Indo-Islamic architecture

• 1. Introduction

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  Indo-Islamic architecture begins with a single ruined mosque in Sindh, Pakistan, dated to the year 727 - centuries before any great dynasty arrived to reshape the subcontinent. From that bare foundation plan at Banbhore, only the outline of walls can be traced. Yet what followed over the next thousand years would alter the skyline of an entire civilization.

  When the Ghurid dynasty made Delhi their capital in 1193, they brought with them a visual language that India had never seen. Soaring domes. True arches carried on wedge-shaped stones. Minarets piercing the sky. These were forms almost entirely absent from Hindu and Jain temple building. They demanded new skills, new materials, and a new relationship between builder and patron.

  What emerged was not a simple transplant of West Asian style onto Indian soil. It was something stranger and richer - a centuries-long negotiation between incoming traditions and deeply rooted local ones. Corbelled arches gave way to true voussoir arches. Stone columns plundered from temples stood beneath new domes. Regional kingdoms in Bengal, Gujarat, the Deccan, and Kashmir each bent the incoming vocabulary toward their own materials and climates. And by the time the Mughal Empire reached its peak, the resulting style had grown so influential that Hindu patrons began borrowing from it - putting scalloped arches on their own temples.

• 2. Building on Borrowed Columns

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  The Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque in Delhi, begun before 1199, was built on a platform that had already served a Hindu temple. Its columns came from that same demolished temple, and from Jain temples as well. The arches above them were still corbelled in the traditional Indian fashion, not the true structural arches of the Islamic world. The style was Iranian in intention, but the hands and habits that built it were Indian.

  Beside this mosque rose the Qutb Minar, a minaret or victory tower whose original four stages reach 73 meters. Its closest parallel anywhere was the Minaret of Jam in Afghanistan, built around 1190 at 62 meters, a decade or so before work likely began on the Delhi tower. Both shafts carry elaborate inscriptions and geometric ornament. At Delhi, the shaft is fluted, with stalactite bracketing beneath the balconies at each level.

  The Tomb of Iltutmish was added to the complex by 1236. Its dome, also corbelled, is now gone, and contemporary observers described its intricate carving as having an angular harshness - the trace of craftsmen attempting ornament in a style foreign to them.

  At Ajmer, the Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra mosque, also begun in the 1190s for the same Delhi rulers, solved the problem of height differently. Hindu temple columns were stacked in threes to gain extra elevation. In both Delhi and Ajmer, large screen walls with pointed corbelled arches were added in front of the mosque facade, probably under Iltutmish, with the central arch taller than the rest in imitation of an iwan. At Ajmer, the smaller arches were tentatively cusped - the first instance of that form in India.

• 3. True Arches and New Colours

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  Around 1300, builders in Delhi began constructing true domes and arches using voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones that distribute weight outward rather than stacking it straight down. The ruined Tomb of Balban, who died in 1287, may be the earliest surviving example.

  The Alai Darwaza gatehouse at the Qutb complex, completed in 1311, shows a cautious approach to the new technology. Its walls are very thick. Its dome is shallow and only becomes visible from a certain angle or height. But the gatehouse introduces something that would become a defining mark of Indo-Islamic architecture: bold contrasting masonry in red sandstone and white marble. In Iran and Central Asia, polychrome glazed tiles served this decorative function. India substituted stone.

  The pointed arches of the Alai Darwaza come together slightly at their base, giving a mild horseshoe effect. Their inner edges carry projections shaped like spearheads, possibly representing lotus buds. Stone openwork screens, called jali, appear here as well - a technique already long established in temple building, now absorbed into the new vocabulary.

• 4. The Tughlaq Dynasty and Its Builders

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  The Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam in Multan, Pakistan, built between 1320 and 1324, stands out among early Tughlaq monuments for its richness. It is a large octagonal brick mausoleum with polychrome glazed decoration, closer in character to the architecture of Iran and Afghanistan than to anything yet built in India. Timber is used inside it. It was built for a Sufi saint, not a sultan.

  The tomb of the dynasty's founder, Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq, who died in 1325, takes a different approach. It is austere, even austere. Yet it carries a small amalaka and a round finial at its apex, forms borrowed directly from Hindu temple architecture. Its compound has high walls and battlements, and the external walls slope inward at 25 degrees, matching the angle of nearby Tughlaqabad Fort.

  The Tughlaqs maintained a corps of government architects and builders, and employed many Hindu craftsmen within that corps. Their third sultan, Firuz Shah, who ruled from 1351 to 1388, reportedly designed buildings himself. He was the dynasty's longest-reigning ruler and its most prolific builder. His Firoz Shah Palace Complex at Hisar in Haryana, begun in 1354, survives in fragmentary condition. He was buried in the Hauz Khas Complex in Delhi, a site that accumulated buildings over the later Sultanate period, including small domed pavilions resting only on columns.

  The late Lodi dynasty, which succeeded a series of weaker rulers, constructed the Lodi Gardens in Delhi, a site incorporating fountains, charbagh gardens, ponds, tombs, and mosques.

• 5. Regional Experiments in Bengal and Gujarat

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  The Bengal Sultanate, which lasted from 1352 to 1576, worked almost entirely in brick. Stone had to be imported to most of Bengal, while clay was abundant. Where stone appears, it was usually re-used from Hindu or Buddhist temples, deployed for columns and prominent decorative details.

  The Eklakhi Mausoleum at Pandua, dating to the early 15th century, is often counted as the earliest surviving square single-domed Islamic building in Bengal - the form that became standard for smaller mosques and tombs across the region. A small mosque at Molla Simla in Hooghly district may actually predate it, possibly from 1375. The Eklakhi Mausoleum carries features that would define the Bengali style: a slightly curved cornice, large round decorative buttresses at the corners, and carved terracotta brick ornament.

  For larger mosques, Bengali builders multiplied domes rather than enlarging individual ones. A nine-domed formula, arranging domes in three rows of three, survives in four examples, all from the 15th or 16th century and now in Bangladesh. The Sixty Dome Mosque, completed in 1459 at Bagerhat, carries 26 doors - eleven at the front, seven on each side, and one at the rear. The openings served ventilation and light in a climate of heavy rainfall. Bagerhat itself is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  In Gujarat, the approach was almost opposite in sensibility. The Gujarat Sultanate, independent between 1407 and 1543 under the Muzaffarid dynasty, was a prosperous state that built lavishly in its capital, Ahmedabad. Gujarati builders drew on the skills of local stone carvers trained in Maru-Gurjara temple traditions, deploying that craft in minarets of unusual elaboration. Minarets often appear in pairs flanking the main entrance, with intricate carving at their lower levels and, in some designs, balconies projecting from the shaft at intervals. The upper parts of the so-called shaking minarets at the Jama Mosque in Ahmedabad, which had taken this idea to its furthest extreme, fell in an earthquake in 1819.

  The Gujarat style also introduced elements that would later appear in Mughal architecture - ornate mihrabs, jali screens, and chattris, the pavilions topped with cupolas.

• 6. Mughal Peak and the Taj Mahal

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  Akbar, who ruled in the 16th century, approached architecture as a matter of systematic design. He laid out forts and towns in symmetrical arrangements that blended Indian and outside influences. At the fort he designed in Agra, the gate displays an Assyrian gryphon, Indian elephants, and birds in combination.

  Lahore, an occasional residence of Mughal rulers, accumulated some of the empire's most important buildings. The Wazir Khan Mosque, built between 1634 and 1635, is noted for its colour. The Badshahi Mosque was built between 1673 and 1674 under Aurangzeb. The Shahjahan Mosque at Thatta in Sindh was built under, and probably largely by, Shah Jahan, and its Central Asian character reflects that the emperor had recently been campaigning near Samarkand.

  The Taj Mahal was built as a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of Shah Jahan, who died in 1631. Earlier Mughal emperors had developed the idea of the garden tomb through their own commissions. The Taj gathered those precedents into a single landmark: a white tomb rising above a reflecting pool, set within a large walled garden. The Red Fort in Delhi, also built under Shah Jahan, served as the official residence of the emperor for nearly 200 years and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007.

  The Mughal style did not simply stop when imperial power declined. By the late 18th century Hindu patrons were mixing Mughal elements with traditional Hindu palace architecture and, later, with European forms. The Asaf Jahi dynasty of Hyderabad, which became one of the wealthiest royal families in the world by the mid-20th century, commissioned public buildings in Indo-Saracenic and Mughal style, including hospitals, colleges, and palaces.

• 7. After the Empire

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  When the Mughal Empire collapsed following the Mughal-Maratha Wars and the invasions of Nader Shah and Ahmad Shah Durrani, wealthy provincial rulers stepped into the space. In Awadh, covering modern eastern Uttar Pradesh, the Nawabs sponsored the Bara Imambara, Rumi Darwaza, and Chota Imambara in Lucknow, as well as structures in Faizabad.

  The so-called Indo-Saracenic style, beginning in the late 18th century and developing mainly from the 1840s until independence, was largely the work of British and other European architects. It applied Islamic and specifically Indian decorative features to buildings whose underlying forms followed contemporary Western models - railway stations, courts of justice, palaces, hotels. What those architects borrowed most often from was Mughal architecture and the Rajput palace tradition.

  The Chaukhandi tombs of Sindh, built between the 16th and 18th centuries, stand entirely apart from Mughal conventions despite the chronological overlap. Their stonemason work follows a Sindhi tradition that likely predates the Islamic period in the region. The tradition that began with the ruined mosque at Banbhore in 727 left its deepest marks not in any single monument but in the architectural languages now spoken across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.