CONTENTS.

The Jumma Musjid—Tombs of Ibrahim and MahmÚd—The Audience Hall—Tomb of Nawab Amir Khan, near Tatta.

CHRONOLOGY.

If the materials existed for the purpose, it would be extremely interesting, from a historical point of view, to trace the various styles that grew out of each other as the later dynasties of the Dekhan succeeded one another and strove to surpass their predecessors in architectural magnificence in their successive capitals. With the exception, however, of Bijapur, none of the Dekhani cities produced any edifices that, taken by themselves irrespective of their surroundings and historical importance, seem to be of any very great value in an artistic sense.

Burhampur, which was the capital of the Faruki dynasty of Kandeish, from A.D. 1370-1596, does possess some buildings remarkable for their extent and picturesque in their decay, but of very little artistic value, and many of them—especially the later ones—in very questionable taste. Ahmednugger, the capital of the Nizam Shahi dynasty, A.D. 1490-1607, is singularly deficient in architectural grandeur, considering how long it was the capital of an important dynasty; while if Golcondah, the chosen seat of the Kutub Shahi dynasty, A.D. 1512-1672, has any buildings that are remarkable, all that can be said is that they have not yet been drawn or described. The tombs of the kings of this dynasty, and of their nobles and families, do form as extensive and as picturesque a group as is to be found anywhere; but individually they are in singularly bad taste. Their bases are poor and weak, their domes tall and exaggerated, showing all the faults of the age in which they were executed, but still not unworthy of a place in history if the materials existed for illustrating them properly.

As mentioned above, the Bahmani dynasty of Kalburgah maintained the struggle against the Hindu principalities of the south for nearly a century and a half, with very little assistance from either the central power at Delhi or their cognate states in the Dekhan. Before the end of the 15th century, however, they began to feel that decay inherent in all Eastern dynasties; and the Hindus might have recovered their original possessions, up to the Vindhya at least, but for the appearance of a new and more vigorous competitor in the field in the person of Yusaf Khan, a son of Amurath II. of Anatolia. He was thus a Turk of pure blood, and, as it happens, born in Constantinople, though his mother was forced to fly thence while he was still an infant. After a varied career he was purchased for the body-guard at Bidar, and soon raised himself to such pre-eminence that on the defeat of Dustur Dinar, in 1501, he was enabled to proclaim his independence and establish himself as the founder of the Adil Shahi dynasty of Bijapur.

For the first sixty or seventy years after their accession, the struggle for existence was too severe to admit of the Adil Shahis devoting much attention to architecture. The real building epoch of the city commences with Ali, A.D. 1557, and all the important buildings are crowded into the 100 years which elapsed between his accession and the wars with Aurungzebe, which ended in the final destruction of the dynasty.

During that period, however, their capital was adorned with a series of buildings as remarkable as those of any of the Mahomedan capitals of India, hardly excepting even Agra and Delhi, and showing a wonderful originality of design not surpassed by those of such capitals as Jaunpore or Ahmedabad, though differing from them in a most marked degree.

It is not easy now to determine how far this originality arose from the European descent of the Adil Shahis and their avowed hatred of everything that belonged to the Hindus, or whether it arose from any local circumstances, the value of which we can now hardly appreciate. My impression is, that the former is the true cause, and that the largeness and grandeur of the Bijapur style is owing to its quasi-Western origin, and to reminiscences of the great works of the Roman and Byzantine architects.

Like most Mahomedan dynasties, the Adil Shahis commenced their architectural career by building a mosque and madrissa in the fort at Bijapur out of Hindu remains. How far the pillars used there by them are in situ, or torn from other buildings, we are not informed. From photographs, it would appear that considerable portions of them are used at least for the purposes for which they were intended; but this is not incompatible with the idea that they were removed from their original positions and readapted to their present purposes. Be this as it may, as soon as the dynasty had leisure to think really about the matter, they abandoned entirely all tendency to copy Hindu forms or Hindu details, but set to work to carry out a pointed-arched, or domical style of their own, and did it with singular success.[533]

The Jumma Musjid, which is one of the earlier regular buildings of the city, was commenced by Ali Adil Shah (A.D. 1557-1579), and, though continued by his successors on the same plan, was never completely finished, the fourth side of the courtyard with its great gateway not having been even commenced when the dynasty was overthrown. Even as it is, it is one of the finest mosques in India.

As will be seen from the plan (Woodcut No. 317), it would have been, if completed, a rectangle of 331 ft. by 257 ft. The mosque itself is perfect, and measures 257 ft. by 145 ft., and consequently covers about 37,000 sq. ft. It consequently is in itself only a very little less than the mosque at Kalburgah; but this is irrespective of the wings, which extend 186 ft. beyond, so that if complete it would have covered about 50,000 sq. ft. to 55,000 sq. ft., or about the usual size of a mediÆval cathedral. It is more remarkable, however, for the beauty of its details than either the arrangement or extent of its plan. Each of the squares into which it is divided is roofed by a dome of very beautiful form, but so flat (Woodcut No. 318) as to be concealed externally in the thickness of the roof. Twelve of these squares are occupied in the centre by the great dome, 57 ft. in diameter in the circular part, but standing on a square measuring 70 ft. each way. The dimensions of this dome were immensely exceeded afterwards by that which covers the tomb of MahmÚd, constructed on the same plan and 124 ft. in diameter; but the smaller dimensions here employed enabled the architect to use taller and more graceful outlines, and if he had had the courage to pierce the niches at the base of his dome, and make them into windows, he would probably have had the credit of designing the most graceful building of its class in existence.

If the plan of this mosque is compared with that of Kalburgah (Woodcut No. 314), it will be seen what immense strides the Indian architects had made in constructive skill and elegance of detail during the century and a half that elapsed between the erection of these two buildings. If they were drawn to the same scale this would be more apparent than it is at first sight; but on half the present scale the details of the Kalburgah mosque could hardly be expressed, while the largeness of the parts, and regularity of arrangement can, in the scale adopted, be made perfectly clear in the Bijapur example. The latter is, undoubtedly, the more perfect of the two, but there is a picturesqueness about the earlier building, and a poetry about its arrangements, that go far to make up for the want of the skill and the elegance exhibited in its more modern rival.

The tomb which Ali Adil Shah commenced for himself was a square, measuring about 200 ft. each way, and had it been completed as designed would have rivalled any tomb in India. It is one of the disadvantages, however, of the Turanian system of each king building his own tomb, that if he dies early his work remains unfinished. This defect is more than compensated in practice by the fact that unless a man builds his own sepulchre, the chances are very much against anything worthy of admiration being dedicated to his memory by his surviving relatives.

His successor Ibrahim, warned by the fate of his predecessor’s tomb, commenced his own on so small a plan—116 ft. square—that as he was blessed by a long and prosperous reign, it was only by ornament that he could render it worthy of himself. This, however, he accomplished by covering every part with the most exquisite and elaborate carvings. The ornamental inscriptions are so numerous that it is said the whole Koran is engraved on its walls. The cornices are supported by the most elaborate bracketing, the windows filled with tracery, and every part so richly ornamented that had his artists not been Indians it might have become vulgar. The principal apartment in the tomb is a square of 40 ft. each way, covered by a stone roof, perfectly flat in the centre, and supported only by a cove projecting 10 ft. from the walls on every side. How the roof is supported is a mystery which can only be understood by those who are familiar with the use the Indians make of masses of concrete, which, with good mortar, seems capable of infinite applications unknown in Europe. Above this apartment is another in the dome as ornamental as the one below it, though its only object is to obtain externally the height required for architectural effect, and access to its interior can only be obtained by a dark narrow stair in the thickness of the wall.

Besides the tomb there is a mosque to correspond; and the royal garden, in which these are situated, is adorned, as usual, internally with fountains and kiosks, and externally with colonnades and caravansaries for strangers and pilgrims, the whole making up a group as rich and as picturesque as any in India, and far excelling anything of the sort on this side of the Hellespont.

The tomb of his successor, MahmÚd, was in design as complete a contrast to that just described as can well be conceived, and is as remarkable for simple grandeur and constructive boldness as that of Ibrahim was for excessive richness and contempt of constructive proprieties. It is constructed on the same principle as that employed in the design of the dome of the great mosque (Woodcut No. 319), but on so much larger a scale as to convert into a wonder of constructive skill what, in that instance, was only an elegant architectural design.

As will be seen from the plan, it is internally a square apartment, 135 ft. each way; its area consequently is 18,225 sq. ft., while that of the Pantheon at Rome is, within the walls, only 15,833 sq. ft.; and even taking into account all the recesses in the walls of both buildings, this is still the larger of the two.

At the height of 57 ft. from the floor-line the hall begins to contract, by a series of pendentives as ingenious as they are beautiful, to a circular opening 97 ft. in diameter. On the platform of these pendentives the dome is erected, 124 ft. in diameter, thus leaving a gallery more than 12 ft. wide all round the interior. Internally, the dome is 175 ft. high, externally 198 ft., its general thickness being about 10 ft.

The most ingenious and novel part of the construction of this dome is the mode in which its lateral or outward thrust is counteracted. This was accomplished by forming the pendentives so that they not only cut off the angles, but that, as shown in the plan, their arches intersect one another, and form a very considerable mass of masonry perfectly stable in itself; and, by its weight acting inwards, counteracting any thrust that can possibly be brought to bear upon it by the pressure of the dome. If the whole edifice thus balanced has any tendency to move, it is to fall inwards, which from its circular form is impossible; while the action of the weight of the pendentives being in the opposite direction to that of the dome, it acts like a tie, and keeps the whole in equilibrium, without interfering at all with the outline of the dome.

In the Pantheon and most European domes a great mass of masonry is thrown on the haunches, which entirely hides the external form, and is a singularly clumsy expedient in every respect compared with the elegant mode of hanging the weight inside.

Notwithstanding that this expedient gives the dome a perfectly stable basis to stand upon, which no thrust can move, still, looking at the section (Woodcut No. 323), its form is such that it appears almost paradoxical that such a building should stand. If the section represented an arch or a vault, it is such as would not stand one hour; but the dome is itself so perfect as a constructive expedient, that it is almost as difficult to build a dome that will fall as it is to build a vault that will stand. As the dome is also, artistically, the most beautiful form of roof yet invented, it may be well, before passing from the most extraordinary and complex example yet attempted anywhere, to pause and examine a little more closely the theory of its construction.

Let us suppose the diagram to represent the plan of a perfectly flat dome 100 ft. in diameter, and each rim consequently 10 ft. wide.

Further assuming for convenience that the whole dome weighs 7850 tons, the outer rim will weigh 2826 tons, or almost exactly as much as the three inner rims put together; the next will weigh 2204, the next 1568, the next 942, and the inner only 314; so that a considerable extra thickness might be heaped on it, or on the two inner ones, without their preponderance at all affecting the stability of the dome; but this is the most unfavourable view to take of the case. To understand the problem more clearly, let us suppose the semicircle A A A (Woodcut No. 324) to represent the section of a hemispherical dome. The first segment of this, though only 10 ft. in width, will be 30 ft. in height, and will weigh 9420 tons; the next, 10 ft. high and 10 ft. wide, will weigh 3140; the third, 10 ft. by 6 ft., will weigh only 1884; the fourth will weigh 942; and the central portion, as before, 316.

324. Diagram illustrative of Domical Construction.