Indo-Islamic Architecture: Sultanate and Mughal Styles

Indo-Islamic architecture is the building style that grew in India after the Turkish conquests of the late twelfth century, when the arch, the dome and the minaret of West Asia were raised by Indian masons out of Indian stone. Examiners return to it every year because each monument carries three facts that fit in one line: who built it, where it stands, and what was new about it. These notes take the style from the first mosques of Delhi to the marble of the Mughals.

What made the style new

Older Indian building was trabeate: weight rested on pillars and beams, and a dome shaped roof was made by laying stones one over another, a method called corbelling. The new style was arcuate: a true arch carried the load sideways into its supports, and a true dome stood on that arch. Lime mortar as a cementing material spread with it. Since the image of a living being was avoided in religious building, ornament turned to calligraphy in Arabic script, arabesque or stylised plant forms, geometric patterns and jali screens of pierced stone. The earliest mosques were raised from the material of demolished temples, so Indian carving and Islamic form stand side by side at the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi and at Adhai Din ka Jhonpra in Ajmer.

The Delhi Sultanate: the Imperial style

The Slave or Mamluk period began the work. Qutb-ud-din Aibak built the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque and began the Qutub Minar, a victory tower of about 73 metres that Iltutmish carried up and Firoz Shah Tughlaq repaired. Iltutmish also built his own tomb, the first Sultanate tomb in Delhi. Under the Khaljis the true arch and the true dome arrived together in the Alai Darwaza, the southern gateway added by Alauddin Khalji in 1311, built of red sandstone inlaid with marble. Tughlaq building is the plainest of all: grey sandstone, thick sloping or battered walls, minimum ornament and a fortress look, seen at Tughlaqabad and at Firoz Shah Kotla. The Lodis gave India the double dome, an outer shell for height and an inner one for a usable ceiling, and the octagonal and square garden tombs now standing in Lodi Gardens.

Provincial schools

When the Sultanate weakened, the provinces built in their own way.

Mughal architecture

Babur left little, and Sher Shah Suri filled the gap with the Purana Qila in Delhi and his own tomb at Sasaram, set in a lake. The Mughal line proper begins with Humayun tomb in Delhi, raised by his widow Hamida Banu Begum and designed by Mirak Mirza Ghiyas: the first garden tomb in India, a charbagh divided by water channels, and the model that leads to the Taj.

Akbar built in red sandstone. His capital at Fatehpur Sikri holds the Diwan-i-Khas with its central pillar, the Panch Mahal, the Jodha Bai palace and the Buland Darwaza, raised in 1575 to mark his Gujarat victory and among the tallest gateways anywhere. He also built the forts of Agra, Lahore and Allahabad. Jahangir preferred gardens: the Shalimar Bagh of Srinagar is his, and in his reign Nur Jahan built the tomb of her father Itmad-ud-Daulah at Agra, the first Mughal building faced wholly in white marble and the first to use pietra dura, the inlay of coloured stone.

Shah Jahan is the marble age: the Taj Mahal at Agra for Mumtaz Mahal, with Ustad Ahmad Lahauri named as its architect, the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid of Delhi, the Moti Masjid in Agra Fort and the new city of Shahjahanabad. Aurangzeb built little of beauty: the Bibi ka Maqbara at Aurangabad, a smaller copy of the Taj, and the Badshahi mosque at Lahore. After him the style thins into the Lodi like tombs of the later eighteenth century, such as Safdarjung tomb in Delhi.

Words that carry marks

• Charbagh: a garden in four quarters, split by walkways or water.
• Pietra dura: coloured stones cut and set into marble to make a design.
• Jali: a pierced stone screen that lets in light and air.
• Iwan: a deep vaulted hall open on one side, usually the entrance.
• Chhatri: a domed kiosk on pillars, borrowed from Rajput building.