism of royalty and the precedents of the practice of sikka¯, there were pragmatic reasons for controlling the production and circulation of coins stamped with royal symbols and produced by centralised mints. As C.E. Bosworth notes, apart from the revenues accrued by channelling bullion through mints by mechanisms of devaluing older coins, control of coinage also allowed the sovereigns to have power over economy and trade.78 Thus, the striking of coins in the name of the ruler served not only a significatory function but to enforce territorial control through monetary policies. In the medieval and early modern Deccan, continuity with the coinage of an earlier dynasty was adequate to fulfil both these roles, until the arrival of the Mughals. The first kings from the post-Bahmani dynasties known to have considered themselves independent sultans using the title Shah were Ahmad Nizam Shah I, Ibrahim Adil Shah I (reg. 1535– 38 CE ), and Sultan Quli Qutb Shah (reg. 1518 –43 CE ). In Bidar, within a few years after the death of the last Bahmani king around 1538, Ali Barid Shah I (reg. 1542– 80 CE ) declared himself the king of Bidar.79 Berar of the Imad Shahs (of whom we have no coinage) was the fifth independent post-Bahmani sultanate, and they declared independence in 1529 CE . It is indeed very strange that these five post-Bahmani kingdoms of the sixteenth-century Deccan (the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, Adil Shahs of Bijapur, Qutb Shahs of Golconda, Barid Shahs of Bidar, and Imad Shahs of Berar) seemed to deliberately avoid the right of striking coins in their own name for a long period after declaring independence. Beginning in 1490 (when Ahmad Nizam Shah I declared himself independent) until around 1580, when Ali Adil Shah I of Bijapur (reg. 1558–1580 CE ) and Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar first issued coins, there are almost no coins issued by any of these postBahmani Deccan sultanates.80 A decline in monetisation has often been advanced as a possible reason for the lack of direct numismatic evidence. But for many reasons (argued by John Deyell), for an earlier period in North India,81 demonetisation can be discounted as an adequate explanation for this hiatus. Neither the lack of monetisation nor the paucity of precious metals could be culpable for missing currency.82 Besides, these Deccan sultanates were actually in various phases of economic expansion and growth through most of the sixteenth century, as can be inferred from the archaeological and material record.

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Curiously, all the Deccan sultanates issued coins in the names of their rulers almost simultaneously, around 1580 CE . The earliest dated coins struck by the post-Bahmani sultans were the hairpin-shaped silver larins from 986 H (1578 CE ) struck by Ali Adil Shah I, but these were used only in international trade. Ali Adil Shah I is also credited with minting copper coins but these are undated. It is likely that he had these copper coins struck only in the last years of his reign, which would date them closer to 1580 CE .83 The earliest dated circulating copper coins minted by the post-Bahmani sultans are from 989 H (1581 CE ), struck by Murtaza Nizam Shah I. The coins of the Qutb Shahs appeared as regular issues only under Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (reg. 1580– 1611 CE ), and the Barid Shahs also struck coins under Ibrahim Barid Shah for the first time in the same year. After Murtaza Nizam Shah I, Burhan Nizam Shah II, Murtaza Nizam Shah II (reg. 1600– 10 CE ), and Burhan Nizam Shah III are the only kings who minted coins in their own name; the primary mints were Ahmadnagar, Burhanabad, Parenda, and Daulatabad.84 In the absence of a large volume of primary sources, numismatic data can provide some of the narratives which would otherwise be inaccessible.85 Though this discussion is limited to copper coins, the scarce gold and silver issues also are in conformance with this narrative. The Nizam Shahs can be credited with two gold coins both toward the end of the sixteenth century and one in the early seventeenth [Figure 2.6]. These are all extremely rare. The coins would most likely have been ceremonial issues, given their occurence in single instances. Two silver coins has been attributed to this dynasty quite recently [Figure 2.7].86 The Adil Shahs seem to have had gold coins only from the reign of Muhammad Adil Shah in the early seventeenth century but, even then, these issues are very infrequently encountered. The few Adil Shahi gold coins that exist shared exactly the same metrology as the Vijayanagara ‘pagoda’ or the hun, which were widely in circulation throughout south India.87 A number of minuscule gold fractions called fanams can be found in Bijapur domains, but none of them can definitively attributed to the Adil Shahs. No silver coins of the Adil Shahs have ever been recovered.88 Of the Qutb Shahs and the Barid Shahs, we are not aware of any gold or silver coins.89 We can thus infer that copper constituted more than 99 per cent of all coinage of the post-Bahmani sultanates.90 Gold and silver coins were

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Figure 2.6 (a) Gold coin of Burhan Nizam Shah III, 3.36 gm. (b) Gold coin of Murtaza Nizam Shah I, 2.90 gm.

either absent or extremely rare, suggesting their role as ceremonial issues for very specific occasions. It is very likely that none of the gold or silver coins issued by these five sultanates were actually used as currency (except for the silver larin used in overseas trade). The actual volumes of coins in circulation cannot be posited with direct evidence. However, extensive surveys and interviews with coin-dealers and collectors, along with the sampling of lots of coins, does suggest that Bahmani coinage was, in fact, the most voluminous in the sixteenth century across the entire Deccan. Towns in Khandesh and Berar (such as Dhule and Ellichpur) have yielded rich stockpiles of Gujarat coins in addition to the Bahmani coins.91

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Figure 2.7

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Silver coin of Burhan Nizam Shah II, 6.85 gm.

The Adil Shahs declared themselves Shahs, as opposed to Khans, from the reign of Ibrahim Adil Shah I.92 But no coins of this dynasty are known before the reign of Ali Adil Shah I. The only dated coin of Ali Adil Shah I is the silver larin, a hairpin-shaped currency used widely in the Persian Gulf region. This silver issue suggests a shortage of Gujarat silver coinage in Indian Ocean trade, not surprising since no common silver issues of Gujarat sultans were issued after 1570 CE .93 Copper coins of Ali Adil Shah I must have appeared toward the end of his reign, sometime around 1578 to 1580 CE , when the larins were first issued in his name. The Nizam Shahs were the earliest of the post-Bahmani sultanates to declare independence, but historical accounts do not mention sikka¯ as a marker used by Ahmad Nizam Shah I, as opposed to the chutr and the khutba¯, which he appropriated.94 The earliest known coins are from the reign of Murtaza Nizam Shah I, and can be dated from 989 H (1581 CE ) to 996 H (1587 CE ).95 The Nizam Shahs also counterstruck Bahmani and Gujarat coins with their own dies, suggesting that their own currency quite literally replaced that of the Bahmani and Gujarat kingdoms.96 The Qutb Shahs minted coins very early, but these seem to have been curiosities, and were not used as currency. This can be inferred from the rarity of these issues.97 Many scholars are suspicious of the authenticity or attribution of the coins of Jamshid Qutb Shah (reg. 1543 – 50 CE ) and Subhan Quli Qutb Shah (reg. 1550 CE ).98 Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah (reg. 1550 – 80 CE ) has a single coin type attributed to his reign, and that is on the basis of a

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single specimen, an event not entirely convincing.99 Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah was the first Qutb Shahi sultan who issued coins as currency on a significant scale, with a large number of coin types. Qasim Barid became the Mir Jumla of the Bahmani kingdom in 1492 CE . He died in 1504 CE and was succeeded by Amir Barid I (reg. 1504 – 42). However, the first coins of the sovereign Barid Shahs are only from the reign of Ibrahim Barid Shah (reg. 1580 – 87 CE ). These coins were modelled on the coinage struck in Kalimullah Shah Bahmani’s name, and several mules exist to corroborate this continued use of Bahmani coins.100 No coins of the Imad Shahs have been recovered yet, but Bahmani and Gujarat coins are recovered from their territories (Berar). We know that Imad ul Mulk had the khutba¯ read in his own name as early as 1529 CE .101 The lack of any coins is explicable since the kingdom was annexed by Ahmadnagar in 1572 CE , a period when none of the Deccan sultanates were yet minting coins in their own name, and possibly just carrying on with old Bahmani dies. We know that coins were minted in the name of the Bahmani sultans till 1538 CE , while Kalimullah Shah (reg. 1525– 38 CE ), the last of the puppet kings, was alive. Bahmani currency seems to have been commonly used across all the post-Bahmani kingdoms, and it continued to be the common currency of the Deccan, for which it must have been minted in enormous quantities even after his death. There is proof that coins in the name of the last three Bahmani kings, Mahmud, Waliullah, and Kalimullah, were minted by the Baridis posthumously,102 if not also by other kings in the region.103 The sheer volume of Bahmani coins in all the caches found across the states of Maharashtra, western Andhra Pradesh, and northern Karnataka support that hypothesis.104 We have several examples of Bahmani and Gujarat sultan coins counterstruck by the Nizam Shahs.105 In the sixteenth century, coinage was a common medium of exchange and coins were in widespread use as tokens of money, in contrast to the bleak picture of low monetisation that is sometimes presented. The overseas trade by volume in this period was certainly very high, though it is difficult to ascertain the exact balance of trade.106 The significant import through most of the sixteenth century was the prized commodity of war-horses. This trade even weighed on political considerations and forged an uneasy peace between

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the Portuguese and the sultanates, as most of the Middle Eastern sea routes were increasingly controlled by the former in the sixteenth century. This Indian Ocean trade used standard acceptable currencies with high true metallic content. Gujarat was a sultanate that consistently minted copper and silver coinage in very large quantities for more than a century until it was annexed by the Mughals in 1576 CE . In the fifteenth and most of the sixteenth century, Gujarat and Malwa coins were widely in circulation across at least the northern Deccan, an inference based on the large quantities recovered. Coins were struck in Gujarat under the Muzaffarid Gujarat sultans from the reign of Shamsuddin Muzaffar Shah I (reg. 1407– 11 CE ) to the second reign of Shamsuddin Muzaffar Shah II (reg. 1583 –84 CE ) in the names of all the sultans, barring Daud Shah (reg. 1458–59 CE ). Even the Mughals, quite aberrantly, allowed Muzaffarid coins to be minted for a short time after the conquest of Gujarat, acknowledging the sphere of circulation the coinage enjoyed. The other common currency in the Deccan were the posthumously struck Bahmani coins, which enabled trade within and among the kingdoms of the Deccan. Since the institution of Bahmani rule was nominally acknowledged into the early sixteenth century though they had no real power, it leads to the question: was the myth of the Bahmani dynasty kept alive for a long time for the sole cause of maintaining a common currency, or were Bahmani coins ‘frozen’ from the early sixteenth century because of the caliphal legitimacy that the Bahmanis had received in the fifteenth century? Coins were issued as tokens of currency only with the presence of Mughal coinage in the Deccan, after the annexation of Malwa (1562 CE ) and Gujarat (1576 CE ). Mughal practices of accepting their revenues only in their coin was one of the mechanisms of control for their expansionist aspirations. The Mughals promoted their coinage very aggressively, insisting that every territory that they held, even though a feudatory, be required to use their currency.107 As explained by J.F. Richards: Akbar and his successors established mints in every provincial capital city and in other important trading cities throughout the empire. Centrally appointed officers and employees of the mints accepted bullion or coin from local moneychangers, from merchants, or other private individuals. These officers, . . .

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returned to the patron newly struck gold, silver and copper coins. . . . The Mughal coinage system, with its uniform imperial standards of weights and measures, was imposed throughout the subcontinent over dozens of local monetary systems. The finance ministry’s unyielding requirement that all tax and tribute be paid in imperial coin was the effective impulse for diffusion of the rupee. On the basis of coin hoards analysed, it appears that the Ahmadabad mint in Gujarat was the most prolific of all the mints under Akbar, and was at its productive apogee in the 1590s.108 Akbar radically changed monetary and minting policies to create the monetary system that would endure for most of the Mughal Empire.109 Thus minting currency, which had been a non-issue for the Deccan sultanates, became an important economic and symbolic action in refuting Mughal aggression. The Mughals, starting with Akbar, had aggressively turned Persian into the language of discourse for the empire and were competing in patronage with the Safavid court, which had become Twelver Shiʾi in a narrow sense.110 The kingdoms in the Deccan had been wary of the Mughals and their expanding empire in North India and were trying to find a rival power from which they could source their own legitimacy. The Safavid court provided them with just that and, to that effect, they sent several missions and embassies to the Safavids.111 The loss of a single caliphal power from the early sixteenth century onwards had resulted in at least three bases of legitimisation of Islamic kingdoms: the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal courts. The Ottomans claimed the mantle of the ‘shadow’ Abbasid caliphate after their conquest of Egypt in 1517 CE . Akbar proclaimed himself as the spiritual fount of the Islamic ʿumma by issuing his famous mazhar in 1579 CE , in which he declared himself the caliph of the age.112 It is precisely around this time that the Deccan sultanates realised the implications of Mughal expansionism, started minting coins in their own name; this was also the period when the Mughals laid claims to an overlordship of the Deccan.113 The Bahmanis had received sanction for the sikka¯ and khutba¯ from the Abbasid caliph in Cairo in the reign of Muhammad Shah I (reg. 1358– 75 CE ).114 The successor states of the Bahmanis operated partly under the rubric of having received caliphal sanction to rule the Deccan. With Akbar’s caliphal declaration in 1579 CE , the legitimacy of the

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Bahmanis, and by extension their successors, was in question. Their identity as successors of the Bahmanis ceased to confer legitimacy. Mughal claims to political authority over the Deccan, which were implied in assuming the mantle of the caliphate, were challenged through the action of minting coins in the name of the Deccan sultans themselves, who all sought allegiance to a different caliphal power. The lack of coins from the Berar sultanate reinforces this view. Berar was annexed by the Nizam Shahs in 1574 CE , before the Mughals and their coinage were established in the Deccan. Since the Nizam Shahs were not using their own coins and coinage either as currency or as tools of their statecraft in this period, they must have chosen to continue with Bahmani currency in Berar. There is one more factor to account for the relative paucity of sixteenth-century Deccan coinage. Mughal occupation of the Deccan kingdoms over the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries led to the transformation of large amounts of local Deccan coins and bullion into issues minted by the Mughals. In the successor states of the Bahmanis, monetary transactions for most of the sixteenth century used Bahmani coins, which are found in large quantities across the Deccan. The symbolic attributes of minting coins were therefore not an issue for these sultanates until the arrival of the Mughals. Up to then, the reinforcement of a connection with the Bahmani sultanate was actually a plan for legitimacy.115 Monetarily, since Bahmani coins were acceptable across the Deccan, there was no need to replace them with others, and most of these kingdoms were minting Bahmani coins posthumously. The sixteenth-century sultanates of the Deccan did not view the Bahmani sultanate as capable of any revival and, since all of them accepted Bahmani currency, there was no polemical or political reason to issue their own coins. By the end of the sixteenth century, Mughal economic policies were mirrored by the Deccan kingdoms and they started issuing their own coinage as a counter-statement to Mughal presence, especially since Muzaffarid silver coins from Gujarat were also no longer available in large quantities in the northern Deccan. Minting and circulating coins as a means of resistance and sovereignty was one of the strategies used by the sultans of the Deccan. This was a unique instance in the sixteenth century, when five functioning Islamic monarchies chose not to exercise a right to mint coins in their own names for as many as 90 years after declaring sovereignty as independent sultans. Surely the larger

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question is how one interprets ‘legitimacy’ and whether the act of issuing coinage should be read as a presumptive declaration of accession (which would hardly qualify as legitimacy), the effect of which could be researched by historians in a variety of ways. The role of the khutba¯, sikka¯, and a caliphal diploma of investure have been thought of as the absolute prerequisites for Islamic kingship. Yet it would appear that at least the role of sikka¯ has been overestimated in the light of historic practice. These symbolic attributes and actions of kingship were decided by political ground realities at a local level, as opposed to practices dictated by received Islamic conventions. Only when sovereignty was challenged did sikka¯ become important. Otherwise, the post-Bahmani Deccan sultans were comfortable in their mutually accepted status as sovereign monarchs, an arrangement without challenge from any of their neighbours. The striking of coins was an affirmation of kingship, more than a presumptive declaration. In this light, it is not surprising that as many as five sultans chose not to exercise a convention that they felt redundant to their acceptability as kings. The shared histories of the origins of their royal houses was the source of their mutual understood legitimacy. The minting of coinage in their own names became a superfluous act for all of them. It was only Mughal monetary policies and pressures that made them strike their own coins, to counter both the monetary and symbolic effects of the former’s expansionism. One might be tempted to suggest that Mughal monetary policy was of purely economic motivation, whereas the Deccani monetary resistance was purely symbolic. The latter was therefore doomed to fail because it lacked the structural state support required to sustain it. The Mughal monetary system was based on the standard of a silver rupee (with the large quantities of silver coming in from the new world), whereas the coinage issued by the Deccan sultans was almost all in copper, by this time devalued by the discovery of cheap Japanese mines, and was thus relegated to being used in local small circuits.

Literature at the Court The Nizam Shahi state patronised a large number of literary works in at least three languages: Dakkani (e.g., Diva¯n-i Hasan Shauqi), Persian (e.g., Burha¯n-i Maasir) and Sanskrit (e.g., Rasa Manjiri). Between these three languages different levels of patronage can be inferred, whether

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from the royal court or various court nobles. Persian and Sanskrit were clearly prestige languages; Dakkani was commonly received. The number of Persian texts that can be attributed to the reign of the Nizam Shahs is voluminous, as the court competed with the other sultanates of the Deccan to attract Persian literati from West Asia. Malik Qummi, Zuhuri, and others were at the court of the Nizam Shahs, and we know of their poems composed on the occasion of the completion of the Farah Bakhsh Bagh. Apart from literature, there are several other genres of texts produced under the patronage of the court and its nobility. For example, a medical manuscript called the Zakhira-yi Nizam Shah was completed under the reign of the dynasty, as we know from its colophon.116 Such scientific works produced in the Deccan include an incomplete manuscript, the Kita¯b-i hasha¯’ish (Persian translation of ˙ Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbos), which is profusely illustrated 117 [Figure 2.8]. The manuscript is from around 1595 CE and might have been produced at Ahmadnagar, given that the academy of Bara Imam Kotla, by the old city, was a major academy of learning. The two major sources of Deccan history from this period, Tabatabai and Firishtah, were at the court of Ahmadnagar before moving on to seek patronage under the Qutb Shahs and the Adil Shahs, respectively. An envoy to the Safavid court also authored a text called the Tarikh-i Qutbi, which was later completed at Golconda.118 The famous Saqinamah by Zuhuri was also written, at least in part, at the court of Ahmadnagar.119 It is no surprise that the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs produced Sanskrit works, particularly because of the conceit that they were actually Brahmins from Pathri. Some of their high-ranking officials, such as Sabaji Prataparaja, are credited with writing (or at least commissioning) texts such as the Parasuramapratapa and Nrsimhaprasada.120 A widely circulated text, the Rasa Manjiri, was authored by Bhanudatta of Mithila at the court of the Nizam Shahs.121 The fact that the court managed to attract scholarship from far lands is a testament to the milieu of learning and patronage in the kingdom. The recent claim, substantiated by Minkowski, that vilomakavya was invented by one of the poets who received patronage from the Nizam Shahs demonstrates the patronisation of Sanskrit works in the Ahmadnagar kingdom.122 In terms of Deccani works, the most celebrated is the Diva¯n-i Hasan Shauqi,123 a most unusual text not just for its use of the local idiom but

Figure 2.8 Manuscript of the Kita¯b-i hasha¯’ish at the University of ˙ Pennsylvania Libraries.

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also because of the themes it tackles. Its author, Hasan Shauqi, like other intellectuals of the period, moved between courts and eventually to the Bijapur court, where he wrote the Mizbani Namah.124 The difference in language also seems to represent a completely different point of view than that of the Persian texts composed around the same period when dealing with the battle of Talikota.125 There is also another corpus of texts which we know were composed by people living in Nizam Shahi lands, sometimes even in the employment of the state. The works of the saint poet Eknath (c. 1522–1599 CE ) are emblematic of such literature. From several sources, including the works of Eknath himself, we know that he was employed at the fort of Daulatabad, as was his spiritual preceptor, Janardan Swami (c. 1504 – 1575 CE ), who was in a high office there. The links between various spiritual lineages and their world of connected texts is a completely different topic, but several Sufis, such as Chand Bodhale, seem to have been connected with the Nizam Shahi dynasty in various ways. Simplistic models of cultural encounter can be questioned, with the biographies and works of holy men such as Shaikh Muntoji, Shaikh Muhammad Srigondekar, and Hussain Ambar Khan, Shah Muni, Latif Shah, and others, who all chose to write in either Sanskritized Marathi, often using metres like the ovi; they expounded on philosophical themes of the Vedanta school. Yet these authors never denied or denounced their Muslim identity, and their hagiographies often contain narratives of their negotiation of the multiple identities and social complexities that they created. While being part of lineages of Vaishnava or Shaiva teachers, they continued to simultaneously be affiliated with Sufi silsilahs, most notably the Qadiri order.126 While the more conventional (perhaps orthodox) modes of Brahminical, Bhakti, Islamic, and Sufi practices were always current, the lived religion relied on holy men and their glosses on spiritual texts more than canonical or organised religion.127 Several literary Muslim holy men in the sixteenth and seventeenth century northern Deccan chose to write in Marathi, and occasionally in Deccani. In a milieu where Persian, Sanskrit, Deccani, and middle Marathi were the languages of literature, many of them chose to write in Marathi or Dakkani, which S.G. Tulpule has called ‘somewhere between Persian and Marathi’.128 From the last decade of the sixteenth century, when various factions at court, such as the Afa¯qis, were persecuted, the high Persian literati seem

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to have fled to other Deccan sultanates and eventually the Mughals to seek patronage and favour. The emergent groups, such as the Habashi–Maratha axis and the Mahdavis, do not seem to have patronised literary activity, but as the period from 1600 onwards was a time of turmoil in the kingdom, political instability seems to have been a major limiting factor in the production of texts and manuscripts. Even if the writers in the sixteenth-century northern Deccan were not directly commissioned by the court, the milieu for producing such works could certainly be credited to the Nizam Shahs.

CHAPTER 3 URBAN PATTERNS, WATER SUPPLY SYSTEMS, AND FORTIFICATION

Urban Design and Settlements Mahmud Gawan (1411– 1481 CE ) was the illustrious prime minister of the Bahmani kingdom under several kings. He was credited with defusing several crises in the kingdom caused by courtly factions. As a response, to keep important court personages in check, he divided each of the four provinces (tarafs) of the Bahmani kingdom into two subprovinces, each of which in turn would have a military commander and an administrative governor. The appointees to these offices were usually from different ethnic court factions – a way of neutralising ambitions, factionalism, and rebellion. It was under him that the taraf of Daulatabad was thus split into the administrative units of Junnar and Daulatabad. The kingdom of the Nizam Shahs, when it was founded in 1490 CE , was based in the city of Junnar, which served as their capital in the early years, along with associated fortress (later called Shivneri). Ahmad Nizam Shah I began annually waging war against Daulatabad immediately after he declared independence. The first urban settlement to be founded as a symbol of the Nizam Shahi legacy and legitimacy, and as a proclamation of independence, was the city of Ahmadnagar in 1494 CE . It served as the Nizam Shahi capital for over a hundred years till 1600 CE . The physical layout of the city, along with the architectural

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connections of ‘memory’ that it sought to reinforce with other parts of the world, was a very cognisant statement of the aspirations of the new kingdom. On the other hand, upon its eventual conquest by the Nizam Shahs in 1500 CE , Daulatabad remained very important and was often used as an administrative retreat when the city of Ahmadnagar was under attack. It retained its position as a prestige city even in periods when it did not serve as the capital or the primary residence of the king. Eventually it served as the capital of the Nizam Shahs for over 15 years, until 1626 CE . The historic port settlement of Chaul was another type of urban settlement, different from the other cities of the kingdom largely by virtue of its position as a coastal trading port.1 Other important locations, such as Parenda, Ausa, and others, were significant as key fortified locations, offering refuge in a large, flat landscape and providing the network of administrative and military islands in the Deccan plains, very often semi-autonomous. For example, the relatively small town of Parenda itself was not fortified, and all the economic and military power was concentrated in the fort. Though the fort is known to have been built by Mahmud Gawan for the Bahmani kings, after its acquisition, the Nizam Shahs always maintained a loyal qilaʾdar (fort commander, sometimes also a regional governor) in that fort. Such an appointment was not exceptional, but only a typical example of maintaining loyal, yet semi-autonomous, fort commanders in order to control a fort town and administer the surrounding territory. The history of Parenda demonstrates the semi-autonomous feudatory mode in which most appointed fort commanders behaved. Khan Jahan and his son were commanders of Parenda for the Nizam Shahs, but the son, at a convenient moment, defected to the Adil Shahs. Later, a different Adil Shahi commander of the fort received a huge consideration from the Mughals and turned the fort over to them.2 Fort commanders and landed elites, with their own revenue administration and local power bases, often chose to side with the political state that guaranteed their rank and revenue, leaving them as virtually independent feudal lords who were the building blocks of the greater kingdoms. Another example of a feudal town is Sindkhed Raja of the Jadhav family, who were local lords and held important positions at the court of the Nizam Shahs. This chapter will study six settlements: Junnar, Daulatabad, Ahmadnagar, Chaul, Parenda, and Sindkhed Raja. All of them have completely different histories and circumstances, resulting in unique physical

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characteristics. The question then remains: what unifies them as settlements of the Nizam Shahi kingdom, or as towns in the northern Deccan? Perhaps the unity in all these towns is reflected by two features: the construction and management of waterworks (hammams, pools, and piped water supply) and the administrative and feudal apparatus that dictated the control of the sites. Otherwise, there is no single trait that would unify all these settlements and towns in terms of their physical layout or urban character. Junnar, Daulatabad, Ahmadnagar, Chaul, Parenda, and Sindkhed Raja show remarkably diverse physical forms and architecture, in part dictated by the primary specialised functions of these settlements. Andre´ Wink’s characterisation of Indo-Islamic cities best suits the Nizam Shahi sites under study: ‘the Indian city as such was certainly not the privileged locus of sustained and cumulative social change’.3 As mentioned earlier, the locus of power was not the city, but the palace. The Nizam Shahs made this divergence between the city and the palace very clear, thus keeping their power centres distant from the fickle and fractured court, and also away from the general public. Since most of the palace sites were on the outskirts of urban settlements, the Nizam Shahs could maintain effective control of visitors to the court. Control of the larger settlements meant little in terms of symbolic and military power, but was important in terms of economic power. This is corroborated through archaeological and historical investigations on these ‘urban’ settlements. The urban patterns of Islamic towns in India, other than Mughal cities, have been inadequately studied,4 and the present study, though localised in its scope, contributes to the larger project that is required. This becomes all the more interesting because the Timurids had been residing largely outside cities, and before them the Ilkhanids too. The Safavids did not really have a proper residence until Tahmasp built one in Qazvin, and even that was not exactly in the city. The other Deccan sultanates and the Mughals were more observant of the IndoIslamic practice of living in the city. The capital of the Mughal king Humayun (reg. 1508– 56 CE ) at Din Panah (in Delhi, which was razed to the ground by Sher Shah Sur (reg. 1540 –45), who built his own capital on the same site) was a way of reviving or maintaining an Indic practice. The notion of an Islamic city typology that has been variously presented in past scholarship needs to be revised, at least for the settlements that were built in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar.5 The usual

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sixteenth-century spatial relationship in the Deccan, between the walled city, the fort, and a citadel, did not apply at all to the city of Ahmadnagar, where three different settlements stood discretely within a short distance of each other: the unfortified city of Ahmadnagar, the fort of Ahmadnagar, and the walled enclosure of the Bara Imam Kotla. Similarly, all the large urban settlements in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar have very different characteristics, and many of them might not be recognised as urban because they did not conform to the norms of urbanity in terms of density, economy, or the urban complexity. Many of these sites served a single primary function, such as a garrison town or a market town. Junnar, Daulatabad, Ahmadnagar, Chaul, Parenda, and Sindkhed Raja are notionally all urban nodes, but the completely varied nature of these sites has to be appreciated [Map 2].

Junnar The city of Junnar predates the rule of the Nizam Shahs. The settlement is located at a control point on a trade route that was used for at least 2,000 years. Junnar was the administrative headquarters of the Bahmani taraf of Daulatabad, and some early tombs from this period in the fifteenth century were constructed here. But it was in Junnar that the Malik Hasan Nizam-ul-Mulk’s son, Ahmad Nizam Shah I, declared independence upon the murder of his father at Bidar in 1490 CE . For a few years it was the capital of the newly founded kingdom, and even after the construction of Ahmadnagar it retained its importance as a place of trade and as a control point for the Naneghat mountain pass across the Western Ghats to the Konkan and its ports. Junnar was particularly noted for its paper industry, which survived well into the nineteenth century.6 Junnar and the surrounding region have played an important role in the political and administrative histories since the Satavahanas, followed by the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, the Yadavas, the Bahmanis, and the Nizam Shahs. It was a capital of the Western Kshatrapas (35 – 405 CE ) who were warring against the Satavahanas. The Mughals were the custodians for this region during the early seventeenth century. This general area is claimed as the core for the independent Maratha kingdom under Shivaji (though he could never gain possession of Junnar and Shivneri in his lifetime); the Marathas acquired it from the Mughals only

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in the mid-eighteenth century. The basin of the Kukdi River, in which Junnar is located, is rich in archaeological remains and Buddhist sites from the first millennium CE . Just 20 kilometres downstream is evidence for Palaeolithic cultures in the region.7 The hill fort of Junnar itself has several important Buddhist caves.8 During Satavahana rule (second century BC to second century CE ), Junnar became a key controlling point for the Naneghat pass. Control of this pass, which is 27 kilometres west of the Junnar region, meant control of an important trade route from the western coast to central India and the Deccan. As a result, the location never lost its importance through the medieval and early modern periods. The fortress of Shivneri, often associated with the town of Junnar and called the fortress of Junnar, has many structures, albeit in a ruinous condition, that could be attributed to the Nizam Shahs on stylistic and architectural grounds. The badly damaged and badly restored set of palace buildings at the northern end of the fort are most certainly of Nizam Shahi origin, as is the ʿidga¯h and the tomb on the high ground called Ba¯la¯-i Qil’a (citadel, lit. top of the fort, ba¯lekilla in Marathi). The Kamani Mosque, a most unusual structure, can be dated to the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah III (reg 1610–31 CE ) on the basis of an inscription [Appendix, Inscription 12]. The plan of the mosque is the simplest in its interior spaces: a single large room with the eastern side open. Yet the buttressing towers that flank the mosque are of enormous proportions; it is possible that a design template for a fortified gateway with flanking bastions was used as a design for the mosque. Such use of an architectural form or typology for varied architectural programmes is characteristic of the period. The whole structure is built on top of an early Buddhist water tank excavated in the living rock below it. This would have served a secondary purpose as a nominal ritual ablution pool for the mosque. A large flying arch connects the two minarets that rise from the buttresses. The motif of two minarets connected by a flying arch is essentially Nizam Shahi, and we see it in many of the smaller mosques in the city of Ahmadnagar, though on a lesser scale. This is an important feature and is considered unique to the kingdom of Ahmadnagar.9 The defensive works of Shivneri have been modified through successive regimes and occupations of the fort, and though it is possible to attribute portions of the walls to different periods, that study is not of particular architectural value here. The town of Junnar is set away from

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this hill fort, lower in the plains, a little over a kilometre northeast as the crow flies. This town was later walled, and the extant walls are largely from the period of Mughal occupation. The town of Junnar has a large number of mosques, suggesting a town-planning pattern not unlike Ahmadnagar, where a large Jamiʾ mosque was not present; instead, a large number of neighbourhood mosques patronised by various nobles, groups, or guilds could be seen. Such a pattern also corroborates what we know of Ahmadnagar: that the Nizam Shah sultans never lived in the town and had their khutba¯s read in the fort, from where they were communicated to the town. Junnar still has a fine water system from the late medieval period: some of the aqueducts are still in working condition, particularly the one that brings water to the Gulshan-i Shahanshah-i Junnar Mosque. There are at least four large tombs within Junnar, all built in the reign of the Nizam Shahs. On the outskirts of Junnar are a large palace and a tomb. The area is now called Hapus Bagh (the District Gazetteer from the nineteenth century suggests that it was called Afiz Bagh), but it might be a corruption of the term Habshi Bagh, given the large numbers of Habashis here, particularly under Malik Ambar’s regency.10 The palace can be dated to the regency of Malik Ambar. Even though there is no inscriptional or textual evidence to date the tomb, stylistically it belongs to the first half of the sixteenth century. The fort of Junnar (Shivneri) is the largest fort in the area, set on a large mesa. It served as the headquarters of the fort cluster that encompasses all the other forts on the horizon. This organisation of the hill fort as a large administrative centre circumscribed by a ring of smaller outposts and fortresses was common in the Western Ghats, and other Bahmani and Deccan sultanate forts also are the foci of such clusters: for example, the forts of Panhala and Lohogad. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such an arrangement became all the more important, as the administrative and military centres in the Western Ghats were all located in such hilltop ‘islands,’ proximal to but disconnected from the civilian and mercantile towns that were located on the plains below.11 The city of Junnar was later an important urban centre for the Mughals, as it was on a key trade route connecting routes from the north to the Deccan and the west coast. The fort of Junnar (Shivneri) remained an important administrative centre till the end of Maratha rule.

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The town of Junnar now has a municipal council and a population of around 25,000.

Daulatabad Daulatabad was one of the most important settlements in the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs. They could not shape it from scratch, like Ahmadnagar. But it provided a centre of legitimacy for the control over the northern Deccan. Daulatabad served as a capital city with a continuity of royal occupation since the Yadavas in the twelfth century, followed by Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s unsuccessful attempt at transferring his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad for a brief period from 1327 to 1335 CE . Eventually the location where the Bahmanis declared independence, it was later an important site for the Nizam Shahs, the Mughals, and finally the Asaf Jahs of Hyderabad, as it meant administrative control of key trade routes and the region. The citadel was the old established locus of power, and control over it was essential in order to claim a dynastic right to succession over the northern Deccan. Even after the fall of the city and fort of Ahmadnagar to the Mughals in 1600 CE , Daulatabad continued as the capital of the Nizam Shahs and as the centre of resistance against the Mughals under Malik Ambar. In many ways, it continued to have relevance as the ‘Delhi of the South,’ a status conferred upon it first by Muhammad bin Tughluq, when he moved his capital here. The fortress of Daulatabad itself was impregnable, with its multiple walls, moats, and natural disposition. The fortified lower town was the hub of several important trade routes connecting Ahmadnagar, Bidar, Bijapur, Burhanpur, Chaul, Dabhol, Ellichpur, Golconda, and various other places in the Deccan and Malwa. It was also at the frontier of Berar, thus being an important garrison town for military exercises in that region. When the city of Ahmadnagar was lost to the Mughals in 1600 CE , the Nizam Shahi kingdom was later managed from Daulatabad, and Malik Ambar founded nearby Khadki (later Aurangabad) in 1610 CE . Eventually, in 1633 CE , the Mughals took over the fort after a long siege. There is some controversy regarding two palaces in Daulatabad, namely the lower and higher Mughal palaces (both called baradari). The construction technology used in these palaces, which was later modified,

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certainly suggests that they were built by the same guilds as those working for the Nizam Shahs.12 There is an extensive use of wood and stone that is not shared with the other Mughal structures in this region. But stylistically, the ubiquitous baluster columns common in Mughal architecture in the Deccan are absent from these palace buildings. In terms of planning, there is little doubt that these palaces contain the core of pre-Mughal buildings, as evidenced in the western pavilion of the lower palace. In the absence of inscriptions or other hard evidence, however, that contention is hard to prove.13 The most important military improvements at Daulatabad were made in the reign of Murtaza Nizam Shah I and later under Malik Ambar. Under the latter, the site was the capital of the kingdom of the puppet Nizam Shah kings, and he made a number of significant improvements to the fortifications. Some of the defensive works constructed by him were modelled along the lines of the improvements made by Mahmud Gawan to Bahmani forts over a century before him. Unfortunately, the change in military technology in this intervening period made Malik Ambar’s military architecture already obsolete at the time of construction.14 The fortified city has multiple concentric enclosures, and the Ambarkot comprises the outermost set of defensive walls, built under Malik Ambar. Within, almost all the earlier urban fabric connected with the site is contained, and includes streets and markets, various mosques and mansions, and a large Jamiʾ mosque constructed in the early fourteenth century. There are many smaller tombs and structures strewn around the plains of Daulatabad, and further investigation would undoubtedly suggest that many of them have a Nizam Shahi dating. Among the structures that can be dated to the Nizam Shahs by inscription is a magnificent hammam. The masons’ marks on this building are repeated on some sections of the fortification walls commonly referred to as the Mahakot. Another structure that dates from the same period is an underground set of galleries surrounding a well, locally known as the Khufiya Bavdi. The medieval settlement of Daulatabad has not been systematically excavated nor researched; a large number of Nizam Shahi and later structures are spread across several square kilometres around the fortified walls of Ambarkot and do not find a place in the narrative constructed for the site. Within the fort, the Chini Mahal, which is a small fraction of

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the palace complex of the Nizam Shahs, is in such a fragmentary state that it cannot be understood in terms of its complete planning. There is no doubt that the water systems in Daulatabad are the work of the late Nizam Shahs, especially under the de facto reign of Malik Ambar.15 The water systems in Daulatabad are the most sophisticated in the Deccan, with their use of multiple devices, apart from the unique drainage system, which has been documented extensively in the excavation report of Daulatabad.16 Aurangabad also has at least two qanats that supply it with water from a nearby lake, a system borrowed directly from Iran but adapted to suit the local basaltic conditions. Importantly, control of Daulatabad meant control of Rauza (later called Khuldabad), which was arguably the most important holy necropolis for Muslims in the Deccan. The settlement of Daulatabad with its citadel is the closest to an idealised medieval city in the Deccan. It must be borne in mind, however, that the site is a palimpsest of at least 900 years, and many phases of construction and fortification are discernible in its physical fabric. Today the site, a large sprawling area of approximately nine square kilometres, includes several small villages (with historic market names such as ʿAbdi Mandi) and is a major tourist destination.

Ahmadnagar The city of Ahmadnagar was the primary capital of the Nizam Shahs for the longest period, almost continuously from its establishment in 1492 CE until 1600 CE , when it was captured by the Mughals. Ahmadnagar came closest to the ideal of the city as envisioned by the Nizam Shahs as they had shaped it from scratch. The development of gardens as an integral part of urban and suburban planning is particularly seen in Ahmadnagar. Such a settlement pattern is not dissimilar to the way that the Timurids and the early Safavids conceived their cities, with suburban gardens serving as locations of royal residence and the court, and even to entertain embassies. The foundation of Ahmadnagar itself was on a site close to a garden: to commemorate his victory over the Bahmani general Jahangir Khan (the governor of Telangana) in 1490 CE , Ahmad Nizam Shah I built a garden with a palace (bagh) or possibly even a garden pavilion.17 This was later called Bagh-i Nizam, and when Burhan Nizam Shah I walled the garden and improved upon it, it was known as

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the Baghdad Palace. Timur also had a suburb by this name in his capital of Samarkand, another example of post-Timurid ideas and their currency in the Deccan. This garden was on the eastern bank of the river Sina, and the site is now contained within the fort of Ahmadnagar. The capital of the Bahmani taraf that became the core of the kingdom established by Ahmad Nizam Shah I was at Junnar. He used to mount expeditions to plunder Daulatabad regularly, and the city of Ahmadnagar, midway between Junnar and Daulatabad, was reportedly founded in 1494 CE for this reason: the new city was founded close to the Bagh-i Nizam, a convenient and defensible location.18 The Bagh-i Nizam in this period was only a royal citadel, a ceremonial and military camp from where Ahmad Nizam Shah could wage his campaigns against Daulatabad, serving a similar function as Firuzabad on the Bhima did for the Bahmanis.19 The city of Ahmadnagar grew quickly into a major urban centre. It has been continuously occupied since and is now a major city. Consequently, the physical structure of the city has changed significantly over time: it is not possible to completely surmise its original layout and functions and its evolution through time, though an attempt was made by Pramod Gadre half a century ago.20 The foundation of the city of Ahmadnagar was described in the Burha¯n-i Maasir: ‘An auspicious day was selected, and the surveyors, architects and builders obeyed the king’s commands, and laid out and began to build the city in with its palaces, houses, squares and shops, and laid around it fair gardens.’21 This passage suggests that gardens with pavilions and palaces were intended in and around the city. Of course, it could also be a trope employed by a court writer in the best conventions of literary representation to depict Islamicate cities. In a translation of Firishtah’s Tarikh-i Firishtah by John Briggs, the foundation of Ahmadnagar is described as follows: In 900, he [Ahmad Nizam Shah I] laid the foundation of a city in the vicinity of the Sena river, to which he gave the name of Ahmadnagar. So great exertions were made in erecting buildings by the king and his dependents, that in the short space of two years the new city rivalled Baghdad and Cairo in splendour.22 The city of Ahmadnagar did not have city walls till after its takeover by the Mughals in 1600 CE .23 Soon after 1494 CE , when Ahmad Nizam

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Shah I conquered Daulatabad, he built himself a new fort outside the city of Ahmadnagar. This fort near the city of Ahmadnagar came to be known as the fort of Ahmadnagar, and it encapsulated the older Bagh-i Nizam, which he had established less than a decade earlier. After this point, the Nizam Shahs never lived within the city of Ahmadnagar. Except for the stray reference to a royal palace in the city,24 there are no records that the Nizam Shahi kings ever owned a residence in the city. They either lived and entertained in suburban garden palaces, such as the Hasht Bihisht Bagh and the Farah Bakhsh Bagh, or conducted their affairs from the fort, as references in the period chronicles indicate. Often, the kingdom was controlled from Parenda, Shivneri, Ausa, and Daulatabad, particularly after the Mughal takeover of the city of Ahmadnagar in 1600 CE . Garden palaces around the city continued to play an important royal and administrative role. Within the city, constructing estates with garden mansions seems to have been the norm. Court nobles of standing, such as Niʾmat Khan and Farhad Khan, built their palaces with gardens, public amenities, and mosques around them. The city was settled in various wards by these nobles, who often lent their names to these areas of the city by virtue of their large mansions and estates. For example, the area called the Niʾmat Khani in Ahmadnagar city contained a market, a caravanserai, a mosque with its associated pious complex, Niʾmat Khan’s tomb, and various other structures all set within a planned landscape.25 Other estates include the Farhad Khani, the Qasim Khani, and other wards. There was little immediate royal control over the development and planning of the city, apart from the sanctioning of areas to various court nobles. The estate of Niʾmat Khan Semnani is located in an area called the Mangalwar bazaar (or Tuesday market) in the southern part of the old city of Ahmadnagar. The physical remains are completely fragmented and fractured today and can be pieced together only with speculative imagination. A row of shops created a barrier between the fully public street and the semi-public interiors of the estate. There are at least two portals through which one enters the inner grounds that Niʾmat Khan once owned. One of them is a large pishtaq that is undoubtedly of Iranian or Central Asian origin. The other portal is a more modest-looking pair of gateways, both along a common axis. Each one of these gateways has an inscription. The surviving part of a palace building is now owned and occupied by municipal offices, and a descendant of Niʾmat Khan has

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turned the bottom storey into a small tomb, allegedly of Niʾmat Khan. The conjectural plans for this complex are sketch plans, made on the basis of earlier descriptions and inscriptions. Every quarter of the city owned and managed by a noble at court would have had such a complex at its heart. With a market, a hammam, a caravanserai, a mosque, and other components, it would have been the core of social and economic activity in this ward of the city, enhancing the prestige and clout of the patron. Niʾmat Khan’s estate is briefly described by Firishtah in passing: At this time, the king expressed a desire to visit the palace and garden of Ahmadnagar, which was known as Baghdad and on Safar 2 AH 992 [14 February 1582] he left the old garden of the watercourse . . . and inspected the palace and buildings of the city. The king had never seen the beautiful garden known as the watercourse of Niʾmat Khan, since its completion, and he therefore turned to it, to inspect it.26 He came back from his self-imposed exile and was surprised to see the pleasant garden and associated watercourse.27 This incident suggests that it would have been built sometime between 1570 and 1580. Inscriptional evidence dates this building to 1578.28 The inscription records the caravanserai and the public bath associated with this site and date the construction of the complex. They are published in ‘Some Unpublished Inscriptions from the Bombay Presidency’ by Ghulam Yazdani [Inscriptions 1, 2].29 Another inscription associated with the site is published by M. Nazim [Inscription 3].30 Most cities in the Deccan through the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries have a walled citadel for the ruling family that was situated on the edge of the walled city. However, Ahmadnagar is unusual in this regard as compared to Gulbarga, Bidar, Golconda, or Daulatabad. As noted earlier, the royal citadel is the Ahmadnagar fort, and the city is at a short distance from this fort. The city was walled only under Mughal occupation, not during the reign of the Nizam Shahs. This was probably one of the greatest legacies of the Nizam Shahs to the later Maratha kingdom. It would also be the beginning of a trend by which unfortified settlements would become increasingly common, as Hyderabad and Khidki would demonstrate a century later. Most of the cities of the early Marathas (until 1725 CE ) similarly had no enceinte. For the Marathas,

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the administrative, judicial, and military power were all concentrated in the forts.31 It is tempting to see the mode of suburban development with royal garden palaces as being similar to the development of Timurid Herat under Shah Rukh (reg. 1397–1447 CE ) in the fifteenth century. Garden palaces around Ahmadnagar were constructed at great expense and were no doubt the setting for various maja¯lis.32 But, as George Michell cautions, it would be too presumptuous to suggest any direct connections between Timurid Herat and cities in the medieval Deccan in the absence of any real comparative work.33 The role of gardens and garden pavilions centred about the city and the semi-urban citadel (fort of Ahmadnagar) confirm that the city and fort together were the weighted centre of various royal suburban gardens and palaces. Apart from the absence of royal buildings in the city of Ahmadnagar,34 the lack of a large congregational mosque also suggests the absence of royalty in the city. Supporting that contention is the absence of a discernible processional route lined with state architecture, which would have been a central feature of royal appearance and ceremony had the king ever paraded through the city. Admittedly, the loss of physical fabric hampers such a recreation, but there is nothing even vestigial in this city to suggest such a ceremonial ever took place. There are several references to triumphal processions to the fort of Ahmadnagar. But it is likely that the main axis of the ceremonial procession was from one of the gardens to the fort, not within the city. Because of the royal residence and the treasury, the fort was clearly the locus of political power, not the city. Approximate and highly conjectural maps of Ahmadnagar from the various phases of Nizam Shahi rule, despite their speculative nature, corroborate the layout of the city as devoid of any processional route.35 It is possible that a processional route from the gate of the city to the fort existed. Important proclamations were made at the fort, not in the city. The early Mughals too had a similar mode: we know that Babur and Humayun’s armies were reviewed at garden sites and marched out of there for military campaigns. Every neighbourhood in Ahmadnagar has at least one small mosque, a feature that can be attributed to the fractured and fragmented development of the city under various court officials. There might be more to this, as it is clear in the case of Tughluqabad,36 that a fort or a

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city might be quickly constructed by entrusting a court noble with a city ward or a gate, and the rewards were the resultant revenue from the market on the estate. References to architecture in the city of Ahmadnagar usually pertain to court nobles and their mansions, never to any royal buildings. The fort and the city of Ahmadnagar, from their foundation in the last decade of the fifteenth century to their occupation by the Mughals in 1600 CE , were the centres of court intrigues, diplomacy, military adventures, and several sacks by invading armies. The whole city of Ahmadnagar was supplied with water from distances far away, using a system of qanats and aqueducts. Many of these were functional until recent decades, and there are colonial accounts and details about the system.37 Today, the city of Ahmadnagar has a population of over 300,000 people administered by a municipal corporation, surrounded by large cantonment areas and military establishments. The fort is controlled by the army and contains fragmentary remains of various palaces and pavilions. The city and the fort are still noticeably discrete.

Chaul The Nizam Shahs controlled two major seaports on the west coast, Chaul and Rajapuri, which was protected by the fort of Janjira.38 Chaul was the larger of the two. Chaul was important not only as a major distribution point for trading inland and along the coast but also because of its strategic location. Therefore the Portuguese, who had permission from the Nizam Shahs to build a factory at the site, also had major conflicts with the latter over the nature of trade and concessions. An important port of trade since the early centuries of the common era, if not earlier, Chaul was mentioned by several early travellers. By the fifteenth century, it had become one of the key ports of the Bahmanis. It might have been cautiously used by the Bahmani kingdom because of its proximity to Gujarat, especially as the Gujarat sultans were aggressively trying to expand along the coast.39 The Bahmanis operated largely from the port cities that were closer to their capitals of Gulbarga and later Bidar. Thus, for the Bahmanis, Goa and Dabhol were significant. Chaul was important for the northwestern Deccan, the Bahmani taraf of Daulatabad and Junnar. This province became the basis

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for the new independent state founded by Ahmad Nizam Shah in 1490 CE ; Chaul became its principal port. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, several European traders came to South Asia through the port of Chaul; many of them, such as Afanasy Nikitin (d. 1472 CE ), Cesare Federici (c. 1530–1600 CE ), Duarte Barbosa (1480– 1521 CE ), Franc ois Pyrard de Laval (c. 1578 –1623 CE ), and Pietro della Valle (1586– 1652 CE ), left accounts of the port. The changes in geographical conditions around this port, which accelerated in the seventeenth century, caused the harbour to be inundated with sediments that completely choked it. The rise in sea level and the transformation of geographical conditions around this area have recently been proven quite conclusively using archaeological methods.40 A variety of historical sources had also previously mentioned these natural changes.41 In the seventeenth century, the presence of large numbers of pirates and several attacks on the town, coupled with the physical changes to the harbour, completely devastated Chaul as a port of trade.42 The sack of the town by Shivaji Bhonsale in the 1660s was conclusive and resulted in a complete decline.43 The sixteenth century saw the last significant occupation of the town as a trading port (although Chaul does get occasionally mentioned as a ‘considerable seaport’ as late as 1781 CE ).44 Chaul declined with the end of the Nizam Shah dynasty (1490– 1536 CE ) and, as the Mughals took over the Deccan, Surat (further north, in present-day Gujarat) became their key port. The old settlement of Chaul is in an area now under cultivation, and the new town has shifted to the north. A mosque and a hammam are in this quarter, whereas on the routes out of the old town are the remains of a caravanserai and a tomb. There have been some excavations carried out in Chaul, and the location of the extant buildings and the archaeological evidence corroborate some of the historical descriptions.45 Chaul became very important as a port under the Nizam Shahs. It was the largest port that they controlled, their only major source of trade, and their sole point of cultural interaction with other countries of the Indian Ocean. The port was at its greatest in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Nizam Shahs and the Portuguese were at peace. Portuguese Chaul (Revadanda) and the Chaul of the Nizam Shah (referred to as upper Chaul, later as Muhammadan Chaul) were twin settlements, both with prospering trade. The mutual benefit in being at

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peace and allowing trade was realised in both ports (Portuguese and Nizam Shahi Chaul) through most of the sixteenth century. In upper Chaul, crafts such as woodcarving supplemented the trading activities.46 The Portuguese and the Nizam Shah were on peaceful terms for the middle third of the sixteenth century, and Chaul prospered enormously in this period. It was also in the sixteenth century (in the beginning and towards the end) that the most important battles for the control of the port of Chaul were contested. In 1508 CE , the Governor of Diu, appointed by the Sultan of Gujarat, along with navies from the Mamluk king of Egypt, the Zamorin of Calicut, and the Deccan sultanates of the Nizam Shah and Adil Shah, jointly defeated the Portuguese off the coast of Chaul, an event recorded in the text Tuhfat-ul Mujahidin.47 In 1509 CE , the Portuguese avenged this loss, Burhan Nizam Shah I signed a peace treaty, and the Portuguese were allowed to appoint a Factor at Chaul.48 The Portuguese governor, Lopo Soares de Albergaria, and Burhan Nizam Shah signed a further treaty in 1516 CE , under the terms of which the Portuguese would be allowed to construct a factory.49 When the factory was attacked in 1521 CE by a fleet from Bijapur, the Portuguese were allowed by Burhan Nizam Shah I to build a fort at lower Chaul, by the mouth of the estuary (a site today known as Revadanda). In 1557 CE , Husain Nizam Shah I (reg. 1553–65 CE ) was in power, and sensing a relatively new and possibly weak king, the Portuguese proposed the cession of the promontory of Korlai. Husain Nizam Shah not only refused but sent his officers to build a fort on Korlai instead. The resultant conflict was resolved by an understanding that none of the powers would occupy or build on that peninsula. Under a new king, Murtaza Nizam Shah I, the Nizam Shahs tried to lay siege to Portuguese Chaul in 1570 CE ; the attempt failed and peace negotiations ensued. The next Nizam Shahi king, Burhan Nizam Shah II, tried to build a fort at Korlai, and this time the Portuguese crossed the bay and captured the fort. They also improved their fortifications at Revadanda. Thus the mouth of the estuary came completely under Portuguese control. The Portuguese, by the late sixteenth century, had control over a lot of the Indian Ocean trading activity, including the important trade in horses that every peninsular Indian polity relied upon.50 To ensure a steady supply of horses, and to outmanoeuvre their rivals, the Nizam Shahs maintained cordial relations with the Portuguese, whose system

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of issuing cartazes or passes for trading ships meant control over the high seas. Akbar’s forces, in his conquest of the city and fort of Ahmadnagar, briefly captured Chaul around 1600.51 In 1609 CE , there was an unsuccessful attempt to capture Portuguese Chaul for the Nizam Shah by Malik Ambar, who had become the regent.52 He was trying to consolidate his power as custodian of the Nizam Shahi state, and therefore soon signed a peace treaty with the Portuguese so that he would not be fighting on multiple fronts. The rise of Surat, the Portuguese losses at Hormuz, the fall of the Nizam Shahs, and the arrival of the Mughals and the English in the Deccan, ensured that by 1630 CE Chaul was in serious decline as a port. It was briefly captured by the forces of Bijapur, who handed it over to the Mughals.53 After this, Chaul never recovered as a major trading centre; it was described as a ruin as early as 1672 CE .54 Chaul had been known by several names since classical antiquity.55 Medieval Arab geographers and merchants have also left us with descriptions of ‘Sheool’ or ‘Saimur’.56 However, the first verifiable European source was the Russian trader Afanasy Nikitin, who described the people and the customs of the country around ‘Chivil’, under the administration of Mahmud Gawan in the mid-fifteenth century.57 Unfortunately, Nikitin did not describe the town in any detail. Ludovico Varthema, a Bolognese merchant, visited ‘Cevul’ around 1506 CE . Very similar to Nikitin’s description, most of the people are described as going around almost naked, except for some of the Moorish merchants. He also mentioned Chaul as possessing a very beautiful river along which foreign vessels plied. He described the king of Chaul as a pagan, suggesting an identity for the governor of the town in this period.58 Cesare Federici, a Venetian merchant, came to Chaul in 1563 CE . His descriptions confirm the location of the Chaul of the Nizam Shahs and of Portuguese Chaul. The most valuable descriptions of the port are by Pietro della Valle, who visited Chaul in 1623 and 1625 CE .59 He described two ways to get from Revadanda to Chaul; the longer way was by a winding road through meadows, palm trees, and forests (much the same as today), and a shorter passage was by means of a small boat across the small tongue of water. Most importantly, he describes a low-density habitation with trees and gardens where a mosque, a public bath, courts, and other public buildings stood.60 The physical evidence for the settlement fits these descriptions well. The port was further to the

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south, and most of the city would have been the port and the market, with its mosque and bath-house. There have been significant changes in the creek, but there are some remains of what appear to be marine structures such as jetties and embankments close to the southwest corner of the areca plantations, near the mosque. There is also the presence of a mound dotted with several graves in the area where the historic town was located.61 Other miscellaneous structures, such as a store (perhaps a granary) and a few stray walls of the port commander’s quarters (locally called Rajkot), also remain. The caravanserai is located on the medieval and early modern route out of Chaul heading inland. Close by a direction-stone was reported, with the names and directions to neighbouring towns.62 Such directionstones were common in the reign of the Nizam Shahs and confirms the role of this structure as a caravanserai, which would be at the crossing of such routes leading out of the port town. The mosque is located on the peninsula of Chaul and would have been visible from the harbour; it would have been a feature of the skyline visible from the incoming ships, with its large bulbous dome. We know that the mosque was badly damaged by Portuguese cannon; ‘the western side and the minarets’ were totally ruined.63 The few extant buildings allow us to piece together a picture of a settlement on the peninsula of Chaul, inland from the Arabian sea in the estuary of the Kundalika River. We know from medieval historic sources that this area was called upper Chaul (upstream on the river) as opposed to the Portuguese Chaul (Revadanda) downstream by the sea. The Chaul of the Nizam Shahs was a navigable port on the north bank, separated from Revadanda by a thin tongue of water on the west; on the east were marshes. The north was guarded by hills, the pass through which was a controlled point of access to the town. To the south was the harbour, and beyond the bay was the southern bank of the Kundalika River, which led to the promontory and fort of Korlai. Duarte Barbosa described the town in 1514 CE as more of a fair or carnival than a city.64 There are no travellers’ descriptions of the richness, grandeur, or even the urban character of Chaul. In fact, the relatively austere and poor lifestyle of the people was worthy of commentary for many of the travellers.65 Alberquerque, the Viceroy of Goa, wrote a letter to the King of Portugal in which he suggested in the same sentence that Danda and Chaul were the two important places on the

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western seaboard that the Portuguese should capture. Danda was described as a beautiful town with palaces; Chaul was not described at all.66 It would be fair to infer that Chaul was not a real urban centre in this period but only a trading port. Under the Nizam Shahs, Chaul was an important trading port with a key garrison to keep the Portuguese in check, but the region itself did not seem to have benefited from or engaged in the trade. The local populations were at best drafted as labour in the months of trade, when the settlement’s population swelled. The archaeological and textual evidence suggest that Chaul was a seasonal place of exchange, a market in a true sense, without most of the paraphernalia of a city or a large wealthy residential population. As Andre´ Wink had suggested, many Indian towns and cities in the medieval period were largely labile.67 Chaul was even more so, because its raison d’eˆtre was trade, an activity that was seasonal, as it depended on the weather and winds.68 As most of the armies in the Deccan sultanates were also part-time cultivators, even the garrison in Chaul would have ebbed in certain seasons. Chaul then was a seasonal port town, not a permanently inhabited city. Chaul is today a town with a municipal body and a population of approximately 10,000.

Parenda Parenda is one instance of an important fortified military centre that was built by the Bahmanis and appropriated by the Nizam Shahs. Like other forts, such as Sholapur, Kandahar, Naldurg, and Ausa, this site often switched hands between the rival post-Bahmani kingdoms. It was the site where important military commanders from the royal court were given charge as qilaʾdar s and carried on the administration in a semiautonomous manner. The site remains largely undocumented, but has been published in a note by Ghulam Yazdani in an Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of His Exalted Highness the Nizam’s Dominions and in a report published for the Government of Maharashtra following the 1994 earthquake.69 One of the curious buildings in the fort of Parenda is the large congregational mosque, which was most certainly built under the reign of Malik Ambar. The mosque has decorative columns made by local artisans in a style comparable to those of temples, but without any figurative decoration [Figure 3.1].

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Figure 3.1

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Detail of column in mosque in the fort of Parenda.

Today, the settlement of Parenda is a village that has encroached on the glacis of the fort, thus destroying valuable historical and archaeological evidence. The fort is compact and filled with buildings, and that suggests that the town would have been just outside the fort as is the present settlement. The fort had a fausse braye added to the outer wall in the fourteenth or early fifteenth century. This is similar to almost

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all the forts of the Deccan plateau that were held by the Bahmanis, and was a response to changing military technologies.70 Two structures within the fort of Parenda are worthy of mention, though it is impossible to establish the period in which they were built. For stylistic reasons, one of them would be easy to assign to the Nizam Shahs, but the lack of any substantial evidence thus far precludes this conclusion. The Chor Well, as it has been described,71 is a fantastic subterranean structure, the focus of which is an actual freshwater well. It is surrounded by subterranean galleries, a feature common to the Indic tradition as seen in the famous va¯vs in Gujarat.72 A similar well (sarda¯b) is found in the vicinity of Daulatabad (Khufiya Bavdi), and in the absence of inscriptional evidence, it too can be stylistically attributed to the Nizam Shahs. Features that prevent a Mughal or post-Mughal origin for this underground structure include the lack of brickwork, which was a common feature in most Mughal construction in the region, including the Mughal buildings at Khuldabad, the caravanserai at Nizampur in the proximity of Daulatabad, the camping ground and final resting place for Aurangzeb at Alamgiri, and so forth. Mughal architecture in the sixteenth century also has its own architectural vocabulary, including baluster columns and certain types of arch profiles, which are all missing in this structure. The other structure in Parenda that might be attributed to the Nizam Shahi reign is a mosque, most probably built under the regency of Malik Ambar. The mosque is remarkable for the use of local crafts and motifs in its decoration. The mosque might be attributed to the period when the fort was the temporary capital of the Nizam Shahs, from 1600 to 1603 CE , during which the architectural vocabulary of the kingdom was undergoing a significant change. This was a period of great turmoil when the existence of the kingdom was itself in danger; the ornamentation of the mosque might be an attempt, most likely by Malik Ambar, to seek a new identity. The village of Parenda lies beside the fort, encroaching on important military features of the site such as the glacis, as mentioned earlier. The village itself is not a fortified settlement and there are no indications of any defensive structures having been around it. Again, this pattern ties into the commoner type of urban settlements in the sixteenth-century Deccan. The fort or the castle was the place of administrative, military, and political power. The civilian part of the town or village was without

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any defensive apparatus, and quite discretely positioned vis-a`-vis the former. Parenda is a small town today, besides the fort, which is under the custodianship of Maharashtra State Archaeological Department.

Sindkhed Raja Now a small village in the district of Buldhana, Sindkhed Raja is best known as being the hereditary fief of the Jadhavs, who were important landed Maratha nobles at the court of the Nizam Shahs. Lakhuji Jadhav, who is credited with most of the sixteenth-century architecture here, was famously the father of Jijabai (1598–1674 CE ), who was the mother of Shivaji Bhonsale, founder of the seventeenth-century Maratha kingdom. Though there is evidence of early occupation of the site, little is known about it historically.73 The only buildings that are datable from the Nizam Shahi period are the fortified mansion in the centre of the village, a large walled enclosure called the Kala Kot, a building known as the Rang Mahal, a small artificial reservoir with a pavilion in the midst, and the dams that create the reservoir. The grandest extant building is the memorial built in honour of Lakhuji Jadhav, who ruled here through the latter half of the sixteenth century. The fortified mansion, locally known as Lakhuji Jadhav’s wada, is a large enclosure with high walls, covering an area of 90 by 85 metres. At the centre is a large elevated platform of 40 by 40 metres on which the ruins of the actual residential structure stand. Small rooms surround a central courtyard in this building, and it is architecturally unremarkable. One of the rooms is believed to be the birthplace of Jijabai Bhonsale (ne´e Jadhav). There are traces of a wooden superstructure. The palace is dateable to the last quarter of the sixteenth century. To the west of the village of Sindkhed Raja is the impressive memorial (samadhi) built for Lakhuji Jadhav. It is a large double-storied masonry building, not unlike the Islamic tombs built in this period. There is a tripartite division of the fac ade, with two blind arches flanking a small doorway. Internally the space is organised as a pancayatana temple, with one central cella surrounded by four smaller sanctums in the four corners. All the cells contain sivalingas and suggest Saivite affiliations. In terms of architectural decoration, several motifs that can be seen on Bahmani and Nizam Shahi buildings are to be seen. Lakhuji

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Jadhav was killed by the Nizam Shahs in Malik Ambar’s regency because he had defected to the Mughals. He died sometime around 1600 CE . In the grounds are several smaller memorials, which are the scale of small cenotaphs and commemorate the lives of other members of the family. They all appear to be of a later date. To the west of the village is also a large tank called Chandani Talab, with retaining dams on the eastern and southern side. In the midst of the water body is a two-storied pleasure pavilion, not unlike the leisure architecture in the palace complexes of the Nizam Shahs. The southern wall of this tank also contains within it a number of pleasure chambers, including a hammam. The village contains a number of spatially distributed temples and a few small mosques, following much the same pattern as Nizam Shahi towns. The whole village of Sindhkhed Raja, including its significant buildings, are an emulation of Nizam Shahi architecture, albeit on a smaller scale. Like the royal court, the residence is placed at the edge of the settlement. But, other than that, the presence of small garden pavilions and waterworks, memorials and tombs, along with the scattered places of worship and prayer, are all similar to Ahmadnagar and Junnar.

Urban Systems: Water Supply and Civic Buildings The water-supply systems of the Nizam Shahs were the most sophisticated in the Deccan, with an understanding of local geology and hydrology, often lifting water to high plateaus from lowland areas. The Nizam Shahs often incorporated local building craft and knowledge in their attempt at creating a regional identity. Their technology was a happy co-existence of local and imported knowledge. A good example is the hill of Manzarsumbah. Water is raised almost a hundred metres from a series of tanks carved into the intermediary compact basalt. The technique of carving water tanks in porous impure layers of rock (amygdaloidal basalt) sandwiched between two layers of compact basalt is traditional knowledge in the Deccan, and many Buddhist caves have a potable water supply based on this technique.74 However, the lifting systems and the subsequent network of conduits, pipes, and cisterns are frequently based on technology imported from Iranian regions. Most of the hydraulic technologies in the early modern Deccan were first utilised by the Nizam Shahs.75

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Prakrit inscriptions in Buddhist caves in the region often make references to kings as the patrons and benefactors of cisterns and water systems. Traditional step wells (baoris or baravs) are common in the kingdom, some having possible Yadava origins. The symbolism of these earlier systems was not lost, merely overlaid with a new interpretation under the Nizam Shahs. Water storage and supply systems were a mix of indigenous and imported technologies, with excavated stone cisterns provided with aqueducts and pipes. Another aspect of the waterworks was the display of water, a Timurid and possibly earlier West Asian conceit from the classical world. For the Nizam Shah kings, large static pools were the spectacle with which to proclaim their control of water, for example, the large water bodies at Farah Bakhsh Bagh, Hasht Bihisht Bagh, Manzarsumbah, etc. This was in marked contrast with the Mughals, for whom the dynamic and fluid qualities of water were the most important. The Mughals exploited these attributes through cascades, fountains, and flowing channels. Within the architecture of the Nizam Shahs, small watercourses and fountains can also be observed and are mentioned in the literary accounts at their court.76 The manipulation and control of water in large quantities was their real achievement, which they sought to display visually and also through civic works. This effect is very different from the meritorious provision of water supply by indigenous dynasties, which did not aspire to control water visually, only as a utilitarian system. In addition to these exercises in visual display, the Nizam Shahs did provide water-management systems for the benefit of the people. Such works made it possible for them to set up towns distant from rivers or natural sources of water. The most impressive water-distribution systems in the Nizam Shahi domains are in urban and suburban areas, where artificial lakes are created with dams and the water is carried by aqueducts and pipes punctuated by siphon towers.77 Wells and cisterns are the termini of these distribution networks. Unfortunately, today these water-supply systems do not survive well in Ahmadnagar city. But enough has been documented to suggest a very extensive network. The Ambarkot area of Daulatabad and the old city of Aurangabad (Khadki) also have large water-distribution systems. The Nizam Shahs aspired to control water resources and had the knowledge required to build and manage water-distribution systems. Such works were often embellished with pavilions and other recreational architecture, as seen in

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the enigmatic pavilion close to the topmost dam that supplies water to Daulatabad. This structure is very likely of the Nizam Shahi period. The design is not unlike the pavilion built by the Adil Shahs at Kumatgi and the building called Kabutarkhana, built by the sultans of Gujarat at the Vada Talao lake in Champaner. The Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar were the only significant postBahmani sultanate dynasty in the medieval Deccan to have local origins (as opposed to the Persian or Turkic lineage that the Adil Shahs and the Qutb Shahs claimed). They were well aware that water management and control was an essential part of successful kingship in the region. Providing water storage was a pious and meritorious act in the Indic tradition of kingship, while at the same time grand displays of water were the prerogative of Persianate royalty. Merging technologies in the same way as ideologies, the Nizam Shahs combined older indigenous systems of water storage, such as cisterns excavated into the living rock, with Persian techniques of water conveyance like underground pipes and qanats. Their ideological and religious affiliation with Persianate lands was often given material expression in the form of the visual arts, but the regional idiom of craft and construction was always evident. Their expertise at water management is also typified in their construction of beautiful hammams.

Military Design and Fortification Many of the military structures, such as the fortress of Daulatabad, have phased construction histories stretching over 800 years or more.78 It is a difficult task to assign different additions, building campaigns, and repairs to the various dynasties, though military technology can be a pointer in this direction. The size of merlons, the thickness of walls, the use of specific shapes in planning, are all architectural responses to changing war technologies, allowing a rudimentary dating of many of these accretions. It is often difficult but possible to isolate architectural features, such as a balcony on a fortified tower, and attribute it to the Nizam Shahs. In Daulatabad fort, for example, some of the old bastions had defence features made redundant by the construction of a newer set of fausse braye external walls built by the Nizam Shahi kings. These obsolete defence features were converted into ornamental balconies by the Nizam Shahs. Evidence of masons’ marks and the style of masonry

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are proof that these balconies were constructed under the Nizam Shahs. A securely dated hammam at Daulatabad has similar masons’ marks, also seen on the other defensive walls at the site. Even the dressed building stones in these elements are visually comparable in tooling and size. The study of such isolated elements does not necessarily add value to this research and therefore such observations about buildings and sites are not presented unless relevant for constructing larger arguments. Though very few military structures apart from forts can be called exclusively defensive, many buildings have at least symbolic defensive attributes, such as non-functional merlons. These features clearly have their roots in military construction, but are often decorative or symbolic, as seen in Bagh Rauza, the necropolis created under Ahmad Nizam Shah I but which was discontinued as the later Nizam Shahs all sent their mortal remains to Karbala in Iraq. Since the history of fortification and military construction are disciplines in their own right, it would be inappropriate to engage in a lengthy discourse on those matters here. Yet, insofar as the military and other functions of architecture intersect, some of the defensive buildings might be relevant to this discussion. Many of the fort complexes were an important part of ordinary civilian life in times of peace. The fort of Ahmadnagar is one of the earliest forts to show certain military innovations in planning. It is completely circular in its plan and has only one point of access.79 The Nizam Shahs also acquired many older forts built by other rulers and added to them. Their forts and fortified hilltops have been appropriated and changed by later dynasties and rulers, and it is very difficult to reconstruct them as they might have been under the Nizam Shahs. A chronology of any one military site is difficult to undertake in the absence of documents or inscriptions, but the task is made easier with a study of construction technology. The Nizam Shahs controlled a variety of forts that can be classified using the conventional division of land forts, hill forts, and sea forts. The hill forts are largely clustered in the Western Ghats, the sea forts are Janjira and Korlai along the Konkan coast, and the land forts are on the Deccan plateau. These forts were essential to maintaining control over the surrounding areas and also as frontier garrisons to mobilise troops. However, the fort commanders were often semi-autonomous and changed loyalties as required by the circumstances.80

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The Nizam Shahs lived in the forts of Daulatabad, Ahmadnagar, Shivneri, Parenda, and Kandahar, where they created their royal architectural settings. Barring these few forts where the Nizam Shahs actually resided, the rest can be classified as non-royal. Forts changed hands frequently, and the actual connection between the court and the fort commanders was not always stable or uniform and is not clearly understood. For example, it can be inferred from written documents that when an important landed family which had possession and control of a fort was refused an extension of its revenue and administrative rights, the nobles of that family at court would rebel. They would then petition and obtain a firma¯n from one of the rival kingdoms, and the fort, with its associated territory, would nominally become a part of that latter kingdom. As mentioned earlier, the Nizam Shahs controlled three types of forts, all different. The hill forts along the Sahyadri ranges, which were typically older fortified hilltops, were appropriated and enlarged by the Nizam Shahs from earlier rulers. The forts on the Deccan plateau were mostly built by the Bahmanis and acquired by the Nizam Shahs. The coastal forts were the big innovation of the Nizam Shahs, in particular the fort of Janjira. Till the end of the fifteenth century, the hill and sea forts had been wrested (and improved) by the Bahmanis from local kings and chiefs to secure the trade routes to the coast. Bahmani fort-building was limited largely to the Deccan plateau. The Nizam Shahs acquired many of these forts in the plateau, and barring the important exception of the fort of Ahmadnagar, which was constructed entirely by them, they modified or repaired earlier forts and fortified sites. The study of fortifications is an important indexical tool in recovering the military history of a region. As military technology changed, military architecture responded. The development of new and improved weapons was accompanied by corresponding changes in fortifications, to both defend against and to deploy new arms. Architectural responses to gunpowder usually took a deeper level of conceptualisation and greater resources to construct. The adaptation and innovation in fortification was therefore significant, and helps us recover the internalisation of gunpowder technology in the imagination and warcraft of historic polities.81 In the Deccan, architectural developments kept close pace with the fast-changing war technologies till the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By the end of the sixteenth century, for reasons outlined here,

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war technology, particularly that of guns and gunpowder, raced ahead while fortifications lagged behind. Urban settlements and the structure of the state were eventually transformed by the evolving administrative and military technologies of the Deccan. Military architecture did not significantly evolve past the seventeenth century, but military technology resulted in changed forms of urban settlements. There are very few works on the fortifications of the Deccan and their changing nature, barring work by Richard Eaton and Jean Deloche.82 The analysis of the development of military architecture as a response to fastchanging war technologies demonstrates that the Deccan kingdoms changed their urban settlement patterns quite radically.83 The continuous occupation of many of the fortified settlements and fortresses until at least the nineteenth century has meant that the historical accretions and associations of later rulers (or sometimes very early ones) are often erroneously and disproportionately misunderstood without any study of the phased construction of these sites. Some of the changes in architecture and planning in the Deccan were affected by the rapidly changing military technology during the sixteenth century. The evidence suggests that as early as the fifteenth century, the attitudes toward gunpowder technologies and related architectural innovations were already quite divergent between the Bahmani sultanate (and its successors states in the sixteenth century) and the kingdom of Vijayanagara. The case of Ahmadnagar city and fort, built early in the sixteenth century, marks the early moment of the disaggregation of urban settlement and fortified strongholds, a feature that was marked by the foundation of Khadki (later Aurangabad) under Malik Ambar a hundred years later. Gunpowder and drilled, disciplined armies were seen as the key factors for a sixteenth century European military revolution and its role in defeating Asian armies.84 Such an argument was extended by including fortification, particularly the artillery fortress and the trace italienne in this discourse, stating that, while most of Asia was ‘unable to adopt western military technology’, the Islamic gunpowder empires were ‘unable to adapt it’.85 Yet, the fallacy of not recognising local and specific conditions that shaped modes of warfare, as Jeremy Black admits, makes it clear that the responses to changing gunpowder technology were of a different nature, even if they did not conform to

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military progress of the seventeenth century as understood by European historians.86 For all the paradigms of European military technologies overcoming Asian states in the early modern period, there has been little comparative work on architecturally constructed responses to such technological advances. The fundamental difference was not dictated by weaponry and firepower (usually the diagnostic two indicators of military superiority of European powers) but by attitudes toward warfare and combat, which changed significantly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Perhaps it would be speculative to say that most battles in South Asia were almost ritually enacted, with the minimum loss of lives and large negotiated settlements.87 It is important to note that most battles and sieges in the Deccan were eventually not settled through military action alone but through negotiations, sometimes protracted but often expedient, and changes in the loyalties of key military commanders. All engagements were not of this nature, but historic chronicles do seem to suggest it for most battles. The tropes of corrupt generals and court nobles who defected, commanders whose loyalties could readily be purchased, and easily demoralised and confused troops all have a particular valency when assessed against two factors. First, the militaries of the early modern period were largely made up of part-time cultivators, who were enlisted to provide numbers and, if any combat actually took place, almost as a reserve after the front-lines of professional soldiers were exhausted. Second, the individual city governors, fort commanders, and other local power-holders exercised relative independence to ensure better prospects for themselves. Gunpowder was not taken up as easily as might appear from literary sources because it was thought to undermine soldierly values of courage and valour, and its uptake and upkeep was dependent on immigrants from the larger Islamic world. The Bahmanis and their successors did well until they were able to attract a steady stream of skilled foreign manpower, but by the seventeenth century, architectural innovation had halted and kingdoms preferred to set up strongholds at geographically impregnable places and set up towns near that, rather than fortify the towns themselves and defend them.88 We can infer that the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries demonstrate the changing architectural responses of the Deccan to gunpowder technology, a change that stagnated by the end of the

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sixteenth century. The eventual settlement of frontier between the various states in the sixteenth-century Deccan, as elaborated by Eaton and Wagoner in their study of fortifications and shifting frontiers, is a plausible model to explain the eventual settlement of boundaries.89 The Mughals, with their large forces, supply line, and full-time soldiers (as opposed to the part-time cultivators that made the bulk of the Deccan armies) had the capacity to carry out long-duration sieges.90 Architectural innovation was replaced by strategies of fort location: on hilltops, controlling passes and gorges. Fortified urban settlements became redundant, and towns walled for defensive reasons disappeared from the Deccan.91 They were disaggregated into two different networks: military (administrative) and civilian (mercantile). Through the sixteenth century, there was an increasing emphasis on abandoning the city when confronted by superior firepower.92 The royal court and the treasury, if in urban areas, were evacuated to fortified strongholds in the countryside. That is also true of Safavid and postSafavid Iran, where the cities were largely undefendable and it was the walled Chaharbaghs which provided refuge under siege. In the seventeenth century, city enceintes became nominal and symbolic and were no longer really used for military functions. Many of the defensible urban settlements eventually only became fortified garrisons and administrative centres by the establishment of urban settlements at a short distance, as seen in the establishment of Ahmadnagar Fort distinct from Ahmadnagar city (c. 1500 CE ), Hyderabad from Golconda (1589 CE ), Nauraspur from Bijapur (c. 1599 CE ) and Aurangabad (Khadki) from Daulatabad (1615 CE ). Burhanpur, though founded earlier, became an important urban centre in the seventeenth century, as its neighbouring fort of Asirgarh became the important stronghold in Malwa along a controlling route between Hindustan and the Deccan, serving only military and administrative functions. Sites such as Mandu ceased to have large and vibrant communities and were instead being superseded by urban mercantile and civilian settlements like Dhar (in this case). Already, by the end of the sixteenth century, the defence mechanisms of adding more material and having thicker walls had become redundant because of their ineffectiveness against improved siege artillery and mining techniques. In the seventeenth century, the rebellious origins of the Maratha state and the semi-permanent presence of Aurangzeb in the

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Deccan caused significant changes in the location and functions of forts and urban settlements. Eaton has argued that the hilly terrain of the Deccan (as opposed to the flat plains of the north) required a heavy reliance on gunpowder, not just cavalry charges. However, this could be easily overcome by other means of warfare, such as the fast and light cavalry charges combined with guerrilla tactics used by Malik Ambar and the Marathas. Hill forts and their importance in the new state formations and administration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have quite clearly been delineated by Stewart Gordon.93 Hill plateaus were natural stages for rebellion, resistance, and proclamation of regional sovereignty.94 But in many of the Deccan forts the advantage of elevation was missing, particularly in those on the Deccan plateau (as opposed to the Western Ghats). By the end of the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth, with the rise of the Mughals and then the Marathas, the trends in the Deccan are the separation of military forts from urban settlements, and the rise of fortified strongholds to form a network, distinct from the network of urban settlements. It is therefore possible to posit that these kingdoms and polities chose not to adapt newer gunpowder technologies. Instead of ‘adapting’ or ‘adopting’ newer ‘advances’ and ‘technologies,’ the kingdoms in the Deccan chose instead to change urban settlement patterns, thus affecting the mode of warfare. In conclusion, the Deccan under the Bahmani and post-Bahmani sultans embraced gunpowder technologies much better than most of south India under the Vijayanagara kings, through most of the sixteenth century. Certainly, the more vigorous cultural and mercantile connections of the sultanates with the larger world of the Indian Ocean, and the role of this sphere in the transmission of technology are the key factors of this shift. Under the Bahmanis, and later the post-Bahmani kingdoms, architectural innovation was a key component of military strategy and suggested a familiarity with changes in siege artillery and siege techniques. By the end of the sixteenth century, architectural innovation had halted. The logical conclusion to bigger and thicker walls had been reached, and the response to newer and more powerful siege weapons was to change settlement patterns. Fortified garrison and administrative towns were depopulated and new mercantile urban centres founded, usually a short distance away.

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The strategy in the Deccan from the seventeenth century onwards relied heavily on individual strongholds, mutually supporting and controlling mercantile routes and supply lines. This was partly a result of the nature of local landed feudal baron courts that were the building blocks of kingdoms such as Ahmadnagar. Several attempts were made to create new groups of aristocracy in the countryside; these usually consisted of settling groups of e´migre´s with a fortress or castle as the centre of the courtlet. As a result, the countryside was never clearly unprotected but had a network of fortified strongholds. The urban centres were not specially protected; they were only larger nodes in this grid. The Mughals defended the periphery of their expanding state. They defended their empire in open battlefields, not typically at the walls of a city.95 This was not true of the Deccan, where most of the protection was at the internal nodes in the kingdom. Under the Mughals, city walls were more emblems of urban identity and of revenue and traffic control. There were implicit problems with stationing a garrison in a city. Contested boundaries, Mughal expansionist policies, and multiple revenue right-holders and taxation tenures, along with land alienation policies, made networks of nodal forts the key to administrative control and territorialisation. Since systems of governance, taxation, justice, and monetisation were already in place, only the control of the defensive node and the defection or replacement of the commander of the fort or governor of the region was required to claim the territory. The administrative and state apparatus was reduced to a series of military islands, connected by various outposts and small garrisons.96 This model of specialised functions, operating out of different nodes and forming discrete networks, was the norm in the Deccan, and most certainly the late Nizam Shahi state and the independent Maratha kingdom under Shivaji relied on this model. It allowed the state to concentrate resources for fortifying only the administrative and military centres, which were all located strategically along passes and controlled important trade routes. This network that they created was the basis of territorialisation. Under the Marathas, through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, this strategy intensified. The early Maratha state did not even pretend to protect the larger urban settlements under its rule. Perhaps hierarchical market networks are a much better explanation for the nature of urban settlements than models of

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bureaucratic (and in this case military) authority. The two diverge and do not map onto each other. This displacement of the state apparatus and market networks into two separate patterns was arguably a response to gunpowder technologies. A number of capital cities were founded in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in an effort to depopulate the fortified townships, which typically had a citadel and multiple concentric walls containing large civilian populations. Architectural responses to war technologies in the Deccan were considered redundant from 1600 to 1750 CE because of changed administrative practices, warfare, and urban settlements.

CHAPTER 4 PALACES AND MANSIONS

This chapter looks at palaces and mansions as special architectural programmes, critically different in commission and use. The levels of patronage, from the royal court to the small feudatories, and the resultant effect in projection of power is investigated and the imbricated nature of the architectural and political systems of the Nizam Shahs is explored. Palaces were the real loci of political power in the medieval Deccan. The palaces of the Nizam Shahs were largely abandoned after the seventeenth century, and some have been modified for different uses. It was rare to see the same royal use of a palace building across different dynasties because of the strong royal associations of the palaces with earlier dynasties, as well as the changing requirements and fashions at court. If a location was strategic or symbolically powerful, it was not uncommon for successive regimes to build new palaces alongside the older ones on the same site: for example, the different palaces built by the Yadavas, the Bahmanis, the Nizam Shahs (including Malik Ambar), and the Mughals in the fort of Daulatabad. The fort of Daulatabad had many implications for royal control of the region, along with trade and defence, and was integral to the strategy of every successful dynasty in the region. Yet no incumbent king occupied the same palace buildings built by earlier dynasties, unless significant modifications and changes were carried out. The earlier palaces were either subsumed as part of a new palace complex by the incumbent rulers or condemned to a secondary use. Both these modes of appropriation can be seen at Daulatabad. The Chini Mahal palace complex in Daulatabad, originally built by the Nizam Shahs, was subsequently used as a prison for rival or

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rebellious personages under Mughal rule. The mythical invocation of the palaces of past kings as ruined (khara¯beh) and occupied only by owls and birds of prey in Persian literature and illustration (as seen in the Kha¯mseh of Nizami) was also seriously regarded and prevented the occupation of these palace complexes. Many Persian epics, in dealing with old abandoned palaces, use the same tropes of ruins being the haunt of jinns and other undesirable mythical elements. This can also be seen in illustrated manuscripts, where painted depictions of the palaces and towns of earlier dynasties and kings are shown in a similar way, occupied by owls and other birds of ill omen. Palaces were, then, largely frozen in the era of one dynasty unless they were enlarged or modified for use as prisons, garrisons, or other ancillary buildings. Malik Ambar’s lower palace at Daulatabad formed a minor part of a large garden palace complex under the Mughals. Other than palaces, the centres of political power were forts. In times of distress and duress, it was not uncommon for palaces and forts to be concurrent and, as a result, forts such as Daulatabad, Parenda, and Shivneri have palace buildings and royal quarters within them. Palaces and hammams were common secular court-patronised architectural programmes, often combined in one complex as a single unit, the hammam often being an integral part of the palace. All these buildings were all built in stone and timber in the Nizam Shahi kingdom, a combination of materials that characterised their courtly architecture as it did that of their predecessors, the Bahmanis. In contrast, the Mughals preferred brick structures, as can be seen in their larger cities and settlements in the Deccan. The technique of cladding buildings in stone was perhaps the cause or the effect of this preference. For the Deccan sultanates, on the other hand, lime mortar and plaster were used to construct and finish the buildings. All the decoration was in cut and moulded stucco. Carved stone ornament was very rarely used in secular architecture, but is found occasionally. Mosques and tombs tend to have more carved stone decorations than any of the palace buildings, which favour stucco. The influx of immigrants from the Middle East was responsible for introducing into the northern Deccan styles and systems of construction and engineering that had evolved elsewhere. This was possible because the ports of Chaul and Danda Rajpuri, which the Nizam Shahs controlled, were a gateway to the trade routes of the Arabian Sea. Despite

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the imported technologies, the importance of pre-existent local building techniques and crafts ensured that the resultant architecture was not just imitative; it was distinguished by the fusion of various traditions in the creation of a new regional idiom. Mansions built for the elite were found in the cities and the countryside, whereas the palaces for the sultans were either in the suburbs of cities or in forts. The mansions that survive within the city of Ahmadnagar can be attributed to important court officials. The mansions of Qasim Khan, Niʾmat Khan Semnani, and Changiz Khan (the peshwa [premier minister] of Murtaza Nizam Shah I and who was the owner of Malik Ambar), all built sometime between 1560–80 CE , have been transformed into offices and residences of local administrators since the nineteenth century but retain some of their original features. Qasim Khan’s palace is the District Collector’s residence and the Niʾmat Khan’s palace houses municipal offices. The palace of Changiz Khan, now the District Court, is slated for demolition! Mosques, hammams, and shops were mentioned as a part of these estates, typically on the periphery.1 It is possible to partially reconstruct the layout of a typical nobleman’s estate, which then formed the basis of a municipal ward in the twentieth century. The public institutions that were a part of this complex would have been on the outer edges and, through a series of gardens and pavilions, the core, which comprised the mansion and its gardens, could be accessed. Unfortunately, the modern city retains very little of this planning and some of the disparate elements survive without their original context. It is only in the case of Niʾmat Khan’s estate that we can see multiple traces of such planning. A large portal flanked by rows of shops survives as an example of the public face of such a complex [Figure 4.1]. Inside were the remains of a hammam, reported as late as the mid-twentieth century.2 The nearby municipal office retains a part of Niʾmat Khan’s mansion and, between this and the portal, is a gateway with inscriptions detailing the revenue grants by Murtaza Nizam Shah I for the upkeep of this estate.3 These grants include the revenues of Savedi village, which is to the north of the city of Ahmadnagar and close to the palace of Hasht Bihisht, a suggestion of the importance Niʾmat Khan had at court. Since the mansions of the nobles and elite survive only in a fragmentary way, it is very difficult to reconstruct the entire complexes within which they were contained. The accretions and modifications to the architecture therefore prove problematic in theorising the architecture.

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The portal to the estate of Ni’mat Khan, Ahmadnagar city.

Some of the court nobles, such as the Jadhavs of Sindkhed Raja, had their fiefs in the outlying areas of the kingdom. Their power was concentrated in a village or a provincial town that usually had a fortified mansion (locally called gadhi) along with a few public works, such as a large step well or a masonry dam, a temple, or a mosque. These nobles in the outlying areas of the kingdom comprised mostly the Maratha landed

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gentry, the deshmukhs and the local chiefs, and made up the ethnic divisions that eventually sided with the Deccani axis. The Afa¯qi Persian nobility tended to be largely concentrated in the urban and the fortified areas, as opposed to the local chiefs, who had power bases in rural areas in addition to retaining their hold over some urban areas and forts. In this chapter, we will consider only four palace sites in detail; the criteria that set these sites apart is that all of them remained palaces as long as they were inhabited or controlled by the Nizam Shahs, and no significant changes have been made to them since. All these palaces were commissioned by the Nizam Shahi dynasty and are located within a radius of 15 kilometres around the city of Ahmadnagar. They were all built within the sixteenth century, though only the Farah Bagh can be conclusively dated by an inscription and supporting textual evidence. The rest are all dated on stylistic and archaeological grounds, which, all considered together, are compelling evidence. All the buildings at these sites show traces of rich decoration in lime-based stucco plasters, which were incised and cut. Unfortunately, only a few fragments of this art now survive in these palaces, but enough survives to draw some broad conclusions about it. Besides these case studies, another set of palace buildings also stands within the fort of Ahmadnagar. These remain in the possession of the Indian Army and are not accessible to scholarship. Notably, there is one octagonal garden pavilion in the fort.

Farah Bakhsh Bagh The site is around a kilometre east of the walled city of Ahmadnagar, south of the fort [Figure 4.2]. The site is now largely covered with acacia scrub forest, but was once surrounded by mango and tamarind trees.4 The building and the surrounding garden in its present form were rebuilt under the supervision of Salabat Khan by order of Murtaza Nizam Shah I. The building is mentioned in Mughal, Maratha, and British accounts, and served a variety of lesser functions until it was granted status as a protected structure in the early twentieth century. It has been suggested apocryphally that this building was a model for the construction of the Taj Mahal.5 The walls are constructed of dressed stone masonry with a rubble core and contain within them a framework of timber. The arches and vaults are true and must have been constructed

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Figure 4.2

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Elevation of Farah Bakhsh Bagh.

with centring. The vaults are constructed of stone, only six inches thick at the apex. Except for the main dome, all the other vaults have a double roof. All surfaces were covered with decorative stucco. The building was used as a garden palace for receiving and entertaining embassies from other kingdoms, and was also the setting for poetry recitations.6 It was never used as a permanent residence. From inception to completion, it was the centre of court intrigues, lavish banquets, and diplomatic overtures. The account of its design and construction can be partially reconstructed from historical documents and building measurements. This history provides critical insights into the transmission of architectural design and also demonstrates the potency of architecture to legitimise a dynasty. This case study has two not entirely unrelated objectives: to locate the monument with respect to ‘memory’ and use, and to trace the origins of the design. The building itself is octagonal and cross-axially symmetrical with monumental pishtaq portals reminiscent of Central Asian and Persianate examples [Figure 4.3]. The building is completely post-Timurid in design with its cross-axial plan and groups of corner rooms flanking the iwans on every fac ade. Yet no palatial structure of a similar scale survives in Iran or Central Asia. In plan, scale, and monumentality, the Farah Bakhsh Bagh is comparable to Humayun’s tomb in Nizamuddin and the Taj Mahal in

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Figure 4.3

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Plan of Farah Bakhsh Bagh.

Agra, preceding the latter by around 50 years. The building is set on a raised platform which was surrounded by a large pool of water, a design that seems to be more South Asian than any of the other sites. This feature that is shared with the tomb of Sher Shah Sur (d. 1545 CE ) at Sasaram is not to be seen anywhere in Central Asia or Iran. Currently there is a strip of raised ground that makes the palace building accessible, but one presumes that boats would have been required to traverse this large pool. A series of fountains and connecting pipes carry water inside the building. It is possible to trace glass strips inlaid in the floor that visually connect all the small pools of water in various parts of the building through straight lines.7 The water is brought to the site through the Bhingar and the Bhandara aqueducts from a few kilometres away. The centre of the building is a large triple-storied domed hall, with a central fountain [Figure 4.4]. The wall construction comprises a rubble core with ashlar masonry on the outer face. Large sections of timber are found in the wall at regular intervals, tying the whole building together. All the openings are framed by wood, including the lintels, which are wooden [Figure 4.5]. Vestigial traces of shutters are found on these frames in the form of postholes for hinges. The decorative elements on the ceilings and vaults are beautifully finished in incised and moulded stucco [Figure 4.6].

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Figure 4.4

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Farah Bakhsh Bagh, section.

The description of the site in the Maasir-i Alamgiri, written for Aurangzeb in the late seventeenth century, is: The garden of the Farah Bakhsh is 2000 zirʿa in length and breadth [alike] which makes the area 278 bighas. In the middle of it is a reservoir 528 zirʿa [square], which makes the area 19 bighas. An underground channel brings water to it from the foot of the hill. In the centre of the reservoir is a lofty and wonderful building in two stories, having 160 hujra [rooms] and a high cupola. Archers practice shooting at its summit.8 The Farah Bakhsh Bagh was completed in 1774 – 75 CE , according to the Tarikh-i Firishtah,9 but a chronogram from an inscription translated by M. Nazim gives the date as 1576 – 77 CE [Inscription 4]. This inscription is fixed on Changiz Khan’s palace, currently the District Court (sadly slated for demolition), but obviously belonged to this garden palace.10 Soon after its construction, it was ordered razed and Salabat Khan II, the accomplished prime minister of Murtaza Nizam Shah I, was commissioned to rebuild it. It was finally completed in its current form in 1583 – 84 CE ,11 which is confirmed on the basis of chronogram in a verse noted in Tarikh-i Firishtah.12 The Burha¯n-i Maasir narrates the construction of the Farah Bakhsh Bagh as follows: At this time, Niʾmat Khan Semnani, who had been the ruler of that country and had been raised from the corner of humility to the summit of honour, being appointed to the post of chashnigar with the title of Niʾmat Khan, and whose power and influence

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Figure 4.5

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

Stucco plaster finishes in Farah Bakhsh Bagh.

with the king increased daily, was ordered to lay out a garden and dig a watercourse. In a very short time he had laid out a splendid garden and built in it a fine garden house, but those at court who envied him represented to the king that the design of the garden house consisted of a series of triangles. The king at once ordered it

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Figure 4.6

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Timber framing in the construction of Farah Bakhsh Bagh.

to be destroyed, and entrusted the construction of a new garden house to Salabat Khan.13 We have no surviving remains of the demolished palace, and the new one stands on the same site. It has been suggested that the earlier palace was of much smaller dimensions, if the four pools around the palace are thought of as being too close, though this claim cannot be substantiated.14 It is thought that there might have been more buildings around the pool, and some remnants have been recorded on the northeastern side,15 but I could not locate them. These reported ruins might well have been the outhouses constructed later under the British, who used the lands for experimental factories and later military exercises.16 This garden was used for entertaining diplomatic missions, and the Burha¯n-i Maasir cites poetry composed on these occasions.17 Faizi, Akbar’s envoy to Ahmadnagar, mentioned Farah Bagh in his correspondence.18 The Mughal scion Shah Jahan lived in Ahmadnagar and saw the Farah Bagh when he rebelled against his father in the early seventeenth century, leading to the speculation that the structure was one of the inspirations for the design of the Taj Mahal.19 However, both these buildings, along with Humayun’s tomb and others, are just

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reflections of the common design patterns that were floating in the postTimurid Islamic world, as can be substantiated by the commonalities between a range of buildings, from Humayun’s tomb to the Hasht Bihisht palace in Isfahan. Then, there is only one mention of the Farah Bagh in the correspondence of the later Marathas, in 1759 CE ,20 after which it shows up in the administrative documents of the British, who acquired Ahmadnagar from the Maratha Peshwa in 1820 CE .21 The Burha¯n-i Maasir, as mentioned earlier, has referred to the earlier garden palace that was demolished because it was ‘triangular’ (musalsat). The term probably meant triangular in elevation, referring to some form of gable or pyramidal construction. It cannot refer to the planning, which could not have been perceived visually as such. The mention of triangular structures immediately brings to mind buildings from the Bahmani period as also within the kingdom of Ahmadnagar: Buildings at Firuzabad, a tomb near the Saudagar Gumbaz at Junnar, a tomb in the Bagh Rauza complex in Ahmadnagar, and the Bahmani palace in the fort of Daulatabad. A garden pavilion converted to a tomb in the Ambarkot at Daulatabad has a form similar to this Bahmani palace.22 Some of the buildings at Bidar (Ashtur), such as Kalimullah and Waliullah’s tomb, have similar forms, but the pyramidal tops are eight-faceted. The only patronage of such construction, barring the Bahmani and Nizam Shah dominions, is at Mandu: pavilions on the roof of the Jahaz Mahal are similar in form. The square pyramidal roofs were all built from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century and are never seen before or after this period, though they are in use in Ottoman provinces.23 I suggest that the geometrical term ‘triangular’ (musalsat), used to describe the demolished structure that was in Farah Bagh earlier, refers to this form of roof construction. This shape became unacceptable – whether for reasons of association with a specific sect or for more esoteric beliefs, we are unable to say. It could also have been connected with a literary ‘memory’ that, after this period, would not allow this pyramidal form to proclaim royalty. We cannot definitively conjecture what the demolished ‘triangular’ palace building in the Farah Bagh looked like, but it certainly failed to pass the test of popular memory regarding what a garden pavilion befitting a king should be. A possible reason for this failure could be the slippage between the local idiom of construction and an imported architectural memory.

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Hasht Bihisht Bagh The Hasht Bihisht Bagh is a site that is five kilometres north of the fort of Ahmadnagar, close to the village of Savedi. The complex is quite large and now set in the midst of a fast-growing suburb of the city of Ahmadnagar. This garden and palace complex was reportedly enlarged, but may even have been built, under the patronage of Burhan Nizam Shah I, on the site of an earlier garden palace called Faiz Bakhsh Bagh [Figure 4.7]. The palace complex has two surviving components, aligned to a large octagonal pool [Figure 4.8]. The first is an octagonal pavilion set in the midst of this pool. There are remnants of fountains in every arched side of this pavilion. The octagonal pool was supplied water by means of underground pipes from the Pimpalgaon and Shendi aqueducts. According to some accounts, the eight outer sides of the pool were planted with flowerbeds of different flowers.24 The stepped platforms that ring the pool are discernible even today. To reach the central pavilion one would either have to wade or cross by boat. The only

Figure 4.7

Hasht Bihisht Bagh, Ahmadnagar.

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Figure 4.8

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Plan of Hasht Bihisht Bagh.

comparable building from this period in the Deccan is a palace at Achalpur (Ellichpur) called Hauz Katora, most likely built under the Imad Shahs, if not the Nizam Shahs themselves. The other component of this complex is a large gateway and attached palace, set on the banks of the octagonal pool [Figure 4.9]. This was originally just a tripartite hall, containing a staircase leading to the rooftop. Added on the eastern side was a set of private chambers; the addition is obvious when one sees the abutment of the new structure against the old tripartite hall. These chambers contain a large private bath, most likely for royal use. According to historical accounts, Hasht Bihisht Bagh is where Murtaza Nizam Shah I (also known as Murtaza Divana or Mad Murtaza) retired for 12 years and these additional chambers would have been constructed as his private quarters in that period. We know of Murtaza Nizam Shah I retiring to this site because of the following narratives: In the year 984 (1576), the Emperor Akbur advancing to the frontier of the Deccan to hunt, the King moved to the north, with a few troops, but in a covered litter, to observe his motions, and to be in readiness to defend his dominions, and

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Figure 4.9 Plan of entrance pavilion and octagonal pavilion, Hasht Bihisht Bagh.

would have marched to attack the Emperor, had he not been prevented by the entreaties of his nobility . . . . In the rainy season the King went to Dowlutabad; and on visiting the tombs of the saints he was seized with religious enthusiasm. One day, unknown even to Sahib Khan, he withdrew from his apartment, and was going alone on foot towards the tomb of Imam Ruza, when he was recognised by a countryman, who gave information to the minister, and it was with much difficulty they prevailed on him to return. After this, on coming back to Ahmudnuggur, he took up his residence in the garden of Husht Behist.25 Some days later the king returned from Daulatabad to Ahmadnagar, where he took up his dwelling in the old garden of the watercourse and there remained for 12 years in seclusion and retirement, in no way concerning himself directly with the affairs of state.26 Around the buildings was the the beautiful garden of the old kariz completed by Malik Ahmad Tabrizi.27 The whole complex is briefly described in the Maasir-i Alamgiri:

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Bihisht Bagh is 210 zirʿa in length and breadth alike which makes the area 100 bighas. In the middle is an octagonal reservoir, which is also fed with canal water. In the centre is a building now in ruins. On the bank of the reservoir are a charming building and a neat Turkish bath [hammam], fit for the residence of elegant people.28 Within the grounds of this palace is the only known large ba¯dgir (wind catcher) in the Deccan, which supplied air to the underground chambers. It is attached to a subterranean structure now known as the Shahi hamma¯mkha¯nah, which was most likely a sarda¯b or an a¯b anba¯r, a subterranean structure designed for seasonal habitation in the summer [Figure 4.10]. Unfortunately, this building is being used as a garbage dump and is inaccessible, but one sketch of the interior of this building survives from the mid-twentieth century.29 It is difficult to conjecture or trace the relationship of this building to the palace.

Figure 4.10

Badgir close to the Hasht Bihisht Bagh.

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The date of the Hasht Bihisht can be arrived at by corroborating these textual sources with the archaeological data. If the additional rooms attached to the palace were constructed late in Murtaza Nizam Shah I’s period to provide for his royal residential arrangements, it is very likely that Lakkad Mahal itself was built earlier. Given that Burhan Nizam Shah, who is credited with building the palace, came of age only around 1520 CE and was succeeded in 1553 CE by Husain Nizam Shah I, who is credited with improvements to the fort and its palaces within, the dates for this site are sometime between 1525 and 1555 CE . We can deduce that this palace in its current form was constructed sometime late in the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah I or early in that of Husain Nizam Shah I. Murtaza’s residence in this garden, when the additional rooms were added, can be dated to the last third of the sixteenth century. Contemporary histories mention that the garden was built by Burhan Nizam Shah I,30 but it is likely that the whole site was reworked under Murtaza Nizam Shah I when it was made his primary residence. The construction technology employing the T-shaped tiles and joists with struts, found at other sites, is also used here [Figure 4.11]. The Lakkad Mahal, another monumental structure is within half a kilometre east of the Hasht Bihisht Bagh, a palatial building of

Figure 4.11 Construction detail of roof, Hasht Bihisht Bagh and Manzarsumbah.

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unknown provenance within the same campus (now heavily urbanised). A grand structure with pishtaqs in three directions, and comprises a large hall with several smaller chambers on the sides [Figure 4.12]. There are traces of gardens surrounding it but it is extremely fragmentary, except for the wells which would have supplied them water. Now in ruins, the structure recalls buildings like the Timurid palaces, and carries some extant plaster decoration with common Nizam Shahi motifs inside.

Manzarsumbah Fifteen kilometres to the north of the city of Ahmadnagar (as the crow flies), along the historic road to Daulatabad, is the site known locally as Manzarsumbah.31 Here, the road descends from the high plateau of Ahmadnagar to the lower plains toward Daulatabad. At this point, a hill juts out from the main Garbhagiri range, almost independent with scarps on all sides, but for a narrow connection with the Ahmadnagar plateau. The singular access to this hill across the narrow isthmus is easy to guard,

Figure 4.12

Lakkad Mahal.

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and the vantage is convenient for a watch on the Daulatabad plains, guarding the pass from plateau to plains [Figure 4.13]. I suggest that the name for this site was originally Manzar-i Subah (literally ‘vantage for the province’) and that its function was not only as a strategic lookout and an early warning system, but also as a pleasure resort. (There are two more sites in the modern state of Maharashtra with the same name, thus confirming that this is a generic functional name for the site, in keeping with its role.)32 Strategically located on a hill just outside the capital of Ahmadnagar, its primary system of water collection and storage is a series of four large excavated water tanks located midway up the hillside. The Nizam Shahs, however, integrated this storage system with a Persianate idea. The remains of the palace complex include a large tank, a hammam, and a system of fountains and pools that suggest the merger of watermanagement technologies [Figure 4.14]. An ingenious system of hydraulic works conveys water from water tanks excavated in the cliffs halfway up the hillside. This water is then used to fill up a very large tank beside the palace. A system of fountains and water channels is also seen around the hilltop area. The plan shows

Figure 4.13

View of the palace buildings at Manzarsumbah.

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Figure 4.14

Plan of the Manzarsumbah site.

the spatial relationships between the various components of the palace complex, including a hammam. Very little is known about this site, but the scanty historical evidence (it is mentioned in the Burha¯n-i Maasir and Aurangzeb’s Maasir-i Alamgiri) points to royal usage. The description in the Burha¯n-i Maasir can be corroborated from the surviving evidence: From there on, he [Murtaza Nizam Shah I] went on to the village of Manjaresna situated in a valley full of beautiful springs and covered with verdure, with fountains springing from the green hill side. Salabat Khan had artificial tanks formed both in the valley and on the hill tops, and in them fountains played, and the tanks were surrounded by beautiful buildings. Without exaggeration the village is one of the best worth seeing [sic] in the world and there can be few so pleasant in the world.33 The Maasir-i Alamgiri, which was written almost a century later, also describes the site: Five kos from the fort is a halting place [manzil], known as Manjar Samba or Manzil Saba. It is said that a high building has been

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constructed in the waist of the hill. The fountain of the garden leaps up of itself incessantly to a height of 100 yards, through the force of the water that comes from a spring in the hill.34 The hill is a typical Deccan trap formation, made of layers of basalt. This formation consists of layers of compact and amygdaloidal basalt. The porous and crumbling amygdaloidal basalt is sandwiched between layers of compact basalt, and is therefore a very convenient stratum in which to excavate living water tanks. This was common in the Buddhist monastic settlements along trade routes in the first millennium CE , and most cave complexes contain such water tanks. Many of the medieval forts in the Western Ghats were also built along these trade routes, on the same hills where such tanks had already been excavated for travellers and monks. This circumstance ensured that water was already provided for, and therefore only battlements and fortifications had to be constructed in order to enable the fort to defend and support a garrison. Junnar (Shivneri), Lohogad, Pali, are some of the examples of such medieval forts built on pre-existent early medieval trade routes with excavated water cisterns. The architectural fragments at Manzarsumbah are not all from the Nizam Shahi period. Some of the walls and bastions are identifiably earlier in their construction. One of the main characteristics of walls from that early period is their corbelled battering, along with the angular cantoning. Both these features also are seen in a structure strategically located at the chokehold to the site and also in some of the fortification walls circumscribing the top of the hill, unless these features are attributed to construction guilds with an antiquated architectural vocabulary. It is possible that the hill was occupied even before the Yadavas in the twelfth century, but there is yet no direct archaeological evidence to prove it. However, in the pious Hindu geography of the region, the area is connected with the lore of the Nath pantha.35 There are also homologies drawn between some of the locations in the vicinity and mythical place names from the Puranas. These connections suggest that the location was possibly well positioned in the religious and symbolic landscape, thus endowing it with a certain value that would legitimise any king who built there and controlled the site. In this area, the gullies that lead from the top of the plateau to the plains of Daulatabad are fed by natural springs, a feature that made this area most

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agreeable through many centuries.36 The site was therefore not limited to being strategic and military; it would also have been a symbolic and recreational venue. Apart from the fortification walls circumscribing the top of the hill, there are three extant building complexes atop this hill, and together they make a coherent layout: the ‘water tower’, the ‘palace complex’ and the ‘gatehouse’ buildings. These labels are not historic and are being used only for convenience. All three buildings are built out of the same Deccan trap that the hill is made from, and it is likely that the stone excavated for the large pool in the palace complex was used in the construction. The entrance to the hilltop is guarded through the gatehouse. The main gateway to the outside, which faces west, is flanked by two porches that could be described as guardrooms. Once inside, on the northern side, another grand doorway leads in the direction of the palace complex on the hilltop plateau [Figure 4.15]. The eastern and southern sides of the gatehouse have two subspaces that would have housed the administrative apparatus verifying and inspecting the

Figure 4.15

Gatehouse at the site of Manzarsumbah.

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people who were to be let in. The function of this building as a security device is confirmed by the stone hinge-sockets for these two grand doorways, which indicate that both doors opened to the inside, thus allowing the people manning this post to control the flow of people in both directions. The main space in this building has a masterfully crafted stone dome, the arch-nets demonstrating the high skill of the stonemasons and the designers, both of whom understood the principles of the vaulting [Figure 4.16]. The stone blocks in the ceiling are modular in the way bricks would be used, thus confirming that the designers were familiar with a Persianate building tradition and that the masons were local and proficient in stone carving. There is an internal flight of stairs leading to the flat rooftop from the southeast corner of the building. The module of the staircase is comparable to sets of stairs in two other palace buildings built by the Nizam Shahs – Lakkad Mahal and Kalawantinicha Mahal. The tooling of the stone, and the size of the stone blocks are also comparable to other buildings with a verified Nizam Shahi provenance, e.g., the walls of the Mahakot at Daulatabad or the Shahi Hammam in Savedi near Ahmadnagar. The elevational composition of three small windows along the external wall of the staircase is also peculiar to the architecture of the Nizam Shahs. Of particular interest are the arrangements for the thresholds into the gatehouse. The ends are made of stone, with notches to receive the actual horizontal element. It is possible that the actual threshold was removable, perhaps for pragmatic or maybe for ceremonial reasons, and that it would be replaced for different occasions [Figure 4.17]. The construction of the arches leading into the building suggest that some of the stone masons were extremely proficient at understanding the principle of the arch, and could experiment with non-uniform voussoirs. This method of arch construction is common throughout the kingdom, and can also be seen in the Gates at Tisgaon. The choice of amygdaloidal basalt for the actual voussoired stones, as opposed to the use of compact basalt for the ordinary dressed blocks, also suggests an understanding of the materials and the economy of carving them, indicating the employment of local tradespeople. It is very likely that this building would have been plastered on the outside, a feature that is lost today. The internal spaces still retain some fragments of incised plaster.

Figure 4.16

Stone vaulting of the gatehouse, Manzarsumbah.

Figure 4.17

Threshold of the gatehouse, Manzarsumbah.

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About 110 metres to the north of the gatehouse is the palace complex, and part of the distance is traversed by a very wide flight of stairs. The palace complex comprises a large pool (around 37 metres on every side and two metres deep), a palace structure, a mosque, and a hammam, all arranged on a large platform [Figure 4.18]. This set of structures is modelled and planned as an integrated unit; the only jarring element is the mosque, which I suggest was added, perhaps later in the century. The enormous pool plays into a local trope that such pools were designed for bathing elephants – an apocryphal story applied to all sites with large pools! Narrow triangular steps at the four corners of the pool do not support this narrative, and this pool was clearly intended as a storage device for supplying the hammam with water for the better part of the dry season, apart from being a recreational site and sight itself. This pool was fed by rainwater and also by an elaborate mechanism of drawing water from the cisterns halfway down the cliffs on the northern side of the hill. The pool also uses two differently textured stones for the edging of the paving around it, alternating them – an aesthetically driven choice of material.

Figure 4.18

Buildings.

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The palace is of a modest size, and the northern side has a patio flanked by two rooms, octagonal on the inside and rectilinear outside. The eastern room has a fireplace and the terracotta flue is diverted through the walls and given vent on the second floor, a most unusual feature for this part of India. On the southern side, corresponding with these rooms and the patio, are three other spaces. The southwest corner is a small patio open on two sides, and the rest has not survived well enough to hazard a reconstruction. On the southeast corner is a staircase leading to the upper story. The redundantly thick floor slabs have large timber beams of crosssection 20 by 20 centimetres placed across the shorter span. This size seems to have been a common module in this region, and other buildings also have beams of the same dimensions: e.g., the Farah Bagh, the Hasht Bihisht Bagh, and the Bahmani palace in Daulatabad Fort. Between these beams, which are anchored in the walls, is straight timber strutting. The gap between these struts is filled with T-shaped bricks and the whole assembly is then covered over with lime-based concrete. Large square bricks cover the whole surface and more timber and concrete complete the floor, over which the original finishes were probably laid. The stone masonry is very fine and the whole building must have been covered with incised and moulded lime plaster, of which only traces survive. The buildings on the northern escarpment of the hill are directly above the excavated water tanks. The primary structure is a tower, which was instrumental in lifting water to the hilltop. There are a series of galleries where one can sit, protected from the elements, to enjoy the panoramic views facing north. Structurally, the Lakkad Mahal is very similar to the palace at Manzarsumbah, thus dating the palace at Manzarsumbah to the same period, using the same techniques of wood-framed ceilings with T-shaped tiles. The gatehouse at Manzarsumbah is also similar to the Lakkad Mahal in elevation, with the visual element of three small arched windows at a higher level. It would therefore not be wrong to suggest that the dates of the palace complex at Manzarsumbah would be the same as those of Hasht Bihisht Bagh, somewhere from 1525 to 1555 CE . This site is not noted in any of the archaeological surveys or maps prepared by the government and is losing the battle to weather and villagers, who try to salvage the dressed stone and timber.

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Palace near Bhatavadi (Kalawantinicha Mahal) This site is around 20 kilometres to the southeast of Ahmadnagar, on the road to Bid, half a kilometre past the village of Bhatavadi. Nothing is recorded about this building site, nor is it mentioned by name in any historical texts. The site is not marked on the ‘inch maps’ of the Survey of India (called such because the scale is set at one inch ¼ one mile) which usually make a note of ruins. This site may be identified as the fort of Bhatavadi (also spelt Bhatodi or Bhatodee), mention of which is made in the famous battle of the same name fought by Malik Ambar in 1624 CE .37 The battle is described by Fuzuni Astarabadi in the Futu¯hat-i-A¯dilsha¯hi: ‘Ambar, seeing himself surrounded by the tempest of calamity, left the road and with a few soldiers entered the strong fort of Bhatavadi, and gave repose to his soldiers. By [letting out] the water of the lake of Bhatavadi, he barred the path before the Mughal army.’38 This battle is described in more detail below. There are no other fortifications around the village of Bhatavadi, and this hill would have been the only strategic place to have a fortified garrison, situated within the oxbow of the Keli River. The lake of Bhatavadi and the masonry dam that was breached is well recorded by the British officers who repaired it.39 Bhatavadi, with its neighbouring villages of Pargaon and Daulat Wadgaon, is located approximately 16 kilometres southeast of Ahmadnagar city as the crow flies. Today a small settlement of a few thousand people, it is notable for a dam that was repaired by the British in the mid-nineteenth century.40 The dam can store at least 4.22 million cubic metres of water.41 This dam was the key element in the battle of Bhatavadi, as was a fortified palace complex, which is currently just across the border from Ahmadnagar, in Bid district. This is likely the ‘fort of Bhatavadi’ mentioned in the Futu¯hat-iA¯dilsha¯hi, as surface surveys reveal no evidence of other fortifications or large-scale construction in the vicinity of this area. Daulat Wadgaon, which is further to the east, has a fortified mansion (locally known as a gadhi in Marathi) but this is demonstrably a later construction, dating from the eighteenth century if not later. The dale with the palace complex would have been the only strategic place to have a fortified garrison, situated close to the confluence of the Manjira and its tributary Keli, where the Nizam Shahi forces could have sought refuge.42

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The lake of Bhatavadi and the masonry dam that was breached can be reconstructed on the basis of the reports by British irrigation officials who repaired it.43 The dam was intended to provide water to the village of Tisgaon, which was one of the estates of Salabat Khan (d. 1589), the prime minister of the Nizam Shahs, who is credited with the construction of the dam.44 The fort/palace at Bhatavadi is not unlike the fortified military/royal encampments in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, perhaps partially along the lines of Firuzabad on the Bhima, built by Firuz a couple of centuries earlier.45 At least two large rectangular concentric walls enclose an open arena, which has four large pavilions/ palaces on its cardinal axes. Its current name, Kalawantinicha Mahal (‘Courtesans’ Palace’ in Marathi), is commonly applied to all such structures with unknown patronage or ownership, including a caravanserai at Chaul. It is in a ruinous state, but enough survives to conjecture its original scope and some of its functions. This architectural complex has imposing pavilions and would have been used as a palatial resort, in addition to being a place for assembling a garrison, martial entertainment, and military reviews [Figure 4.19]. It comprises a large field, bounded by a wall, with pavilions on all four sides. The peculiar positioning of the northern pavilion, just

Figure 4.19

Plan of Kalawantinicha Mahal, near Bhatavadi.

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outside the enclosure wall, with its lavish decoration, suggest that it was used by the king or ranking personages. The rooftops of the pavilions command views of the enclosed field. The roofs of two pavilions survive, on the north and the south, and are accessible by stairways. On the northern side of the northern pavilion is a porch, and it faces the site of a large enclosed garden. The garden contains two pools of water on axis with the building. The pools have pipes leading to them, but the origin of the water-supply system cannot be traced. It is very likely that the water was brought here from the old masonry dam of Bhatavadi, since this site is downstream. Alternatively, there might have been a system of water connected with the Keli River, which flows around the east and the south of the complex. The layout suggests that the northern pavilion was the most important one, set apart for royal use [Figure 4.20]. Stylistically and in construction technology, the buildings resemble the gatehouse at Manzarsumbah, and portions of Hasht Bihisht Bagh.46 The fields around the buildings have a number of small water tanks, and scattered around are large stones with holes in them [Figure 4.21]. The former were probably troughs, and the latter were for tethering horses, elephants, and other animals or to aid in setting up tents.47 Both uses are associated with a large garrison. There are suggestions of larger compound walls around the area, but they cannot be completely traced. Fragmentary vestigial remnants of outer enclosure walls are not adequate

Figure 4.20 Plan of northern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal near Bhatavadi.

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Figure 4.21 Large stones with tether-holes around Kalawantinicha Mahal.

to permit any conjectural reconstruction. The scale of the complex is enormous, but there are no extant hammams or other structures that suggest a primary residential use for the site. The eastern and western pavilions are in very ruinous states, and little can be discerned about their plans. However, the quality of masonry and the plaster finishes in all these buildings, along with the scale of the complex, suggest a royal patronage [Figure 4.22]. Stylistically and in the construction technology, the buildings resemble the gatehouse at Manzarsumbah and also portions of Hasht Bihisht Bagh. It is possible to surmise that this site was the location battle of Bhatavadi (1624 CE ), a pivotal event in the history of the Deccan. A combined army of the Mughals and Bijapur suffered a large defeat, but more importantly, at the centre of this encounter were two figures responsible for changing the region. In this battle, Malik Ambar (d. 1626 CE ) and Shahaji Bhonsale (d. 1664 CE ) displayed gallantry which ostensibly ensured that their policies and successors would reshape the western Deccan. Malik Ambar was then the de facto ruler of the Nizam Shahi state. Shahaji Bhonsale championed the cause of the

Figure 4.22a

Eastern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal.

Figure 4.22b

Northern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal.

Figure 4.22c

Southern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal.

Figure 4.22d

Western pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal.

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sultanate for a decade after Malik Ambar’s death. He was eventually forced into an uncomfortable situation because of a truce between the Adil Shahs of Bijapur and the Mughals, circumstances that partially led to the emergence of the Maratha state under his son, Shivaji (b. 1630, d. 1680 CE ). The battle of Bhatavadi ensured a new lease of life for the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs until the Mughals were able to completely dismantle the remnants of the kingdom in 1636 CE . The battle has been described in lesser or greater detail in many Persian, Marathi, and Sanskrit chronicles, such as the Futu¯hat-i-A¯dilsha¯hi by Fuzuni Astarabadi (ca. 1640–43 CE ),48 the Iqba¯lna¯mah-i-Jaha¯ngı¯rı¯ of Muʾtamad Khan,49 the Ra¯dha¯ma¯dhavavila¯sacampuh of Jayarama Pindye (c. 1654 CE ),50 the S´ivabha¯rata by Parama¯nanda (c. 1674 CE )51 and the Jedhe S´aka¯vali (compiled through the seventeenth century).52 The physical site of the battle and the architectural fragments in the area have never been studied. Surprisingly enough, inch maps of the Survey of India, which usually mark ruins and remains, do not record the architecture around this site.53 Here I propose that the landscape of the battle can be reconstructed using historical and archaeological sources, confirming both the location and the narrative. The architectural remains, climatic details, contemporary or near-contemporary accounts of the battle, later recantations of the event, colonial accounts of the re-appropriation of man-made features central to the battle, and the site as seen today are all important data that provide a coherent approximation of the events as they happened in the early seventeenth century. In 1624 CE , Malik Ambar (representing the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs) had to flee toward his own dominions after exacting tribute from Golconda and then unsuccessfully attacking Bijapur. He was pursued by an Adil Shahi army and followed by Mullah Muhammad Lari, commanding a joint contingent of Adil Shahi and Mughal troops. The Mughals were in possession of the fort and city of Ahmadnagar, while Malik Ambar controlled large parts of the surrounding countryside to the east. The Keli River was between the fort of Bhatavadi and the combined army camp of the Adil Shahs and the Mughals.54 There was a dam on the river a couple of kilometres upstream, built by Salabat Khan. When Malik Ambar was being pursued, the narratives mention that he retreated into the large fortified complex close to Bhatavadi. His strength was the territory and the knowledge of the terrain, allowing him to pursue guerrilla tactics against a superior enemy. Cutting off supply lines and

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launching surprise attacks were his strategies, a legacy that became the established warring modes of the Marathas. Malik Ambar’s masterful stroke, however, was breaching the dam on the Manjira. This resulted in a quagmire, and the supplies of the combined forces of the Mughals and the Bijapur army were seriously hampered. Their cavalry could not be mobilised to travel across the area toward where Malik Ambar and his court were camping. Other incidental factors also assisted him, including heavy rain, squabbles among the Adil Shahi and Mughal commanders, and – consequently – a large number of demoralised defectors. Eventually most of Malik Ambar’s adversaries retreated, and the event was considered an important victory. The Bhatavadi dam is upstream from this location, about two kilometres to the northwest of the palace [Figure 4.23]. The battle was fought in September 1624 CE ,55 which would have been late in the monsoons, thus ensuring that the water levels in the dam were near maximum and the ground was saturated with water, in concordance with the descriptions in the Futu¯hat-i-A¯dilsha¯hi.56 The material evidence on

Figure 4.23 the British.

Bhatavadi dam, built under the Nizam Shahs and repaired by

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the ground suggests that the story of the battle of Bhatavadi, which was won with the assistance of an artificial flood, holds water. We can be reasonably sure that the fort of Bhatavadi is the palace complex of the Nizam Shahs, currently referred to as the ‘Mahal’ and with no local memory of its history. It would be useful if excavation archaeology is undertaken at the site.

Architecture of Palaces for the Sultan The remarkable thing about the palaces of the Nizam Shahs is their variety in scale and design, unlike many of the palaces in Bijapur that bear the imprint of a similar design, such as Gagan Mahal or Asar Mahal. Stylistically, the Nizam Shahi palaces share a number of traits but have significant differences in their use. Farah Bakhsh Bagh provided an imposing setting for the entertainment for diplomatic guests, as is suggested by the monumental scale of the building set in a huge pool of water and confirmed by texts. The poetic contests that took place in Farah Bakhsh and the poetry that was written in its praise stress the importance of this building in the cultural and social environment of the Nizam Shahs.57 Hasht Bihisht Bagh was a palace complex built to suit a more personal, intimate scale. It was used primarily as a residence, at least for Murtaza Nizam Shah I. Manzarsumbah occupied a strategic vantage point from which one could observe the important route to Daulatabad. It was a fortified military outpost with a large palace complex. The king would enjoy the views of the plains toward Daulatabad, thus symbolically commanding and appropriating the whole area under his domain. The complex at Bhatavadi was an arena for military reviews and perhaps some sporting activity (elephant fights, etc.). The four large pavilions around it were meant for the king and his court to view the events inside the courtyard. An important feature that binds all these palaces as a cluster, apart from dynastic pedigree and stylistic affinity, is the construction technology that used timber in extensive quantities, though not always for structural reasons. The method of timber construction is reminiscent of seismic zones, and its large-scale adoption in this region from the sixteenth century onwards is suggestive of two reasons: the imitation of an imported construction technology that required a significant use of wood, or the expediency of construction required by a regime that had to

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raise grand architecture quickly. The latter was a requirement of the later Marathas as well, ensuring the survival of this technique of quickly raising buildings with wooden frames. Two of the palaces show unique features in the construction of their roofs. At Manzarsumbah and in the Lakkad Mahal, T-shaped tiles were slotted on the struts between large timber beams. Large bricks was then placed on top of this assembly and then overlaid with layers of lime mortar and bricks. The top was then finished with a lime plaster to create a flat roof. This suggests a local idiom of architecture, conveyed either by gesture (in trade practices through guilds and teams of workmen) or by a paper-based transfer of knowledge. We do not have any real evidence of the latter in the sixteenth-century Deccan.58 The former is more likely, given the absence of any documentary internalisation of architecture in this region at the time. It is difficult to state that the Nizam Shahs were executing a well-articulated proposal of regional harmony, thus promoting a conscious melding of regional construction with their imported ideals of kingship and royalty. Many of the building practices were based on accident and convenience, but the success of this architecture often encouraged the rulers to understand it as a formula for good function and legitimisation of their regime. All the palaces share a planning principle of the royal pavilion or the primary areas facing north, a useful principle, as they never face directly into the harsh sun. All the palaces and even other buildings associated with the court are now bare and naked, because they have lost all their furnishings and soft landscape. It can be quite difficult to imagine what the palaces would have looked like furnished with rugs, tapestries, and other fabrics that were used for utilitarian and aesthetic reasons. Unfortunately, as noted earlier, none of the paintings produced in Ahmadnagar has any details of the architecture or furnishings. The trees and plants that were consciously planted around the palaces for significant reasons have disappeared, and the replacements, if any, are not usually historically congruous.

CHAPTER 5 MOSQUES:PIETY AND PRAYER

One of the commonest architectural programmes, mosques are ubiquitous and dispersed throughout the kingdom of Ahmadnagar. In the city of Ahmadnagar itself, there is no large congregational mosque because of several factors, which include the Shiʾi faith of the Nizam Shahs, the theological debates over Jamiʾ mosques, the close ties of the Ahmadnagar sultans with the Safavids, and the peculiar mode of city planning chosen by the rulers.1 Unusually different from the other Deccan sultanates, the capital of the Nizam Shahs did not have a Jamiʾ mosque, the large congregational space where proclamations of sovereignty would be made every Friday. Apart from the mosques in the forts of Daulatabad and Parenda, where larger mosques were built by rulers other than the Nizam Shahs (Ala-ud-din Khilji and Malik Ambar, respectively), there are no large mosques in the kingdom. However, all city wards and even rural areas have smaller mosques, usually named after a patron, a locality, or the community they served. The mosque has been thought of as the centre of gravity for politics as well as religion,2 but in Ahmadnagar it seemed to have served a purely religious function. Within the city of Ahmadnagar, the construction of mosques was largely funded and carried out by court nobility. Even in the remote and rural areas of the kingdom, mosques were commonly patronised by local fief-holders and court nobility, as can be seen in Rohankheda, Fathkheda (now known as Sakharkherda) and the mosque at Dharur. At very few outlying sites, the king himself was the patron; the Kamani Mosque at Shivneri is one such instance, but even that was an important royal site and not really rural. Most of the mosques in this chapter have some form

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of inscription and some retain the names of the patrons, in common usage today. All the mosques under the Nizam Shahs are of very modest dimensions. Perhaps some of them had larger courtyards in front enabling slightly larger congregations, where other structures have been subsequently built. Even in such cases, the dimensions of the mosques suggest that there was no public mosque serving as a focus of authority, a location from where the king would have made public announcements and held ceremonial shows of power. This is completely in conformity with other details of the royal residential arrangements. The Nizam Shahs did not engage with the city, but left for Junnar or Daulatabad either for leisure or when Ahmadnagar was under attack. The mosques of Agha Bihzad, Damdi, Kali, and Kamani in and around Ahmadnagar are all of a similar plan, a single bay deep and three bays wide. The three bays form an open fac ade. The Qasim Khani mosque has a plan of the type shared by the two mosques built in the provincial fiefs of Rohankheda and Fathkheda, respectively, and also in the fort of Dharur, being two bays deep and three bays wide. Two of the notable exceptions are the mosque at Chaul and the mosque in the Bara Imam Kotla, which are both five bays wide and three bays deep. These would have served larger populations. The characteristic material of the mosques in the region is dressed stone with lime mortar. The decoration is either stucco or carved stone. Almost all the mosques are open to a courtyard on the eastern side, though in some cases, such as Qasim Khan’s mosque, the courtyard has later been constructed over. In all mosques, the eastern fac ades have a projecting cornice. The brackets for these cornices are derived from a tradition of woodwork, and it is possible to see the vestigial traces of wood joinery translated to stone in some of them. All the bays have vaulted ceilings, but the exterior roof may be flat or have only a single large dome placed centrally. In elevation, these mosques have small turrets (minarets) at the corners, and sometimes mark the ends of the mihra¯b niche. The central bay is often marked as small turrets connected by a flying arch, a feature noted as a marker of the Nizam Shahs.3 In this chapter are a small corpus of 12 mosques, to provide a sense of the different types, locations, and patrons. This is not a comprehensive catalogue of mosques built under the sultans of Ahmadnagar, but a representative sample.

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Soneri Mosque in the Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar) The Bara Imam Kotla was an educational institution just north of the city of Ahmadnagar. The Soneri Mosque is the large mosque on the western side of this complex. The Kotla comprised a large square walled courtyard with a central fountain and cloistered cells around the periphery [Figure 5.1]. All these vaulted rooms open inwards toward the courtyard. The mosque itself is five bays wide and three bays deep, the largest schema for a mosque built under the Nizam Shahs [Figure 5.2]. The mosque is constructed in finely dressed stones held together by lime mortar. The decorative details are all in carved stone, unlike many other buildings, where they are done in stucco. This mosque was the large congregational mosque for the compound of the academy and seminary. There is no doubt that it was built as a mosque and continues to function in that capacity, without the supporting educational institutions that made it an academy [Figure 5.3]. It was built in 1530– 31, as per inscriptions formerly lying loose in the complex [Inscriptions 5, 6].4 The whole complex is dated to the same period. On the basis of one of the inscriptions, the construction is attributed to one Sayyad Asad Amir Jafar. The presence of Shah Tahir al Husaini, the advisor of Burhan Nizam Shah I, seems to have been a

Figure 5.1

Plan of the Bara Imam Kotla complex.

Figure 5.2

Soneri mosque, Bara Imam Kotla, Ahmadnagar.

Figure 5.3

Interior of Soneri mosque, Bara Imam Kotla.

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Figure 5.4

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Entrance portal to the Bara Imam Kotla enclosure.

catalyst in the establishment and construction of this institution. We know that the Kotla was an important academic site under Burhan Nizam Shah I and his successors. It would have been used by all the resident scholars and visitors and housed many important theologians, doctors, and scholars. The former grandeur of the complex can be gauged by the large eastern entrance portal, with multiple rooms flanking the gateway [Figure 5.4]. The whole complex is occupied by squatters and is now in the midst of a large slum.

Agha Bihzad or Kari Masjid (Ahmadnagar) The mosque of Agha Bihzad, just outside the old walled city of Ahmadnagar, is in an area around a city gate (Zenda gate), close to the tomb of Bava Bangali. It is set in a large maidan, with its qibla wall against the open space [Figure 5.5]. The mosque is one bay deep and three bays wide [Figure 5.6]. The bays are not uniform. The central bay is wider than the others. The large central inner bay is surmounted by a very large dome. In plan and elevation, it is similar to the Husaini

Figure 5.5

Rear fac ade of the Agha Bihzad mosque, Ahmadnagar.

Figure 5.6

Plan of the Agha Bihzad mosque.

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Figure 5.7

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Husaini mosque, now the Kotwali Police Station.

Mosque (now the Kotwali main police station) [Figure 5.7]. The structure has recently been repaired and refinished, but the original building is built of dressed stone masonry. Now, concrete finishes have been added on the internal walls and the shapes of the arches have been modified [Figure 5.8]. This is one of the larger neighbourhood mosques in Ahmadnagar, and it cannot be determined if the size was a function of having a larger congregation than the others, or if it was just a statement of the growing clout of this particular nobleman at court. It is possible that the position of this mosque outside the city walls facilitated a larger congregation. The date of this mosque is uncertain, but it would appear that this is an early phase of Nizam Shahi mosque architecture, given the dimensions and proportions of this mosque, which are similar to those of

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Figure 5.8

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Interior of the Agha Bihzad mosque.

the Husaini Mosque and Kotwali Mosque (1536), built by Sayyed Husain Mashhadi in the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah I. The Husaini mosque also has two smaller domes over the flanking rooms. Yet some of the decorative features, such as the attached cantoning pilasters on the exterior of the mihra¯b, are of a later date. It is very likely that the minarets were added in a later period. The word kari might be derived from the local adaptation of the Persian word kariz, which means a watercourse. Perhaps the mosque was situated in a garden complex. The association of the name Agha Bihzad with this mosque is unclear.

Damdi Mosque (Bhingar) The mosque is located close to the village of Bhingar, which is within a couple of kilometres of Ahmadnagar fort [Figure 5.9]. It does not have any urban context, unless the area around it was densely inhabited in the period of its construction. It has an attached cemetery, but the graves are all from a later period. The mosque has a typical Ahmadnagar plan, being open-fronted, three bays wide, and two bays deep [Figure 5.10].

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Figure 5.9

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Damdi mosque, near Bhingar.

There is a small clearing in front of the mosque. The mosque has the motif of a flying arch flanked by two small minarets on top of the fac ade. The Damdi mosque is built with very finely carved basalt. The craftsmanship and detail are superb, resulting in one of the most ornate

Figure 5.10

Plan of Damdi mosque.

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Figure 5.11

The richly carved stone interior of the Damdi mosque.

mosques in the region [Figure 5.11]. Many of the ornamental details are to be found nowhere else in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar. The mosque advertises the qualities of the stone masons employed in the work. It is unclear if the mosque was regularly used for prayers, but the richness of the ornament would have made it an attraction even in the local community. Historically, it is claimed that this mosque was built in

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1565–67 by a noble named Sahir Khan. He charged all the workmen who were building the fort in stone a levy of a damdi (a small copper coin), and had this mosque constructed from that fund. The high level of craftsmanship associated with the mosque could be attributed to the patronage of stonemasons, if the story is not apocryphal. The Damdi mosque was not a functioning mosque for a while, but the pressures of urban development have now resulted in a small congregation and a caretaker. The graves around the site are from later centuries.

Mosque of Sanjar Khan (Dharur) This mosque is in the fort of Dharur, an important fort built in the midsixteenth century. This mosque is among the many discrete buildings within the fort and is located centrally [Figure 5.12]. The mosque follows the standard plan and is two bays deep and three bays wide [Figure 5.13]. It had a timber ceiling supported by timber columns, none of which survive anymore. However, it is possible to see the stone foundation blocks on which these timber columns were positioned [Figure 5.14].

Figure 5.12

Mosque of Sanjar Khan, Dharur.

Figure 5.13

Plan of the mosque of Sanjar Khan.

Figure 5.14 The ruinous interior of the mosque of Sanjar Khan with remnant column bases.

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The mosque is built of dressed stone blocks and decorated with lime plaster stucco. The timber used in the construction can be observed because of the negative spaces created in its absence. A flat roof could be conjectured because of the timber columns and framing in the building and the limitations of their load-bearing capacities, based on their size. This mosque was most likely built for the fort commander or for an important personage, given the small scale. It would have held only about fifty people in congregation, assuming that the small courtyard was also pressed into service. According to an inscription on the mosque, it was built by Sanjar Khan in 1573– 74, during the reign of Murtaza Nizam Shah I [Inscription 7].5 We know almost nothing about Sanjar Khan. The fort of Dharur was the first conquest of the young king Murtaza Nizam Shah I, and he stayed on in the fort for many months after he conquered it, perhaps commissioning new buildings. This mosque is very similar to many found in other forts, but the inscription makes it possible to date and attribute it securely.

Mahdavi Mosque (Rohankheda) The mosque is in the village of Rohankheda, which was an important battlefield through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries [Figure 5.15]. This site is geographically in Khandesh, and controls access to a pass that is on an important route from Malkapur to Buldhana. Today, the village is of little or no importance in terms of trade. The mosque is within an enclosure wall. The wall has vaulted spaces on the outside, which would have served as shops [Figure 5.16]. The mosque itself is the typical plan, two bays deep and threes bay wide [Figure 5.17]. The enclosed courtyard in front of the mosque has an octagonal pool. The gatehouse of the mosque is on the south and is very ornate, though in a ruinous state [Figure 5.18]. The little kiosks at the corners of the mosque are common with other mosques constructed late in the sixteenth century under Nizam Shahi rule. A mosque at Imampur, about 12 kilometres from Ahmadnagar on the Aurangabad highway, is very similar, except for the lack of a walled courtyard [Figure 5.19]. The mosque is constructed of stone and has beautifully carved decorative details. The inner walls are covered with wonderful calligraphy, done in unusual ink which shows only when the walls are daubed with a wet cloth. The roof is flat, except for a tall central dome covering the bay in front of the mihra¯b.

Figure 5.15

The mosque at Rohankheda.

Figure 5.16

Exterior of the enclosure walls of the mosque at Rohankheda.

Figure 5.17

Plan of the mosque at Rohankheda.

Figure 5.18

Gatehouse in the enclosure wall of the Rohankheda mosque.

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Figure 5.19

Mosque at Imampur, 10 km east of Ahmadnagar.

This must have been the large congregational and ceremonial mosque for the town, which was a garrison. There is also an eidgah just outside the village, which would have been the place of prayer for larger gatherings of troops [Figure 5.20]. It is very similar to the eidgah at Ellichpur. The mosque is dated to 1582– 83 on the basis of an inscription [Inscription 8],6 which attributes the construction of the mosque to Khudavand Khan. This monument has been declared to be of national importance and given protected status by the ASI. The patron of the mosque, Khudavand Khan Mahdavi, was one of the supporters of Jamal Khan Mahdavi (a Nizam Shahi noble) and Ismail Nizam Shah I (reg. 1589– 91). In the last two decades of the sixteenth century the Mahdavi sect had a large following in Ahmadnagar, both in the court and among the people.

Mahdavi Mosque (Fathkheda/Sakharkheda) The village of Sakharkherda was known earlier as Fathkheda. The mosque is on the outskirts of this town today but within the medieval

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Figure 5.20

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‘Idgah at Rohankheda.

walls of the town, which barely survive today [Figure 5.21]. A small lake is to the west of the mosque, and a small postern allows access from the mosque to the water. The layout of the mosque is very similar to that of Rohankheda [Figure 5.22]. An enclosure wall contains the mosque. Within the large courtyard, the mosque is situated to the west, and there is a large tank of water just to the west of the enclosure. The mosque has an external stairway to go to the roof, the main entrance to the mosque enclosure is on the eastern side, and there are no rooms in the enclosure wall. The mosque is constructed of dressed stone held together with lime mortar. The ornate stone carving suggests that it did not have any other finishes [Figure 5.23]. This mosque would have been a proclamation of the power of the patron at the Ahmadnagar court, and would have been used for large congregational prayers in his grant lands. Just like Rohankheda, on the basis of an inscription [Inscription 9],7 this mosque is also dated to 1582– 83 and attributed to Khudavand Khan. This mosque has a history of construction very similar to the mosque at Rohankheda and was most likely built by the same set of craftsmen. The Mahdavi patronage, similar to Rohankheda, would have made this

Figure 5.21

Mosque at Fathkheda (Sakharkheda).

Figure 5.22

Plan of mosque at Fathkheda.

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Figure 5.23

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The front fac ade of the Fathkheda mosque.

mosque a rallying point for rebellious Mahdavi personages when the Mahdavis were revolting against the Nizam Shahi sultan. It has also been declared an archaeological site of national significance, ‘protected’ by the ASI.

Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar) This mosque is in the old city of Ahmadnagar, in a densely urban area called Burud Ali (Basket-weavers’ Lane). It is presently difficult to take a good look around the building, because of the recent construction around it. The mosque is a typical neighbourhood mosque from an urban area within the kingdom of Ahmadnagar [Figure 5.24]. It is two bays deep and three bays wide, and of very modest dimensions [Figure 5.25]. The materials are the same as most typical mosques: finely dressed blocks of black Deccan basalt held together by lime mortar. There was probably no plaster finish due to the high level of craftsmanship in the dressed stone. This was most likely a neighbourhood mosque, perhaps reserved for a particular community. The modest dimensions and small courtyard,

Figure 5.24

Interior of Kali mosque in Burud Ali, Ahmadnagar.

Figure 5.25

Plan of Kali mosque, Ahmadnagar.

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along with a profusion of such smaller mosques in the city, suggest that it was really meant for a small congregation. The mosque can be dated to 1585–86 on the basis of an inscription that is on the qibla wall of the mosque [Inscriptions 10, 11].8 A large number of similar small mosques exist in Ahmadnagar, and most of them have now been irreversibly modified. The Kali mosque is relatively unchanged, but the neighbourhood around it has been transformed.

Qasim Khan’s Mosque (Ahmadnagar) Qasim Khan was an important noble in the reign of Murtaza Nizam Shah I. This mosque would therefore have been constructed sometime in the 1570s or 1580s, a date corroborated by the flying arch over the entrance, a stylistic feature from the latter half of the sixteenth century [Figure 5.26]. This mosque was part of Qasim Khan’s estate, one of the components of a larger site, with a palace and other buildings set in a garden. It is now part of the District Collector’s office. Qasim Khan’s mansion, now the District

Figure 5.26

Gateway to Qasim Khan’s mosque, Ahmadnagar.

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Collector’s residence, was a part of the complex. The mosque is similar to other mosques, such as the unnamed mosque on the way to Salabat Khan’s tomb on the outskirts of Bhingar town. The central bay is wider than the two that flank it, but the overall layout is still the common one found in Ahmadnagar: two bays deep and three bays wide [Figure 5.27]. A courtyard which would have been in front is now lost to the new administrative building constructed by the District Collector’s office. The same materials used for other buildings in Ahmadnagar are used here: stone ashlar masonry held in place by lime mortar but left exposed, without any plaster decoration [Figure 5.28]. The mosque would have been for the small congregation within the ward. Visitors, residents, and others within the vicinity of the mosque at prayer times would have used it. This mosque is now part of a litigation involving the District Collector’s office, which owns all of Qasim Khan’s property. There is an office of the Dar ul Uloom running out of the mosque.

Figure 5.27

Interior of Qasim Khan’s mosque, Ahmadnagar.

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Figure 5.28

155

Plan of Qasim Khan’s mosque.

Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar) This mosque is close to the Husaini mosque, set off from Manik Chowk. It is now set in a dense urban environment, making it difficult to understand its spatial relationship with the area around. The mosque has the conventional design found in Ahmadnagar. The plan is standard, similar to Qasim Khan’s mosque, with the late variation of having a large central bay immediately in front of the mihra¯b [Figure 5.29]. The materials used are the commonest in Ahmadnagar, dressed stone blocks bound with lime mortar. Stucco decoration cannot be confirmed because the mosque has recently been repaired. [Figure 5.30] It is a neighbourhood mosque, probably sponsored by an important noble of the court, who would have lived in close proximity. Two buildings that were right behind the mosque were demolished in 2007, and in them one could see traces of medieval walls and basements, suggesting that this might have been a part of a larger complex, much like Niʾmat Khan or Changiz Khan’s estates. This mosque is probably from the later sixteenth century, when the motif of the flying arch was standardised as a symbol for a mosque. It is called the Kamani Mosque because of the flying arch flanked by minarets which appears on its eastern fac ade. After the sixteenth century, the Mughals were in charge of

Figure 5.29

Plan of Kamani mosque, Ahmadnagar.

Figure 5.30

Interior of Kamani mosque, Ahmadanagar.

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157

Ahmadnagar, and the buildings that were built in their reign are recognisably different. It is a functioning community mosque today. There are a couple of graves and tombstones in the complex, but they all date from the seventeenth century, under Mughal rule.

Kamani Mosque (Shivneri) The Kamani mosque is in the fort of Shivneri, on the way to the northernmost tip of the fort. It is on the same level as the palace buildings in the fort. This building has one of the simplest plans in terms of its habitable space. The covered area is just one large room, open to the front [Figure 5.31]. The flanking buttress walls, which provide the base for the minarets, are very unusual in their thickness. Only certain elements of the mosque are enlarged, almost in a caricatured way. It is above an ancient excavated cistern, which serves as the ritual ablution pool for the mosque [Figure 5.32]. The mosque is built in the regulation dressed stone with lime mortars and stucco finishes. The fac ade of the mosque is very similar to that of a gateway with flanking towers, which might have been the result of fort-building craftsmen being employed to construct the mosque, or a design module from military architecture being used as a template

Figure 5.31

Plan of Kamani mosque, Junnar fort (Shivneri).

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Figure 5.32 The early historic cisterns above which the Kamani mosque at Shivneri is constructed.

Figure 5.33

The Kamani mosque at Shivneri.

[Figure 5.33]. This mosque was very likely for use by the fort commander, since it is located very close to the plinth of a large palace complex on the eastern end of the fort. The presence of the large ablution pool suggests a large congregation, but there is hardly any room for the faithful to pray in front of the mosque. This mosque is a proclamation of power, advertising itself as a mosque rather than being a real place of prayer for a large congregation. The mosque is firmly dated by inscriptions to 1616–17 [Inscriptions 12, 13], and the patronage is attributed to Burhan Nizam Shah III.9 This would be one of the last great buildings built by the Nizam Shahs that is dated, and it does not bear any impression of a Mughal architectural style. It is surprising that cusped arches and cypress columns after the Mughals were not part of the architectural vocabulary.

Jamiʾ Mosque (Chaul) This is located near the estuarine coast of the city of Chaul. The location was such that all ships coming to the harbour of Chaul would have seen the mosque, with its prominent dome [Figure 5.34]. It is large, five bays

Figure 5.34

Elevation of the mosque at Chaul.

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Figure 5.35

Plan of the mosque at Chaul.

wide and three bays deep [Figure 5.35]. The prominent dome covers the central bay, but not the innermost one. The mosque has an additional structure of two bays on its eastern side. There is an inscription on one of the front pillars of the mosque. In front of the mosque is a small tomb, with a badly damaged inscription. The mosque is built of dressed stone with stucco decoration. The dome is very similar to those built in Bijapur, with a tall drum [Figure 5.36]. It is possible that the mosque was significantly added to during a brief occupation of Chaul by the Adil Shahs in the early seventeenth century. The presence of timber sections in the columns and other parts of the mosque strongly suggests Nizam Shahi technology. The arcuated construction is unusual because of the presence of wooden dowels that tie the voussoirs together [Figure 5.37]. This would have been the primary congregational mosque in Chaul, and is mentioned along with a general description of its location by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European travellers.10 Though there is no evidence to date the mosque conclusively, it was most likely built in the late sixteenth century, when Malik Ambar was in charge of the Konkan region. European sources often refer to him as the ‘Melique’. An inscription on one of the columns of the mosque is still undeciphered, as is the inscription on the small tomb [Inscriptions 14, 15]; the line

Figure 5.36

The large bulbous central dome of the mosque at Chaul.

Figure 5.37

Wooden dowels inside the stone voissoirs, mosque at Chaul.

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Figure 5.38 Fac ade of revetted stone, mosque of Dilawar Khan, Khed (Rajgurunagar).

which would have contained the date or a chronogram is obliterated.11 It could be that the mosque is from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, but the latter date seems unlikely, because of the decline of the port of Chaul in that period.

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163

Dilawar Khan’s Mosque (Rajgurunagar/Khed) The mosque and the tomb in a single complex are built by Dilawar Khan, a noble in the Nizam Shahi court in the early seventeenth century. The mosque is located at Khed (now Rajgurunagar), which is at a distance of 11 kilometres to the north of Chakan Fort. The complex is bounded by a wall, has a tomb in the centre and a mosque at its western end. The ornamentation on the walls of the mosque is unique. There are slabs of rusticated stone, almost resembling later European baroque wooden panelling [Figure 5.38]. These are punctuated by bands of lotus rosettes. The elements are not uncommon, but the composition is very unique, working almost like academic eclecticism, where new combinations of familiar elements were achieved. The mosque has three bays in elevation, and the central bay is roofed with a dome on a very tall transition zone. There are other stylistic features, like multifoil cusped arches, which clearly show ideas from the Mughals. The tomb is built of stone and lime mortar [Figure 5.39]. The ornament is all carved stone, suggesting a very nominal use, if any, of a plaster finish. This would have been as a garden with family tomb with an attached mosque, converted into a waqf

Figure 5.39

Mosque of Dilawar Khan, Rajgurunagar.

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property in order to keep inheritance within the family. This building was probably built around 1612–13 or earlier, and the tomb of Dilawar Khan in the same complex has an inscription from that date, mentioning the death of his son [Inscription 16].12 The mosque is not a typical mosque from the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, but an attempt to visually collate disparate architectural elements from various sources, suggesting a segue towards Mughal architecture in the Deccan.

CHAPTER 6 TOMBS

Tombs in Ahmadnagar come in a large variety, but there are two reasons for this. Buildings constructed for other purposes were occasionally converted to tombs, if the patron died unexpectedly and there was no time to construct a tomb. The basic requirements for a tomb were simple: a single-storied structure (though sometimes of double height) surmounted by a dome. Often set on a high pedestal, such as the tombs of Ahmad Nizam Shah I and Malik Ambar, these had entrances or openings on three sides, the western side being screened or walled to serve as the mihra¯b. Some of the tombs, such as Sarje Khan’s tomb (known as Do¯ Bo¯ti Chira¯) or that of Salabat Khan, were most likely constructed for other purposes and converted to tombs upon the death of their patrons. This was a common strategy to retain control of lands held by the family (either as hereditary or service fiefs) by turning the estate into a waqf (pious foundation) with descendants and family members as trustees. The inscription on the portal of Niʾmat Khan’s estate is an example of the activities undertaken by such an entity and the resources allotted for its maintenance:1 Verily . . . the great sultan, the most generous monarch, the king of the kings of Arabia and non-Arab countries, the shadow of God, the defender of the law of the chief of prophets [Muhammad], the namesake of the prince of the faithful [Murtaza Ali] – may the peace of God be upon both of them – the favoured one of God, the servant of the family of the Prophet [Muhammad], the lord of the kingdom and the caliphate, Murtaza Nizam Shah, may God

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perpetuate his kingdom and his sovereignty and extend his bounty and munificence to the people of the world, the founder of these charitable institutions, attached to the tomb (of the founder), situated at this pleasant site, known as . . . was Khwaja Husain, entitled Niʾmat Khan, son of the deceased, taken into the mercy of God, the Malik Mubin, Khwaja ʿalaʾuddin As-Semnani, in the Shahur year 979 [1578 AD]. This beautiful place was dedicated . . . with the stipulation that the people may avail themselves of its water for drinking purposes, and they also avail themselves of such other comforts as are the right of the servants of God, [but they are enjoined] not to sell these two [works], nor to bestow them upon any person, nor to mortgage them, nor to lease them, nor to lend them, nor to settle therein . . . nor to cut . . . in them, nor to change . . . I entrust the guardianship of this place to . . . and his descendants. Whoever changes it after he hath heard it, the curse of God and angels and men overtaketh him. To conclude, praise be unto God, the Cherisher of all the worlds. Written by the humble Muhammad Husain in the year 979 [1578 AD]. Many of the tombs that are of unusual design have such histories, even if not recorded. Since the programmatic requirements for a tomb are fairly simple, with no requirement other than a sheltered place under which the cenotaph is placed and the body is buried, most pavilions, kiosks, and outlying buildings on an estate could easily be converted into tombs. With the passage of time, tombs of a double-storied fac ade with a single large space inside became common, though this type had existed since the Bahmanis. The Saudagar Gumbaz at Junnar is an example of such an early post-Bahmani type. The tombs of Ahmad Nizam Shah I at Bagh Rauza; Bava Bangali; and the unknown tomb at Chaul are examples of an early phase when the height of tombs was modest and they were single-storied on the outside, with a band of miniature blind niches above the doorways. The tomb assumed to be of the Nizam Shahs at Daulatabad and the tombs of Haji Hamid, Shah Sharif, Dilawar Khan, and Malik Ambar all stand tall and appear to have two storeys on the outside. The tomb of Changiz Khan, the Habashi minister of the Nizam Shahs, is unusually octagonal, but the construction techniques and the placement of small windows between the two storeys is completely reminiscent of the buildings from the reign of Murtaza Nizam Shah I. The most unusual tomb is that of Salabat Khan.

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It is situated on a hill just to the south of the city of Ahmadnagar, offering fine views of the countryside. Perhaps a watchtower and pleasure garden that was converted to his tomb, it has ambulatory passages on three storeys surrounding an atrium that has the cenotaph. The vaulted ceiling cannot be easily seen as a dome from the outside, and it appears to be unfinished on the roof. Malik Ambar’s tomb, not strictly of the Nizam Shahi dynasty but certainly of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, is one of the finest tombs in terms of its rich decoration and carving. Around his tomb in Khuldabad are several other tombs of the same period, including the three memorials associated with the Bhonsale family at nearby Ellora, which was their fief. The emplacement of these memorials around the temple of Ghrishneswara is not unlike the arrangement of several tombs in Khuldabad around the shrines of important Sufis. Malik Ambar and several members of his family are buried around the shrine of Zar Zari Zar Bakhsh. The mode of memorialising important nobility through such commemorative buildings seems to have been prevalent in the court culture of the Nizam Shahs, not limited to followers of Islam alone. There are a large number of tombs from the period of the Nizam Shahs strewn around the grounds of Daulatabad and Khuldabad, and also in most other sites that were once controlled by the Nizam Shahs. The tombs of the late Bahmanis and the early Nizam Shahs are so similar that it is impossible to date or attribute these structures to any one dynasty conclusively. This survey does not include tombs that we cannot attribute to the Nizam Shahs and their nobility. Some, such as Dilawar Khan’s and Haji Hamid’s tombs, have small mosques associated with them. They are not reproduced here in the section on tombs. There are a number of characteristic features shared by later tombs and mosques in the reign of the Nizam Shahs, such as the kiosks on the corners, which can assist in dating these buildings as from the later sixteenth or the early seventeenth centuries. The Nizam Shah kings themselves, barring Ahmad Nizam Shah I, chose to have their bodies embalmed and sent to Karbala, thus making the dynasty unique in the Deccan in terms of its sepulchral practices.

Bagh Rauza – Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I (Ahmadnagar) This tomb complex is on the western side of the city of Ahmadnagar, on the banks of the river Sena. The large walled enclosure has a central domed

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tomb built for Ahmad Nizam Shah I [Figure 6.1]. Within these walls is another tomb, said to have held the body of Shah Tahir al Husaini (mentor of Burhan Nizam Shah I) until it was moved to Karbala. This would have been the core of the royal necropolis. Unfortunately, this was never realised, because after the conversion of the Nizam Shahs to Shiʾism under Burhan Nizam Shah I, all the kings had their bodies embalmed and sent to Karbala. Near this second tomb is a large well with steps to go down. Around the area are a number of unknown tombs, now partly occupied by people living in them. The whole complex is orthogonal in its layout. The square enclosure has a domed gatehouse, on the axis on which is the tomb. The enclosure wall has smaller doorways leading out in the other three directions. The tomb itself is a simple triple-bayed square, with openings on all four sides [Figure 6.2]. We do not know the functional use of the well, which must have been constructed at quite an expense unless it preexisted the tomb complex. The tomb would have been surrounded by gardens, hence the name Bagh Rauza. The tomb itself is built of carved and dressed stone. It is finished with plaster above the walls. The domed roof is partly built in brick and decorated with incised stucco plaster. The inside of the ceiling is painted with medallions. The enclosure walls are all built of

Figure 6.1 Site plan of Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I), Ahmadnagar.

TOMBS

Figure 6.2

169

Elevation of the tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I and gatehouse.

stone. The gatehouse has a partial brick dome and is decorated with the use of lime stucco. All the materials found in the construction of the Nizam Shahs are used in this complex. Elements of Bahmani architecture are also noticeable, such as the decorative motifs on the jambs around the main entrance to the tomb. The building was meant as a royal tomb, meant to express the sovereignty of the new dynasty [Figure 6.3]. All the symbolism associated with the tombs of the Bahmanis was appropriated. The ornamentation borrows from Bahmani ideals. Ahmad Nizam Shah I (died 1508–10) had this tomb constructed while he was alive, thus making this building the oldest surviving structure built by the Nizam Shahs in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar. It is from the first decade of the sixteenth century and has undergone very few changes. There was confusion (discussed below) because of the name, which is also the name for the necropolis of Khuldabad. The site has an inscription within the walled enclosure, on the tomb with the pyramidal roof [Inscription 17].

Saudagar Gumbaz (Junnar) Very little is known about this tomb, which is a kilometre to the south of Junnar town, in an area now called Hapus Bagh (mentioned as Afiz Bagh in the District Gazetteer and allegedly derived from Habshi Bagh).

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Figure 6.3

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I at Bagh Rauza, Ahmadnagar.

This tomb is in the middle of agricultural lands [Figure 6.4]. It has a square plan, and the squinches do not come all the way to the ground [Figure 6.5]. Each elevation is tripartite, and this sets up a convenient set of pilasters from which the squinches arise. The central recess, which is the doorway to the tomb and is on the southern side, has some ornamentation. The others are plain. The structure is capped by a large dome. The materials are dressed stone blocks, held in place by lime mortar. Lime plasters and stucco are used for the decoration around the cornice and parapet. The construction of the arches is reminiscent of one of the gateways at Firuzabad, where the arches cannot be called either true or corbelled; they are something in between [Figure 6.6]. This tomb must have been a site for popular visitation, and the scale and ornate design suggests that it was meant to draw large crowds on the ʿurs and other celebrations. This tomb must have been one of the earliest structures of the Nizam Shahs. The workmanship of the ornamentation inside the building is not quite mathematically precise, suggesting a folk tradition. On the building is an inscription over the entrance which does not yield the date, but refers to Shiʾi beliefs [Inscription 18]. There are references in the Burha¯n-i Maasir and the Tarikh-i Firishtah to Ahmad Nizam Shah summoning builders from Junnar to construct the

Figure 6.4

Saudagar Gumbaz, Junnar.

Figure 6.5

Plan of Saudagar Gumbaz, Junnar.

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172

Figure 6.6

Elevation detail.

city of Ahmadnagar. This tomb is probably from the same period as the founding of Junnar, because the details lack the principles that they would have shown had it been built by expert builders in the employ or patronage of the Bahmanis.

Sarje Khan’s Tomb – Do¯ Bo¯ti Chira¯ (Ahmadnagar) This building is located very close to Changiz Khan’s palace, but currently stands as an isolated building next to its associated mosque. The tomb is unusual because it is rectangular in plan; the longer sides are arched and the shorter sides of the rectangular plan are walled off [Figure 6.7]. The cenotaph is placed longitudinally in the building. Beyond the tomb, on the western side, is a very modest associated mosque. The building has a dome over the central bay and the flanking two bays have flat vaults [Figure 6.8]. The tomb is built with very finely

Figure 6.7

Plan of the tomb of Sarje Khan, also known as Do Boti Chira.

Figure 6.8

Tomb of Sarje Khan, Ahmadnagar.

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dressed stone blocks. All the decorative elements are carved in the stone. The mortar joints are very fine and almost rendered invisible. There are cartouches and roundels in relief on the inside, and they were probably meant to receive inscriptions or decoration; this incompleteness cannot be explained, unless the tomb was unfinished. The austerity of the building is a contrast to the Damdi Mosque, which was built of the same materials in the same decade. This tomb was built to mark an important nobleman’s territory. There are no traces of a large ward in which it was situated. The building is dated to 1562 by an inscription on a loose slab in the premises [Inscription 19].2 In terms of construction, it is a very unusual design for a tomb, more reminiscent of a portal to a large estate. The name do¯ bo¯ti chira¯, which literally means ‘two-finger hole’, is a common reference to two grooves on the eastern wall of the tomb where it is possible to place the index and middle finger of one’s hand. There is also a belief that lightweight materials such as paper adhere to the ceiling of this building when thrown up in the air.

Tomb of Changiz Khan (Ahmadnagar) The tomb of Changiz Khan is located north of the city of Ahmadnagar, close to the village of Savedi. The tomb is set in the midst of fields today, but it must have been an important suburban garden site. A gateway in ruinous condition is about 200 metres to the east of the tomb, suggesting the scale of the complex and its entrance. The tomb is octagonal, which seems to have been the fashion in the late sixteenth century in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar [Figure 6.9]. It is double-storied in height but a unified space inside, again a common feature of tombs in this period [Figure 6.10]. The tomb is built of stone ashlar masonry and kept in place with lime mortar [Figure 6.11]. The decoration inside is all with lime plaster over stone masonry. This was a functional tomb used as a ceremonial space. This is corroborated by its use today as a terminus for many of the Muharram processions. Changiz Khan was an important noble of Murtaza Nizam Shah I and continued later. His mansion in the city is now the District Court. He was the master of Malik Ambar and the peshwa (prime minister) of the Nizam Shahs in the 1570s, and he was put to death around 1579. The tomb is therefore most likely no earlier than the 1570s. There is a well right next to the tomb. It would have been set in

Figure 6.9

Figure 6.10

Plan of the tomb of Changiz Khan, near Savedi.

Double-storied interior of the tomb of Changiz Khan.

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Figure 6.11

Tomb of Changiz Khan, near Savedi.

the midst of gardens or orchards, based on the extent of the property and the lack of settlements around it to date.

Tomb of Bava Bangali The tomb is close to the estate of Qasim Khan, near the Agha Bihzad mosque, just outside the walled city of Ahmadnagar. The tomb is very simple in plan, inside and outside [Figure 6.12]. It is a square building with openings on all sides. It is double-storied and divided into three bays on the lower story [Figure 6.13]. The central bay on each side is a doorway. It is set on a high platform and is accessible by stairs. Today the platform is surrounded by new construction and cannot be studied. The materials are the same as materials used for most other tombs in this period in this region. Finely dressed stone is bound by lime mortar. There is carved stone decoration in the niches, suggesting an absence of plasters, at least in some parts of the building. It is claimed that Bava Bangali was an ascetic who lived before the foundation of the city. Yet the tomb is most certainly of a later date, on the basis of the similarities it has with the tomb of Rumi Khan and

Figure 6.12

Plan of the tomb of Bava Bangali, Ahmadnagar.

Figure 6.13

Tomb of Bava Bangali, Ahmadnagar.

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Dilawar Khan. This tomb might have been built by a later patron. It is in use for venerating the saint. The fac ade is not as elaborated as these tombs, but the overall elevation is the same, suggesting a date approximately a decade earlier than the tomb of Rumi Khan. The property is now legally disputed, and is still regarded as a Sufi shrine by the residents of Ahmadnagar. It is raised high on a platform, which might be a result of the changes in ground level around the site.

Tomb of Salabat Khan The tomb is located on the hills, called the Shah Dongar, about 12 kilometres to the southeast of Ahmadnagar. It is a strategic vantage point on the hilltop and controls the route to Salabat Khan’s grant lands in the village of Tisgaon [Figure 6.14]. The tomb is surrounded by three small masonry dams, which would have been used to supply water to gardens around it. It is set on a very large octagonal platform built with stone masonry. The tomb is octagonal, and triple-storied in elevation [Figure 6.15]. It is capped by a central dome and has ambulatory sets of galleries on each floor. These galleries also have vaulted ceilings. The subtle drainage slopes in the galleries and other finer aspects of this building make it unique. There is an underground crypt in which the grave of Salabat Khan is located. It is a simple building that exudes elegance through its craftsmanship and proportions. There is hardly any decoration. The tomb is built with dressed stone blocks and held in place by lime mortar beneath the seamless joints. There is no evidence of any lime plaster used to finish the building. This tomb was built in Salabat Khan’s lifetime and would have been a splendid spot for picnics from the city of Ahmadnagar. After Salabat Khan’s death, the tomb would still have been a convenient place for a day-long excursion. The galleries around the central chamber have a wonderful display of light and shade as the day passes through, as well as projecting balconies where one could sit and enjoy the air and the view [Figure 6.16]. Salabat Khan died in 1589 and his tomb was left unfinished. He was out of favour with the ruling king, Miran Husain Nizam Shah (who only ruled for ten months in 1588), and what we see of the tomb was probably built in the early 1580s, when he was in control of the kingdom, as a regent for Murtaza Nizam Shah I. The tomb was converted into a sanatorium under the British in the

Figure 6.14

Tomb of Salabat Khan, south of Ahmadnagar.

Figure 6.15

Plan of the tomb of Salabat Khan.

Figure 6.16 Ambulatory gallery on the upper floor, tomb of Salabat Khan.

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nineteenth century. The lack of potable water in the area caused that function to be abandoned, and it was declared a protected site in the early twentieth century. The tomb is often mistakenly called Chand Bibi’s palace and is associated with that dowager queen of Ahmadnagar.

Rumi Khan’s Tomb Rumi Khan’s tomb is located at the northern edge of the city, close to the Bara Imam Kotla. It is currently within the grounds for a hostel managed by the Pitaliya Trust, and the tomb itself is sometimes used as a residence by students. The building is double-storied on the outside. It is a simple square plan with tripartite sides; the central bays were open on all sides [Figure 6.17]. A large carved cenotaph lies outside, but it is unclear if it was ever inside this structure. The interior space is also square. The tomb is constructed of dressed stone and the ornamental details are also in stone. Plaster finishes were not used on the outside. On the inside, there are traces of the use of stucco decoration, but the inside has been altered significantly. The roof comprises a dome with four small kiosks at the four corners of building. This building was set in a garden, which probably also contained a gun-casting foundry. It was converted into a tomb only after the death of Rumi Khan and served as a garden pavilion until then. This tomb is similar to those of Bava Bangali, Shah Sharif, and Dilawar Khan. It was probably built in the decade around 1590, given the articulation of the ornamentation and the similarities in elevation with other later tombs. We know that Rumi Khan died sometime in the late sixteenth century, well after the battle of Talikota (1565), where he famously commanded his artillery. It is claimed that Malik-i Maidan, the large gun now in Bijapur, was cast in the grounds around the tomb. There is no inscriptional evidence to link this tomb with Rumi Khan, but an inscription has been reported from a gun in the grounds around the tomb [Inscription 20].

Tomb Attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah I (Khuldabad) This building is a few hundred metres from the tomb of Malik Ambar, on the ridge that separates Khuldabad from the lower village of Ellora (Verul). The site has a commanding view of the Ellora caves. The tomb is simple in its plan, built like a garden pavilion on a

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Figure 6.17

Tomb of Rumi Khan, Ahmadnagar.

grand scale [Figure 6.18]. It has an enclosure wall with a few cloistered spaces built in it. Internally, it is double-storied T, a trend from the late sixteenth century, thus suggesting a later date for the tomb than its popular attribution [Figure 6.19]. The building is built of very finely dressed stone with lime mortar. The finely dressed

Figure 6.18

Plan of tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad.

Figure 6.19 Interior of tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad.

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stone is ornamental in itself and was probably left without any other surface finish. The building was most probably constructed as a pavilion that would be converted into a tomb once the patron died. For inexplicable reasons, it was never used as a tomb, and there is no cenotaph even today (the crypt is also empty). The floor finishes are all original, which confirms the hypothesis that no burial ever took place. Though this tomb has been attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah I, it was most likely built in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, on the basis of stylistic attributes such as the articulation of the fac ade and the corner kiosks [Figure 6.20]. The confusion regarding the date of the building stems from the ambiguity of the word rauza, which was used to describe the final resting place of Ahmad Nizam Shah I. Because of a reference in the District Gazetteer that mentioned that Ahmad Nizam Shah I was buried in the garden of Rauza, it was assumed that Rauza (the necropolis of Khuldabad) was the location of his tomb. Hence, the largest unattributed tomb in good condition was assumed to be his. His tomb is actually located in Bagh Rauza (translated as ‘the garden of Rauza’), which is just outside of Ahmadnagar on the banks of the river Sina.

Shah Sharif’s Tomb (Ahmadnagar) The tomb is built in the precinct called Dargah Dairah and is located very close to the Takht of Jamal Khan Mahdavi. The site is quite large and contains a number of buildings, a comprehensive water supply system, and a tomb. It also contains a mosque, a stepped well, and other buildings that made this the centre of Mahdavi activity in the late sixteenth century [Figure 6.21]. Today, a school for the local community is run there. The building itself is not dissimilar to the tombs of Bava Bangali or Rumi Khan: a simple square building with a similar plan internally [Figure 6.22]. It has four entrances, and such large tombs were commonly built in the late sixteenth century. The materials used are dressed stone blocks and binding lime mortar. The decoration is all in carved stone. The building was built as a tomb for Shah Sharif, who was buried there before the tomb was built; it is still functioning as a tomb and has recently received fresh attention because of its rediscovered connection with the Bhonsale family. The construction of Shah Sharif’s tomb in 1596–97 is attributed to Maloji Bhonsale (1552–1606), the

TOMBS

Figure 6.20

185

Tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad.

father of Shahaji and grandfather of Shivaji. By that attribution, we can fix the date of the tomb to the late sixteenth century. Stylistically, the tomb is very similar to other tombs built in the late sixteenth century, with the kiosks on the corners of the building, and cusped arches [Figure 6.23]. Active worship at the shrine of Shah Sharif is still ongoing, and the site’s connection with the Mahdavi sect is not popularly known. For most

Figure 6.21 Site plan of Dargah Dairah, including the tomb of Shah Sharif, Ahmadnagar.

Figure 6.22

Plan of the tomb of Shah Sharif.

TOMBS

Figure 6.23

187

Tomb of Shah Sharif, Ahmadnagar.

people, it is an old pious complex in a fast-growing suburb and offers a relatively secular social space which also has a shrine. The water-supply system is connected to the aqueducts in Ahmadnagar city, and residents tell of a drought in the 1970s when the well was the source of water for most of the residents in the area even when other wells in the larger area had gone dry.

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Tomb of Haji Hamid (Ahmadnagar) The tomb of Haji Hamid is close to Savedi village, now a part of Ahmadnagar city. This site has a mosque, a tomb, and a well with a subterranean resting pavilion. The tomb has a very simple plan, square on the inside and outside, with openings on all sides [Figure 6.24]. It is quite large and shares ornamental details with Rumi Khan’s tomb. The mosque is approximately the same size as the tomb and stands across a courtyard from it. Both are constructed of the same material as most of the buildings in Ahmadnagar: ashlar masonry with lime mortar. There is some carved and some stucco decoration inside [Figure 6.25]. They were built as a rauza, a tomb with a mosque as an integrated unit. The use of the mosque continues, but the tomb does not have many visitors. On the basis on an inscription, the tomb can be dated to the late sixteenth century. Stylistically, it resembles the tomb of Shah Sharif.3 The inscription, which is bilingual, records the endowment of land from Bisat Khan’s gardens [Inscription 21]. This type of bilingual inscription is common in the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah II.4 The shrine and the mosque are controlled by a custodian family who reside in the complex. There is also a well with underground galleries on the same site, but it was difficult to access.

Figure 6.24

Plan of the tomb of Haji Hamid, Savedi.

TOMBS

Figure 6.25

189

Interior of the tomb of Haji Hamid.

Bhonsale Memorials (Verul) There is an enigmatic set of three buildings, all within a few hundred metres of the temple of Ghrishneshwara, which is one of the 12 important sites of Shiva worship ( jyotirlingas) in India. All these tombs are square in plan on the outside, though with various cantoning features around the

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openings. The memorial T1 is right by the entrance of Ghrishneshwar temple; T2 is to the north, and T3 is the furthest [Figures 6.26, 6.27, 6.28]. All three tombs share a number features in planning and elevation. They are all square on the inside, and the transition from a square plan to a domed ceiling is made using squinches. These structures are all built with squared stone blocks, fitted together with the help of lime mortar. The decoration is carved in the stone and is very lavish. There are traces of lime plaster above the cornice. These tombs are popularly attributed to the ancestors of Shahaji Bhonsale. It is known that Babaji Bhonsale, the grandfather of Shahaji was the hereditary patil (headman with certain revenue rights) for the village of Verul (Ellora). It is not inconceivable that the family would raise memorials in the prevalent fashion at a later date for Babaji and Maloji Bhonsale. Yet the tomb we label T3 has a cenotaph inside. It is unclear who is buried inside or is commemorated in these buildings. T3 has a very high plinth, and a crypt chamber is clearly discernible. The lines between Hindu and Muslim practices and expressions were often very blurred in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These

Figure 6.26

Memorial attributed to Maloji Bhonsale, Verul.

TOMBS

Figure 6.27 Verul.

191

A tomb or a memorial just north of Ghrishneshwar temple,

‘tombs’ were clearly important sepulchral or memorial markers for their occupants and/or their descendants. Stylistically, these structures share a lot of ornamental features and even proportions with the late Nizam Shahi tombs at Khuldabad, and it would be fairly accurate to date them to the early seventeenth century [Figure 6.29].

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Figure 6.28

Tomb west of the Ghrishneshwar temple at Verul.

Dilawar Khan’s Tomb (Rajgurunagar/Khed) The tomb and its associated mosque were built by Dilawar Khan, a noble in the Nizam Shahi court in the early seventeenth century. The site is located at Rajgurunagar, formerly called Khed, which is between the forts of Chakan and Junnar, but closer to the former. The settlement is close to

TOMBS

Figure 6.29

193

Detail of the memorial T2 north of Ghrishneshwar temple.

the banks of an upper tributary of the Bhima River. The complex is bounded by a wall, with a tomb in the centre and a mosque at its western end. The mosque is remarkable for its decoration: it is unlike any other mosque in the region (see Chapter 5). The tomb itself is very similar to the tomb of Shah Sharif in elevation and built of stone and lime mortar. The ornament is all carved stone, suggesting a very nominal use, if any, of a plaster finish. The decoration on the mosque comprises horizontal bands of lotus rosettes and rectangular stone blocks with rusticated faces. The tomb has some cusped arches and is double-storied in height with corner kiosks. This would have been a garden with a family tomb and an attached mosque, converted into a waqf property in order to keep the inheritance within the family. Today, as a protected monument, the mosque is not in active use, and the tomb is occasionally opened for visitors. This building was probably built in or around 1612–13, and the tomb has an inscription from that date, mentioning the death of Dilawar Khan’s son [Inscription 16].5 It is likely that the tomb is that of his son. The mosque would have been built around the same time, and the two buildings would have been set in a garden. The mosque, described earlier, is unique in its decorative programme, suggesting exposure to the larger Mughal world – not unusual in this late period.

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Lakhuji Jadhav’s Tomb (Sindkhed Raja) The most interesting site at Sindkhed Raja is the memorial to Lakhuji Jadhav, a large masonry structure 40 by 40 feet with a brick dome on top [Figure 6.30]. In the centre of the building under the dome is a sivalinga. Inside, there are two staircases that lead to the roof. Close by, to the south, is a temple known as Rames´vara, which is attributed to Lakhuji Jadhav.6 Lakhuji Jadhav was in the service of the Nizam Shahs, as several generations of the family had been, and was an important general. Under Malik Ambar’s regency, Lakhuji joined Mughal service, where he was promptly received with a zat/sawar rank of 2,400/1,500.7 He later defected back to the Nizam Shahi court after the death of Malik Ambar, but he started undermining the authority of the Nizam Shahs from his seat at Sindkhed.8 In 1629, Burhan Nizam Shah III invited the entire Jadhav clan to court and had them attacked, and Lakhuji Jadhav was killed.9 The rest of his family were variously injured and fled back to their base in Sindkhed, from where

Figure 6.30

Memorial to Lakhuji Jadhav, Sindkhed Raja.

TOMBS

195

they firmly defected to the Mughals, receiving such high positions as zat/sawar rank 4,000/3,000.

Malik Ambar’s Tomb (Khuldabad) Malik Ambar’s family is buried near Khuldabad, outside the walled town. At this site is the tomb of a famous Chishti Sufi saint, Muntajib al-Din (Zar Zari Zar Baksh). Very close to Malik Ambar’s tomb is the alleged tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I. All the tombs are on the ridge above the Ellora caves. An enclosure wall contains a large court, within which the tomb is placed in the centre. The tomb itself is on a high plinth and has a square plan [Figure 6.31]. The chamber is square on the inside. The entrance to the tomb is on the south side. Inside is a large dome that covers the building, set on squinches that spring high above the ground [Figure 6.32]. The tomb has four kiosks on the four corners of the building. On the eastern side of the enclosure is a gate, with guard

Figure 6.31

Tomb of Malik Ambar, Khuldabad.

Figure 6.32

Plan of the tomb of Malik Ambar, Khuldabad.

Figure 6.33

The carved stone jalis on the tomb of Malik Ambar.

Figure 6.34 Unattributed tomb next to the tomb of Malik Ambar, around Khuldabad.

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chambers and stables flanking it. There are a number of unknown tombs in the area, which all date from the early seventeenth century. The materials used are basaltic stone from the Deccan plateau, well-dressed and held together by lime mortar. The magnificent jalis (grills) carved in stone are all of red basalt, a rarer material than the common basalt [Figure 6.33]. All the decoration is in stone relief; the tomb probably was never plastered with lime plaster and did not have ornamentation and decoration in stucco. Malik Ambar was the functioning regent of the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs and this tomb was meant to evoke a royal presence, as is evident from all the royal Nizam Shahi motifs on it. It is also close to the tomb of an important Sufi in Khuldabad, which was a spiritually and symbolically potent necropolis. Malik Ambar ruled from Daulatabad for most of his career as a regent, and the site is only 27 kilometres northwest of Aurangabad. The tomb is attributed and dated on the basis of an Arabic inscription on a grave very close to Malik Ambar’s tomb [Inscription 22].10 This inscription records that the deceased was a resident of Hadramaut born in 1585, and was buried in the garden of the tomb of Malik Ambar. Around this tomb are a number of well-constructed tombs which cannot be attributed or dated because of a lack of inscriptional evidence. They are innovative and structurally challenging, leading one to believe that they are from the midseventeenth century, when a new kind of experimentation in architecture was taking place, in part because of the new styles that the Mughals introduced to the Deccan [Figure 6.34]. There is an associated palace building that is on the southern side of the enclosure wall.

CHAPTER 7 MISCELLANEOUS BUILDINGS

The palaces of the Nizam Shahs at Manzarsumbah, Hasht Bihisht Bagh, and Shivneri have hammams attached to them, but there is also a set of free-standing hammams which might have been a part of other urban conglomerations. For example, the hammam in the port city of Chaul and the Nizam Shahi hammam at Daulatabad both have arcades that would serve as shops, not unlike those seen in eighteenth-century complexes in Iran, such as the hammam of Ganj Ali Bakhsh in the bazaar of Kirman. Both these hammams are large enough to serve the public and have similarities in their planning. An outer room (to change and get ready) led to the inner chamber, where an octagonal platform dominated the space. Such a platform was used for various activities within the hammam, and several pools and cisterns of hot and cold water surrounded the room. The hammams attached to palaces were of a modest size in comparison. A caravanserai outside the city of Chaul would have served the mercantile traffic, being located at crossroads leading to different destinations in the region. A direction-stone recovered close to the site suggests this primary use for the architecture. A second caravanserai at the village of Sarai Nizampur, five kilometres southwest of Daulatabad, cannot be definitely attributed to the Nizam Shahs, and several elements of its construction are Mughal. But it could have been constructed in the reign of Malik Ambar, when Mughal architecture was in the process of becoming naturalised in the region. An interesting and unusual set of gateways survives at the village of Tisgaon, which was the fief of Salabat Khan. Two of them are vaulted by

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domes, and three are just fac ades. These gateways do not connect any set of walls, and it is likely that they were ceremonial portals for entering or leaving the village in different directions. The two larger gateways could easily have been converted to tombs, and it is such a potential secondary use of various kinds of ancillary buildings by which the many of the tombs lack a uniform character. As chapter 3 describes in detail, the systems of water management used by the Nizam Shahs were the most advanced in the region in the early and middle sixteenth century. The number of extant hammams is surprising: I have been able to document no less than three free-standing hammams and at least three hammams attached to palace buildings. Since hammams were exposed to steam and water for longer periods of time, the mortars and plasters in them tend to be extremely well cured. This might explain the disproportionate survival of baths as compared to the mansions and palaces themselves. One of the most impressive of the hammams built in the Nizam Shahi period is one at Daulatabad, which is dateable to 1582 by an inscription. If the Nizam Shahs were indeed conscious of their Brahminical roots,1 it is not surprising to see the ritual and symbolic significance of physical cleansing with water as part of their daily regimen. But such explanations are only speculative. The large-scale migration of e´migre´s from the Middle East, who had access and expertise to water systems of many kinds not common in India, was the real reason for the proliferation of water-management technologies. It was now possible to found cities away from perennial rivers or sources of water, a development with implications for defence.

The Water System of Ahmadnagar The city of Ahmadnagar has water pipes and conduits traversing it, as seen in a map of the city prepared by British surveyors. These typically terminate in cisterns (wells) and pools. There are hardly any surviving siphon towers around the city anymore, but until the 1960s they existed to some extent, as documented by Pramod Gadre.2 Other similar structures and systems are seen in Junnar, Daulatabad, and the fort of Dharur. In Junnar, the existing water-supply systems are found in the Gulshan-i Shahanshah-i Junnar Mosque, where a large water tower regulates the flow into an ablution tank. The water-distribution system

MISCELLANEOUS BUILDINGS

201

in Junnar has not been mapped, and the sources for the water are unknown. The water-distribution systems of Ahmadnagar are among the earliest that use earthen pipes and siphon towers on this scale in the Deccan.

The Waterworks at Manzarsumbah The hilltop palace complex of Manzarsumbah has been described in some detail in chapter 4. The system of waterworks is described in a plan. The water-supply system comprises a number of freshwater tanks carved halfway up the hillside. A spectacular pavilion and water-raising tower is right above these tanks and forms the bulk of constructed waterworks at Manzarsumbah. The pavilion tower would have been a quiet resting place in the hot months, when temperatures can easily reach 40 degrees Celsius. It affords views of the plains toward Daulatabad and faces north, so as not to receive any direct sunlight. It is approached by a flight of stairs on the southern side and leads to a stairway that goes down to the source water tanks. It is superbly crafted in stone masonry, and does not carry any traces of plaster finishes. The rooftop of this structure has a waterdrawing mechanism and the remnants of a set of conduits that would distribute the water. There is evidence to prove the existence of a water-distribution chamber closer to the large pool of water by the palace. This would have been an elevated square chamber set on four arches (accessible by stairs) where all the lifted water would have been distributed. This structure is confirmed as a water-distribution tower by the presence of troughs right next to it, as is typical of such structures in the period. The hammam at Manzarsumbah is a small, private one for use by the family of the king and his immediate associates. It is intimate in scale and comprises only two rooms. An outer room leads to an inner chamber equipped with hot and cold water. It is on the same platform as the rest of the palace buildings, and the water-supply system is connected with that of the large tank. There are arrangements to heat the water on the southern side of the hammam. There are motifs and shapes in the internal stucco plaster that are similar to the hammam at Shivneri, and the palace at Bhatavdi (Kalawantinicha Mahal). The hammam opens onto a set of terraced beds, which would have been planted with

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ornamental trees and shrubs, a suggestion that can only be confirmed with archaeo-botany.

¯ b Anba¯r and Ba¯dgir at Savedi A This building in the vicinity of the Hasht Bihisht Bagh is not accessible today because it is full of sewage from the fast-growing suburb around it. There are encroachments upon this subterranean structure, and abutting the ba¯dgir, a unique structure that is the only above-ground component of the building. The current squatters on the site are hostile to any documentation now. Pramod Gadre published a crude plan and section of this structure in The Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar. The subterranean structure had a central pool open to the sky, surrounded by vaulted spaces on three sides. Piped water was brought in from the southern side, where the staircase was located. A series of nurgirs (skylights) was located in the centre of all the domed bays. The ba¯dgir, which is the only known one of its kind in the Deccan, is about 20 feet tall. The ‘wind-catching’ feature is the set of windows at the top, which have baffle walls in them to channel the air upwards and downwards. The tower is capped by a small dome.

Hammam at Chaul The Chaul hammam is not unlike the one at Daulatabad in scale and style. It has a large outer chamber which could be accessed through the bazaar or through another back entrance [Figure 7.1]. This large chamber has chamfered corners, and four low platforms on the four sides [Figure 7.2]. It leads to the warm-water room, through which one could get to the hot-water room. A row of shops fronted what would have been a main street with a bazaar. The southern side of the structure has a number of tanks and cisterns, which would have regulated the hot and cold water supply. It is not uncommon to have large public hammams on the periphery of the town, or between the town and the governor’s palace. Such an arrangement is seen in the ‘funerary bath’ in the royal necropolis at Golconda. Visitors to the latter and to the fort of Golconda could have availed themselves of physical cleansing activities and rituals before their appointments with living or dead kings. Similarly, it is possible that the

MISCELLANEOUS BUILDINGS

Figure 7.1

203

Plan of the hammam at Chaul.

hammam was used by seafarers and traders who sought an audience with officials and the governor in the town. The construction of the hammam employed large timber sections (now missing) which were non-structurally built into the masonry, a technology used in most Nizam Shahi buildings.

Shahi Hammam at Daulatabad The hammam at Daulatabad is a magnificent structure. It has an inscription that dates it to 1582–83 [Inscription 23]. It has an outer room with a set of vaulted spaces running peripherally to the lower central portion with a fountain. The inner rooms are separated from this with a long corridor that has bathrooms and toilets at both ends [Figure 7.3]. The inner chamber is a large room with four rooms set off in the four corners. The four sides of the room have large, low platforms where masseuses, barbers, and other hygiene professionals would have assisted the customers. The four corner rooms contain large tanks sunk in the floor, which could be filled with water of different temperatures. All the rooms have pipes for hot and cold water. The furnace was at the

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Figure 7.2

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

Interior of the hammam at Chaul.

back, where the water cisterns are located. On the eastern side a row of shops, where various vendors would have set shop. The stucco plasters inside the building survive well accentuate the intersecting arches that form the squinches in corners [Figure 7.4].

was up and the

Figure 7.3

Plan of the Shahi hammam at Daulatabad.

Figure 7.4

Interior of the Shahi hammam at Daulatabad.

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An inscription lists the name of one Muhibullah Khan, who was involved in the creation of this inscription.3 The hammam was a public building, judging by the scale. It would have hosted male and female patrons at different times of the day, a practice not uncommon in twentieth-century Afghanistan and Iran. The water supply for the hammam, along with the drainage, was integrated with the larger systems for the whole settlement of Daulatabad.

The Dam near Daulatabad This dam and water pavilion are located two kilometres north of Daulatabad. This is part of an elaborate system of water management to supply the city. This complex comprises a large catchment dam, with a pavilion set to one side [Figure 7.5]. The pavilion is very much part of the waterworks, as it would have enabled a point of control for the dam, perhaps even regulating the flow of water in some way. The pavilion is very similar to a palace building close to Junnar. It has a simple tripartite plan, and the central pavilion has a balcony projection.

Figure 7.5 Dam north of Daulatabad, close to old Kagazipura on the Khuldabad plain.

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207

Figure 7.6 Balcony projection on the building near the dam north of Daulatabad.

This type of balcony was derived from Bahmani defensive works, but by the end of the sixteenth century it was a standard feature for most pavilions and palaces. There is a staircase that leads to the roof [Figure 7.6]. The building has a later eighteenth-century addition in the form of a second storey. This site is relatively inaccessible today. Structurally and stylistically, there is little doubt that it is from the early seventeenth century, when Malik Ambar expanded the settlement and made sophisticated arrangements for water supply and drainage.

Khufiya Bavdi This enigmatic structure is a well which is in immediate danger of being appropriated as a mosque.4 This was a subterranean pavilion built to escape the heat of the summers and is not dissimilar to the well in the Parenda Fort in that respect. The building itself is a rectangular well, which is accessed by a doglegged staircase [Figure 7.7]. There is a set of vaulted passages around the actual well that serve as cool pavilions. A mihra¯b marks the

208

Figure 7.7

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

Plan of Khufiya Bavdi, west of Daulatabad fort.

western wall of such a passage, but is nothing more than a decorated arch that indicates the direction of Mecca, in case the devout wished to pray in this space. This suggests that the users of this space were here for long periods which would have spanned over several Islamic prayer calls. The quality of the space is ideal for a summer retreat, and there is a steady shaft of natural light as the well itself is open to the sky, while the water provides cooling [Figure 7.8]. There are a number of smaller structures and surviving portions of buildings from the domains of the Nizam Shahs which do not add value to the catalogue, either because of their fragmented and modified nature or because there is no distinction in their construction and design. Sometimes buildings are in this category because they cannot be definitively attributed the Nizam Shahs. These include the Chini Mahal at Daulatabad, the eidgah and tomb on Shivneri fort, and a large number of battlements and fortifications.

The Caravanserai at Chaul The caravanserai in Chaul is on the old road travelling inland from the town. This ancient road would have been the only significant route connecting Chaul with the hinterland of the Deccan, and had been used

MISCELLANEOUS BUILDINGS

Figure 7.8

209

Khufiya Bavdi.

since early Buddhist times.5 This is borne out by geographical surveys, which indicate that the larger river basin and associated marshes would have made this the easiest path to travel inland to the east (where the larger commercial and production centres of the northern Deccan, such as Junnar, Daulatabad, Paithan, etc., were located.) This road passes through a natural barrier of hills separating the town from the

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caravanserai. This was an ideal location for a building complex that housed itinerant merchants and travellers, as it was isolated from the town. The caravanserai was also provided its own source of water in the form of a small natural pond behind. The hamlet located a few hundred metres from this site is called Sarai, corroborating the early function of this site as a caravanserai. A direction-stone, with the names and directions to neighbouring towns (not an uncommon feature under the later Nizam Shahs, especially Burhan Nizam Shah II)6 was found close to the site7 and is in conformance with the role of this structure as a caravanserai. The caravanserai is fairly large (the enclosure wall contains an area of approximately 60 by 45 metres), with two major extant structures: a block of rooms at the front (east) and a similar but smaller set of vaulted spaces along the rear (west) wall. The enclosure wall survives, and the arcaded spaces that ran along its inside are obvious from the ruins [Figure 7.9]. The central room on the western side has a prayer niche, but this alone is not adequate to accord this building the primary function of a mosque; it does not have any of the other details required of a mosque in this period and region. The east bloc of rooms forms the entrance to the complex.

Figure 7.9

Plan of the Caravansarai at Chaul.

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Although the architectural programme of a travellers’ station is universal, the form of a caravanserai is itself an ideal from the Middle Eastern world. The relevance of the town as a large trading port in the sixteenth century would have necessitated a caravanserai of these dimensions for itinerant traders. The patterns and scale of the vaulting are characteristic of the Nizam Shahs, as are also the planning modules for the staircase. Similar construction is found at sites around Ahmadnagar, such as Manzarsumbah and the Lakkad Mahal in the Hasht Bihisht complex. An inscription which was reported close by confirms the location of this site on an important trade route and its interest to travellers and merchants [Inscription 24].

Chini Mahal The Chini Mahal is attributed to the Nizam Shahs, though it is unclear who built it. Its name derives from the decorated faience tiles on its fac ade. This palace survives in a fragmentary state of preservation, and must have been part of a larger complex [Figure 7.10] encompassing an earlier Bahmani palace. This site is within the Kalakot enclosure of Daulatabad and was later abandoned and destroyed by the Mughals, who converted the Chini Mahal into a prison. The structure itself survives only as a long hall with a portal on one side. There is the characteristic use of timber, but the network of now subterranean galleries and rooms that connect it with the ‘Nizam Shahi Palace’ nearby are not completely open to exploration.8 The ‘Nizam Shahi Palace’ itself is a very enigmatic structure, and some parts of it have been recorded before the Archaeological Survey of India has carried out its ambitious plans of ‘restoring’ it. Stylistically, it bears a striking resemblance to Bahmani palaces, particularly in terms of its decorative scheme. Yet, in terms of construction, it is very likely from the very early period of the Nizam Shahs, perhaps built by Ahmad Nizam Shah I. The large complex of palaces suggests that the Nizam Shahs built their most important palaces in the Kalakot around the same area that had Bahmani buildings. A large pavilion behind the ‘Nizam Shahi Palace’ can be attributed to the Nizam Shahs on the basis of its stylistic traits and construction technology. The whole area needs a systematic survey and excavations; unfortunately, those endeavours have not been facilitated.

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Figure 7.10

Chini Mahal in the Kala Kot enclosure, Daulatabad.

Chitakhana This building, which now functions as an exhibition space, was built by Malik Ambar around 1610 CE [Figure 7.11].9 It was converted into a town hall for the city of Aurangabad by the British and is known by that name. It is a large octagonal pavilion with a pool in the central

MISCELLANEOUS BUILDINGS

Figure 7.11

213

Chitakhana, Aurangabad.

courtyard [Figure 7.12]. This pool was fed by the Ambari Nahar, an underground conduit constructed by Malik Ambar. The British put up a Gothic roof over the courtyard, making it difficult to assess if this courtyard was originally roofed over. On four sides are four large halls, all facing the inner court. There are a large number of accessory and

Figure 7.12

Plan of the Chitakhana, Aurangabad.

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ancillary spaces off these halls and also the courtyard. It is noted that the hall was once called Pandit khana or Chintan khana, and was used to foster dialogue between theologians and priests of various religions and sects. It is more likely that this was a large garden pavilion which was later converted into a jail under the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.

CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION:END OF AN OLD WORLD

The Nizam Shahs belonged to an older world of architectural and court practices, which were then superseded as the Mughals expanded into the Deccan, ushering in the ‘early modern’ period. The Nizam Shahs, like most of the Deccan sultans, were trying to establish a local kingdom where they patronised local forms of material expression, yet without losing sight of the Timurid ideal of all Islamic kingship in South Asia after the fourteenth century. Ironically, the lack of direct dynastic and centralised administrative control in commissioning some of the architecture in the kingdom did not result in a great diversity of architectural styles. On the contrary, most of the buildings look as if they were built by the same guilds but for different people, suggesting that the local idiom was stronger than ideological affinities. The architectural details often betray the ‘regional idiom’, even if the exercise in planning seems different. Sources for the architectural forms, whether real or idealised, are very similar in the sixteenth-century Deccan sultanates (for Ahmadnagar, Golconda, and Bijapur), but the construction of these designs is often affected by regional idioms of construction. What are sometimes claimed as stylistic differences are the effects of local crafts and trades. The system of power at the court was based on interpersonal relationships or layers of sovereignty and authority; it was a system that relied on individuals, not institutions. Therefore the architecture built was most often an extension of personalities, not of ideologies of the

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state. Architecture was as important as ceremony, robes of honour, titles, jewellery, and other personal effects as the markers of identity and power.1 The architecture of the Nizam Shahs provides important data to reconstruct the social history of the period. For the study of architecture itself, it fills large gaps in knowledge of stylistic aspirations as well as the construction realities. The tension between these two processes is manifest in many ways. Our understanding of social and political history can be informed by the architectural and planning patterns that we see used in the kingdom. Physical planning indicates a shift to a fort-dominated mode of administration, a legacy that ultimately found expression with the Maratha state founded by Shivaji Bhonsale. Mobility of the administrative apparatus was a typical feature: the capital could move at ease with such an arrangement.2 The capital ‘city’ was where the king was, where the administrative apparatus was centralised. Processions, as they constituted an ideal of legitimacy3 – an important political practice in India – seem to be absent based on the surveys of settlements, since there are no large avenues or streets where they could take place. None of the settlements seem to have any processional vistas or notable buildings that would flank such displays. Mughal kings were often on public display and on tour, but for the Nizam Shahs, the person of the king was mystified; he did not give public appearances or dars´ana.4 The presence of the king in the fort of Ahmadnagar, where he granted a regular audience to the members of the court (who had to be reassured that he was alive and well), is well recorded, but there is absolutely no reference to public appearances. The nature of the architecture and planning did not provide for this spectacle either. Central waterworks were crucial to settling towns. As a result, settlements were not necessarily close to rivers anymore, suggesting a paradigm shift for the region. This research dismisses the notion of a uniformity across the kingdom in terms of power structure, on the basis of the lack of uniformity in architectural patronage. It demonstrates the use of construction technology as a tool equally important to stylistic studies. The use of urban planning patterns uncovered archaeologically, in the absence of a complete physical fabric for any settlement, allows a more comprehensive look at the land use and political systems in the kingdom than other conventional means. The catalogue will allow a further

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analysis of the material record of the Nizam Shahs, overturning earlier dates for many of the buildings. There is a clear directional change in the architecture, an argument that can be demonstrated visually. Early buildings tend to have hemispherical domes with no drum. The domes become taller over time and the trefoil merlons on the parapet wall also become more ornate. Arches change from the initial stilted forms to the cusped shape, which becomes common by the end of the sixteenth century. Corner kiosks with arched openings start appearing in the late sixteenth century, replacing the finials of the early period. However, it is difficult to map that evolution onto the political changes in the kingdom. It seems that the global designs of the Nizam Shahs were always in tension with the local idioms, and any clear resolution was precluded by the decline of the kingdom. This study locates the Nizam Shahs as a critical component of the architectural and political history of the sixteenth-century Deccan, and hopefully can restore to them some of the status that they once commanded in their own time. The Nizam Shahs were one of the last medieval kingdoms the Mughals encountered as they swept across the Deccan. Being vanquished more than half a century before the Adil Shahs of Bijapur and the Qutb Shahs of Golconda meant that they did not have time to adjust to the early modern world, though Malik Ambar made some efforts in that direction. Taking a cue from Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam that the Mughals were an early modern state by virtue of their selfdefinition and their investment in representations of themselves, in both visual and literary terms the Nizam Shahs seem to lag behind, as did other sultanates of the Deccan. Particularly in the economic arena of portfolio bankers who could finance wars and of officials and courtiers who could be easily transferred and their lands confiscated, the Nizam Shahs were invested in traditional models of ʿiqta across their kingdom. This meant the rise of entrenched semi-feudal lords who were easily amenable to defecting for better prospects and quick to declare rebellion or independence. Such a scenario ensured a quick Mughal takeover, which would have also been the case with the other Deccan sultanates had Aurangzeb not been vested in his internecine struggles and had to move back to Delhi. From the early seventeenth century onwards, Mughal court fashions and protocol already affected the Deccan courts but, architecturally, Golconda and Bijapur kept up the local

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architectural idiom until it was completely vanquished by the Mughals in the late seventeenth century. In the northern Deccan, the strongest architectural continuity with the Deccan sultanates was maintained by the new Maratha state under Shivaji Bhonsale. While Aurangzeb was casting Aurangabad in a Mughal architectural cloak, Shivaji, like his ancestors, was still employing an architectural style that was distinctly not Mughal. Perhaps the Jagdisvara temple at his capital of Raigad, built around the time of his investiture in 1674 CE , is an example of architectural continuity before the complete Mughal takeover of the Deccan. The sultanate Deccan was a cosmopolitan space, with different ethnic and social groups who had enormous mobility between various states.5 Religious affiliations were not primary, as also in the case of the Marathas who served in all the sultanates and also joined the Mughal service in substantial numbers, just as Muslims and others served in the Maratha court.6 Iranian e´migre´s, who had made up a significant coterie at the Deccan courts, were in declining numbers in the seventeenth century; this was a result of the Safavid and Mughal empires absorbing these men of letters, and also because of Portuguese control of the sea routes.7 The Deccani–Maratha– Habashi axis vis-a`-vis the Persian nobility had been a feature of the Deccan since the sixteenth century. The Bahmani and post-Bahmani sultanates cultivated Maratha families to balance the various ethnic factions at court: these included Afa¯qis, the Deccanis, and later the Habshis and Marathas. The Nimbalkars, Shirkes, Jadhavs, Jedhes, Bhonsales, Khandagales, Ghorpades, etc. were important families in the service of the Adil Shahs, the Nizam Shahs, and the Qutb Shahs, and they formed a loose kinship group with lots of fickle alliances and bickering.8 But as with the other identity groups, they were firmly part of the court culture of the Deccan sultanates and their limited material expression cannot be distinguished. The paucity of architectural evidence of the Marathas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is similarly mirrored by the lack of evidence in painting. After 1700 CE , as the Maratha empire reconsolidated its position, the architectural character of the Deccan completely changed. The sultanates of the Deccan had become Mughal provinces under Aurangzeb, and long-lasting architectural changes were in place. The Marathas, too, under their peshwa Balaji Vishvanath, would negotiate the vassalage of the Mughals, and within 40 years most of the provinces of the

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Mughals would be virtually independent, despite their nominal acceptance of the Mughal overlords in Delhi. The architecture of power, that of the Mughals, was evident, and even though the Maratha and Asaf Jahi (eventually known as the Nizams of Hyderabad) courts would eventually evolve their own versions of Mughal architecture, it would be a while before regional idioms of Mughal architecture were created. The Nizam Shahs displayed the first post-Bahmani flourish of an architecture that would be called Deccan sultanate architecture, and were also the first Deccan kingdom to succumb to the Mughals. The Marathas would carry their political fight until much later, but the architectural and cultural landscape of the sultanate Deccan was lost after the mid-seventeenth century. The Marathas were firmly embedded in the political and social milieu of the Deccan from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. The Maratha sardars shifted alliances between the various sultans and had differences between themselves.9 It is possible to conclude that there was no nationhood or polity based on an ethnic identity, and that their ethnic identity was a marker of a social rise through military service. The cultural forms of the greater Islamicate world, as expressed in the Deccan by the Bahmanis, the Vijayanagar kings, and the later sultanates, were also adopted by the Maratha courts. In conception, execution, and ornament, the architecture of the early Marathas was exactly the same as that of their sultanate overlords and peers. The structural forms, decorative details, and planning logic all conform to the Islamicate architecture of the Deccan sultanates. In conclusion, early Maratha history and architecture was not distinct from that of the sultanate Deccan sultanates, as a result of which it remains invisible. The early Marathas, resistant to Mughal expansion, were actually one of the last champions of the sultanate legacy in their architecture. The brief architectural record of the early Marathas is a testimonial to their integrated nature within the context of the Deccan sultanates. It is unfortunate that the historiography of the region has thus far been unable to accommodate the early Marathas within that cultural complex.

APPENDIX:INSCRIPTIONS

Inscription 1 Findspot: Gate of Niʾmat Khan’s palace. Date: 979 H (& words) ¼ 1571 AD Language and script: Arabic, Thuluth Remarks: States that through the efforts of Khwaja Husain, entitled Niʾmat Khan, son of the deceased Khwaja Jalal-ud-din Simnani (i.e., of Simnan), a desert was transformed into a garden which was called Naʾimiyya, and a water channel was excavated and the whole was endowed by him to the general public and their animals for drinking purposes (only). It further prohibits its sale or bestowal as present or mortgage or hire or loan or use as residence, or its fragmentation or alteration. Further says that the trusteeship of the two will vest in his offspring. Written by Muhammad Husain. Published: EIM 1933–34, pp. 10–11, Plate V (a); ARIE 1972–73, D 68. Transcription:

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Translation: During the period of the king of the dignity of Jamshid and glory of Alexander, Whose best quality is being the namesake of the Lion of God [Ali], Murtaza, king of the nation and of the faith, shadow of Allah, Through whom the government of the whole of the Deccan is evident. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . kings, Niʾmat Khan, Whose action on account of its veracity are all devoid of hypocrisy and dissimulation, He was favoured as he constructed a house of charity, Like unto what his brilliant mind desired. In that house he constructed cisterns, full of running water, And in it he constructed a mosque; and what he did is justifiable. For the date of its construction, the old man of wisdom wrote, This blissful place; this sport has good water and air. The chronogram yielded is 971 H [1564 AD].

Inscription 2 Findspot: Slab below the above [Gate of Niʾmat Khan’s palace]. Date: Shuhur 971 (chronogram) ¼ 978 H; 25 May 1570 to 24 May 1571 CE Language and script: Persian, Nasta’liq Remarks: States that Niʾmat Khan constructed a pleasant place called Naʾimiyya with reservoirs of flowing water and also a mosque. Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 10, Plate V (b); ARIE 1972– 73, D 69. Transcription:

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Translation: Khwaja Husain Shah, entitled Nʾimat Khan, may his end be laudable!, in order to get nearness to Allah, the Worshipped, made this endowment consisting of all the confectionary shops and caravanserai and hammam situated in the Bazar Panjshambah [i.e., Thursday] in Ahmadnagar, the seat of Ahmadnagar, the seat of government, and all the cultivated portions of Naʾim Bagh situated in the village Savar, for the Naʾimiyyah Masjid and the running conduits in the endowed mosque in the said bazaar, so that the income of these may be utilised for the essential repairs, for the carpets and lightning of the mosque, and for the conduits. And the trusteeship and the work of keeping the accounts of the mosque and the said villages will rest with his children, and the children of his children, generation after generation. After completely defraying the expenses connected with the mosque and its repairs, the balance of the income of said villages should belong to them. He who changes it after hearing it, may the curse of Allah, the angels, and the men be on him. This happened in the year 980 H (1572– 73 CE).

Inscription 3 Findspot: Carved in four lines on the Mangalwar Gate, Ahmadnagar. Date: Shuhur 979 ¼ 1578 CE Language and script: Arabic, Thuluth. Remarks: Similar to the Persian inscription carved on the same gate. Most likely the same craftsman. Published: EIM 1935– 36, pp. 37 – 38, Plate XXV (a). Transcription:

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Translation: Verily . . . the great sultan, the most generous monarch, the king of the kings of Arabia and non-Arab countries, the shadow of God, the defender of the law of the chief of prophets [Muhammad], the namesake of the prince of the faithful [Murtaza Ali] – may the peace of God be upon both of them – the favoured one of God, the servant of the family of the Prophet [Muhammad], the lord of the kingdom and the caliphate, Murtaza Nizam Shah, may God perpetuate his kingdom and his sovereignty and extend his bounty and munificence to the people of the world, the founder of these charitable institutions, attached to the tomb (of the founder), situated at this pleasant site, known as . . . was Khwaja Husain, entitled Niʾmat Khan, son of the deceased, taken into the mercy of God, the Malik Mubin, Khwaja Jalal-ud-din Simnani, in the Shahur year 979 [1578 CE]. This beautiful place was dedicated . . . with the stipulation that the people may avail themselves of its water for drinking purposes, and they also avail themselves of such other comforts as are the right of the servants of God, [but they are enjoined] not to sell these two [works], nor to bestow them upon any person, nor to mortgage them, nor to lease them, nor to lend them, nor to settle therein . . . nor to cut . . . in them, nor to change . . . I entrust the guardianship of this place to . . . and his descendants. Whoever changes it after he hath heard it, the curse of God and angels and men overtaketh him. To conclude, praise be unto God, the Cherisher of all the worlds. Written by the humble Muhammad Husain in the year 979 [1578 CE].

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Inscription 4 Findspot: Now on the District Judge’s Court (Changiz Khan’s palace) Date: 984 H (chronogram) ¼ 1576– 77 CE Language and script: Persian, Nasta’liq. Remarks: Refers to the laying out of a garden called Farah Bakhsh by Niʾmat Khan. Published: EIM 1933 – 34, p. 11, Plate VI (a); ARIE 1972 – 73, D 67. Transcription:

Translation: Its name, on account of the pleasantness of its water and air, Became Farah Bakhsh, may it be known thus! As Niʾmat Khan made efforts for the foundation of this garden, May his efforts be commended! I sought its date from wisdom, O God, Keep it inhabited till eternity! The last line provides the date 984 H [1574– 75 CE].

Inscription 5 Findspot: Enclosure known as Bara Imam Kotla. Loose slab kept inside the entrance gate of the east. Language and script: Persian, Naskh. Remarks: Fragmentary and damaged. States that Sayyid Jala, a descendant of the Prophet and a saintly person, built a mosque and also set apart a place near it (for his burial). Portion containing the chronogram lost. In characters of about the sixteenth century. Published: EIM 1935–36, pp. 39 – 40, Plate XXVI (b); ARIE 1972 –73, D 47.

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Transcription:

Translation: It is in the Sayings of the Prophet, ‘Whoever talks of worldly affairs in a mosque loses (the recompense) of his good actions of forty years.’ The builder of the sacred, Sunhairi Masjid is the servant of the ‘faithful’ from his heart and soul. He is the humble slave of the court of the God Almighty, and his name is Sayyid Asad Amir Ja’far. Written by the humble, Ibrahim Nasr, dated 937 H [1531 CE].

Inscription 6 Findspot: Another loose slab in the same place [Bara Imam Kotla]. Date: 937 H (& words) ¼ 1530– 31 CE Language and script: Arabic prose, Thuluth. Remarks: Records the construction of a mosque called Sumehri-Masjid [sic] by Sayyid Asad (son of) Amir Jaʾ’far. Written by Ibrahim (son of) Nasr. Published: EIM 1935–36, p. 39, Plate XXVI (a); ARIE 1972– 73, D 48. Transcription:

Translation: 1. Sayyid Jalal is a descendant of the Prophet . . . in both the worlds he is honoured.

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2. . . . the thirsty . . . are replenished like the ocean by water as on his face God has written the solution of the difficulties of the people. 3. Protect him . . . for innumerable years! 4. He has built a mosque for the believers, and on one side has set a place for himself. 5. And from his age . . .

Inscription 7 Findspot: Ruined mosque in [Dharur] Fort. Date: 981 H (chronogram) ¼ 1573– 74 CE Language and script: Persian verse, Nasta’liq. Remarks: Assigns the construction of the mosque to Sanjar Khan. Published: ARIE 1965– 66, D192; Indian Archaeology: A Review 1964 –65 (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India), Arabic and Persian inscriptions no. 18. Transcription:

Loose Translation: In the reign of Nizam Shah, king of the world comparable to Khorshid, This was constructed by Sanjar Khan, for convenience and comfort, The date of construction . . . (hemistich ¼ 981), for the pious.

Inscription 8 Findspot: Rohankheda Jamiʾ mosque. Over the entrance. Date: 990 H (chronogram) ¼ 1582– 83 CE Language and script: Persian verse, Nasta’liq. Remarks: Assigns the construction of the mosque to Khudavand Khan. Published: EIM 1907– 08, p. 20; ARIE, 1965–66, D 200.

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Transcription:

Translation: Because of the damaged nature of the inscription, the facts that can be gleaned from this inscription are translated, not the whole inscription. The mosque was built by Khudavand Khan in the year 990H [1582 CE].

Inscription 9 Findspot: Fatehkheda Jamiʾ mosque. Over the entrance. Date: 990 H (chronogram) ¼ 1582– 83 CE Language and script: Persian verse, Nasta’liq. Remarks: Refers to the construction of the mosque by Khudavand (Khan). Published: EIM 1907– 08, p. 20; ARIE 1965 –66, D 202. Transcription:

Translation: By the grace of the Lord of the world, This mosque was built like the eternal abode I inquired of my mind the date of its completion And [I] replied ‘May the house of God endure’. The last hemistich yields 990 H [1582 CE].

Inscription 10 Findspot: Kali Masjid in Burud Gate. Slabs in the west wall, flanking the central mihra¯b. Date: 994 H (& words) ¼ 1585– 86 CE

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Language and script: Persian verse, Thuluth. Remarks: Records construction by Sayyid Muntajib. Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 13, Plate VI (e); ARIE 1972–73, D 49. Transcription:

Translation: 1. The most distinguished noble from the descent of the illustrious kings, may the abode of bliss be his resting place in the everlasting world! 2. He has always endeavoured to obey the Lord of Creation and always glorified Him and sought His good-will. 3. The chronogram ‘Adn Tayyib’ was composed by Miyan Makhdum, but if it is incomplete, add the numerical value of the phrase—‘these are the words’.

Inscription 11 Findspot: In the central mihra¯b of Kali Masjid in Burud Gate. Date: 994 H (& words) ¼ 1585– 86 CE Language and script: Arabic, Naskh. Remarks: Contains religious text (Basmallah, Allah, Muhammad, Ali). In characters of about the sixteenth century. Published: EIM 1933 – 34, p. 13, Plate VI (e); ARIE 1972 – 73, D 50. Transcription:

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Translation: The mosque resplendent with the light of the Worshipped, Was constructed by the effort and exertion of Sayyid Muntajib [chosen Sayyid] For the date of its completion, Wisdom Found, Its construction was due to Sayyid Muntajib [994 H ¼ 1586 CE].

Inscription 12 Findspot: On a minaret of the Kamani mosque, Shivneri. Date: Circa 1625 CE because it is paired with another inscription that mentions the date. This inscription mentions Burhan Nizam Shah III who was ruling at the time. Language and script: Persian, Naskh. Remarks: This is one of the last inscriptions of the Nizam Shah kings on a monumental building. Burhan Nizam Shah III was the third last of the Nizam Shahs. Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 22. Transcription:

Translation: . . . . . . . . . .The foundation of this mosque was laid on the twentysecond of the month of Shawwal, year one thousand and twenty-four, and it was completed on the ninth day of the month of Zu’l Hijja, year one thousand and twenty-five, during the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah and administration of the officer of the state, the support of government, Miyan Barbud.

Inscription 13 Findspot: On a minaret of the Kamani mosque, Shivneri. Date: Shuhur San 1025 ¼ 1625 CE

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Language and script: Persian, Naskh. Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 22. Transcription:

Translation: That the mosques are Allah’s, therefore call not upon anyone with Allah. [Quran] . . . . . . . . . . .The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless and assoil him! And his family! . . . . . . . . . . . During the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah, son of Murtaza Nizam Shah, Shahur year 1025. . . . . . . . . . . Secure in the favour of the Beneficient, Ambar Adil of Changiz Khan. Miyan Barbud,. . . . . .

Inscription 14 Findspot: On a column of the mosque at Chaul. Date: Late sixteenth to early seventeenth century. Language and script: Persian, Nasta’liq. Remarks: A very crude hand, probably untrained in carving the Arabic script. Published: ARIE 1959 –60, D 150; untranslated. Transcription:

Translation: This inscription is very poorly carved and has weathered extensively. Words can be identified but not entire sentences. There is a reference to a mosque, but not a date that can be deciphered.

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Inscription 15 Findspot: On the wall of a tomb next to the mosque at Chaul. Date: Late sixteenth to early seventeenth century. Language and script: Persian, Naskh. Remarks: Mentions a mosque, but nothing more can be inferred. Published: ARIE 1959 –60, D 151; untranslated. Transcription:

Inscription 16 Findspot: Dilawar Khan’s tomb. Over the main entrance. Date: 1022 H ¼ 1613– 14 CE Language and script: Persian verse, Nasta’liq. Remarks: Records the death of Raihan, son of Dilawar Khan. Published: ARIE 1961 –62, D 212; untranslated.

Inscription 17 Findspot: Slab in the east wall of a small building in the compound of the Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah. Date: 947 H (& words) ¼ 1540– 41 CE Language and script: Arabic and Persian, Naskh. Remarks: Indifferently executed. Records the construction of a mosque by (name illegible) for Bibi Halima. Published: EIM 1935– 36, p. 43, Plate XXX (c); ARIE 1972–73, D 58. Transcription:

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Translation: O God, pardon the sins. . . . . .built the mosque. . . . . . . .dated, 947 years after the Prophet [1540 CE], the intercessor . . . .

Inscription 18 Findspot: On the entrance to the tomb of Saudagar Gumbaz. Date: First half of the sixteenth century. Language and script: Persian; Naskh. Remarks: Unpublished. A verse of three baits using metaphors of death and the impermanence of the human body, invoking Shiʾi beliefs. Transcription:

Inscription 19 Findspot: Do¯ Bo¯ti Chira¯ tomb. Loose slab. Date: 969 H ¼ 1562 CE Language and script: Arabic, Naskh Remarks: Damaged. Contains religious text. In characters of about the sixteenth century. Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 7; ARIE 1972– 73, D 66. Transcription:

Translation: Invoke ʿAli, the displayer of miracles, (And) thou wilt find him a help to thee in calamities.

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Every care and grief will vanish, By thy aid, Muhammad! By thy aid O ʿAli! O ʿAli! The chief of the Sayyids, Sayyid Muhammad, son of Sayyid Jaʾfar, Muqarrab Khani was received into the mercy of God in the month of Rajab 969 (March 1562 CE).

Inscription 20 Findspot: Gun in the garden of the tomb of Rumi Khan. Currently missing. Date: Second half of sixteenth century. Language and script: Unknown. Remarks: Muhammad ibn Hasan Rumi is mentioned in the inscription. Reference: Tarikh-i Ahmadnagar, p. 397; Z.A. Desai, Arabic, Persian and Urdu Inscriptions of West India, p. 18, no. 171; not reproduced in translation.

Inscription 21 Findspot: Tomb of Haji Hamid. Remarks: The inscription is bilingual and has a quatrain in Marathi, written in Devanagari script. The rest of the text comprises Shiʾi invocatory verses. Published: EIM 1939– 40, p. 30, Plate XIII (b). Transcription:

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Inscription 22 Findspot: Tomb of Malik Ambar. The whereabouts of this inscription are unknown. Date: First half of the seventeenth century. Language and script: Unknown Remarks: According to Desai, the inscription mentions the death of a man from Hadramaut in 1041 H (1631 CE) in ‘the garden of the Tomb of Malik Ambar at Rauda’. The man was born in 993 H (1585 CE). Reference: Z.A. Desai, Arabic, Persian and Urdu Inscriptions of West India, no. 1328, p. 140; unpublished in translation.

Inscription 23 Findspot: Over the doorway to the Shahi Hammam at Daulatabad Date: 992 H ¼ 1582– 83 CE Language and script: Arabic, Naskh. Remarks: The inscription is unpublished in translation. Reference: ARIE 1958– 59, D 56.

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Transcription:

Loose Translation: God only intended to take dirt away from you, and purify you well, with the [Prophet’s] family (Ahl al Bait) The lover of the Ahl al Bait, Muhib Khan Abdul Qadir al Husaini, the scribe. 990 H.

Inscription 24 Findspot: Chaul: Loose slab in Vishnu Joshi’s field Language and script: Bilingual, Persian and Marathi; Naskh and Modi. Remarks: Location presently unknown. Direction-stone that provided orientation to travellers by indicating the directions of nearby towns. Published: ARIE 1959 –60, D 149; EIAPS 1970, p. 48, Plate X (b).

NOTES

Praface 1. Scott Cameron Levi, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and Its Trade, 1550 – 1900 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2002); Scott Cameron Levi (ed.), India and Central Asia, 1500 – 1800 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007). 2. Panduranga Pissurlencar, ‘The Extinction of the Nizam Shahi’, in Sardesai Commemoration Volume (Bombay: Keshav Bhikaji Dhavale, 1938), pp. 27 – 46. 3. John Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India (Calcutta: Editions Indian, 1966) v. 3, p. 190; a slightly different story is translated by Lt. Col. Sir Wolseley Haig, History of the Nizam Shahi Kings of Ahmadnagar (Bombay: British India Press, Mazgaon, 1923), pp. 2 – 3: ‘The story of the origins of the Nizam Shahi dynasty in the Burhan e Maasir is more intriguing, and suggests that Ahmad Shah Bahri, the founder prince of the Nizam Shahs, was actually an illegitimate son of the Bahmani sultan, Muhammad Shah, and was only raised by Malik Naib Nizam-ul-Mulk. If this was indeed the case, then Ahmad Nizam Shah I would have gladly used the name Bahmani as opposed to Bahri, which is suggested as a corrupt version of the name Bhairav (written as Bhairo in Persian).’ 4. Lt. Col. Sir Wolseley Haig, Indian Antiquary, v. XLIX (May 1920), pp. 85 – 6. 5. Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astrabadi Ferishtah, Tarikh-i Firishtah musamma¯ bi Gulshan-i Ibra¯hı¯mı¯ (Lucknow: Nawal Kishore, 1943 –45) p. 97; Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power, p. 121; however, it must be mentioned that none of the coins allegedly struck under the rule of Ahmad Nizam Shah I have ever been recovered, and there are good reasons to believe that those coins, if they existed, were only ceremonial and not circulatory. 6. Haig, Indian Antiquary (April 1920), pp. 72 – 4. 7. Haig, Indian Antiquary (June 1920), p. 108. 8. Ibid., p. 108.

NOTES

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9. Farhad Daftary, The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 451– 5 passim. 10. S. Mujahid Husain Zaidi (ed.), Tarikh-i Qutbi (also called the Tarikh-i Ilchi-yi Nizam Shah) of Khurshah bin Qubad Al-Husaini (New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia, 1965), pp. 12 – 26. 11. Akbar’s envoy Faizi was in Ahmadnagar in the late sixteenth century, and he mentions these massacres. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘A Place in the Sun: Travels with Faizi in the Deccan’, Les Sources et le Temps: Sources and Time, Francois Grimal, ed. (Pondicherry: Institut Francais d’Indologie; Ecole Francais d’Extreme-Orient, 2001), pp. 265–307; the massacres are also referred to by Pramod Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, pp. 33 – 36. 12. P.M. Joshi, ‘The Portuguese on the Deccan (Konkan) Coast’, Journal of Indian History, v. XLVI (1968): pp. 65 – 88; Stewart Gordon, The Marathas: 1600– 1818 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 50. 13. For a detailed account of the Mughal pressures, both military and diplomatic, on the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, see M. Siraj Anwar, Mughals and the Deccan: Political Relations with the Ahmadnagar Kingdom (Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 2007). 14. T.N. Devare, A Short History of Persian Literature at the Bahmani, the A¯dilsha¯hi and the Qutbshahi Courts (Poona: Nowrosjee Wadia College, 1961), pp. 66 – 7. Both the historians Firishtah and Tabatabai were originally at the court of the Nizam Shahs but later sought employment at the Adil Shahi and Qutb Shahi courts, respectively. Similarly, the poets Zuhuri and ʿUrfi also fled Ahmadnagar in this period. 15. Phillip B. Wagoner. ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 55, no. 4 (Nov 1996): pp. 851– 80; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 16. A.H. Siddiqui, ‘A Copper Coin of Murtaza Nizam Shah II of Punanagar Mint’, Journal of the Numismatics Society of India, v. 36 (1974): pp. 140–1; Pissurlencar, ‘Extinction of the Nizam Shahi Dynasty’, p. 28. 17. Richard M. Eaton, A Social History of the Deccan, 1300– 1761 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 113. 18. The water systems built to supply the Peshwa capital in Pune in the eighteenth century were the last of their kind to be built in the western Deccan. The only explanation for the survival of this technology is that it had become indispensable for settling large urban areas that would not be dependent on just natural sources of water in their proximity. 19. K.A. Kadiri, ‘Some More Direction-Stones of the Nizam Shahi Dynasty’, in Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica 1970 (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1975), pp. 48 – 9. 20. Sumit Guha, ‘Transitions and Translations: Regional Power and Vernacular Identity in the Dekhan 1500– 1800’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 24, no. 20 (2004): p. 23.

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21. Deborah Hutton, The Elixir of Mirth and Pleasure: The Development of Bijapuri Art, 1565– 1635, PhD diss. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2000), p. 20. 22. Pushkar Sohoni, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds: Responses to Gunpowder in the Early Modern Deccan’, South Asian Studies, vol. 31, no. 1 (Jan. 2015): pp. 111 – 126.

Chapter 1 Locating Architecture: Social History and Historiography of the Deccan 1. Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1986), p. 11. 2. E.J. Chinnock (tr.), Anabasis of Alexander, Together with the Indica (London: Bohn, 1893); Tarif Khalidi, Islamic Historiography: The Histories of Mas’udi (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1975); Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea & Ptolemy on Ancient Geography of India (Calcutta: Prajn˜a¯, 1980); Gerhard Fussman, ‘Le Periple et l’histoire politique del’Inde’, Journal Asiatique, vol. 279 (1991): pp. 31 – 8; Martin Hammond and John Atkinson, Alexander the Great: The Anabasis and the Indica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 3. D.C. Sircar, Inscriptions of As´oka (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1967); Kanai Lal Hazra, As´oka as Depicted in His Edicts (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2007). 4. Anwar, Mughals and the Deccan, p. 41. 5. Ibid., pp. 40 – 5 passim. 6. Stewart Gordon, ‘Burhanpur: Entrepot and Hinterland, 1650– 1750’, Indian Economic Social History Review, vol. 25 (1988): pp. 425– 42; B.G. Gokhale, ‘Burhanpur: Notes on the History of an Indian City in the XVIIth Century’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 15 (1972), pp. 316 –23. 7. George Michell and Mark Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 7: ‘Allauddin (reg. 1347 –58) gave his name to a new line of rulers, henceforth known as the Bahmanis after the legendary hero Bahman of the Persian epic, the Shahnameh’. 8. Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture: An Outline of Its History and Development (1526 – 1858) (Munich; New York: Prestel; distributed by Neues, 1991); Ebba Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology (New Delhi: New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 9. Richard M. Eaton and Phillip B. Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300– 1600 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014). 10. Briggs, Rise of the Mohamedan Power, vol. 3, p. 123.

NOTES TO PAGES 9 –17

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11. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). 12. Yasser Tabbaa, ‘Geometry and Memory in Architectural Transmission’, Theories and Principles of Design in the Architecture of Islamic Societies (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1988), pp. 23 – 34. 13. Hermann Goetz, ‘The Fall of Vijayanagara and the Nationalization of Muslim Art in the Dakhan’, Journal of Indian History, vol. 19 (1940): pp. 249– 55. 14. Deborah Hutton, Art at the Court of Bijapur (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 15. Eaton and Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture. 16. Elizabeth Schotten Merklinger, Indian Islamic Architecture: The Deccan 1347– 1686 (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1981); Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates. 17. Hutton, Art of the Court of Bijapur, p. 129. 18. Sayyid Ali bin Aziz ʿullah at-Tabatabai was an e´migre´ who came to Ahmadnagar via Iraq and Golconda. His work was published as Burha¯n-i Maasir (Delhi: Matba’at Jami’ah Dihli, 1936); Firishtah’s real name was Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astrabadi and, as a young boy, he arrived in in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, where his father Ghulam Ali was a courtier – his history was first published in Persian as Tarikh-i Firishtah (Bombay: Mirza Hasan Shirazi, 1832) and later famously translated by John Briggs as History of the Rise of Mohammedan Power in India in four volumes. 19. M.S. Mate, ‘Road to Islamic Archaeology in India’, World Archaeology, vol. 14, no. 3 (February 1983): p. 336. 20. Pika Ghosh, ‘Problems of Reconstructing Bengali Architecture of the 14th – 16th Centuries’, in The Architecture of the Indian Sultanates, Abha Narain Lambah and Alka Patel, eds. (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2006), p. 95. 21. Avinash Sovani, Maratha Town and City Planning with Reference to the Systems of Village Development during 17th and 18th Centuries, unpublished dissertation (Pune: Tilak Maharastra Vidyapeeth, 2011). 22. The only obvious exception to the large-scale use of wood inside masonry walls is at the site of Bhongir, close to Warangal, which was in the kingdom of Golconda. 23. Alka Patel, Building Communities in Gujara¯t: Architecture and Society during the Twelfth through Fourteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Abha Narian Lambah and Alka Patel, The Architecture of the Indian Sultanates (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2006). 24. Patel, Building Communities in Gujarat; Khoundkar Alamgir, Sultanate Architecture of Bengal: An Analysis of Architectural and Decorative Elements (New Delhi: Kaveri Books, 2011). 25. George Kozlowski points out the common reasons awqa¯f were readily created by gentry and nobility: ‘Awqa¯f were sometimes connected with an attempt to secure or preserve wealth and power . . . endowments were not always dedicated

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to the service of the public or for religious purposes . . . . Individuals made use of them for a variety of more personal objectives . . . endowments became favored instruments for dealing with property, especially land, because they offered the promise of stability’. George Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 16–17. 26. Status as a national monument does not translate into any real protective mechanism against vandalism and looting, and very often the protected status applies only to the central structure, not the complete site. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is the custodian of the sites of ‘national importance’ and may depute people to guard them. The sites protected are listed by the ASI as: ‘Damdi Masjid, Gate near Niyamat Khan’s Place, Kotla of Twelve Imams, Old Tomb near Changiz Khan’s Palace, Tomb of Nizam Ahmedshah, Building known as Farah Bagh, Five Stone Gates at Tisgaon, Tomb of Malik Ambar.’ All these monuments are listed under the Aurangabad Circle of the ASI. Only one Nizam Shahi site – the Shahi Hammam at Daulatabad – is under the jurisdiction of the Maharashtra State Archaeological Department. 27. Many of these conversions are well documented in the Bombay State Gazetteer: Ahmednagar District, vol. XVII (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1884), pp. 694 –706.

Chapter 2

Multiple Pasts: The Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar

1. Even in the study of literature, the Nizam Shahs are not treated as an independent entity whose patronage of literati is worthy of study. For example: ‘The Nizamshahs of Ahmadnagar had a chequered political career. And though this dynasty nominally stretched its political existence till AH 1043, its political prestige had suffered a setback. [Ahmadnagar was a] . . . rendezvous of Shia Scholars and Divines. History and Poetry followed Religion, and ports like Malik e Qummi, Mawlana Zuhuri, Fani, and Hayati and historians like Sayyid Ali Tabatabai, Khurshah Husayni, and Firishta enjoyed the Nizamshahi patronage in the heyday of its glory. [After 1588], . . . most of these poets and historians left Ahmadnagar and enlisted themselves in the services of either Bijapur or the Golconda courts, and hence have been classified here for the sake of convenience as the A¯dilsha¯hi and the Qutbshahi poets and historians’ (Devare, Short History of Persian Literature, pp. 66 – 7). 2. P.M. Joshi and H.K. Sherwani, eds, History of Medieval Deccan, vol. II (Hyderabad: Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1974), p. 107. 3. T.N. Devare, ‘Tabatabai and His Burhan e Maasir’, in A Short History of Persian Literature: At the Bahmani, the Adilshahi and the Qutbshahi Courts (Poona: Nowrosjee Wadia College, 1961), pp. 282– 96.

NOTES

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4. Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan, p. 103. 5. Rafiʾuddin Shirazi, ‘Tadhkirat ul Mulk,’ manuscript at the Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad, acc. no. History 142. 6. For example, Ibrahim Zubairi’s Basatin us-Salatin (Ha¯ydara¯ba¯d, Dakkan: Matbaʿ-i Sayyidı¯, [19 – ]), written in 1824– 25. ˙ 7. Jonathan Scott, Firishtah’s History of Dekkan, vols I – II (London: John Pickdale, 1794). 8. Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power. 9. Haig, History of the Nizam Shahi Kings. 10. S.P. Sen, Indian History Congresses (1935 – 1963) (Calcutta: Indian History Congress, 1963). Some of the papers from the conferences are as follow: ‘Salabat Khan II of Ahmadnagar’ by C.H. Shaikh (1942); ‘History of the City of Aurangabad’ by Ghulam Ahmed Khan (1942); ‘Early Life of Malik Ambar’ by Banarasi Prasad Saksena (1942); ‘Interstate Relations in the Deccan (1529 – 1707)’ by Pratapgiri Ramamurti (1945); ‘Gujarat and Malwa in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century’ by S.C. Mishra (1953); ‘Adilshahi Administration’ by P.M. Joshi (1940); ‘The Archives of the Deshmukh Family of Sholapur’ by G.H. Khare (1953); ‘Identification of Dalpat Rai Mentioned in Burhan e Maasir . . . ’ by P.K. Gode (1938); ‘The Bijapur Court Culture’ by K.K. Basu (1943). 11. The phenomenon and the reasons for the rise of regional history and historians in the region of the modern state of Maharashtra in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are detailed by B.G. Gokhale, The Fiery Quill: Nationalism and Literature in Maharashtra (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1998). 12. Radhey Shyam, The Kingdom of Ahmadnagar (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1966). 13. Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan. 14. Percy Brown, Indian Architecture: Buddhist and Hindu Period and Indian Architecture: Islamic Period (Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., 1942 –43). 15. ‘Shatter zone’ was a term used by Phillip Wagoner and Richard Eaton to describe the region around Kalyani (now called Basavakalyan) in the central Deccan in ‘Architecture and Contested Terrain in the Medieval Deccan’ (New York: Barbara Stoler Miller lecture at Columbia University, 28 April 2006). 16. S.M. Alam, ‘The Historic Deccan – A Geographical Appraisal’ in Aspects of Deccan History, V.K. Bawa, ed. (Hyderabad: Institute of Asian Studies, 1975). 17. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, was based on a doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Poona in 1969 but published only posthumously, 17 years later. 18. Ibid., p. 128. 19. Gordon, Marathas. 20. Anwar, Mughals and the Deccan. 21. Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates. 22. Emma J. Flatt and Daud Ali (eds), Garden and Landscape Practices in Precolonial India: Histories from the Deccan (New Delhi: Routledge, 2010); Navina Najat

242

23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

NOTES TO PAGES 26 –28 Haidar and Marika Sardar (eds), Sultans of the South: arts of India’s Deccan Courts, 1323– 1687 (New Haven, CT, and New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2011); Laura E. Parodi (ed.), The Visual World of Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era (London: I.B.Tauris, 2014); Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar, Sultans of Deccan India, 1500– 1700: Opulence and Fantasy (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015). Henry Cousens, Revised Lists of Antiquarian Remains in the Bombay Presidency, vol. VIII, (Bombay: Archaeological Survey of India, 1897), has only a small paragraph on the city of Ahmadnagar, which might explain this attitude toward the antiquities and monuments of Ahmadnagar. Under ‘III—Ahmadnagar Zilla / I – Ahmadnagar Taluka’s he writes: ‘A few only of its old Muhammedan buildings remain, among which, perhaps, the little Damri Masjid is the most interesting, though the great octagonal tomb of Salabat Khan is best known. Besides these two buildings, there are the Faria-bagh, the tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah, the Bihisti Bagh, Alamgir’s Dargah, and a few other buildings of lesser note, together with the fort.’ Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1924). For example, Phillip B. Wagoner, ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 55, no. 40 (Nov. 1996), pp. 851– 80; Richard M. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300– 1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978); Michael W. Meister, ‘Indian Islam’s Lotus Throne’ and ‘The Two-and-a-Half-Day Mosque,’ in Piety and Politics in the Early Indian Mosque, Finbarr B. Flood, ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008); Eaton, Social History of the Deccan; Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). There are various problematic issues involved in the translations of Persian chronicles and their interpretation, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of these are highlighted by G.T. Kulkarni, ‘Persian Texts, Documents, Epigraphs and Deccan History’ in Medieval India: Problems and Possibilities, Radhika Seshan, ed. (Jaipur: Rawat, 2006), pp. 34 – 66. An eminent historical research institution, the Bharat Itihas Samshodhak Mandal, Pune, has been embroiled in multiple lawsuits for a couple of decades. The shameful incident in which the property and collections of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune were destroyed by ideologically motivated vandals in 2004 is an example of right-wing activism. Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, p. 10: ‘Burhan I (1510 – 53), the second sultan of Ahmadnagar, adopted Shi’ism as the state religion, . . . bringing the Nizam Shahi kingdom into sympathetic relations with Iran’.

NOTES

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29. V. Gogte et al., ‘The Ancient Port of Chaul’, Journal of Indian Ocean Archaeology, vol. 3 (2006); Benjamin Rowlandson, trans., Tuhfat ul Mujahideen, by Zeinuddin Sheikh (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1833), pp. 92 – 3; Joseph G. da Cunha, Notes on the History and Antiquities of Chaul and Bassein (Bombay: Thacker, Vining and Co., 1876), p. 7. 30. Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Patterns of Faith: Mosque Typologies and Sectarian Affiliation in the Kingdom of Ahmadnagar,’ in David Roxburgh (ed.), Seeing the Past – Envisioning Islamic Art and Architecture: Essays in Honour of Renata Holod (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 110– 27. 31. Pramod Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, p. 30; Ashin Das Gupta, ‘Indian Merchants and the Western Indian Ocean: The Early Seventeenth Century’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 19, no. 30 (April 1984), pp. 481 –549. 32. Maria Eva Subtelny, ‘Socioeconomic Bases of Cultural Patronage under the Late Timurids’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 20, no. 40 (1988), pp. 479 – 505. 33. Devare, Short History of Persian Literature, p. 17. 34. For details on the social dynamics, see Emma Jane Flatt, ‘Courtly Culture in the Indo-Persian States of the Medieval Deccan: 1450– 1600’, PhD dissertation (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2009), pp. 17– 18. 35. P.M. Joshi, ‘Adilshahi Administration’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Lahore; Fourth Session (1940), p. 235. 36. The Mahdavi sect was finally banned under Burhan Nizam Shah II. For more information on the Mahdavi movement of the sixteenth century, see Ahmad Qamar Qamaruddin, The Mahdawi Movement in India (Delhi: Idarah-iAdabiyat-i-Delhi, 1985). 37. Gordon, Marathas, pp. 25– 8. Nested rights is a term used to describe the revenue rights of various kinds being awarded to the same person. The areas of collection, and the duties and obligations related to each concession, often overlapped. 38. This was a local version of the iqtaʾ system prevalent in post-Timurid Iran and Central Asia. 39. Grove Dictionary of Art Online, s.v. ‘Ahmadnagar’, by Mark Zebrowski, accessed 12 April 2004, http://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html? section¼ art.040113.6.5.6.1#art.040113.6.5.6.1: ‘Ahmadnagar painting undoubtedly represents the earliest and most original flowering of the art of painting in the Deccan.’ 40. Twelve paintings are from the manuscript Ta¯rif-i Husain Shah at the Bharat Itihasa Samshodhana Mandal, Pune; the other paintings are dispersed among various collections: the State Library, Rampur (Album 4); Bibliotheque National, Paris (Supp. Pers. 1572 fol. 26); Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1978.129); India Office Library, British Library (401); Cincinnati Art Museum (1983.311); Salar Jang Museum, Hyderabad; San Diego Museum (Edward Binney 3rd Collection); Cincinnati Museum of Art (Cincinnati John

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41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52.

NOTES

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33 – 40

J. Emery Endowment 1983.311). At least two of the paintings are in private collections and have been published a few times, the last such publication being Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (1999): Plate 3 and Figure 111. Stuart C. Welsh, ‘Portfolio’, Marg, vol. 16, no. 2 (1962 – 63), p. 7. The whole manuscript has been published in facsimile form: M.S. Mate and G.T. Kulkarni, eds, Ta¯rif-i Husain Shah Badshah-i Dakan (Pune: Bharat Itihas Samshodhan Mandal, 1987). Welsh, ‘Portfolio’, p. 7: ‘Often, Deccani miniatures are “lost” in galleries and boxes labeled as “Persian” “Mughal” or “Rajasthani” or worse, the all-important but elusive differences having been overlooked’. Karl Khandalavala. ‘Reflections on Deccani Painting’, Marg, vol. 16, no. 2 (1962 – 63), p. 23. Mark Zebrowski, Deccani Painting (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 26: ‘The way certain details of costume and anatomy have been isolated and transformed into beautiful shapes, resembling the full, natural forms of plants and flowers, is also Indian, quite unlike the abstract tendencies of Persian art.’ Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 26: ‘The plumed cap in the Freer picture and the speckling on the clothes and shields of both warriors are typical of later Ahmadnagar conventions.’ Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 10. Eleanor Sims, Peerless Images (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2002), p. xi: ‘I thought I might develop an approach that was not historical. Instead I would shape the book by means of the themes displayed by the themes of its illustrations.’ Barbara Brend, Perspectives on Persian Painting: Illustrations to Amir Khusrau Dehlavi’s Kha¯msah (London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. xxi. Brend, Perspectives on Persian Painting, p. xxii. Brend, Perspectives on Persian Painting, pp. xxi–xxii: ‘In the Matla-i-Anwar Khusrau’s story of the Hindu pilgrim going to Somnath may be seen as topical in the year of the Gujarat campaign, though it is not much in the spirit of the leaders of the expedition, . . . Some contemporary reference may also be seen in Ainah-i-Iskandari. It is possible that this topic, which is fifth in Nizami’s Kha¯mseh is fourth in Khusrau’s because Ala-al-din had begun to see himself as a second world conquering Alexander. The title “Iskander-al-Sani” is attested on some of his coinage. . . It seems probable that in laying out his work before the sultan, Khusrau intended to flatter him and, in the guise of entertainment, to offer him advise on the proper conduct of an Alexander. The long battle sequence between the armies of Iskander and the Khaqan of Chin at the beginning of the romance may be seen as reference to the Mongol threat.’ For practices of collecting images in such albums, see David Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 1400– 1600: from Dispersal to Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).

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53. Grove Dictionary of Art Online, s.v. ‘The Style of Shiraz, c. 1500–c. 1600’, by Eleanor Sims, accessed 12 April 2004: ‘Within the image, the ratio 3:5 is repeatedly used; for example, the horizon line rests at three-fifths the height of the image. These features were first noticed in a dispersed copy of Sharaf al-Din ʿAli Yazdi’s Zafarna¯ma (“Book of Victory”), copied by the noted Shiraz scribe Murshid in 1546.’ 54. Stella Kramrisch, A Survey of Painting in the Deccan (London: India Society, 1937), p.142: ‘Miniature painting in the Deccan of the sixteenth century similar to that of the Mughals seems to start with book illustrations. The bound book, of Persian origin with its nearness of script and painting on the page, is followed closely in the Bijapur manuscripts, whereas the Ta¯rif-iHussein Shahi paintings occupy the major part of the page and are less intimately connected with the written work’; David Roxburgh, Our Works Point to Us, unpublished PhD dissertation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1996), p. 11. 55. Kramrisch, Survey of Painting in the Deccan, p. 141: ‘Neither the illustrations of the Ta¯rif-i Husain Shah nor of the two Bijapur manuscripts have the features of court art. [They] . . . are painted with spontaneity and with little care as to details of execution or of ostentation.’ 56. Mate and Kulkarni, Ta¯rif, p. 25. 57. Mate and Kulkarni, Ta¯rif, p. 30. 58. Khandalavala, ‘Reflections on Deccani Painting’, p. 25: ‘The general handling of the miniatures shows that the substratum of the technique of fresco painting in the Vijayanagar empire has come through here as a base, because the large area of blue background and the golden yellow on top are treated almost as an alcove on a wall.’ 59. Mate and Kulkarni, Ta¯rif, p. 12; Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 18. 60. Kramrisch, Survey of Painting in the Deccan, p. 137: ‘The palace scenes lay out the architecture in clumsy panels in which Timurid tradition is encumbered partly by attempts along western avenues of shading some of the frames and by making walls appear substantial.’ 61. Kramrisch, Survey of Painting in the Deccan, p. 141. 62. Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 19: ‘The man so closely resembles Sultan Hussein in the Ta¯rif that we can assume he is the same king, painted by the same artist. There is however a new attempt at Persian refinement. A leafy arabesque fills the background and there are rippling contours everywhere.’ 63. Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 23. 64. Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ‘Style of Shiraz’: ‘Painters had to look elsewhere for their livelihood. Some went to. . . . the independent Deccan states.’ 65. Brend, Perspectives on Persian Painting, p. 74. 66. Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 23: ‘Portraits at Ahmadnagar show a close relationship to earlier Mughal works, especially to those by the Iranian artists Mir Sayyid Ali, Abd us Samad, and Dost Muhammad, whom the emperor

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67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72.

73.

74.

75.

NOTES

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Humayun had brought with him to India. It is possible that the sultans of Ahmadnagar employed Persian painters of the same caliber and that a synthesis of Indian and Iranian elements occurred in the Deccan.’ Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 31. Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 32. Kramrisch, Survey of Painting in the Deccan, p. 144: ‘A peculiar mannerism of showing the pupil as a vertical line is possibly a misunderstood way of making a small dot in the Mughal manner of the late sixteenth century.’ A large part of this section is reproduced from Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Non-Issue of Coinage: The Monetary Policies of the Post-Bahamani Sultanates’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (in press). Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Sikka’, by C.E. Bosworth (Leiden: Brill, 1997), vol. IX, p. 592: ‘The right of issuing gold and silver coinage was a royal prerogative. Hence in the caliphate, the operation of sikka¯, the right of the ruler to place his name on the coinage, eventually became one of the insignia of royal power, linked with that of the khutba¯ [q.v. ], the placing of the ruler’s name in the bidding prayer during the Friday congregational worship.’ This was not only a medieval or early modern phenomenon, but existed in the subcontinent as early as the first millennium BCE. It has been noted by early historians of India, such as Vincent Smith, in Imperial Gazetteer of India, Oxford, 1909, vol. 2, p. 287, ‘After the time of Apollodotus, the Indian provinces were governed by sundry Greek kings, known only from their coins, and whose history is in consequence extremely obscure.’ P.L. Gupta, ‘Coinage’, in Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan, vol. 2, p. 438: ‘The Bahmani coins are equally important for the verification of the dates given in the chronicles. Sikka¯ or the right to coin money, was regarded as one of the royal privileges; and in any dynasty, each claimant to throne and every one who tried to carve out a kingdom for himself, lost no time in issuing at least a few coins after he came to power.’ See also H.K. Sherwani, ‘Bahmani Coinage as a Source of Deccan History’, in Mahamahopadhyaya Prof. D.V. Potdar Sixty-First Birthday Commemoration Volume (Poona, 1950), pp. 204– 18. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Sikka’, p. 592: ‘The new holders of power within the conquered lands finally placed their own names on newly-minted coins or counterstamped them on older coins, this was not a sign of a prerogative reserved to the caliphs. . . . It can thus be said with some certainty that the idea of sikka¯ as a prerogative of caliphal sovereignty had not yet developed in the early years of the Islamic community.’ Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Sikka’, p. 595: ‘While in theory the right of sikka¯ flowed downward from God, through the Prophet, to his vicegerent the caliph, and from him to his vassal/ ally, and ultimately perhaps to the latter’s heir or an important governor, in practice it now moved in the opposite direction. The local strong man who controlled the mint defined his political and even religious position by acknowledging only those overlords who were valuable

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78. 79.

80.

81. 82.

83. 84.

85.

86.

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to his status, or by choosing Kur’anic and other legends that defined his allegiance in the Sunni-Shi‘i divide.’ Dilip P. Balsekar and Sarjerao J. Bhamre, Khandesh Faruqi Gharane Itihas va Nani (Anjaneri: Nasik, 2008). John S. Deyell and Robert E. Frykenberg, ‘Sovereignty and the Sikka under the Raj: Minting Prerogative and Imperial Legitimacy in India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. XIX, no. 1 (Jan.– Mar. 1982), p. 9. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Sikka’, p. 592. This date of death for Kalimullah Shah, the last Bahmani sultan, is itself based on numismatic evidence, creating a slightly circular argument. The actual date of his death at Ahmadnagar, where he was in exile, is unknown. The exceptions are the singular coin issues of the Golconda kings, Jamshid Qutb Shah and Subhan Quli Qutb Shah. These are extremely rare and the coin attributed to the latter is based on the uncertain reading of a single coin. Only one type of rare issue can be attributed to the next king, Ibrahim Qutb Shah, even though he ruled for 30 years, suggesting that these coins were not meant for circulation but were novelty issues. John S. Deyell, Living without Silver: The Monetary History of Early Medieval North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1990), p. 5. There are also secondary historic references to the common availability of copper coins in the middle of the sixteenth century; for example, a description of the battle of Talikota by Philip Meadows Taylor, A Student’s Manual of the History of India (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1871), p. 299: ‘As [the Vijayanagara army] approached it was met by a withering fire from the large guns, of shot, and copper money enclosed in strong canvas bags.’ Mohammad Abdul Wali Khan, Copper Coins of the Adil Shahi Dynasty of Bijapur (Hyderabad: Birla Archaeological and Cultural Research Institute, 1980). Aravind S. Athavale, ‘Coins of the Nizam Shahi Sultanate of Ahmednagar’, in K.K. Maheshwari and Biswajeet Rath (eds), Numismatic Panorama: Essays in the Memory of Late Shri S.M. Shukla (New Delhi: Harman Publishing House, 1996), pp. 291– 320. For a discussion of Islamic coins as a historical source, see Stefan Heidemann, ‘Numismatics’, in A New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1, Chase Robinson, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 648– 53. Hasmukh Shah, ‘A Pedigree 12 Tanka of Gujarat Sultan Ahmad Shah I and a Silver Coin of Murtiza Nizam Shah I’, Nidhi, vol. II (Nagpur, 2008), pp. 113 –14. Gupta, ‘Coinage’, p. 443: ‘From a farman issued by him [Adil Shah], it appears that the bankers, merchants, and village people were reluctant to accept his huns.’ The Adil Shahi silver currency unit called a larin (or lari), which was a hairpinshaped silver ingot, was minted and circulated largely in the port town of Dabhol. This currency was of an imported pattern and is only found around the ports of the Adil Shahs, with no real circulation inland. The larin is named

248

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90.

91. 92.

93.

94.

95.

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after a region in Iran and was an established mode of payment in Gujarat and the western seaboard of India, as part of the more extensive Indian Ocean trade. For more information about the larin, see Howland Wood, The Gampola Larin Hoard (New York: American Numismatic Society, 1934); there is information about this kind of currency specific to the Deccan in Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan, vol. 2, p. 443; also see Najaf Haider, ‘Precious Metal Flows and Currency Circulation in the Mughal Empire’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 39, no. 3 (1996), pp. 298– 364. Mir Fazaluddin Ali Khan, ‘Qutb Shahi Coins’, in Studies in Archaeology and History: Commemoration Volume of Prof. S. Nurul Hasan (Rampur: Rampur Raza Library, 2003) pp. 227– 30. This prevalence of copper coins was also true of the Bahmanis and can be observed in museum collections; also see Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan, p. 432: ‘While gold coins are scarce, copper coins are available in large numbers.’ The issues and problems in the treatment of coins in South Asia are expounded by Deyell in Living without Silver, pp. 272– 91. Stan Goron and J.P. Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2001), p. 314: ‘Readers should note that it was Ibrahim Adil Shah I who first seems to have called himself shah rather than khan.’ According to H.K. Sherwani, ‘Independence of Bahmani Governors’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Ninth Session, Annamalai University), 1945, p. 161, ‘Ibrahim Adil Shah called himself Shah in 1539, and the date therefore may be taken as the death of Waliullah Shah Bahmani.’ Shamsuddin Muzaffar III ruled from 1561 till 1573 nominally, and issued a scarce ceremonial silver coin in his second brief reign in 1583, but ten years of Mughal rule had already had an impact on the monetary system. Within certain mercantile circuits within Gujarat, such as Surat, Baroda, and Broach, non-standard coinage such as the Mahmudi was common in circulation, and even the Mughals had to capitulate to this system of local coinage; for more details on such money, see Om Prakash, ‘Co-existence of Standardized and Humble Money: The Case of Mughal India’, paper for session 61 of the XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, Finland, 21 – 25 August 2006. Joshi, ‘Adilshahi Administration’, p. 235: ‘The Deccan Sultanates copied these Bahmani institutions when they became independent. But, except the Sultan of Golconda, none of them – during the sixteenth century – arrogated to themselves the right of issuing gold coins or of striking the naubat five times a day.’ However, Ahmad Nizam Shah I is mentioned as striking coins in his own name by later authors, such as quoted in Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, p. 10. Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 326: ‘The coins of this ruler [Murtaza Nizam Shah I (1565 –88 CE)], the first of the Nizam Shahi

NOTES

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97.

98.

99.

100.

101. 102.

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rulers to issue coins in his own name, are known dated from 989 H. [1581 CE] to 996 H. [1587 CE].’ Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 326: ‘A number of the Nagar copper coins are known overstruck on the coins of the Bahmanis and the sultans of Gujarat’; a couple of the Gujarat (Nasiruddin Mahumad III and Muzaffar Shah II) and and Bahmani copper coins counterstruck by the Nizam Shahs can be seen in Sanjay Godbole, ‘Coins of Sultan of Gujarat Restruck by Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar’ and ‘Copper Coin of Kalimullah Shah Bahmani Restruck by Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar’, Journal of the Numismatic Society of India (Varanasi, 2011). Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 332: ‘Qutb ul Mulk declared independence in 1518, upon the death of Mahmud Bahman Shah . . . . Jamshid Qutb Shah (1543– 50) is the first ruler to have coins minted. There are two types, both rare in their occurrence. Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah (1550 – 80) has only one coin type.’ Gupta, History of Medieval Deccan, p. 444n: ‘It is doubtful whether the coins attributed to Jamshid and Subhan are genuine.’ However, the coins of Jamshid Qutb Shah and Subhan Quli Qutb Shah have been catalogued as such in Mohammad Abdul Wali Khan, Qutub Shahi Coins in the Andhra Pradesh Government Museum (Hyderabad: Birla Archaeological and Cultural Research Institute, 1961), pp. 17 – 18. Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 335: ‘Despite his thirtyyear rule, very few coins of this ruler have been found or attributed. . . . Otherwise the only other coin published for this ruler is a smallish falus of unstated weight published in NCirc May 1955, again with a reading which is by no means certain from the illustration.’ Mohammad Abdul Wali Khan and Parmeshwari Lal Gupta, Copper Coins of Barid Shahs of Bidar and the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar (Hyderabad: Birla Archaeological and Cultural Research Institute, 1982), pp. 3 – 4: ‘It is only the fourth ruler of the dynasty, . . . who may, with certainty, be said to have issued coins in the latter part of his reign in the name of his own dynasty. In the earlier coins, he retained the name of the Bahmani ruler Kalimullah on the obverse; it is only on the reverse that he placed a new legend Bi-amr-iSultan Barid Shah.’ The mules are also mentioned in Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 321: ‘The first dated coins in the Bidar series were struck during the reign of this ruler [Ibrahim Barid Shah]. Four different types are known so far. One of them has the name of Kalimullah, the last Bahmani ruler, on the reverse.’ However, the coin itself is dated 993 H. [1585 CE]. Sherwani, ‘Independence of Bahmani Governors’, p. 161. With the later Bahmanis, the attribution of coins becomes difficult in light of the lack of uniformity in dies and metrology. This is discussed in some detail while describing the coins of Mahmud Shah in Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 305: ‘The copper is copious and struck in a large number

250

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104.

105. 106.

107.

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of varieties. . . . The style of engraving varies considerably suggesting that the coins were struck at a number of different mints. No mint-name, however, is found on the coins. The weight of the coins varies a great deal and it becomes more difficult to assign them to specific denominations. . . . It is noticeable that a greater number of coins with garbled legends occur during the reign. As few of the copper coins have legible dates, it is not possible to determine any sequence in the issue of the coins.’ The catalogue lists 29 types, with a note that ‘other copper types of this ruler probably exist’. See p. 309: ‘Some of the gani coins are quite heavy, weighing around 17 g. The dates on the coins appear to be mainly fixed, from the previous reign or posthumous. Some are dated 930 (like the coins of Waliullah), and some even appear to have 893! While others have dates between 950 and 952. By that time, the Bahmani sultanate had ceased to exist but the successor rulers were not yet bold enough to strike coins in their own names.’ The posthumous issues are also discussed in Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan, p. 439: ‘According to Firishtah, Kalimullah left his capital in 934 AH and took asylum at Ahmadnagar, where he died soon after. But coins dated 942, 950, 951, and 952 AH are known to have been issued in his name . . . the fact remains that some coins were issued posthumously in his name. They undoubtedly indicate that the Bahmanis held their prestige even after their total extinction.’ The numbers of late Bahmani coins found in excellent condition across a very large area of the Deccan confirms this trend. As Sherwani suggests in ‘Independence of Bahmani Governors’, p. 162, the independent post-Bahmani kingdoms ‘issued coins in the name of the sovereign without any fear of interference from the centre’. Some of the statistical data for hoards can be found in P.L. Gupta, Coin Hoards from Maharashtra (Varanasi: Numismatic Society of India, 1970), and Coin Hoards from Gujarat State (Varanasi: Numismatic Society of India, 1969). Athavale, ‘Coins of the Nizam Shahi Sultanate’, p. 298. There is some research on monetary flows and trade, mostly centred around intermediary ports like Hormuz, such as Haidar, ‘Precious Metal Flows’, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Money and the Market in India: 1100– 1700 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1998). J.F. Richards, ‘Mughal State Finance and the Premodern World Economy’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 23, no. 2 (April 1981), p. 297; also see P.M. Joshi, ‘Coins Current in the Kingdom of Golkonda’, Studies in the History of the Deccan: Medieval and Modern—Prof. A.R. Kulkarni Felicitation Volume (Delhi: Pragati Publications, 2002), pp. 146– 55: ‘By the treaty of 1636 Golconda was reduced more or less to the position of a vassal state of the Mughal empire and one of the conditions of the treaty was that gold and silver coins issued from Golconda were to bear the Mughal coins legends. Moreover the dies of the first issues were engraved at the Imperial Court and sent to Golconda by the order of Shah Jahan.’

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108. Jaroslav Strnad, Monetary History of Mughal India as Reflected in Silver Coin Hoards (New Delhi: Harman Publishing, 2001), pp. 71– 3. 109. M.H. Martin, ‘The Reforms of the Sixteenth Century and Akbar’s Administration: Metrological and Monetary Considerations’ in The Imperial Monetary System of Mughal India, 1556 –1707, J.F. Richards, ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1987), pp. 68 – 99. 110. Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India, 1200– 1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 124– 8. 111. Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Deccan Frontier and Mughal Expansion, ca. 1600: Contemporary Perspectives’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 47, no. 3 (2004), pp. 367–8: ‘For while the Mughal claim by the 1580s was that the whole of the Deccan fell under their suzerainty, the rulers of neither Bijapur nor Golkonda could countenance such a claim. . . . Besides, from the early sixteenth century, there was the Safavid connection, and the fact that both Bijapur and Golkonda had periodically recognised in the Safavids a form of “ritual suzerainty”, often inserting the names of the rulers of Iran for example into the Friday prayers in their capital cities. The flow of Iranian migrants into the Deccan in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, and the fact that these migrants constituted a significant part of the elite in both Bijapur and Golkonda, only served to strengthen these ties.’ 112. David Shea and Anthony Troyer, trans., Dabistan, or School of Manners (Paris, 1843), p. cxlvii: ‘At last, in the month of December, A.D. 1579, twenty-six years before his death, he substituted for the common profession of the Muhammedans the new: “There is no God but God, and Akbar his khalif (or deputy)”.’ 113. Subrahmanyam and Alam, ‘Deccan Frontier and Mughal Expansion’, p. 362: ‘The point to be made then is that while there is a certain retrospective inevitability about Mughal expansion, contemporaries did not wholly share this sense until the late sixteenth century.’ 114. H.K. Sherwani, The Bahmanis of the Deccan (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1985), p. 87. 115. This would also explain the attitude of deference that all the post-Bahmani sultanates had toward the Bahmani royal family and presence. Sherwani, ‘Independence of Bahmani Governors’, p. 160: ‘It is remarkable that every time a powerful governor like the ruler of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar gets the better of the royal forces against a Barid resulting in the defeat of the [Bahmani] king, he invariably treats him in a right royal manner as befits a suzereign, and never acts as an independent monarch.’ 116. S.A. Hussain, ‘Zakhira e Nizam Shah’, Bulletin of the Indian Institute of History of Medicine, vol. XXIII, no. 1 (1993): pp. 58 – 65. 117. ‘Kita¯b-i hasha¯ʼish’ (manuscript LJS 278), Kislak Special Collections Centre, ˙ University of Pennsylvania Libraries. 118. S. Mujahid Husain Zaidi (ed.), Tarikh-i Qutbi (also called the Tarikh-i Ilchi-yi Nizam Shah) of Khurshah bin Qubad Al-Husaini (New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia, 1965).

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119. Sunil Sharma, ‘The City of Beauties in Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 24, no. 2 (2004): pp. 73 – 81. 120. P.K. Gode, ‘Sabajiprataparaja, a Prote´ge´ of Burhan Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar and His Works – between A.D. 1500 and 1560’, Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 24, no. 3/4 (1943): pp. 156 – 64; P.K. Gode, ‘Identification of Dalpat Rai Mentioned in Burha¯n-i-Masir with Dalapatiraja the Author of the Dharmasastra work called the Nrsimhaprasad’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 2 (1938): pp. 313 – 18. 121. Sheldon Pollock (trans.), ‘Bouquest of Rasa’ and ‘River of Rasa’ by Bhanudatta (New York: New York University Press, 2009), pp. xxii– xxiii. 122. Christopher Minkowski, ‘On Suryadasa and the Invention of Bidirectional Poetry (Vilomakavya)’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 124, no. 2 (2004): pp. 325– 33. 123. Jamil Jalibi (trans.), Diva¯n-i Hasan Shauqi (Karachi: Anjuman-i Tariqqi-i Urdu Pakistan, 1971). 124. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 82 – 4. 125. Subrahmanyam, Courtly Encounters, pp. 84 – 5. 126. Dusˇan Dea´k, ‘Maharashtra Saints and the Sufi Tradition: Eknath, Chand Bodhale and the Datta Sampradaya’, Journal of Deccan Studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (Jul. – Dec. 2005): pp. 22 – 47. 127. Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Vernacular as a Space: Writing in the Deccan’, South Asian History and Culture, vol. 7, no. 3 (2016): pp. 258– 70. 128. S.G. Tulpule, Classical Mara¯thı¯ Literature: From the Beginning to A.D. 1818 ˙ (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1979), p. 377.

Chapter 3 Urban Patterns, Water Supply Systems, and Fortification 1. Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Medieval Chaul under the Nizam Shahs: An Historic and Archaeological Investigation’, in Laura E. Parodi (ed.), The Visual World of Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era (London: IB Tauris, 2014), pp. 53 – 75. 2. G. Yazdani, ‘Parenda: An Historical Fort’, Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of His Exalted Highness The Nizam’s Dominions (1921 – 24), Appendix A, pp. 17 – 26. 3. Andre´ Wink, Al Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1990), p. 76: ‘The city had little or no autonomy in the historical Indian ocean region’; pp. 77 – 8: ‘The Indo-Islamic cities were the sites of political and military power, apart from being commercial centres. But even so, they were

NOTES

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5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

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essentially not recognized as legal entities in any way, and the inhabitants of cities and towns enjoyed no special privileges.’ Marc Gaborieau, ‘Indian Cities’ in The City in the Islamic World, vol. 1, Salma K., Jayyusi Renata Holod, Attilio Petruccioli and Andre´ Raymond, eds (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 200: ‘Almost everything remains to be done’ in the study of medieval and Islamic urban planning in India. Salma K. Jayyusi, Renata Holod, Attilio Petruccioli and Andre´ Raymond, eds, The City in the Islamic World (Leiden: Brill, 2008), vols 1 and 2; a functional definition for an Islamic city has been provided by Heinz Gaube in Iranian Cities (New York: NYU Press, 1979), pp. 18 – 19. He proposed that an Iranian (or, as in our case, Iranicate) Islamic city would contain the following functions: 1. Seat of government; 2. Centre of intellectual and religious life; 3. The place of non-agrarian economic activities; 4. The dwelling place of a population which is not employed in the primary sector. These four functions are not adequately fulfilled in any single settlement of the Nizam Shahs, barring Daulatabad; see Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie Shokoohy, Tughluqabad, a Paradigm for Indo-Islamic Urban Planning and Its Architectural Component (London: Araxus, 2006). Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency vol. XVIII. pt. 3 (Bombay: Govt. Central Press, 1885), p. 144. Vasant Shinde et al., ‘A Report on the Recent Archaeological Investigations at Junnar, Maharashtra (2005– 07)’, Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, vol. 66 – 67 (2006– 07): pp. 113– 59. Suresh Vasant Jadhav, Rock Cut Cave Temples at Junnar: An Integrated Study, unpublished thesis (Pune: Deccan College Post Graduate Research Institute, 1980). M.S. Mate, ‘Islamic Architecture of the Deccan’, Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, vol. 22 (1962 – 63): pp. 1 – 91. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency vol. XVIII, pt. 3 (Bombay: Govt. Central Press, 1885), p. 153. Sohoni, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds’, pp. 111–26. Klaus Ro¨tzer, ‘The Architectural Legacy of Malik Ambar, Malik Sandal and Yaqut Dabuli Habshi’, in African Elites in India – Habshi Amarat, Kenneth X. Robbins and John McCleod, eds (Ocean, NJ: Mapin, Amalgamated Book Services, 2006), p. 79: ‘In the Deccan at the beginning of the sixteenth century, military architecture and artillery were still not standardized. They were the work of craftsmen who remained faithful to techniques handed down in a restricted circle, often a single family. To this must be added the geographical diversity of the region . . . each team was as accustomed to working in a particular stone as in a particular style.’ George Michell, ‘Daulatabad and Aurangabad under the Mughals (1660 – 1707)’, in Helen Philon (ed.), Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan, 14th– 19th Centuries (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010), pp. 88 – 97. Ro¨tzer, ‘Architectural Legacy’, pp. 69 – 105.

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15. Ro¨tzer, ‘Architectural Legacy’, pp. 69 – 105. 16. M.S. Mate and T.V. Pathy, Daulatabad: A Report on the Archaeological Investigation (Poona, Aurangabad: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, Marathawada University, 1992). 17. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmadnagar District, vol. XVII (Mumbai: Government Central Press, 2003 [1884]), pp. 356– 7. 18. The foundation of the city has associated with it a variant of the usual ‘hare and hound’ story: the site is deemed auspicious because a predator is scared away by the prey, an epiphany to suggest that the underdog will be protected against larger empires. A similar story is told in the ‘Chronicles of Fernando Nuniz’ in Robert Sewell, Vijayanagara: A Forgotten Empire, p. 299. 19. George Michell and Richard Eaton, Firuzabad: Palace City of the Deccan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 20. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar. 21. Lt. Col. Sir Wolseley Haig, Indian Antiquary (June 1920), p. 108. 22. Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, vol. 3, p. 201. 23. Subrahmanymam, ‘A Place in the Sun’, p. 285: ‘[The Nizam Shah] had built a stone fort at four or five bowshots’ distance from the city, and this fort was the seat of the hakim. Around the fort was a maidan and open fields. The city was rectangular, and there were no city walls.’ 24. A royal palace is mentioned once by Gadre and was a gift to Shah Tahir and later called Shah Tahir’s palace: Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, p. 49; Briggs also refers to a royal palace in the city and mentions the Baghdad palace in fortified Ahmadnagar, which possibly refers to the fort and not the city: Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, vol. 2, p. 159. 25. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, p. 52. 26. Haig, ‘The History of the Nizam Shahi Kings of Ahmadnagar’, Indian Antiquary (December 1922), p. 236. 27. Lt. Col. Sir Wolseley Haig, ‘The History of the Nizam Shahi Kings of Ahmadnagar’, Indian Antiquary (December 1922), p. 236. 28. Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica 1933 –34, Supp. 10 (henceforth EIM); Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy 1972–72, D69 (henceforth ARIE); EIM 1935– 36, pp. 37 – 8; ARIE 1972– 73, D68. 29. EIM 1933– 34, pp. 10 – 11. 30. EIM 1935– 36, pp. 37 – 8 31. Stewart Gordon, ‘Forts and Social Control in the Maratha State’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (1979): pp. 1– 17. 32. Dominic Brookshaw, ‘Palaces, Pavilions and Pleasure-gardens’, Middle Eastern Literatures, vol. 6, no. 2 (July 2003): pp. 199– 223. 33. Michell and Eaton, Firuzabad, p. 83. 34. Sohoni, ‘Patterns of Faith’, pp. 110– 27. 35. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, plates V– VIII. 36. Shokoohy and Shokoohy, Tughluqabad. 37. Government Zincographic Press, Map Plan of Ahmadnagar City (Poona: 1879).

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38. Some portion of this section is reproduced from Sohoni, ‘Medieval Chaul under the Nizam Shahs’. 39. In the Mirat-i Ahmadi by Ali Muhammad Khan, translated by Sir E.C. Bayley as The Local Muhammedan Dynasties: Gujarat (London: W.H. Allen and Co., 1886), Danda Rajpuri, south of Chaul, is mentioned as a sarkar of the Gujarat subah. The sultans of Gujarat mentioned this port as their tributary, though those claims can be regarded largely as rhetorical. S.C. Misra and M.L. Rahman, (eds), Mirat i Sikandari (Baroda: Department of History, Maharaja Sayajirao University, 1961), pp. 147 – 8, mentions incursions into Mahim and Jeul (sic) by the sultans of Gujarat. 40. V. Gogte et al., ‘The Ancient Port of Chaul’, Journal of Indian Ocean Archaeology, no. 30 (2006): pp. 62 – 80; V. Gogte, ‘Discovery of the Ancient Port of Chaul’, Man and Environment, vol. 28, no. 1 (2001): pp. 67 – 74. 41. Da Cunha, Notes, p. 4. 42. Maharashtra State Gazetteer: Kolaba District (revised edition) [vol. XI of Gazetteer of Bombay Presidency] (Bombay: Directorate of Printing and Stationary, Maharashtra State, 1964), p. 728. The pirates were allegedly so great in number that even Portuguese battleships were afraid of any potential confrontation. 43. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 732. 44. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 734. 45. Gogte et al., ‘Ancient Port of Chaul’. 46. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, pp. 727. 47. Benjamin Rowlandson, trans., Tuhfat ul Mujahideen [by Zeinuddin Sheikh] (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1833), pp. 92 – 3; Ibid., Gazetteer pp. 24 – 9. 48. Da Cunha, Notes, p. 34. 49. Ibid., da Cunha, pp. 34 – 6; P.M. Joshi, ‘The Portuguese on the Deccan coast: sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Journal of Indian History, vol. XLVI pt. 1 (April 1968), p. 83. 50. Subrahmanyam, ‘Place in the Sun’, p. 287: ‘The firangis have a rule that ships with horses are taken first to Goa, where they pick out the ones that they want. Thereafter, the ships went on to Chaul, which was in the jagir of Nizamul-Mulk.’ 51. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 727. 52. Da Cunha, Notes, p. 63. 53. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 729. 54. Da Cunha, Notes, p. 67. 55. Gogte et al., ‘Ancient Port of Chaul’, p. 62; Da Cunha, Notes, pp. 7 – 11. 56. Rowlandson, Tuhfat ul Mujahideen, p. 92; Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 718; Da Cunha, Notes, p. 7. 57. Afanasy Nikitich Nikitin, Afanasy Nitikin’s Voyage Beyond Three Seas, 1466– 1472 (Moscow: Raduga, 1985).

256

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81 –83

58. John Winter Jones, trans., The Travels of Ludovico Varthema (London: Hakluyt Society, 1863), p. 114. 59. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, pp. 78 – 9. 60. Letter IX from Muscat dated 19 January 1625, in The Travels of Sig. Pietro della Valle, a Noble Roman, into East-India and Arabia Desert (London: Printed by J Macock for John Place, 1665), pp. 224– 5. 61. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 750. This mound is also noted as being a mile south of Bhagvati Devi’s temple, close to a pond called Pokharn. 62. This direction-stone has not been located, but based on local inquiries, I could only speculate that it would have been in the vicinity of the caravansarai. 63. Da Cunha, Notes, p. 113. 64. Henry E.J. Stanley, trans., A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar by Duarte Barbosa (London: Hakluyt Society, 1866). pp. 69 – 71: ‘This place is one of great commerce in merchandise, and in the months of December, January, February and March there are many ships from the Malabar country and all other parts, which arrive with cargoes. . . . In this port, there are few inhabitants, except during three or four months of the year, the time for putting in cargo, when there arrive merchants from all the neighborhood, and they make their bargains during this period, and despatch their goods, and after that return to their homes till the next season, so that this place is like a fair in those months’; Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 735. 65. Nikitin, Barbosa, and Della Valle are all struck by the frugal lifestyles of the native people, unless they are soldiers or administrators. 66. F.C. Danvers. The Portuguese in India, vol. 1 (London: W.H. Allen & Co, 1894), p. 291. 67. Wink, Al-Hind, vol. 3, p. 73. Wink refers to several instances of the ephemeral nature of Indian settlements in this period, which he says were a result of natural and man-made factors. He argues that most settlements could not be thought of as real cities in a European sense because they faced ‘sharp seasonal fluctuations of the number of their inhabitants, the general mobility of large numbers of people, the long tradition of internal migration caused by military invasions and raids, famines, epidemics and droughts, as well as the general volatility of Indian political and military life’; p. 76: ‘The city had little or no autonomy in the historical Indian ocean region . . . the Indian city as such was certainly not the privileged locus of sustained and cumulative social change’; pp. 77 – 8: ‘The Indo-Islamic cities were the sites of political and military power, apart from being commercial centres. But even so, they were essentially not recognized as legal entities in any way, and the inhabitants of cities and towns enjoyed no special privileges.’ 68. Wink, Al-Hind, vol. 3, p. 1: ‘The instability of Indian cities, while primarily due to geophysical and hydrological factors, was enhanced by demographic volatility associated with the monsoon climate and the generally very high mobility of the Indo-Islamic ruling elites.’

NOTES

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69. Yazdani, ‘Parenda’, pp. 17 – 26; sketch plans of some of the structures are in a report produced by the Directorate of Archaeology (Govt. of Maharashtra): ‘Detailed Strategy for Preservation and Restoration of Historical Monuments in Latur and Osmanabad Districts.’ This report was part of the Maharashtra Emergency Earthquake Rehabilitation Programme (assisted by World Bank Credit # 2594), and was prepared in April 1996 by JPS Associates. However, the drawings in the report are inaccurate and not scaled accurately. 70. The fort of Ahmadnagar is unique in that respect, where it did not undergo such a transformation. 71. The JPS Associates report uses the name ‘Chor Well’. 72. M.S. Mate, A History of Water Management and Hydraulic Technology in India, 1500 B.C. to 1800 A.D. (Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1998), pp. 99 –122. 73. R.C. Agrawal, Archaeological Remains in Western Deccan (Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1989), pp. 38 – 9. 74. Personal correspondence with Dr. Klaus Ro¨tzer. 75. M.S. Mate, History of Water Management, pp. 127– 30. 76. Haig, ‘History of the Nizam Shahi Kings’, p. 236: ‘The king had never seen the beautiful garden known as the watercourse of Niʾmat Khan, since its completion, and he therefore turned to it, to inspect it.’ 77. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, pp. 64 – 78; Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty, Gyani Lal Badam, Vijay Paranjpye (eds), Traditional water management systems of India (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2006). 78. Some portion of this section is reproduced from Pushkar Sohoni, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds’. 79. The other egress at the back is a small emergency doorway, which could not have been used for large movements of troops. 80. Gordon, Marathas, p. 35: ‘Families shifted loyalty much more on the basis of factional politics than they did on the basis of proximity to something later historians call a “frontier” with a neighboring polity’; p. 38: ‘“Conquest’” of this area meant that the invading kings sent messages to these local powers and local officials to attend his camp with a payment and their and their sanad of authority in hand. Those who came received robes of honour, and had their authority confirmed by fresh sanads in the name of the invading king.’ 81. Sohoni, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds’. 82. Jean Deloche, Studies on Fortification in India (Pondicherry: Institut Franc ais de Pondiche´ry; Paris: E´cole Franc aise D’Extreˆme-Orient, 2007), and Four Forts of the Deccan (Pondicherry: Institut Franc ais de Pondiche´ry; Paris: E´cole Franc aise d’Extreˆme Orient, 2009); see Klaus Ro¨tzer, ‘Fortifications and Gunpowder in the Deccan, 1368–1687’ in Sultans of the South: Arts of India’s Deccan Courts, 1323–1687, Navina Haidar and Marika Sardar, eds (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011). Books such as Sidney Toy, The Fortified Cities of India (London: Heinemann, 1965) and The Strongholds of India (Melbourne: W. Heinemann, 1957) were written in the mid-twentieth century, but are not critical studies of fortification and are mostly without any historical context.

258

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92 –100

83. Sohoni, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds’. 84. Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560 –1660: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the Queen’s University of Belfast (Belfast: M. Boyd, 1956). 85. Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500– 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 86. Jeremy Black, War in the Early Modern World (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 17: ‘The widespread availability of gunpowder technology underlines the need to contextualize “technology” in order to understand why “advances” were made in particular societies and what factors affected patterns and practices of military diffusion.’ 87. Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire, 1500– 1700 (New York: Routledge, 2002). 88. Sohoni, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds’. 89. Eaton and Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture. 90. Gordon, Marathas, pp. 40 – 1, 178. 91. There were no large walled settlements under the Marathas or their later Peshwa rulers. Mughals continued to wall cities, but the effectiveness of these walls under artillery and mining attack is debatable. 92. This reaction to superior invading armies armed with good artillery can be gleaned on multiple occasions throughout the history of the sixteenth century written by Firishtah, from Briggs’s Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India. 93. Richard Gordon, ‘Forts and Social Control in the Maratha State’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (February 1979): pp. 1 – 17. 94. Richard Eaton, ‘India’s Military Revolution: The View from the Early 16th Century Deccan’, in Raziuddin Aquil and Kaushik Roy (eds), Warfare, Religion, and Society in Indian History (New Delhi: Manohar, 2012), pp. 85–108. 95. For a lengthy exposition of this idea, see Catherine Asher, ‘Delhi Walled’, in James Tracy, City Walls: The Urban Enciente in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 279. 96. M.S. Mate, ‘Urban Culture of Medieval Deccan (1300 AD to 1650 AD)’, Bulletin of the Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, vol. 56– 57 (1996 – 97), pp. 161– 217. From p. 181: ‘It is equally interesting to note that nobility treated precaution as a better part of valor and ensconsed themselves in their own Jagirs, although they had their mansions in the fortified areas of the rtown but outside the citadel. Numerous instances have been cited by Firishtah especially in the late Bahmani period, when the noblemen preferred to camp outseid ethe fortified area of the town of Bidar.’

Chapter 4

Palaces and Mansions

1. Ghulam Yazdani, ‘Inscriptions from Ahmadnagar’ and ‘Some Unpublished Inscriptions from the Bombay Presidency’, EIM 1935– 36 (1939), pp. 37 – 8; M. Nazim in EIM 1933– 34, pp. 10 – 12. 2. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology, p. 138.

NOTES

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259

3. Lower taxation rates, prevention of subdivision of the estate, and the provision to make the revenues of the property available to the descendants of the patron, are some of the common reasons. In addition, as in this case, not only did the king contribute to the waqf by providing additional revenue endowments, but was also then prevented from having the land and grants revert back to crown property. The reasons for the common practice of establishing pious trusts for administering the properties of court members and nobility are outlined by Maria E. Subtelny, Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 4. Firishtah, Tarikh e Ferishta, p. 279; Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmadnagar district, p. 704. 5. H.I.S. Kanwar, ‘Foreign Impact on the Architecture of the Taj Mahal’, in Studies in Foreign Relations of India (from the Earliest Times to 1947), P.M. Joshi and M.A. Nayeem, eds (Hyderabad: State Archives, Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1975). 6. Sayyid Ali Tabatabai, Burhan-i Maasir, Sayyid Hashimi, ed. (Hyderabad: Majlis-i Makhtutat-i Farsiya, 1936), pp. 538– 9; and in Firishtah, Tarikh e Ferishta, p. 143. A translation of the original is by Chand Husain Shaikh, ‘Literary Personages of Ahmadnagar’, Bulletin of the Deccan College Oriental Research Institute, vol. 3 (1940 – 44): 212–18. Also see Nurussaid Akhtar, ‘Ahmadnagar ka Bagh-i Farah Bakhsh’,’ Qawmi Zahan (June 2006), pp. 14 – 15, citing his source as an unspecified article by Chand Husain Shaikh. 7. This feature can be easily missed on account of the heavy-handed repairs carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India, but was kindly pointed out by George Michell. 8. Sir Jadunath Sarkar, trans., Masir-i Alamgiri: A History of the Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir by Saqi Mustad Khan (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1990), p. 157. 9. Firishtah, Tarikh e Firishtah, vol. 2, p. 279. 10. This inscription is published by M. Nazim, EIM 1933– 34, p. 12. 11. Firishtah, Tarikh e Firishtah, vol. 2, p. 280. 12. The inscription itself is published by M. Nazim, EIM 1933– 34, p. 12. 13. Haig, ‘History of the Nizam Shahi Kings’, p. 328. 14. Gadre, ‘Cultural Archaeology of Ahmednagar’, PhD dissertation, University of Poona (1969), p. 268: ‘The dimensions of the palace which is referred to as “angular” by Sayyid Ali Tabatabai in Burhan-i Ma’asir were definitely smaller than the present dimensions, because the square ponds on four sides of the present superstructure are so near that they must have been constructed by Nei’mat Khan.’ 15. Gadre, ‘Cultural Archaeology of Ahmednagar’, p. 268. 16. ‘On Sugar Mills’ (Bombay miscellaneous public documents), British Library 793.m.17.2 [793.m.17.28]. 17. This poetry is mostly panegyric, using the usual tropes. See Omar Khalidi, ‘From Deccan to Hindustan? Gardens in the Deccan and Beyond’, Deccan Studies, vol. V, no. 2 (July– December 2007).

260

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107 –118

18. Subrahmanyam, ‘Place in the Sun’, p. 285: ‘At the time that Murtaza Nizam Shah had become mad, Salabat Khan had built a garden for him with tall cypress trees outside the town. In the middle of it was a covered hauz, but Faizi had not yet seen it.’ 19. Kanwar, ‘Foreign Impact’; Subrahmanyam, ‘Place in the Sun’. 20. A letter in Marathi written by Sadashivraobhau to Nanasaheb Peshwa, dated 16 December 1759, made a passing mention of Farah Bagh as a fine place to live. A copy of the letter is on display in the City Museum, Ahmadnagar. 21. British Library, London, India Office Records, IOR/F/4/1410/55639 [Note: Bombay revenue department no. 8 of 1832]; British Library, London, India Office Records, IOR/F/4/1410/55639 [Note: Bombay revenue department no. 29]; ‘On Sugar Mills’ (Bombay miscellaneous public documents), India Office Records, 793.m.17.2 [793.m.17.28]. 22. This structure is close to the Nizam Shahi hammam across the road opposite the tourists’ entrance to the fort of Daulatabad. It is popularly understood as the tomb of Chand Bodhale, an important personality in the spiritual history of Daulatabad and Khuldabad, among Hindus and Sufis. 23. Maurice Cerasi, ‘Late-Ottoman Architects and Master Builders’, Muqarnas, vol. 5 (1988), pp. 87 – 102. 24. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology, p. 66. Burhan Nizam Shah is credited with having commissioned the garden of Hasht Bihisht. 25. Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, vol. 3, p. 159. 26. Haig, ‘History of the Nizam Shahi Kings’, p. 36. 27. Haig, ‘History of the Nizam Shahi Kings’, p. 29. A footnote states that the garden was later called Bagh-i Hasht Bihisht. 28. Sarkar, Masir-i Alamgiri, p. 157. 29. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, plate XXXV. 30. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, p. 66. 31. Mentioned as Manjareshna in Burhan-i Ma’asir and as Manzar e Sabah in Masir-i Alamgiri. 32. Villages called Manzarsumbah exist in Raigad and Latur districts as well, suggesting the generic toponym, probably derived from a function of the site. Unfortunately, I have not visited either of these sites to record the physical terrain. 33. Haig, ‘History of the Nizam Shahi Kings’, p. 236. 34. Sarkar, Masir-i Alamgiri, pp. 157– 8. 35. The sarpanch (village headman) of Dongargan village nearby narrated Puranic stories alluding to the region, though he could not specify the sources for this mythological geography. 36. A temple was built at one of these sites, and the British officers from the Ahmadnagar cantonment mentioned it as a picnic spot that they called ‘Happy Valley’, a name that persists to some measure even today. For a description of this place, see Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmednagar District, vol. XVII (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1884), p. 716.

NOTES

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261

37. James Laine, The Epic of Shivaji (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2001), pp. 78 – 84. 38. Sir Jadunath Sarkar, ‘Malik Ambar: A New Life’, Indian Historical Quarterly, vol. IX, no. 30 (September 1933), p. 641. 39. Project for the Completion of an Ancient Unfinished Work known as Bhatodee Tank in the Ahmednuggur Collectorate of the Bombay Presidency (Bombay: Printed for the Government at the Education Society’s Press, Byculla, 1867). 40. Project for the Completion of an Ancient Unfinished Work. For another proposal to repair the dam, see ‘The Bhatodee Tank (Paper no. CLXXXIV)’ in Professional Papers on Indian Engineering vol. V (Roorkee: Thomason College Press, 1868), pp. 142 –51. 41. These figures are approximated from the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency vol. XVII, p. 713, which estimates the capacity at ‘149 million cubic feet of water’. 42. For another account of the battle, see Laine, Epic of Shivaji, pp. 78– 84. 43. Project for the Completion of an Ancient Unfinished Work. Figure 11 shows the breach in the old dam that is repaired in the nineteenth century. 44. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, vol. XVII, p. 610: ‘According to local tradition it was intended by its constructor to supply watr to the Shevgaon town of Tisgaon. About sixteen miles north-east of Ahmadnagar, which was a favorite residence of Salabat Khan and where he planted the groves of mangoes and tamarinds’. 45. For details on Firuzabad, see Michell and Eaton, Firuzabad. 46. For details on these sites, see Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Architecture of the Nizam Shahs’, in Helen Philon (ed.), Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan, 14th– 19th Centuries (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010). 47. P.A. Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions (London: Melisende, 1999) vol. II, pp. 1034 –5. 48. British Museum, Persian Mss. Add. 27, 251 and Or. 1390; a translation of the first manuscript was published by Sarkar, ‘Malik Ambar’, and reproduced as chapter II in Jadunath Sarkar, House of Shivaji (Calcutta: S.N. Sarkar, 1940, 1948, 1955). For the dates of this work, see K.K. Basu, ‘History of Ibrahim Adil Shah of Bijapur’, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, vol. XXIV (1938): pp. 189– 204. 49. See Henry Miers Elliot and John Dowson, trans., The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. VI (Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1964), pp. 414 –17. 50. For a critical edition, see V.K. Rajwade (ed.), Ra¯dha¯ma¯dhavavila¯sacampuh Jayarama Pindyekrta, 2nd ed. (Pune: Varada Books, 1989). 51. Laine, Epic of Shivaji, pp. 76 – 84. 52. A.R. Kulkarni, Jedhe Shakavali-Karina (Pune: Manasanaman Publishers, 1999), p. 43, gives a transcription of the passage that relates to the battle of Bhatavadi. 53. Survey of India Map Catalogue, Index no. 47, I– 16 (SE).

262

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129 –149

54. B.G. Tamaskar, The Life and Work of Malik Ambar (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1978), p. 133; Sarkar, House of Shivaji, p. 21; for details of the inscription, see T. Sambamurti Row, The Marathi Historical Inscription at the Sri Brihadeeswaraswami Temple at Tanjore (Tanjore: Sri Krishna Vilasa Press, 1907). 55. The date of the battle is mentioned in the Jedhe Sakavali as October 1624, but the Basatin ul Salatin declares it to be 1033 H and 1034 H in the same manuscript (the change of the Hijri year happened on 6/7 October in 1624); Tamaskar, Life and Work of Malik Ambar, p. 136, on the basis of circumstantial evidence, has quite convincingly argued a date of September 1624 CE. 56. Sarkar, House of Shivaji, p. 20, translated the Futuhat-i Adil Shahi (folio 289b, British Museum Add. 27, 251) thus: ‘The rainy season invested the ground with the mantle of water; the excess of mud and rain weakened both the armies.’ 57. For details of the poems, see Khalidi, ‘From Deccan to Hindustan?’ 58. It was not uncommon in the sixteenth century to find plans, patterns, and templates being transmitted on paper, either in albums or as scrolls, across the Islamic world of Asia connected by the Indian Ocean; Renata Holod, ‘Text, Plan and Building: On the Transmission of Architectural Knowledge’ in Theories and Principles of Design in the Architecture of Islamic Societies, Margaret Bentley Sˇevcˇenko, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1988), pp. 1 –12; Gulru¨ Necipog˘lu, ‘Chapter I: Architectural Drawings and Scrolls in the Islamic World’ in The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica: Getty Centre for the History of Arts and the Humanities, 1995), pp. 3 – 27.

Chapter 5 Mosques: Piety and Prayer 1. Sohoni, ‘Patterns of Faith’. 2. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Masjid’, by Johann Pedersen. 3. Z.A. Desai, ‘Architecture of the Post-Bahmani States’, in History of Medieval Deccan, vol. 2, pp. 253–304, esp. p. 263: ‘But what came to be associated at a later date with a Nizam Shahi mosque was the flying arch resting on small minars in the middle, or springing from two flanking minarets of the fac ade. This typical feature had perhaps its origin in the early Idgah at Ahmadnagar, whereon account of lack of space for it in the wall, the central dome had to be replaced by a suitable medium in the form of an arch for breaking the long stretch of the skyline’; M.S. Mate, ‘Islamic Architecture of the Deccan’. 4. The two inscriptions relating to the mosque are published in G. Yazdani, ‘Some Unpublished Inscriptions from the Bombay Presidency’, EIM (1935 – 36): pp. 39– 40. 5. ARIE 1965 –66, D 192. 6. EIM 1907– 08, p. 20. 7. EIM 1907– 08, p. 20.

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263

8. This inscription also attributes the mosque to one Sayyid Muntajib. The inscriptions are published in EIM, 1935 –36, p. 38, plate XXV (b); and in EIM, 1972– 73, supp. 13, plate VI (c). 9. The inscriptions have been published in EIM 1933– 34 supp. 22, plates XII (c) and XIII (a). 10. Afanasy Nikitin, Duarte Barbosa, Ludovico Varthema, Franc ois Pyrard, Keeling (captain of the third voyage of the British East India Co.), Pietro della Valle, and Cesar Frederici all left accounts of Chaul, from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. The two important chronicles are Nikitin, Voyage beyond Three Seas, and Varthema, Jones (trans.), Travels of Ludovico Varthema. 11. ARIE 1959 –60, D 150/151, claims that the inscriptions on the mosque and the tomb are dated to 1624– 25, and that one of them refers to repairs carried out. 12. ARIE 1961 –62, D 212.

Chapter 6 Tombs EIM 1935– 36, pp. 37 – 8, plate XXV (a). EIM 1933– 34, supp. 7. EIM 1939– 40, p. 30, plate XIII (b). Epigraphia Indica (Arabic and Persian Supplement) 1970, p. 48, plate X (b). ARIE 1961 –62, D212. Maharashtra State Gazetteers: Buldhana District (revised edition), p. 797. This refers to the system of assigning two numbers to every Mughal official in order to fix rank, status, revenue, and other privileges. 8. Shyam, Kingdom of Ahmadnagar, p. 303. 9. Elliot and Dowson, History of India, vol. VII, pp. 10 – 11 (citing the Badshahnamah of Abdul Hamid Lahori, text, vol. 1, p. 308). 10. Z.A. Desai, Arabic, Persian and Urdu Inscriptions of West India: A Topographical List (New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 1999), p. 140. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Chapter 7 Miscellaneous Buildings 1. C.A. Kincaid and Rao Bahadur D.B. Parasnis, A History of the Maratha People, vol. 1 (Delhi: S. Chand, 1968), p. 92: ‘Ali Adil Shah renewed the treaty with Ramraj. The two allies induced the king of Golconda to join them, and invading Ahmadnagar, laid siege to the capital. At last Hussein Nizam Shah was reduced to such straits that he was forced to order the execution of his best general, Jehangir Khan, to cede the fortress of Kalyani to Bijapur and to receive pan as an inferior from the hand of Ramraj. Hussein Nizam Shah’s pride especially resented this last clause. After Ramraj had touched his hand, Hussein Nizam Shah called out in a loud voice for a basin of water. He then washed his hands in the most offensive manner possible.’

264

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2. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, pp. 64– 79. 3. ARIE 1958 –59, D56. 4. The author’s last visit in January 2009 resulted in heated arguments with youngsters from neighbouring villages, who claimed that this well was historically a mosque. 5. Gogte et al., ‘Ancient Port of Chaul’. 6. Kadiri, ‘Some More Direction-Stones’, pp. 48 – 9. 7. This direction-stone has not been located, but based on local inquiries, the authors did track it down to that location. 8. The palace has been identified as a Bahmani palace by Helen Philon, but guidebooks continue to attribute it to the Nizam Shahs; see Helen Philon, ‘Daulatabad, Gulbarga, Firuzabad, and Sagar under the Early Bahmanis (1347 – 1422)’ in Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan, 14th to 19th centuries, Helen Philon, ed. (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010), pp. 34 – 43. 9. A damaged inscription, part of which is with the Epigraphical Division of the ASI at Nagpur, is set in the interior of the building.

Conclusion

End of an Old World

1. See Stewart Gordon (ed.), Robes of Honour: Khil’at in Pre-Colonial and Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), for a discussion of some of the operative mechanisms of ceremony, gift-giving, and materials exchanged for diverse materials such as paan and garments. 2. Joshi, ‘Adilshahi Administration’, p. 237: ‘The office of the Peshva does not seem to have been a permanent institution at the Adilshahi court. During the Bahmani dynasty, the Peshva was one of the ministers of the kingdom. Under the Nizamshahs of Ahmadnagar he became the chief minister and appears to have enjoyed the same status as the vakil us Sultanat did in Bijapur. In fact, the Nizamshahi influence can be traced in this office, because a minister called the Peshwa was appointed at the Adilshahi court first at the instance of Chand Bibi, a Nizamshahi princess. . . . This seems to be the only instance when the office of Peshva existed at Bijapur.’ The administrative apparatus of the Nizam Shahs survived in Maratha administrative systems. The office of the Peshwa was found only at the court of the Nizam Shahs and, later, at the court of the Marathas. 3. Ronald Inden, ‘Embodying God: From Imperial Progresses to National Progress in India’, in Text and Practice: Essays on South Asian History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 241– 311. 4. For more on Mughal public appearances and dars´ana, see R. Nath, ‘A Curious Inscription of Shah Jehan’s Jharokha¯, Shah Burj, Red Fort, Delhi (1639-48 AD)’ in Indica (Heras Institute of Indian History and Culture), vol. 40, no. 2 (2003): pp. 153 –62, esp. p. 160: ‘But jharoka-darshana was so integrally institutionalized within the Mughal Kingship and State, and had become so necessary a function of the Mughal Emperor that he could not avoid it.’

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218 –219

265

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INDEX

a¯b anba¯r at Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 260n29 Aftabi Kita¯b-i Ta¯rif-i Husain Sha¯h Pa¯dsha¯h-i Dakan, 44 –45 see also Ta¯rif paintings verse for paintings, 34, 41 Agha Bihzad (Kari Masjid), Ahmadnagar, 137 –40 Ahamadanagara sahara¯ca¯ itiha¯sa (History of the City of Ahmadnagar), (Mirikar), 23 Ahmadnagar as administrative centre, 90 capital city of the Nizam Shahs, 32, 73 creation of, xxii, xxviii, 1, 2, 73, 74 different from other cities, 68, 73, 76, 77, 78 as emigrant hub, 29 – 30, 31 estates of nobility in, 75, 76, 78, 100 fort of, xxiii, 75, 90 gardens and palaces, 74, 75, 77 see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh; Hasht Bihisht Bagh; leisure architecture importance of, 23, 24, 74, 78 location of, xxviii, 1, 2 mosques. See Agha Bihzad (Kari Masjid), Ahmadnagar; Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar); Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar);

Qasim Khan’s Mosque (Ahmadnagar); Soneri Mosque, Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar) nobility as city wardens, 75 – 6, 133 paintings characteristics of, 38, 42, 46 – 8, 243n39 as cultural combinations, 45 – 6, 49 – 50, 244n45 Deccan breeze in, 46, 47, 48 Persian influences on, 38, 41 –2, 45, 245n66 schools of, 33, 37, 41, 44 – 6, 49 – 50 themes for, 39, 42, 44 –5 with verse, 34, 41 –2 see also Ta¯rif paintings palaces discrete from urban settlements, 67, 75, 92 see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh; Hasht Bihisht Bagh as planned urban settlements, 65, 73 – 5, 92 scholarship on, 23, 24 similarities with Persian cities, 73 –4 tombs. See Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I, Ahmadnagar)

INDEX water systems in, 76, 78, 87 – 9, 200 Ambar, Malik mosque by, 85 stewardship of, xxiv – xxvi, 32, 72, 95, 198 see also Bhatavadi tomb (Khuldabad), 195–8 architectural remains as method of study, 12 – 20 Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (Michell and Zebrowski), 25 ba¯dgir at Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 112, 202 Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I, Ahmadnagar), 167– 9 see also tombs: Ahmad Nizam Shah I Bahmani kingdom currency, 29, 54 – 5, 56 –57, 59 dynasty of, 4, 7, 8, 13, 58 emergence of sultanates from, 10, 28 –29 ethnic factions in, 65 as influence on Deccan, 8, 29 military architecture and technology in, 94 – 95 Persian connections of, 7– 8 role of nobles in, 30 – 31 tombs from, 167 visual culture of, 8 Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar) as academy, xxii– xxiii architecture, 135– 7 see also Husaini, Shah Tahir albattles attitudes to warfare in, 92, 93, 95 Bhatavadi, 123– 4, 129– 30 Chaul, 80 conquests without, 93 military architecture for, 89 –93 other forms of conquest, 218 paintings of, 34, 44 – 5 Talikota, xxiii, 10, 63 technology for, 92 –3, 95 – 6 Bava Bangali tomb, 176–8

279

Bhatavadi dam, 123– 4, 130 see also Tisgaon gates fort, 123– 5 see also Kalawantinicha Mahal (Bhatavadi) Bhatodi (Bhatodee) fort. See Bhatavadi Bhonsale, Shivaji, 11, 27, 68, 86, 218 Bhonsale memorials (Verul), xxvi, 189–92 Briggs, John, Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, 23, 73 Burha¯n-i Maasir historic descriptions of Ahmadnagar, xxii, 12, 74, 170 Farah Bakhsh Bagh, 107– 8 Manzarsumbah, 116– 17 see also Tabatabai, Sayyid Ali bin Aziz’ullah atBurhanpur as important trade route, 7, 71, 94 as gateway to Deccan, 6 caravanserai Chaul architecture, 199, 208– 11 Inscription 24, 211, 235 Daulatabad, 199 Chandani Talab, 87 Changiz Khan estates of, 100 tomb of, 174– 6 Chaul battle of, 80 caravanserai Inscription 24, 211, 235 location and architecture, 199, 208– 11 hammam, 202– 3 historic descriptions of, 81 – 2, 83 Jami’ Mosque architecture, 158– 62 Inscription 14, 160, 230 Inscription 15, 160, 231

280

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

as port, 29, 78 – 80, 82 – 3, 255n40, 255n42, 256n64 Portuguese trade in, 56 – 7, 78, 80 –1, 255n50 public buildings in, 79, 81 – 2 as travellers’ station, 203, 210, 211 see also Revadanda (Portuguese Chaul) Chini Mahal (Daulatabad), 98 –9, 208, 211– 12 Chitakhana (Aurangabad), 212– 14 coinage as acceptance of authority, 51, 60 Bahamani currency, 29, 54, 56, 249n100 as control of power, 51 – 2, 59, 60 as currency, 56, 57 in Deccan sultanates, 52 –3, 58– 9, 249n102, 250n103 by different rulers in India, 54 –7 Gujarat silver as, 55, 56 – 7, 58 for khutba¯ and sikka¯, 50 – 2, 55, 58, 60 mints in the Deccan, 53 of Mughals, 57 – 8, 59 – 60 by Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, 29, 50 as sovereign rights, 50 – 2, 246n71 see also khutba¯ and sikka¯ for special occasions, 53– 4, 55, 236n5, 247n80 in trade, 56 – 7 Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar (Gadre), 25, 74, 202 Dakkan (Dekhan). See Deccan Damdi Mosque (Bhingar), 140– 3 Daulatabad as capital, 5, 7, 26, 31, 66, 73 caravanserai, 199 dam near, 206– 7 as fortified city, 66, 71, 72, 90 historic importance of, 71, 73 Khufiya Bavdi, 207– 8

palace complexes, 71 – 2, 73 see also Chini Mahal (Daulatabad) Shahi hammam, 203–6 water systems at, 73, 206– 8 see also Khufiya Bavdi (Daulatabad) Deccan ancient kingdoms of, xx, 3 – 4, 8, 24 architectural remains conservation of, 12 – 13, 20 – 2, 26 – 8, 242n27, 259n7 inadequate studies of, 23, 24, 26 – 7, 28 as social history, 12 – 14, 18 – 20, 26, 100, 216 urgency to study, research and recover, 19 – 21, 26 – 7, 92, 100 architecture building typologies, 17 communal vision of, xxvi, 9 construction materials in, 15, 99, 103, 122, 131, 143, 145, 207 construction process in, 14, 18, 19 current uses of buildings from, 20 design process in, 18, 19 guilds and craftspeople in, 13 – 14, 15, 19, 131, 262n58 as hybrid styles of, xxvi, 10 influences on, xxvi, 6, 8, 9, 10, 16 local and imported knowledge in. see guilds and craftspeople military fortification and technology in, 91 – 2, 95 – 96 multipurpose designs in, 17, 124– 5 new programmes in, 16 as political power, 9, 13 slippages in, 15, 18 – 19, 108– 9 social relationships in, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18 – 19 see also Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (Michell and Zebrowski)

INDEX coinage, 51, 52 – 53, 57, 58 – 59, 236n5 see also khutba¯ and sikka¯ consolidation with Hindustan, 4 –5, 11 court practices in, 29, 31 – 2 cultural practices in, xxiv, 10 as a distinct region, xix – xx, 5 – 6, 25 emerging sultanates of, 10, 28, 29 ethnic factions in, 31 – 2, 64, 218 geography of, xxix, 1 – 2, 4, 6 –7 historiography of, 10 – 11, 22, 26 –7, 31, 73 Deccan (continued) as hub cosmopolitan, xxiii, 3, 218 for migrants, xix, 29 –30, 31 for religion, xxii, 4, 30, 218 see also Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar); Safavids for trade and culture, 3, 5, 6– 7, 29, 31 languages of, 4, 24 – 5 literature books and translations, 23 –4, 25, 26 genres of text, 22 –3, 40, 60 –1, 62, 63 languages, 9, 10, 60 – 1, 63 Persian influences on, xix, 29, 30, 31 major settlements in, 2 map, 2, 67 migrant scholars of, xxiv, 1, 22, 31, 61 narratives of, xix, 9, 11, 26, 27, 28 paintings characteristics of, 38, 48, 243n39, 245n54 colour schemes in, 45 comparisons between, 45 cultural combinations in, 34, 38 – 42, 45 – 6, 48, 244n45 Indian influences on, 40 – 2, 47 – 8 limitations of, 34, 38

281

mistaken attribution of, 34 ragamala series, 33, 45, 49 reflect the period, 49 schools of, 33 –4, 41, 49 –50 themes for, 34, 35, 38, 42, 44 see also Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (Michell and Zebrowski); Ta¯rif paintings politics of, 4– 7 ports, 29 – 30, 78 – 83 records of events. See Aftabi; din Shirazi, Rafi’i al-; Firishtah (Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi); Tabatabai, Sayyid Ali bin Aziz’ullah atrole of nobles in, 31 –2, 66, 75 – 6, 133, 215, 243n37 Safavid alliance for, 10 in ‘shatter zone,’ 24 – 5, 241n15 sultanates architectural variations in, 10, 16, 100 meaning of the term, 16 as migrant hubs, 31 as successors of Bahmani kingdom, xxi, 10, 28, 29 Timurid ideals and influences in, xx, 5, 29 – 30, 215 visual culture of, xx, 7, 8, 10, 218 water systems of, xxv, 73, 87 – 8, 117, 237n18 Dehlavi, Amir Khusro, Khamseh, 40 Dilawar Khan (Rajgurunagar/Khed) mosque, 163– 4 tomb, 192– 3 din Shirazi, Rafi’i al- (Tadhkirat ul-Mulk), 22 – 3 do¯ bo¯ti chira¯, 165, 172 Farah Bakhsh Bagh architecture and location, 102–4 building and rebuilding of, 104– 7, 108, 259n14, 260n18 court intrigues around, 103, 107

282

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

historic descriptions of, 105, 107–8 Inscription 4, 105, 224 as inspiration, xxvi, 102, 103, 108, 260n19 as royal venue, 103, 131 water systems at, 104, 106 Firishtah (Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi) records of events by, 12, 22 – 4, 61 Tarikh-i Firishtah (Gulshan-i Ibra¯hı¯mı¯), 23, 24 translations of work by, 23 – 4 Firishtah’s History of Dekkan (Scott), 23 forts as administrative centres, 70, 94, 216 architectural combinations at, 120–1 Bhatavadi, 123– 4 as centres of political power, 66, 83, 90 –1, 94, 97 Daulatabad, 66, 71, 72, 90 Dharur, 143 discrete from urban settlements, 78, 85 –6, 92, 94 –5, 97 Manzarsumbah, 114– 15, 117– 20 military architecture and technology in, 89 – 90, 91 – 3, 95 – 6, 238n22, 253n12, 258n86, 258n92 military strategy at, 78, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 mosques in, 143, 145, 157 of Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, xxiii, 90 Parenda, 83 –86 pleasure resorts in, 115, 116– 17, 124 royal residences in forts, 91, 99 on trade routes, 94, 96, 117 types and functions of, 78, 90 – 1 gardens Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I, Ahmadnagar), 168 Chitakhana, 214 as commemoration of victory, 73 – 4

Farah Bakhsh Bagh, 102, 107 Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 109, 111– 12 Kalawantinicha Mahal, 124 at Manzarsumbah, 117 gardens (continued) at mosques, 163 in palaces at forts, 99, 102 as settings for paintings, 34, 38, 39 in suburban palaces and mansions, 75, 76, 77 at tombs, 174, 180, 181 as urban planning, 73, 74, 100 see also leisure architecture gateways to Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I, Ahmadnagar), 168 at city wards, 78 to the Deccan, 6, 25 Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 110 Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 155 Kamani Mosque (Shivneri), 69 Mahdavi Mosque (Rohankheda), 147 at Malik Ambar’s tomb, 195 Manzarsumbah, 118, 120 Ni’mat Khan Semnani estate, 75 Tisgaon, 199– 200 to trade routes, 99, 243n31 Zenda Gate (Ahmadnagar), 137 Gordon, Stewart, The Marathas, 25 guilds and craftspeople, 10, 13 – 15, 131, 215, 262n58 Haig, Lt. Col. Wolseley, Indian Antiquary, 23 Haji Hamid tomb (Ahmadnagar) description, 188– 9 Inscription 21, 188, 233– 4 hammams at Chaul, 202– 3 of the Deccan, 89, 99, 199, 200 at Manzarsumbah, 201 as part of nobleman’s estates, 100 Shahi hammam (Daulatabad), 203– 6, 208

INDEX Shahi hammam (Daulatabad), Inscription 23, 203, 234– 235 Hasan Shauqi, 60 –1, 63 Hasht Bihisht Bagh ba¯dgir (wind catcher) at, 112, 202 location and architecture, 109– 14 Maasir-i Alamgiri description of, 111– 12, 260n27 nurgirs (skylights) at, 202 octagonal pavilion at, 109 palace complexes of, 110– 11, 112– 13 water systems at, 109, 112, 202 see also Lakkad Mahal History of Medieval Deccan (Joshi and Sherwani), 24 – 5 Husaini, Shah Tahir al-, xxii– xxiii, 168 see also Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar) Husaini Mosque, 137, 139– 40 Indian Antiquary, (Haig), 23 Inscription 13, 229– 30 inscriptions list, 220–35 Islamicate influences on architecture, 13, 15, 18, 86, 208, 210– 11 on coinage, 50, 60 on the Deccan, 5, 6 on literary works, 9, 99 from migrants, 29 – 31, 99 on Mughal sultanates, 5, 6 on sovereignty, 9, 29, 30, 58, 90, 167 on urban settlements, 67, 74 Jadhav, Lakhuji (Sindkhed Raja) building complex of, 86 – 87 memorial, 194– 5 as nobleman, 66, 194– 5 patron of craftsmen, 30 Jami’ Mosque (Chaul), 159– 62 Junnar capital of Nizam Shahs, xxii, 27, 74 importance of, 68 –9

283 mosques, 70 see also Kamani Mosque (Shivneri) Shivneri fort in, 69 –70 tombs in, 70, 167, 169 as urban settlement, 68 – 70

Kalawantinicha Mahal (Bhatavadi) battle of Bhatavadi, 124, 129 –30 Bhatavadi dam, 123– 4, 130 fort, 124– 5 as generic name, 124 location and description, 123, 124–8 similarities with other buildings, 125, 129, 261n46 water systems at, 123, 124, 125 Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 151 –3 Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 155–7 Kamani Mosque (Shivneri) architecture, xxiv, 69 – 70, 157– 8 Inscription 12, 158, 229 Inscription 13, 158, 229– 30 Khufiya Bavdi (Daulatabad), 207– 8 Khuldabad miscellaneous tombs, 197, 198 necropolis for Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, 168, 169, 185, 94, 198 tomb of Malik Amber, 195– 8 khutba¯ and sikka¯, xxi, 50, 55, 56, 58, 60 Kingdom of Ahmadnagar, The (Shyam), 24 kingship khutba¯ and sikka¯ as, xxi, 50 – 2, 55 – 6, 58, 60 symbols of, 88, 89 Kita¯b-i Ta¯rif-i Husain Sha¯h Pa¯dsha¯h-i Dakan see also Aftabi Lakkad Mahal, 110– 13 leisure architecture garden pavilions, 74, 77, 124, 201–2 pleasure pavilions, 16, 86, 87, 89, 109

284

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

pleasure resorts, 115, 116– 17, 124, 201 summer retreats, 112, 122, 201, 202 see also Khufiya Bavdi (Daulatabad) Mahdavi Mosque (Fathkheda/ Sakharkheda), 148– 51 mansions current uses of, 20, 100 in noblemen’s estates, 75, 100, 101 see also Ni’mat Khan Semnani in urban settlements, 98, 100 see also Chandani Talab; Jadhav, Lakhuji (Sindkhed Raja) Manzarsumbah as fort, 114, 115, 116– 18, 131 gatehouse, 113, 117, 118, 119– 21, 122 hammam, 201 palace complex, 115– 17, 121– 2 as pleasure resort, 115, 116– 17, 201 similarities with other buildings, 120, 122, 123– 4 T-shaped tiles at, 113, 117, 122 water systems, 87, 115– 16, 117, 121, 122, 201 Marathas at Ahmadnagar court, 31, 32 architectural continuity by, 218, 219 as champions of sultanates, 219 changing loyalties of, 93, 218, 257n80 kingdom, 4, 6, 27, 218 network, 96 – 7 similarities with Nizam Shahs, 11, 96 see also Bhonsale, Shivaji; Bhonsale memorials (Verul); Jadhav, Lakhuji (Sindkhed Raja) Marathas, The (Gordon), 25 masjid. See mosques Melique. See Ambar, Malik

Michell, George and Zebrowski, Mark, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, 25 Mirikar, Sardar N.Y., Ahamadanagara sahara¯ca¯ itiha¯sa (History of the City of Ahmadnagar), 23 miscellaneous buildings from the kingdom of Nizam Shahs, 199–212 mosque of Sanjar Khan (Dharur) architecture, 143– 5 Inscription 7, 145, 226 mosques Agha Bihzad (Kari Masjid) Ahmadnagar, 137– 40 Damdi Mosque (Bhingar), 140–143 Daulatabad, 72 Dilawar Khan (Rajgurunagar/Khed), 163– 4 in forts, 72, 143, 145, 157 in garrison towns, 145– 8 Imampur, 148 Jami’ Mosque (Chaul) description of, 158– 62 Inscription 14, 160, 230 Inscription 15, 160, 231 Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar) Inscription 10, 153, 227– 8 Inscription 11, 153, 228– 9 location and architecture, 151– 3 Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 155–7 Kamani Mosque (Shivneri) architecture, 69, 157– 8 Inscription 12, 229 Mahdavi Mosque (Fathkheda/Sakharkheda) description, 148– 51 Inscription 9, 149, 227 Mahdavi Mosque (Rohankheda) description of, 145– 8 Inscription 8, 148, 226–7 as modest places, 77, 133– 4, 262n1 Mosque of Sanjar Khan (Dharur) architecture, 143– 5 Inscription 7, 145, 226

INDEX Parenda, 85 patrons of, 133 at port city, 158– 62 Qasim Khan’s Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 153– 5 Soneri Mosque (Bara Imam Kotla) architecture, 135– 6 Inscription 5, 224– 5 Inscription 6, 225– 6 at tomb complex, 163, 167 Mughals architecture, 8, 199– 200, 218 coinage in Deccan, 57 – 8, 59 construction techniques, 85, 99 Emperor Aurangzeb, 33, 58, 95, 217, 218 expansion policies, 96 geographical regions of Hindustan for, 5, 7 relations with Deccan, 5– 6 trading routes of, 70 Mughals and the Deccan (Anwar), 241n20 Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi. See Firishtah (Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi) Ni’mat Khan Semnani estates description, 75 – 6, 100, 101 Inscription 1, 76, 101, 220– 1 Inscription 2, 76, 101, 221– 2 Inscription 3, 76, 222– 3 tomb, 165– 166 see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar architecture arches, 14 – 15, 69, 120– 1, 217 combination of cultures in, xxiii, xxvi –xxvii construction materials used in, 15, 72, 99, 102, 106– 7, 131– 2 construction process in, 14, 19, 216

285

construction techniques in, 131 design process in, 14, 19, 216 development of, 26, 217–19 guilds and craftspeople, 14 – 15, 16, 19, 71– 2 influences of nobility on, 215– 16 Islamicate influences on, xxvi, 9 – 10, 17, 18, 49, 215 –16 similarities in, 13, 121, 122– 123 slippages in, 12, 13, 15, 18 – 19, 108– 9, 216 social relationships in, 13, 14 – 15, 18 – 19 visual culture in, xxv, 5, 8 – 10, 18, 49, 215– 16, 218 see also Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (Michell and Zebrowski); leisure architecture capital city of, 73, 216 see also Ahmadnagar; Junnar characteristics of mosques by, 133–4 coinage Bahmani currency, 29, 52, 59, 60 copper, 53 gold, 54 issued by, 50, 52, 53, 58 silver, 55 see also khutba¯ and sikka¯ comparison with other kingdoms, 11, 28, 96, 217 factions in kingdom of, xxiii, 31, 32, 102 forts controlled by, xxiii, 90 – 91 hammams, 89, 99, 199, 201– 6, 208 historiography of, 1, 22 influences from Persia on. See Persian influences miscellaneous buildings, 199– 200 miscellaneous tombs, 168, 198, 234 mosques. see mosques Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar (continued) origins of the dynasty, xxi – xxiii

286

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

paintings codex of, 34, 41 combination of cultures in, 33 –4, 35 – 7, 38, 39, 42 patrons of, 33, 243n39 scholarship on, 33 – 4 schools of, 33, 38, 41 themes for, 34 – 8 with verse, 34 see also Aftabi palaces architectural style of, 102, 131– 2 see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh; Hasht Bihisht Bagh; Kalawantinicha Mahal (Bhatavadi); Manzarsumbah as patrons of literature, 60 – 1, 63, 64 see also Deccan: literature; Hasan Shauqi literary works ports controlled by, 78, 82, 83 see also Chaul records of events of, 22 – 4 see also din Shirazi, Rafi’i al-; Firishtah (Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi); Tabatabai, Sayyid Ali bin Aziz’ullah atrelations with the Mughals, 25 see also Mughals and the Deccan (Anwar) religious influences on, xxii, 29 – 30, 90, 167 see also Husaini, Shah Tahir al-; Safavids role of nobles in kingdom of, 31 – 2, 66, 215, 217, 243n37 royal residences of, 67, 75, 85 – 6 as rulers, 215– 16 sepulchral practices of, 90, 167 sultanate period, xx–xxii, 26, 32, 217 Timurid ideals of, 215 urban settlements of characteristics, 65, 67 – 8, 69 – 70, 87

patterns, 73 – 4, 216 see also Ahmadnagar; Chaul; Daulatabad; Junnar urgency to study architectural remains of, 100 see also Deccan: architectural remains visual culture of. See Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar (Gadre); leisure architecture water display pools, 88, 121, 201, 202 pools and fountains, 104, 109, 116– 17, 212– 13 water course and garden, 107 water supply systems, 73, 87 – 9, 115– 116, 200– 1 see also Bhatavadi palaces as associations of the past, 98 – 9, 131– 2 Chini Mahal (Daulatabad), 98, 208, 211– 12 combinations of architecture in, 100 construction techniques for, 106– 7, 131 Daulatabad complex of, 71 – 2, 73 see also Chini Mahal (Daulatabad) Farah Bakhsh Bagh, 102– 4, 106 in forts, 91, 99 hammams at, 99, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203– 5 Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 109– 12 Kalawantinicha Mahal (Bhatavadi), 123, 124– 6 Manzarsumbah complex, 116, 118, 120 Nizam Shahi palace (Daulatabad), 211– 12 purposes of, 130– 1 as symbols of power, 98 – 9, 131 as urban settlements, 99, 100

INDEX Palaces, Pavilions and Pleasure-Gardens (Brookshaw), 254n32 Parenda Chor Well, 85 fort, 83 – 5 mosque, 85 Persian influences in architecture, 10, 16 see also Deccan: architecture as communal memory, 9 on courtly customs, 8 on kingship, xx, xxii, xxiv, 5, 29– 30, 215 on literature, 22 –3, 40, 50 see also Deccan: literature from migrants, xxiii, xxiv, 7, 30, 99 on paintings, 39– 42, 43 – 5, 50 see also Deccan: paintings; Ta¯rif paintings on religion, xxii, 4, 30, 218 see also Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar); Safavids on water management technologies, 87, 89, 199, 200 ports Chaul, 78 – 83 Deccan, 78 as migrant gateways, 30 as networks for trade, 29, 30, 66, 99, 243n31 Revadanda (Portuguese Chaul), 81–82 Qasim Khan’s Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 153– 5 Revadanda (Portuguese Chaul), 79– 80, 81, 82 Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, (Briggs), 23, 73 Rumi Khan tomb of Inscription 20, 181, 233 location and architecture, xxiii, 181

287

Safavids as allies of Deccan sultanates, 57 –8, 251n111 influence on Deccan literature, 61 religion, 28, 29 – 30, 133 urban design, 73 war strategies, 94 migrants to Deccan, xxiii, 7, 29, 30 Salabat Khan dam by, 124, 130 estates of, 124, 178, 199 see also Tisgaon gates tomb, 178– 181 water tanks by, 117 see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh Sarje Khan’s tomb (Do¯ Bo¯ti Chira¯, Ahmadnagar) do¯ bo¯ti chira¯, 172– 4 Inscription 19, 174, 232– 3 Saudagar Gumbaz tomb (Junnar) Inscription 18, 170, 232 location and architecture, 169–72 Shah Sharif’s tomb (Ahmadnagar), 184–7 Shivneri fort (Junnar), 69 – 70 Sindkhed Raja dams at, 86, 87 emulation of architecture at, 86 –7 fiefdom of the Jadhavs, 86, 101 Lakhuji Jadhav memorial, 86 pleasure pavilion, 87 see also Bhonsale, Shivaji Soneri Mosque, Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar) architecture, 135– 6 Inscription 5, 135, 224–5 Inscription 6, 135, 225–6 study and conservation of architectural remains, 12 – 13, 20, 21, 26 – 8, 91, 92, 259n7 subterranean rooms at Chini Mahal (Daulatabad), 211– 12

288

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE

at Chor Well (Parenda), 85 at Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 112, 202 at Khufiya Bavdi (Daulatabad), 72, 207– 8 at Manzarsumbah, 122, 201 at Nizam Shahi palace (Daulatabad), 211– 12 at tomb of Haji Hamid (Ahmadnagar), 188 Tabatabai, Sayyid Ali bin Aziz’ ullah atrecords of events in Burha¯n-i Maasir, 22, 24 translations of work by, 23 – 24, 61 see also Kingdom of Ahmadnagar, The (Shyam) Tadhkirat ul-Mulk, (din Shirazi), Rafi’i al-, 23 Ta¯rif paintings of battles, 34, 44 – 5 dohada, 36 of king and queen, 37 – 8 of military scenes, 35 of ragamala series, 49, 50 traditions of, 44 – 5, 49 verse by Aftabi, 34, 41 work similar to, 41 Tarikh-i Firishtah (Gulshan-i Ibrahimi) descriptions, 12, 22 – 24, 74 Timurid empire, 30 – 31 Timurid ideals in Deccan sultanates, xx, 5, 29 –30, 215 Tisgaon gates, 119, 124, 199– 200 tombs Ahmad Nizam Shah I Bagh Rauza (Ahmadnagar) architecture, 167– 9 Bagh Rauza (Ahmadnagar) Inscription 17, 169, 231– 2 confusion about, 169, 184 Khuldabad architecture, 181– 4 Bava Bangali, 176– 178 Changiz Khan (Ahmadnagar), 174– 6

as congregational space, 170 Dilawar Khan (Rajgurunagar/Khed) Inscription 16, 164, 193, 231 location and architecture, 194– 5 essential requirements of, 165– 167, 169 Haji Hamid (Ahmadnagar), 188– 9 Lakhuji Jadhav (Sindkhed Raja), 194 Malik Ambar (Khuldabad), 195– 8 as memorials, 190 see also Bhonsale memorials (Verul) miscellaneous (Bagh Rauza, Ahmadnagar), 168 miscellaneous (Khuldabad), Inscription 22, 198, 234 as mosques, 184, 188 retaining estates with, 17, 165– 6, 239n25, 259n3 Rumi Khan, xxiii, 181 Salabat Khan, 181 Sarje Khan (do¯ bo¯ti chira¯, Ahmadnagar), 172– 4 Saudagar Gumbaz (Junnar) Inscription 18, 170, 232 location and architecture, 170– 2 as secondary use of structures, 165, 178, 193, 260n22 sepulchral practices of Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, 90, 167, 168 tombs (continued) Shah Sharif (Ahmadnagar), 184– 7 varied styles of, 166– 7 urban settlements administration of, 65 as commercial networks, 96 – 7 components of, 67, 68, 69, 70 effects of military technology on, 92 forts as, 70 see also Daulatabad; Manzarsumbah Indo-Islamic cities as, 67, 252n3 nobleman’s estates in, 100 patterns of, 65 – 6, 73 –4, 85, 87, 216

INDEX seasonal fluctuations in, 256nn67– 68 social hierarchy in, 66, 67 types of, 65 –6, 68 waterworks at, 67, 70, 87–9, 237n18 see also Ahmadnagar; Chaul; Junnar water management at Farah Bakhsh Bagh, 104 in hammams, 199, 201, 202, 203– 4 at Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 109 at Manzarsumbah, 115 –116, 117 systems of pipes as, 87 – 8, 89, 200– 1 see also Bhatavadi water supply in Ahmadnagar, 200– 1 as battle strategy, 123, 130, 261n38, 261n41 dams as near Bhatavadi, 124, 130– 1 near Daulatabad, 89, 206– 7

289 expertise, 200 Inscription 3, 222– 3 natural systems in Deccan for, 73, 87, 117, 118 as part of kingship, 88, 89 as part of nobleman’s estates, 76, 124, 261n44 systems of the Deccan, 87 – 8, 89 at tomb complex, 184, 187 types of, 87 – 8 in urban settlements of Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, 200, 201, 202, 203, 206 use of technology for, xxv, 87, 89, 200– 2, 237n18 wells Chor Well (Parenda), 85 Khufiya Bavdi, 207– 8 Shah Sharif’s tomb (Ahmadnagar), 184 see also Manzarsumbah