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“A collection of merits…”:1 Architectural influnces

in the Friday Mosque and Kazaruni Tomb Complex at

Cambay, GujaratElizabeth Lambourn

Published online: 11 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Elizabeth Lambourn (2001) “A collection of merits…”:1 Architectural influnces in the Friday Mosque a

Kazaruni Tomb Complex at Cambay, Gujarat, South Asian Studies, 17:1, 117-149, DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2001.9628596

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"A collection of m er its../':1 Architectural

influnces in the Friday Mosque and

Kazaruni Tomb Complex at Cambay,

Gujarat

ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

"Cambay is one of the most beautiful cities as regards the artistic architecture of its houses and the construction of

i ts mos ques. T he reason is that the majority of i ts inhabitants are foreign m erchants, w ho continual ly b ui ld theie

beauti ful houses and wonderful mosques - an achievement in which they endeavour to surpass each other."

Ibn B attuta, ca. 743/Ί 3422

Chitlorgarh

I. Map of west ern India with the principal sites mentio ned.

Tu g h lu q a rch i t ec tu re h as j u s t l y b een d esc r ib ed b y

An th o n y Welch an d Ho w ard Cran e as a t u rn in g p o in tin the histor y of Ind ia's Islamic arch itectu re (Welch &

Crane, 1983, p. 123). Thanks to the efforts of these, and

other , scholars Tughluq arc h i tecture i s becom ing ever

bet ter known and the las t twenty years have seen

su b s t an t i a l ad v an ces i n t h e d o cu m en ta t i o n o f n ew

structures and in the analysis of Tughluq bui ld ing types

and pat ronage. Much at ten t ion has obviously focused on

the Tughluq arch i tecture that surv ives at Delh i , the

capi tal , bu t a large num ber of s t ructures s t il l remain to b e

studied in the provinces of the Tughluq empire. The

stud y of these provinc ial mo num ents is obviously

im p o r t an t fo r co m p le t i n g o u r p i c tu re o f Tu g h lu q

arch i t ec tu re an d p a t ro n ag e , an d u n d er s t an d in g t h e

exten t to which Tughluq forms were d isseminated in the

rest o f the Empire and adapted to local s ty les and

condi t ions. Moreover , in many cases these monuments

also represen t the founda t ions of the later reg ional s ty les

of Islamic architecture that grew up after the collapse of

the Tughluq Empire at the end of the 14th century. In the

changed pol i t ical contex t of the 15th century , these

117



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

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Ground plan of the Friday mosque and

Kazaruni tom b complex, Cambay.

Gujarat. (From Burgess, 1896.)

View o f the Friday mosque and Kazaruni tom b comp lex at Cambay, fro m the east.

structures are no longer provincial reflections of a distant

capital but central models for the architecture of the new

independent Sul tanates .

The State of Gujarat in western India preserves a

large group of Tughluq s t ruc tures , pr inc ipa l ly la rge

congregational, or Friday, mosques, built in the years

fol lowing the Musl im conques t of the region in

704/1304-05 under the Khaljis .3 Many of these structures

are s t i l l unknown, documented only through Archaeo

logical Survey of India volumes, and practically all

would merit fuller publication.4 This article focuses on

two of the ear l ies t , mos t innovat ive , complex and

influential buildings in this group: the 725/1325 Friday

mosque a t the port of Cambay and the tomb complex of

c \ Jmar a l -Kazaruni (d . 734/1333) to i t s south . The F riday

mos que and Kazaruni tomb complex would undo ubt

edly be ranked as except ional s t ruc tures whatever the ir

place or period. Their monumenta l i ty , imaginat ion and

the sheer skill of their construction and decoration place

them alongside some of the finest buildings in the

Islamic world and for this alone a fresh publication is

long overdue. The two structures are also exceptional for

the breadth of sources they gather together, a breadth

that reflects Cambay's position at the interface between

Sul tanate northern India and the wes tern Indian Ocean.

Pe rha ps a s a c ons e que nc e o f th i s ma ny e l e me n t s ,

especially those of the tomb complex, are innovative and

technically experimental. All these qualities helped to

118 South Asian Studies Ί 7



"A COLLECTION OF MERITS..."

H S M F

4. View o f the prayer hall facade, Friday mosque, Cambay, including the small chattri at the centre of the c ourtya rd. (Courtesy of the AIIS, Centre

for Ar t and Archaeology, New Delhi.)

5. View of the nor th east entrance, Friday mosque, Cambay. with the

725/1325 foundation inscription and traces of the pilasters of the

original p orch.

es tablish the Friday mosque and Kazaruni tom b complex

at Cam bay as fund ame nta l mo dels for the la te r

architecture of the Sultans of Gujarat during the 15th and

16th centuries.

This said, the complexity of each structure, and of

their relationship to each other, makes their discussion

long and difficult. On the one hand, they are two

distinct s tructures in terms of their function, phases of

construction, patrons and architectural sources, and so

might be discussed in separate articles. On the otherhand, they are physically interlinked to the extent that it

is impossible to discuss one without the other. Not only

do the two bui ldings share many cons truc t ional and

stylistic details but the tomb complex is built against the

entire length of the mosque's south wall, and the two are

l inked in terna l ly by numerous windows and connect ing

doorways (Figs. 2 & 3). The final effect is of a single

complex and indeed Western t rave l le rs - who provide

our only early descriptions of these two buildings - have

often treated them as a single structure, referring to both

either as a tomb or as a mosque. The pattern of their

subsequent influence within Gujarat also suggests that

they were seen as a single complex by the local Muslim

c ommuni t i e s .

P A R T I

THE STRUCTURES

Since the Friday mosque and Kazaruni tomb complex

have not been published substantially since 1896, whenthey were documented by James Burgess , 4 this article

be g ins w i th a more e x te ns ive de s c r ip t ion a nd a

reconstruction of the two structures.

THE FRIDAY MOSQUE AND ITS PATRON

The Friday mosque

The Friday mosque is a hypos tyle or Arab plan mosque ,

cons is t ing of a centra l courtyard su rrou nde d by the main

prayer ha l l on the wes t s ide and colonnades on the

rem ainin g three side s (Fig. 2). The m osq ue is an im

pos ing s t ruc ture meas uring appro ximate ly 64.5 by 60meters, or 212 by 197 feet, externally. In a sophisticated

and inspired compositional touch, the centre of the

mosque courtyard is marked by a smal l orna te ly carved

chattri or pavi l ion (Fig . 4) . Cons truc t ion throu ghou t the

mo squ e is ent i re ly in s tone and m ainly t rabea te ,

employing corbel led domes and arches . Prac t ica l ly a l l

the s tone employed in the mosque must have come from

Cambay 's Ja in and Hindu temples but th is spol ia is

generally reused discreetly.

119



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

6. View of the interior of the sanctuary, Friday mosque. Cambay,

showing the use of grey stone for the pillars around the central

mihrab.

An inscr ip t ion over the n o r th ern en t r an ce of the

m o sq u e r eco rd s its fo u n d a t io n on 18 Mulmrram 725

eq u iv a l en t to 4 January 1325, under the p a t ro n ag e of

Daw latshah M uha mm ad al -But ihar i (Fig . 5 ) . The ful l tex t

of the inscr ip t ion runs as follows (tran slation from

Mah d i Hu sa in ' s ed i t i o n of the inscr ip t ion) .6

^ j J u l j u v - . U ^ ^ I U t J U j I ^ . I il\p\j*Ji1*Jl *Λ-Η jfrJt JA AJ I J^ -O )

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^ UJ IjlU LJ l J i t y i j u ; 4 l ILJL i . * - / j4L iJ j *« lJ l * : iUJL . u e ) b -1 > . i l i ' j iA ; - # ; * ; jU£ j (T )

•LLJJJ jLru iiHtjJA j f l j j l JLJ^S\ JUJI ;LUL. } SL· M M jlUuJI lUlU: Λ .Li JLJJ JSLJI

^ U > _ - j l > C r l * 1 J J - i L . r j * l ^ ^ i i l > . L U I t > a ) i J * < l ^ i l >* ► J jWj t * JUrf

(Line 1) In the n a m e of G o d , the C ompa s s iona te ,

the Merciful. And the places of w o r s h i p are for Allah

alone so invoke no-one e lse bes ides Al lah.7

And theProphet , peace be u p o n him, s a ys " Who e ve r bu i ld s a

m o s q u e for Al lah, even tho ugh it be as small as the

dwe l l ing of a part ridg e, Allah will build for h im a house

in paradise" .8 This is by one who has been rightly guided

and he lped by Him. This b lessed Friday mosq ue and its

bui lding were cons truc ted

(Line 2) whol ly and comple te ly , out of his own

money from what Al lah had given him th rough His

grace and benevolence , mere ly for the sake of Allah the

Exal ted, during the reign of the learned and just S ultan

M uha mma d Sha h s on of Tughluq Shah the Sul tan - ma y

Allah perpe tua te his dom inion and po wer - by the weak

crea ture , expectant of the mercy of Al lah the Exalted,Da wla t s ha h M uha mma d a l -B u t iha r i9 , may Allah enable

him to achieve his object. And that too k plac e on the

eighteenth of Mulmrram in the year seven hun dred and

twenty five.10

The main prayer ha l l has a re la t ive ly s im ple

internal articulation of fourteen large dom es of equa l size

and he ight , wi th a ra ised and screened pray er area or

muluk khanah, l i te ra l ly "king 's chamber" , at e i ther end

7. View of th e south western muluk khanah Friday mosque, Cambay.

(Fig. 7). The precise uses of muluk khanahs in India have

yet to be fully explored and they ar e often refer red to as

wome n ' s ga l l e r i e s . Howe ve r , one of the earliest

explanat ions of th is fea ture a ppea rs in the me moi r s ofthe Mughal Emperor Jahangir on the occasion of a visit

to the Friday M osque at A h m e d a b a d w h e r e he explains

that these shall nishin, called muluk khanah in Gujarat,

were built to shield the King when he attended Friday or

' Id prayers on account of the c rowding of the people"

(Jahangir, 1909-14, p. 425). This expla nation sugges ts that

they were in fact maqsurahs.

The mos que has a total of five mihrabs, three

princ ipa l mihrabs in the main prayer hall and two simpler

mihrabs in each of the muluk khanahs (Fig. 8). Tine three

princ ipa l mihrabs are also "reflected" on the exterior of

th e qiblah wal l, mark ed by three projecting semi-circular

but t resses (Fig. 9). As befits a jami' or congregationalm o s q u e it is provided with a minbar or pulpi t for the

del ivery of the khutbah or s e rmon on Fridays and other

important days s i tua ted jus t to the north of the central

mihrab and built like this entirely in whi te marble (Fig.

10).n Probably the most distinctive feature of the m osque

is the solid masonry screen with arched openings that is

built across the fagade of the pra yer hall, effectively

ma s k ing its t rabeate cons truc t ion. A n u m b e r of arched

openings within the screen allow a g l imps e of the hall

b e h i n d , and the centra l a rch is e m p h a s i s e d by

being wid er and hig her than its neig hbo urs (Figs. 4). The

m o s q u e is not provided with a tow er minaret, instead

stairways within the fagade screen give access to the roofof the mosque from where the call to prayer wou ld have

been made.

The mos que has a total of five entrances, one on

the east, on axis with the centre of the qiblali wall (Fig. 3)

and two entrances each on the north and south sides, one

permitting access directly into the pray er hall of the

mosque, jus t beneath the muluk khanahs (Fig. 11), the

other leading s t ra ight in to the courtyard . The princ ipa l

120 Smith Asian Studies 37



"A COLLECTION OF MERITS.

Above:

8. Small marble mihrab in the north -weste rn muluk khanah Friday

mosque. Cambay.

Top right:

9. The back of the qiblah wall o f the Friday mo sque, Cambay, showing

the use of different coloured stones in the construction of the

mihrab projections.

Below

10. View of the unfinished or restored marble minbar Friday mosque,

Cambay.

121





ACOLLECTION OF MERITS...

12. Early 13th century corbelled d ome reused in the Friday mosque. Cambay. (Courte sy o f the A IIS. Cen tre for A rt and A rchaeology, Ne w Delhi.)

s id e wh ich ap p ear s t o co r r esp o n d to o u r Tu g h lu q

mo sque . Delia Valle desc ribes a Mes chita, or Tem ple of

the Mahometans, whereunto there i s cont inual ly a great

concourse of people wi th r id icu lous and fool ish

devot ions, no t merely Mahometans but l ikewise Gent i les

[Hindus] . In the s t reet before the Gate many persons

si t t ing on the ground asked Alms, to whom the passers-

by cast, some Rice, others certain other corn, but no

Mo ney (della Valle, 1892, p. 69).15

Although the mosque appears to have fal len in to

disrepair by the later 17th century - since de Thevenot

noted that the sepulc hre (mea ning both the Fr iday

mosq ue and tomb complex) wa s kept in bad repai r

when he visited Cambay in 1667-68 (de Thevenot, 1949,

p. 18) - there is no reason to suppose that i t ceased to be

used. At some stage before the late 18th century the

whi te marble paving of the mosque was also removed

(Forbes, 1834, p. 319). It also seems probable that the

mosque suffered some st ructural damage dur ing the

great earthquake that shook Gujarat and Kutch in 1819

(Summers, 1854, p . 21) and substan t ial ly damaged the

Kazaruni complex . The damage to the nor th en t rance

may date to this t ime (Fig. 5), as well as that to thecusped arch that is inserted within the central arch of the

prayer hal l faςade, apparent ly to suppor t the clerestory

jalis (Fig. 4). A description of the mosque in the mid-19th

cen tu ry , t h o u g h h eav y wi th ro m an t i c o v er to n es ,

confirms its extrem e dilap idatio n: the exterior exhibits

p a lp ab l e ev id en ce o f r ap id an n ih i l a t i o n ; an d t h e

decaying co lonnades, the in jured arches - indeed every

indicat ion of age and ru in are qui te unmistakable wi th

the interior (Briggs, 1849, pp . 161-62). Ho we ver, i t

appears to have cont inued in use in to the late 19 th

century s ince a second inscr ip t ion near the mosque 's

wate r tank me nt ions the const ruct ion of the cis tern wi th

a roof carried out through the efforts of the local

M usl im s in 1297/1879-80 (AR1E, 1956-57, D 43).16

Dawlatshah Muhammad al -Butihari

Thanks to the research of Mahdi Husain , the Dawlatshah

Muhammad al -But ihar i o f the foundat ion inscr ip t ion has

been ident if ied wi th a cer tain Daw latshah Mu ham ma d

o r Mal ik Dawla t sh ah m en t io n ed i n co n t em p o rary

histories as one of the main amirs of the Tughluq period

(Mahdi Husain, 1957-58, pp. 29-34). 'Isami records that

he served on the mi l i tary expedi t ion of Ghiyath al -Din

Tug hluq to Lak hna ut i (c . 1324) and a lso serv ed

M u h a m m ad b in Tu g h lu q Sh ah d u r in g t h e Mu l t an

expedi t ion of 730/1330-31 , whe re he com ma nde d the

r ight wing dur ing the bat t le of Abohar (Mahdi Husain ,

1957-58 , p . 30) . Accord ing to Barani at th is t ime

Dawla t sh ah Mu h am m ad h e ld t h e p o s t o f Aklwr Bek o r

Super in tendent of the Royal S tab le. Thanks to Ibn

Bat tu t a we k n o w th a t Dawla t sh ah Mu h am m ad d i ed

d u r in g Mu h am m ad b in Tu g h lu q ' s cam p aig n i n Malab ar ,

succumbing to the p lague in Tel ingana in 735/1335

(Ma hdi H usa in, 1957-58, p. 30). Alt hou gh n one of these

s o u r c e s g i v e D a w l a t s h a h M u h a m m a d ' s nisbah,17 a l-

But ihar i , o r ment ion any par t icu lar involvement wi th

Gujarat , Mahdi Husain 's ident i f icat ion appears to be

correct s ince the names and dates of the two characters

correspond closely.

Al though contemporary sources do not ment ion

123



I I , Ι /Λ Ι '. Ι I I I I A M B O U K N

13. View of the interio r of al-Kazaruni's mausoleum w ith his cenotaph, facing towards the south doorway, Kazaruni complex, Cambay.

Dawla t sh ah Mu h am m ad a l -Bu t ih a r i ' s i n v o lv em en t i n

Gujarat , a number of surv iv ing inscr ip t ions ind icate that

he had s t rong l inks wi th the por ts of Gujarat dur ing the

1320s. Al-Bu t ihar i i s me nt ion ed in three o ther

inscr ip t ions f rom the nearby por t o f Bharuch: h is name

appears in the foundat ion inscr ip t ion of the Fr iday

mos que at Bharuch , dated 721/13 21, in anothe r m osqu e

foundat ion inscr ip t ion of 722/1322,

18

and finally on thefoundat ion inscr ip t ion of the por t ' s namaz garh (an open

area for communal prayer on special occasions in the

Mu s l im ca l en d ar ) wh ich i s d a t ed 7 2 6 /1 3 2 6 . 1M

Unfortunately, the first two inscriptions are so badly

damaged that we cannot speci fy the ro le he p layed in

these pro jects . He may have been the main pat ron of

these bui ld ings or h is name may feature in these

inscriptions simply because he held an official post in

Gujarat and i t was customary to include the names of

importan t local o ff icials in such inscr ip t ions. The

importan t po in t i s that he was al ready in Gujarat at th is

period and apparently in an official capacity. Fortunately,

the third inscription on the minbar or pulpit of the namazgarh at Bharuch is complete. I t records al -But ihar i ' s

patronage of the structure in 726/1326 - only a year after

the Fr iday mosque at Cambay - and paid for once again

out of h is personal funds. The ment ion of al -But ihar i ' s

name in four inscriptions from these two sites - in two

cases as the pat ron of major rel ig ious s t ructures -

demonst rates that he had close, and very probably

official , t ies to the ports of western India.

The existence of these inscriptions in no way

inval idates the ident i f icat ion made by Mahdi Husain .

14th century histories do not pretend to the kind of

b iographical detai l found, for example, in Mughal

b iographical d ict ionar ies , thei r fai lure to ment ion

Da wlatsh ah M uh am ma d 's career in Gujarat is therefore

not proof that he was never posted there. Equally, and for

r easo n s t h a t h av e y e t t o b e ex p l a in ed , t h e nisbah(al - )But ihar i may only have been used or known in

Gujarat . Indeed , in some cases , detai l s f rom the

inscriptions and texts actually reinforce one another. The

namaz garh inscription furnishes new official t i t les which

a p p e a r to c o n fi r m D a w l a t s h a h M u h a m m a d ' s i n

volvement in the Lakhnaut i campaign as ment ioned bycIsami. In this text al-Butihari is referred to as Malik al-

Sharq Fakhr al-Dawlah wa al-Din Dawlatshah Muhamm ad

Butihari, li terally, King of the East, Pride of the State and

Rel ig ion , Dawlatshah Muhammad But ihar i . One may

wonder whether the new t i t le Malik al-Sharq or King of

th e Eas t was award ed as a r esu l t o f Dawla t sh ah

Mu h am m a d ' s p a r t i c ip a ti o n i n th e Lak h n au t i cam p aig n .On e d e t a i l o f Dawla t sh ah Mu h am m ad ' s ca ree r

may provide a clue to his posting in the ports of Gujarat.

Barani ment ions the fact that Dawlatshah Muhammad

held the post of Akhur Bek or Supe r in tend ent of the Royal

Stab le around 1330 and th is in format ion suggests that he

may have had a par t icu lar ly good knowledge of horses .

As Simon Digby 's s tudy on war horses and elephants in

India has shown, India imported large numbers of

124 South Asian Studies 7



"A COLLECTION OF ME RITS..."

14. V iew of the main, south facade of the Kazarun i complex showing

the entrance portal or pishtaq.

horses to serve in the cavalry. Many were imported by

sea from the Persian Gulf, Arabian Peninsula and Iran,

and landed at the western seaports (Digby, 1971 p. 1). A

related phenomenon, that has received far less attention,

is the appointm ent of wel l -connected horse me rchants asofficials in the ports or states which imported these

horses . Probably the bes t known example is the

connect ions be tween the Pandyan rulers of Madura i and

the al-Tibi merchant family who ruled the coasts of Fars

and its is lands during the late 13th and early 14th

centuries. The Pandy a imp orted alm ost 1,500 horses

annually from the Tibis alone and for several decades,

until the Khalji conquest of Ma'bar, members of the Tibi

family were appointed as viziers to the Pandyas and as

gove rnor s of their three main port s (Aubin, 1953, pp . 89-

99; Shokoohy, 1991, p. 32). Alth oug h d ata is lacking for

wes tern India during the Tughluq period, we know tha t

in the Mughal period horse traders were quite often

appointed to admin is te r or govern ports there , exploi t ing

the ir connect ions and the ir expert ise in horses . In

1056/1646, for example, the Iranian merchant and horse

trader cAli Akbar Is fahani was appointed by Shah Jahan

to administer the ports of Surat and Cambay on the basis

that "since [he] is a merchant and has knowledge of

judging horses and jewels, i t is possible that he will be

able to administer ports in an efficient manner" (Khan,

1965, p. 196).20 The logic of this system sugg ests th at it

may well have been in place long before the Mughal

period and we might specula te tha t , whi ls t Dawla tshah

Muhammad's mil i ta ry career makes i t unl ike ly tha t hewas himself a horse merchant, he may well have been

appointed to Bharuch and Cam bay in connection w ith

the procurement of horses for the Tughluq Sultans.

THE KAZARUNI TOM B COMPLEX

The Friday mosque cannot be discussed independent ly

from the tomb comple x that flanks its entire sou ther n

side (Figs. 2 & 3). The two cenotaphs of cUmar a l -

15. View of the main entrance portal or pishtaq south facade of the

Kazaruni complex. (Courtesy o f the AIIS, Centre for Ar t and

Archaeology, New Delhi.)

Kazaruni (d . 734/1333) and his wife Bibi Fa t imah

(d. 784/1382) at the centre of the complex are among the

bes t publ ished Is lamic monuments a t Cambay 21 yet the

complex tha t houses them has never been ful ly s tudied.

Al-Kazaruni 's grave is usual ly referred to as be ing

situated in his mausoleum, but this is only the central

part of a t r ipar t i te complex compris ing a separa te

multifunctional structure - definitely in part a mosque -

to the west, and a large courtyard area on the east.

T h e m a u s o l e u m an d pishtaq

The la rges t e lement of the tomb complex is the

mausoleum tha t houses the graves of cUmar a l -Kazaruni

and his wife (Fig. 13). This m aus ole um is a large and

c omple x s t ruc tu re , me a s u r ing a pprox ima te ly 15 ,5

metres, or 51 feet, at i ts widest (east to west), and

conceived on three or perhaps even four s toreys . At

floor-level are the two cenotaphs set within an octagonal

mausoleum, with a first floor gallery or above this from

which one can look down onto the cenotaphs be low and

out over the surrou ndin g landscap e . A low solid ra i l ing

marks the outer edge of the gallery (Fig. 13). This

mausoleum is fronted on the south by a large portal, in

Pers ian pishtaq (Figs. 14 & 15). Pishtaq literally m eans

"the arch in front," and the portal consists of a large

125



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

rectangular f ront , ra ised above the leve l of the

surrounding wal ls and s t ruc tures , and with a deep arch

at its centre. Steps from street level lead up and back to

the ac tua l doorway to the mausoleum. The dome and i ts

portal are perfectly integrated with a small loggia or

balcony in the upper half of the portal that both

continues the gallery level of the mausoleum and affords

a view out over the port area and the Gulf of Cambay

(Figs. 15 & 16). Tucked with in th e massiv e sides of theportal are two spiral s taircases that lead from ground

level up to the first floor gallery and then up again to the

roof level of the pishtaq (Figs. 2 & 17). The whole

structure of the Friday mosque and the tomb complex sit

upon a high masonry pl in th tha t var ies in he ight

be tween one and two meters . I t i s h ighes t on the

southern and western sides of the complex and it seems

likely that the Kazaruni burial crypt lies here, exactly

beneath the floor-level cenotaphs that indicate the burial

spot.22 This crypt w ould constitu te the fourth storey of

the ma us o le um.

The mau soleum was origina l ly covered by a dome,

but "in June 1819, the largest and loftiest dome, under

which the remains of the founder a re entombed, was

thrown down by a severe shock of an ear thquake , the

same which caused the devas ta t ions in Cutch, and

thro ug hou t Gu jarat" (Sum mer s, 1854, p. 21) (Fig. 18). The

quantity of stone rubble at the site certainly seems to

confirm that the dome was of stone. The extra pillars

added to but t ress the unsupported wes tern and eas tern

sides of the octagon also indicate worries about the lat

eral thrust of an unusually large and very heavy dome.

The inner diameter of the octagon is just under 12

m (39 ft), and there seems litt le doubt that, at the period

Above

16. View of the interior of the balcony within the pishtaq Kazaruni

complex.

Below

17. View of the juncture of the mausoleum and pishtaq from the east

courtya rd, and showing the doorways giv ing access to the

staircases within each wing of the pishtaq Kazaruni complex.




A COLLECTION OF MERITS..."

n^gmiunntv

18. View of the lost dome, mausoleum, Kazaruni complex.

of its construction, the stone dome over al-Kazaruni 'smausoleum was the largest ever built in western India.

By contrast, the dom es in the adjacent F riday m osq ue all

me asure ap prox imate ly 5.5 m (18 ft) in diameter, an

average size for domes in the 14th century Islamic

archi tec ture of wes tern India . Stone domes of th is

diameter appeared only in the mid-15th century, as in the

mauso leum of Ahm ad Shah I a t Ah med abad and in tha t

of Shaykh Ahmad Khatu at Sarkhej, but even in these

instances they cover single-storey structures and are

solidly buttressed by a crown of smaller domes. 23 A l-

Ka z a run i ' s ma us o le um wa s a t ru ly e xpe r ime n ta l

structure, worthy of the architectural rivalry described

by Ibn Battuta.

The paired minarets

The dome of al-Kazaruni 's mausoleum is not the only part

of th is complex to have been los t through na tura l

disasters. A description of the Friday mosq ue and tomb

complex by James Forbes at the end of the 18th century

mentions that "over the south entrance of the tomb

complex was a handsom e minare t ; it s compan ion having

been destroyed by lightning, was never replaced" (Forbes,

1813, vol. II, p. 17). Th e accuracy of Forbe s' rem ark is

borne out by an accompanying panoramic ske tch, drawn

in 1772, which sho ws the sout hern face of the K azaruni

tomb complex with its dom ed m ausol eum and the

surviving eas tern minare t above the pishtaq (Fig. 19).24 The

19. View of Cambay, from the sou th, showing one of the tw o original m inarets atop the tom b complex's entrance gateway. Engraved by J. Shury

fro m an origina l sketch by James Forbes in 772 AD . (From Forbes, 1834) (Photograph Cou rtesy of the Yale Center for British Ar t. New Haven.)

127



ELIZABETII LAMBOURN

20 . V iew of the western p ortio n of the Kazaruni complex, from the

courtyard of the tomb complex.

22 . Mihrab in the wes tern por t ion of the Kazaruni complex .

(Courtes y of the AIIS, Cen tre for A rt and Archaeology, New

Delhi.)

caption that accompanies the plate reads: "In the centre is

the Jum ma M usjid and fallen Minar, me ntio ned in the

memoirs"(Forbes, 1813, vol. IV, p. 364). Forbes ' remark

and ske tch es tabl ish tha t the entrance to a l -Kazaruni 's

mausoleum was origina l ly topped by a pa ir of tower

minare ts . Al though we do not know exact ly when the

first (western) minaret fell , this appears to have occurred

reiat'we\y eariy, since the earty Y7tYi cen tury acco unt oi

William Finch speaks of "a watch-tower of an exceeding

21 . Exterior v iew of the western por tion of the Kazaruni complex, a

multi-functional area including a small mosque.

height " near the sea-shore at Cambay which seems to

corre spon d to the surv iving mina ret (Finch, 1921, p. 174).

The remaining minare t mus t have col lapsed, a long with

the mausoleum dome, in the 1819 earthquake .It is difficult to know how far to trust Forbes'

sketch for a reconstruction of the minarets , s ince they are

only details in a panoramic view. Nevertheless, they

appear to have been circular and the two balconies

indicated in the sketch suggest that they had internal

staircases that continued from the circular staircase

within each wing of the pishtaq. The presence of these

minarets explains the extraordinary thickness of the

portal 's walls , but most importantly indicates that the

pair of minarets were part of the original design of the

complex rather than a later addition. As far as can be

judged from the sketch they were substantial s tructures,

and at least doubled the height of the pishtaq, whichwould suggest a height of at least 12m (40 ft) from roof

level. Forbes ' sketch gives no idea of the material used to

construct these two minarets . Stone is a strong possibility

(the later 15th century minarets of Ahmedabad are of

stone) and might explain the extreme thickness of the

pishtaq's wa l l s . Howe ve r , t he a bunda nc e o f b r i c k

construction in the central plain of Gujarat means that

we cannot rule out this possibility, especially as the

immedia te models for these minare ts , the 14th century

minarets of Il-Khanid Iran, were brick structures (see

later discussion).

Like the adjacent mosque the complex has been

discreetly restored over time. We have no information on

the damage caused by the collapse of the first minaret

after the lightning strike. However, the collapse of the

mausoleum's dome and the remaining minare t in 1819

would expla in two prominent a reas of rebui lding within

the tomb complex. The loss of a portion of the eastern

wall, as show n on B urgess ' g rou nd plan of 1896 (Fig. 2),

w ou ld b e consisten t wvtb. the collapse oi a tall s tructu re

such as the eastern minaret. The collapse of either the





23 . Carved doorframe connecting the main sanctuary of the Friday

mosque and the western p ortio n of the Kazaruni complex, seen

from the side of the Kazaruni complex.

dome or the minaret would also explain the 19th century

restorations of the balcony within the entrance gateway

(Fig. 15). A rosette carved on the underside of the

pishtaq's ba lcony displays evident ly 19th century

features: for example, the design of its flowers can be

para l le led with carving on the contemporary heads tones

of the Nawabs of Cambay, suggesting that this whole

area was rebuilt and recarved at this time. The Kazaruni

tom b complex is s t il l one of the mos t imp ress iv e

comp lexes of its genre in Gujarat, an d m ust hav e been

even more so before the lightning strike and earthquake

destroyed this magnificent entrance.

The funerary mosque and eastern courtyard

The western end of the complex is occupied by a mosque

cons is t ing of four domed bays with an L-shaped

walkway running along the east and south sides (Figs. 20

& 21). Like the mausoleum, this structure is a far more

complex space than one would initially imagine from the

publ ished ground plans , be ing bui l t on two s toreys and

provided with a walkway, and numerous s ta i rcases and

24 . Raised muluk khanah in the western portion of the Kazaruni

complex.

25 . L-shaped walkway in the western part of the Kazaruni tomb

complex, seen from the west looking towards the mausoleum.

doorways that tie it to the adjoining Friday mosque and

link it to the exterior. The easiest area to define and

identify is un de r the nor th-w ester n of the four do mes ,

since a large white marble mihrab indicates that th is was

used for prayer, more specifically as a funerary chapel

(Fig. 22). But this space also functions as a transition

between the tomb complex and the prayer ha l l of the

Friday mosque , s ince a doorway connects the two (Fig .

23). The space und er the south-w es tern do me appe ars to

have been conceived as a minia ture muluk khanah, since

the upper half of this bay is divided by jali screens, in a

fashion similar to the separation of the muluk khanahs in

the main mo squ e, tho ug h it now lacks its floor (Fig. 24).Access to this muluk khanah is provided by a raised

L-shaped walkway tha t runs a long the southern and

eastern sides of this part of the complex and connects to

the staircases in the pishtaq and also to a separate small

do orw ay in the south facade of the com plex (Fig. 25).

Traces of dowling a long the edges of the walkway

suggest that this was originally screened off by jalis . The

provision of separate access to this area may confirm that

it was intended to provide a secluded place for prayer.

129



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

To the eas t of a l -Kazaruni 's mausoleum is a la rge

empty courtyard comple te ly overgrown and f i l led with

rubble , presumably from the col lapse of the mauso

leum 's dom e and the remainin g minare t (Fig . 2) . There is

no evidence to sugges t tha t th is a rea ever housed any

s truc tures ; whi ls t the eas t wal l was rebui l t somet ime

after 1886, the intact south wall shows no traces of

bond in g w i th o the r s t ruc tu re s . A numbe r o f minor

graves here , and in the second smal l courtyar d be tw een

the mausoleum and the funerary mosque , a re evidence

that these areas were used for later burials , possibly for

family members , as was common throughout the Is lamic

world . The French t ravel le r de Thevenot , who vis i ted

Cam bay in 1665, men t ioned th a t in the Friday mos que

" there are many Sepulchres of Princes there a lso" , a

de s c r ip t ion tha t c o r re s ponds we l l t o the e a s t e rn

courtyard of the tomb complex and the buria ls there (de

Thev enot, 1949, p. 18).

The Kazaruni complex - phases of construction and

patronage

Unlike the Friday mosque the Kazaruni tomb complex

lacks any foundat ion inscr ipt ion indica t ing i ts pa tron

and the date of it construction, and it is only the graves

of a l -Kazaruni and his wife a t the heart of the

ma us o le um tha t l e a d to the a s s umpt ion tha t t h i s

complex was purpose-bui l t for h im. I t i s not c lear

whether the complex was begun by a l -Kazaruni during

his own lifetime, as was often the case in the Islamic

world , or whether i t was cons truc ted pos thumous ly by

members of his family, perhaps by his young wife Bibi

Fatimah. It is even possible to envisage that the complex

was begun by another pa tron and taken over for a l -Kazaruni 's buria l , another prac t ice frequent in the

Is lamic world . Unfortunate ly , exis t ing sources provide

litt le help in clarifying this matter but a few details can

be established.

The Friday mosque and tomb complex have often

been mis taken for a s ingle s t ruc ture , and one may

wo nde r whe ther they were in fac t bui lt as a s ingle projec t

and under a s ingle pa tron, namely a l -But ihari . The

725/1325 foundat ion inscr ipt ion of the Friday mosque a t

Cambay does inc lude a somewhat mys ter ious reference

to the Friday mosque and i ts Hmarat - me a n ing bu i ld ing ,

s t ruc ture or edif ice - a de ta i l tha t points a t leas t

superficially to this possibility. The term cimarat is

regularly used in this sense in Indian Islamic epigraphy,

from the ear ly Sul tanate per iod o nw ards . I t is used e i ther

in association with a specific architectural term, such as

mosque, well or fort, or alone, its meaning inferred from

its location, as on a minaret, a gateway or a mosque. 25

However, outs ide Cambay there a re no examples of the

use of the phrase " the mosque and i ts bui ld ing" . In

Ottoman Turkey the te rm Hmaret referred specifically to a

public kitchen providing food for the needy, but as far as

I know the term is not recorded in this sense in 14th

century India. In fact, i t is highly unlikely that the cimarat

mentioned in this inscription ever referred to a real

structure at all

The foundation text of the 725/1325 mosque is

heavi ly model led on tha t of an ear l ie r Friday mosque

bui l t a t Cambay in 615/1218 (Desa i, 1961, insc.I, pp. 4-7).

The texts of the two Friday mosques share the same

hadiih a nd Qur ' a n ic ve r s e {surah 72, verse 18) and an

almost identical foundation text: "this [blessed]26

Friday

mosque and i ts bui ld ing were cons truc ted whol ly and

completely, out of his own money from what Allah had

given him through His grace and benevolence , mere ly

for the sake of Allah the Exalted ..." . Is lamic inscriptions

in Gujarat regularly copied the text, script and decorative

motifs of earlier local examples. Indeed, the very same

text , inc luding the te rm Hmarat, was incorp ora ted in to

a th i rd mosque inscr ipt ion a t Cam bay in 815/1412 -

demons tra t ion enough of the prac t ice of copying a t

the site (Desai, 1974, insc.III, pp. 5-7). Given this

phe n ome non i t i s h igh ly que s t iona b le whe the r the

Hmarat inclu ded in al-Butih ari 's inscription ever referred

to a real s tructure, let alone to the tomb complex on its

south . Indeed, the phys ica l evidence sugges ts two

separa te bui ld ing campaigns and therefore two dis t inc t

pa trons .

Even without a da ted foundat ion inscr ipt ion there

i s no do ubt th a t the tomb com plex was cons truc ted af te r

the Friday mosque had been subs tant ia l ly comple ted,

and therefore pr obab ly by a different patr on. A clear

break in the masonry bond be tween the two bui ldings on

the exterior of the west and east walls , at the point where

the Friday mosque meets the tomb complex, indica testha t we a re de a l ing w i th two s e pa ra t e pha s e s o f

construction, not a single building project (Fig. 26). The

whole south wall of the mosque (or the north wall of the

tomb complex) provides evidence for the fact that the

complex was bui l t aga ins t the mosque , and not the

reverse . The ma usole um was bui l t on a different mo dule

from the adjacent Friday mosque, with the result that its

pi l la rs in terca la te ra ther c lumsi ly wi th the windows and

doo rw ays of the m osq ue wall (Fig. 2). How ever, the thr ee

exter ior mouldings tha t enc irc le the two s t ruc tures a re

con tin uo us (Fig. 26), and t he bays of the fu nerary

mosque fol low the same module as the Friday mosque

and have s imilar a rchi tec tura l decora t ion ( the mihrab inthe tomb complex is almost identical to those in the

Friday mosque) . This sugges ts tha t , whi ls t the Friday

mosque and tomb complex were not p lanned and bui l t

as a single project, they were constructed in close

sequence . Unt i l a more plaus ible candida te comes to

light, i t is reasonable to assume that the complex was

bui l t to commemorate a l -Kazaruni , and most probably,

after his death. Whilst i t is difficult to estimate





construction times in medieval India, we do know, for

example that the first phase of the Quwwat al-Islam

mosque in Delhi took six years to complete, being

founded in 587/1191-92 and finished in 592/1197 (Page,

1926, insc.I, p. 29 and insc.lll , p. 29). If the Frid ay mo squ e

at Cambay was founded in 725/1325 one can imagine i t

app roac hin g comple tion in the early 1330s. Given the

break in the bond between the two structures, this might

suggest that the tomb complex was begun shortly after

a l -Kazaruni 's dea th in 734/1333 and perhaps f in ished

towards the end of the 1330s.

cUmar ibn Ahmad al-Kazaruni

The size and sophistication of the complex certainly befit

a character such as al-Kazaruni and the milieu in which

he moved. What scant data there is establishes thatcUmar al-Kazaruni was one of the elite merchants of

India. The nisbah al-Kazar uni is of Iranian orig in a nd

denotes family roots in, or connections with, the town of

Kazarun near Shiraz in southern Iran, and it is clear that

he was one of the many foreign merchants who lived and

traded at Cambay. Like many of the greatest merchants

of the period, al-Kazaruni was also closely involved with

the Tughluq court and the politics of the day. Ibn Battuta

refers to a l -Kazaruni as Malik al-Tujjar or King of

Merchants , whi ls t another inscr ipt ion from Cambay

dated 726/1326 gives him the tit le Malik Muluk al-Tujjar,

an intensive form of the tit le which translates literally as

King of the Kings of Merchants (ARIE, 1956-57, insc. D

52).27 Although the precise history of this ti t le is s til l

obscure , it was an officiaJJy conferred post under the

Tughluq Sultans, s ince we know that a certain Malik

Shihab al-Din Abu Raja was appointed to this post and

a wa rde d the ciqta of Na vsari on the access ion of

Muhammad ibn Tughluq in 725/1325 (Habib & Nizaxni ,

1992, p. 486).2S The ti t le sugges ts tha t incum bents were

respons ible for oversee ing merchants and t rade within

the Sul tanate . The 726/1326 inscr ipt ion from Cambay

suggests that, unless the intensive form of the tit le was

used more as an eulogy than as an official title, al-

Kazaruni succeeded Abu Raja in the post sometime in

1326, but the 'iqta he was awarded is not known.

As Ibn Battuta noticed, the foreign merchants of

Cambay were avid pa trons of a rchi tec ture , and a l -

Kazaruni appears to have been no except ion. "The hou seof Malik al-Tujjar al-Kazaruni with his private mosque

adjacent to it" were among some of the grand buildings

of Cambay singled out by the Moroccan traveler (Ibn

Battuta, 1976, pp. 172-173).29 Anoth er of a l -Kazarun i 's

architectural projects , this time directly related to trade

and the protection of shipping, involved the fortification

and repopulation of the island of Perim, some four miles

off the trans-shipment port of Gogha on the western side

of the Gulf of Cambay (Ibn Battuta, 1976, p. 176).30 The

sca le an d magnif icen ce of h is funerary com plex -

whether started during his lifetime, or after his death by

his entourage -testifies similarly to the level of patronage

he was able to command.

According to Ibn Bat tuta , a l -Kazaruni d ied

unexpectedly in an ambush by Hindu bandi ts as he was

taking the cons iderable tax revenue from his iqtac in

Gujarat to Delhi (Ibn Battuta, 1976, pp. 67-68). Although

local unrest and banditry were common in Gujarat at this

t i me , Ibn Battuta reports the rumour that the attack was

a carefully organised plot by the incumbent vizier,

Khwajah Jahan, who feared that al-Kazaruni had been

appointed to replace him.31 Al though this rumour is

impossible to verify, the fact that it was still talked about

a decade af te r a l -Kazaruni 's dea th indica tes h is impor

tance in the politics of the period. Al-Kazaruni 's murder

a t the hands of Hindu bandi ts a lso appears to have won

him the highest s tatus of Islamic martyrdom, that of

battlefield martyr or shahid al-ma'rakah. The evi denc e for

this comes from his heads tone which carr ies a long

Qur 'anic extrac t (surah 3, verses 169-71) about the first

Musl im martyrs of the ba t t le of Uhud. The verses a re

inscribed just above the text of al-Kazaruni 's epitaph,

and the physical proximity of the two seems intended to

26 . Detai l of the break in the masonry bond between the Friday

mosque and Kazaruni complex on the western qibla wall.

131



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

^ J U M i n ' -" ^ y ι1ι {Τ Γ ι ιΒ « > "<- Ί " " '

27 . View of al-Kazaruni 's cenotaph from the courtyard of the Friday

mosque.

l iken him to these first martyrs. The iconography of

ma rtyr dom is con t inue d in the actual form of h is

headstone, which is topped by a miniature p i l lar , a formused throughout Gujarat to denote a martyr 's g rave.32

The text of his epitaph refers to him grandly by the

p o s th u m o u s t i t l e s Malik Muluk al-Sharq wa al-Wuzara'

mashhitr al-Arab wa al-cAjam, li terally King of the Kings

of the East and of Ministers, Celebrated in Arabia and

Other Is lamic Countr ies .

Tomb complexe s and the pairing of Friday m osque

and mausoleum

Al-Kazaruni 's g rave complex obviously fo l lows in a

well -estab l ished Is lamic t rad i t ion of mul t i - funct ional

funerary complexes. These could incorporate, besidesth e m au so l eu m , a m o sq u e o r fu n era ry ch ap e l an d

diverse o ther s t ructures such as a madrasah, a khanqah, a

library or even a hospital or an observatory. Unfor

tunately , wi thout the foundat ion inscr ip t ion of the

Kazaruni complex we have lost the precise term or terms

by which i t wa s or ig inal ly know n, and wi th that any f irm

indication of what activit ies were provided for. In spite

of this i t is abundantly clear that i t was a multi-functional

s t ructure wi th provis ion for the main bur ial , subsid iary

burials, prayer, the call to prayer, keeping watch over the

Gulf of Cambay, and no doubt housed many addi t ional

activit ies.

By the 14th century tomb complexes were a

common form in Islamic architecture, from north Africa

and Spain to India in the east . Am ong i ts conte mpora r ies

one might single out the funerary complexes of the

Mamluk Sultans and their nobles in Egypt and Syria, and

those of Il-Khanid Iran, where the Il-Khanid Sultans and

their viziers built a number of extremely large complexes

during the first half of the 14th century. Sultanate India

also had a discreet and very distinct tradition of such

c o m p l e x e s .3 3 Giv en t h e co sm o p o l i t an ch arac t e r o f

Cambay and al -Kazaruni 's mi l ieu , i t i s more than l ikely

that many of these complexes were familiar at first hand

o r t h ro u g h th e acco u n t s o f o th er m erch an t s an d

travel lers . However , the Kazaruni complex does not

appear to follow any one specific geographical tradition.

Most important is the question of the pairing of the

Fr iday mosque and tomb complex . The s t ructures workso well as a who le that i t is easy to overlook how unu sual

this association is. No other Friday mosque in western or

nor thern India has a mausoleum, let a lone a whole tomb

complex, so well integrated into i ts structure, and there

are no Fr iday mosques elsewhere in the Is lamic world

where th is i s found. In India importan t mausolea are

often associated with great Friday mosques, but are

always physical ly separate f rom them. The mausoleum

of I l tu tmish at the Quwwat al - Is lam mosque in Delh i i s

built behind the qiblah wal l , cAla' al-Din Khalji 's funerary

madrasah is built beh ind the qiblah wall of the s am e

mosque. No o ther Tughluq Fr iday mosque in Gujarat

had a ma uso leu m phys ical ly at tach ed to i t. AtAh m ed ab ad th e m au so l eu m o f Ah m ad Sh ah and that of

the female members of his family, the so-called Rani ka

Hazira, are both closely related to his great 827/1424

Friday mosque, bu t are again physical ly separate . Only

at Pandua in Bengal i s the so-cal led Sulayman 's tomb

chamber bui l t against the qiblah wall of the 776/1374-75

Ad in a m o sq u e .

The relat ionship between mosque and tomb at

Cam bay is al l the more unu sual in that the tomb complex

was al lowed to dominate the mosque in many aspects .

Today the Fr iday mosque dominates the tomb complex

in terms of both area an d he ight (Fig. 3), and most

travellers arrive by land and enter the complex via thenorth gateway of the Friday mosque (Fig. 5). However, in

the past the scale of Kazaruni 's dome and the minarets

reversed this balance. As Forbes' sketch shows, i t was the

dome and minarets of the mausoleum, rather than any

element of the mosque, that dominated the Cambay

skyl ine, l i teral ly overshadowing the ad jacent mosque

(Fig. 19). They also challenged the main axes of the

F r id ay m o sq u e , ro b b in g t h e n o r th g a t eway o f its




A COLLECTION OF MERITS...''

importance and estab l ish ing the southern en t rance - v ia

the tomb comp lex - as the pr incipa l po in t o f en t ry . Eve n

today , as one en ters the mosque through the nor th

gateway it is impossib le not to be drawn across the

cour tyard towards the funerary complex on the south

side, s ince al -Kazaruni 's cenotaph is s i ted d i rect ly

o p p o s i t e t h e n o r th en t r an ce , g l im p sed t h o u g h th e

southern door wa y (Fig . 27).The closest paral lel for the physical relat ionship

an d b a l an ce o f t h e F r id ay m o sq u e an d Kazaru n i

complex , though by no m eans a d i rect source, app ears to

be in 13th century Anato l ia . Here Fr iday mosques were

somet imes associated wi th char i tab le inst i tu t ions, the

var ious par ts being physical ly cont iguous and of ten

equal ly balanced . For example, the Fr iday mosque at

Divrigi (626/1228-29) has a hospital attached to i ts qiblah

wall ; whi ls t the Khwand Khatun complex at Kayser i

(635/1237-38) comprised a Fr iday mosque, a madrasah, a

b a th an d a m au so l eu m . 3 4

At such a distance in t ime it is difficult to explain

the prominence of al -Kazaruni 's tomb complex and i t sunique in tegrat ion wi th the Fr iday mosque. Perhaps

only his status as a battlefield martyr is sufficient to

explain th is . The associat ion of the two st ruc tures created

a major rel ig ious cent re - a Fr iday mosque and a

martyr 's shr ine - a t the very hear t o f the por t . At the

very southern edge of the city, facing onto the port area,

these were the f i rs t major s t ructures encountered by any

person arr iv ing at Cambay, a 14 th century precursor of

Bo m b ay ' s Ga teway o f In d i a , t h e so u th ern g a t eway

announced the might of Tughluq India.

Though we know noth ing of the or ig inal 14 th

century environment wi th in which these bui ld ings were

placed , la ter descr ip t ions ind icate that they were at the

hear t of a larger landscape d an d bui l t seafront deve loped

by the Sultans of Gujarat. 33 The ear ly 17th century

descr ip t ions of the mosque and tomb complex by del la

Valle make clear that both structures were sti l l busily

frequented a nd we re close to at least one o ther imp osing

m au so l eu m , 36 as wel l as a large talav or tank (described

as a great P iscina or Lake ) . Cont iguo us wi th th is w as a

smal l gard en som et ime s belonging to the k ings of

Gu zara t , ad o rn ed wi th ru n n in g wate r wh ich a t t h e

entrance falls from a great Kiosck, or cover'd place to

kee p it coo l (della Valle, 1892, pp . 68-69).

P A R T I I

K H A L J I A R C H I T E C T U R E I N D E L H I A N D T H E

S O U R C E S O F T H E C A M B AY F R ID A Y M O S Q U E

Cambay 's Fr iday mosque has received l i t t le at ten t ion

since it was first published over a century ago by

Burgess . The general pauci ty of research in to Indian

Islamic architecture may be partly to blame, but i t is also

true that the mosque lulls the visitor into a false sense of

familiarity. To the visitor fresh from the Quwwat al-Islam

mos que in Delh i , o r the Arh a ' i d in ka Jhom pra m osqu e at

Ajmer, the mosque provides an immediately recog

nisable enviro nm ent , a hypos ty le p lan mo sque bui l t in

spol iated s tone wi th an arched fa?ade screen across

i t s t rabeate prayer hal l (F ig . 3 ) . One would only need to

add a programme of Is lamic inscr ip t ions and a minaret -a second Qutb Minar , o r perhaps a pai r o f pseudo-

minarets as at Ajmer - and the resemblance would be

complete. I t i s easy to forget the hundred years and

thousand k i lometres that separate these s t ructures .

The Fr iday mos que at Ca mba y cer tain ly bears l i tt le

r esem b lan ce t o co n t em p o rary T u g h lu q F r id ay m o sq u es

in Delh i . Though the Fr iday mosque at Tughluqabad is

only a ru in i t is c lear that i t had a hyposty le p lan mos que,

apparent ly wi thout a screen fagade, and was bui l t f rom

ashlar faced rubble, wi th the typ ical Tughluq bat tered

walls, influenced by the brick architecture of Multan. But

how and why does i t fo l low these ear ly Sul tanate

m o d e l s?

Po s t - co n q u es t m o sq u es an d p ara l l e l s wi th t h e

Q u w w a t a l - I s l a m m o s q u e

An th o n y Welch an d Ho w ard Cran e h av e a l r ead y

su g g es t ed t h a t p ro v in c i a l Mu s l im s ty l es u n d er t h e

Tughlu qs we re set more by the ghazi ideal and the

avai lab i li ty of local mate r ials than the capi tal mo de

(Welch and Cran e, 1983, p . 125), p resum ably an al lusion

to the pract ice of bu i ld ing ear ly mosques f rom temple

spol ia . Cer tain aspects of the Cambay Fr iday mosque

might indeed class i t wi th th is type.

The type of mosque to which Welch and Crane

appear to refer is not specifically Tughluq, but goes back

to the very first mosques built in India after the Ghurid

conquest . As the foundat ion inscr ip t ions on the Delh i

and Ajmer mosques testify, in their first phases these

bui ld ings were s imple hyposty le s t ructures wi th open

trabeate prayer hal l s . The Delh i mosque was founded in

587/1191-92 and finished in 592/1197, but the faςade

screen was only completed in 594/1199 (Page, 1926

insc.IV, pp. 29-30), almost two years after the main body

of the mosque - enough of a delay to suggest that the

screen was an af ter thought . At Ajmer the main mosque

was completed in 595/1199, bu t here i t was anotherthirty years before the prayer hall was given a fagade

screen b y Su l t an I l t u tm i sh i n a ro u n d 6 2 7 /1 2 2 9 -3 0

(Horovitz, 1911-12, insc.XXXII, p. 30). India is peppered

with mosques of th is type, marking the ebb and f low of

Mu s l im co n t ro l o v er t h e cen tu r i es . Th e s im p les t

examples of ten have only an open t rabeate prayer hal l ,

wi thout even s ide arcades or a cen t ral cour tyard , and are

assembled f rom temple spolia. Ma ny have not been

publ ished , whi le o thers no longer surv iv ing can be

1 3 3



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

traced through remarks in epigraphic publ ica t ions and

archaeological reports .

Severa l hypos tyle mosques of the ear ly 13th

century have survi ved in Rajasthan: the Shah i Masjid at

Khatu, probably da ted 5 99/1203 (Shokoohy, 1993, pp .

107-10) , the Chauras i K hamba mo sque a t Kaman a nd the

Ukha Mandir mosque at Bayana (both c. 1206 and 1210

AD) (Shokoohy, 1987). The Qazi mosque at Bayana

(705/1305), the Dini mosque at Rohtak (708/1309) and

the Ambiya Wali mosque at Fatehpur Sikri (713/1314) all

had simple trabeate prayer halls , built largely from

temple spol ia , wi th a wal led courtyard and somet imes

an entr ance g ate (Y azdani, 1917-18, pp . 19, 21 and 31

respect ive ly) . The Friday mosque a t Dawla tabad in the

Deccan was constructed under Khalji patronage in 1318

AD along this basic model, as was the mosque of Karim

al-Din (c. 1320 AD) at Bijapur (Burton -Page, 1986, p. 62

and Fig. 8). In 725 /1325 the hypo style F riday m osq ue at

Khanapur in Maharashtra was bui l t f rom Hindu spol ia

(Welch & Crane , 1983, p. 26). In Gujarat, the first a nd

larges t mosque of th is type was the Adina mosque bui l t

in 705/1305-06 at Anhilawad Patan by the Alp Khan, the

leader of the conquest and first governor of the region.

Though the mosque was des t royed in the la te 18th

century, descript ion s sugges t tha t it was eno rm ous ,

measuring some 100 by 121 m. (330 by 400 ft .) and

fol lowed a t radi t io nal h ypo s tyle plan (Burgess &

Cousens, 1903, pp. 53-54). There is no evidence that it

had an arched facade screen. The mos qu e wa s

constructed entirely in white marble taken from local

temples, and sources such as the Mir'at-i Ahmadi extol its

sheer sca le and the number of columns employed.

Neverthe less , the Friday mosque a t Cambay does

not fit comfortably within this type. Th oug h it em ploy sspoliated material, i t does so in an altogether discreet

manner - there are none of the hacked off images visible

in Delhi - and alongside a large amount of purpose

carved material. There is none of the haste sensed in

some of these very early mosques, and it is the only one

to have a solid screen across its trabeate prayer hall , a

fea ture tha t points unequivocal ly to the Quwwat a l -

Islam mosque in Delhi and its "twin" at Ajmer.

Though the first facade screen at Delhi was a later

addition, the idea was faiuvfully continued in every

s ubs e q ue n t e n la rge m e n t of t he Qu ww a t a l - Is l a m

complex during the 13th and 14th centuries , thus

ensuring the currency of this feature at the capital forover a century. I l tu tmi sh 's exten s ion of the Delhi

mosque , undertaken around 627/1229-30, inc luded a

magnificent arched screen as an integral part of the

mo sque plan (Page, 1926, insc.V, p. 30) and it wa s ag ain

Iltutmish who added the screen facade to the Ajmer

mosque around the same t ime. The Delhi and Ajmer

facade screens are unique to India; no parallels are

known in the earlier Islamic architecture of Iran or

Central Asia, nor indeed elsewhere in the Islamic world.

The innovat ion appea rs to have been born in response to

the particular architectural conditions of early Muslim

India, the main effect of these screens being to impart an

immedia te ly " Is lamic" fee l to the archi tec ture ,

concealing the trabeate construction of the prayer hall

and evoking the la rge iwan facades of the Iranian world

(see later discussion of Seljuq iwan a nd do me

combinations). But if the screen facade began life as a

cosmetic mask, by the middle of the 13th century it had

visibly become part of a new mosque plan.

In this context, the presence of a facade screen at

Cam bay is extremely significant because, beyond the

Delhi and Ajmer mosques, no other 13th century or early

14th century mosque in India had a screen of this type. In

other words, the idea of a screen facade was exclusive to

the Delhi and Ajmer mosques until i t appeared for the

first t ime at Cambay. Significantly, the Cambay screen

closely follows these two northern models in the details

of its com positi on. At Camba y, as at Delhi and Ajmer, the

central arch of the screen is accentuated in width andhei ght (F ig. 4). In the first ren de rin g of this idea at Delhi

and Ajmer, no effort appears to have been made to

integrate the screen with the prayer hall behind. As a

consequence , the modes t s ingle s torey prayer ha l l

" p e e k s " through the main central arch of the screen in a

rather disjointed and incongruous fashion. By contrast,

in the later extension of the Quwwat al-Islam mosque

und er I l tu tmish, these two e lements wer e marr ied by the

introduction of a screened back, or clerestory, to the rear

of the central arch (Page, 1926, Plate IV). At Cam bay too,

exactly this feature is em plo yed arou nd the three arches

of the screen (Figs. 4).

cAla ' al-Din Khalji s extens ion of the Friday mosque

in Delhi

The appearance of the facade screen at Cambay can only

be unders tood in the context of the s ingle mos t

important architectural project of the early 14th century:cAla' al-Din Khalji 's scheme for the enlargement and

expans ion of the Quwwat a l -Is lam mosque; Delhi ,

a round 710/1310. Whils t a lmos t nothing of th is

phenomenal projec t remains above ground, a rchaeo

logical excavations and contemporary references reveal

its scale and ambition. The expansion included the

doubling of the area of the mosque, the construction of anumber of monumenta l ga teways - of which the LAla'i

Darwazah is the s ingle remaining example - and the

construction of a second Qutb Minar, double the size of

the f i rs t . The projec t appears to have reached an

advanced s tage of comple t ion, s ince Ibn Bat tuta

described the mosqu e with i ts four courtyards and whi te

walls during his stay in Delhi in the 1340s (Ibn Battuta,

1976, pp. 26-27).

134 South sian Studies 17




The Qu ww at a l -Is lam complex wa s a l ready a

symbolically charged complex - with its inscriptions

proclaiming the might of Islam, the Qutb Minar belongs

to a long tradition of Gh urid victory tow ers - and there

is no doubt tha t the expans ion of the complex added

further layers of symbolism. Friday mosques hold a

unique place in the religious and political l ife of each

comm unity s ince the enti re male Musl im p opula t ion of alocality is required to gather together for the Friday

midday prayers. These prayers are first and foremost a

re l ig ious ac t , but they a lso comprise a pol i t ica l

dimens ion, be ing preceded by the reading of the khutbah

in the name of the ruling Sultan. Friday mosques are

therefore the ideal theatre for the communication of

political messages to the widest audience possible. The

fact that lAl a' al-Din Khalji chose to exp and the existing

Friday mosque of Delhi, rather than found a new struc

tu re , can be seen as a demonstration of his adherence to

the idea of the Sultanate and its continuation. Moreover,

by doubling the size of the early structures and literally

swallowing them up within his new mosque, his projectexpressed the extent to which the Khalji conquests had

surpassed those of the early Sultanate.

cAla ' a l -Din 's projec t was known across the

Musl im world and appears to have had a profound

influence upon subsequent Khalji and early Tughluq

architecture, especially in the provinces. The mosque

became one of the major "sights" of India: as one would

expect i t i s ment ioned in Amir Khusraw's Kliaza'in al-

Futuh (Am ir Kh usraw, 1931, pp . 14-17) and Ibn Battuta

devotes a long descript ion to the new expanded Friday

mosque with i ts mul t ip le courts and mass ive minare t

(Ibn Battuta, 1976, pp. 26-28). Purely in terms of

ma npo wer , ' Ala ' a l -Din 's pa tronage mu st have crea ted a

massive influx of labour to Delhi and Amir Khusraw's

account of the project is focused around the massive

search for stone to complete the work. When the project

finished these craftsmen and arc hitects left to wo rk on

other projects in other regions, taking these "new" forms

with them. But the best measure of the attention that the

projec t a t trac ted is prov ided by tw o Mam luk geo

grap hies of the 1320s and 1340s . The m osq ue is

mentioned in the Tatfwim al-Buldan or "Table of the

Countries", a famous geographical treatise by Abu al-

Fida ' the Ayyubid Prince and Governor of Hamah in

Syria, com pleted in 721 /132 1. "In its [Delhi 's] m osq ue

there is a minaret the like of which is not found in the

world; it is built of red stones and has about three

hundred stairs . It has extensive dimensions, is very high

and h as spac ious lower part s" (a l -Qalqashandi , 1939, pp.

27-28). The min aret 's heigh t is also mentio ned in the

Masalik al-Absar fi Mamalik al-Amsar of Shihab al-Din

Ahmad a l -cUmari (d.749/1349,) whe re it is given as ab out

six hund red forearms (al-Qalqash andi, 1939, p. 28).37

The crucial impact of cAla' al-Din Khalji's project is

demonstrated by the fact that a range of architectural

fo rms p re v ious ly un ique to the Qu ww a t a l - Is l a m

mosque and i ts " twin" in Ajmer suddenly reappeared

thr oug hou t India in the late 1310s and 1320s, exactly the

period when these forms were revived by the

enlargem ent of the Delhi mosque . The fa langes found on

the Qutb minar in Delhi and on the but t resses and twin

minarets of the Arha'i din ka Jhonpra mosque at Ajmer,were unique to these two s t ruc tures unt i l they were

revived for the exterior of cAla' al-Din Khalji 's second

Qutb Minar. Thus no falanging is found on 13th century

Rajasthani mosques such as the Shahi Masjid at Khatu -

a mosq ue which otherw ise fol lows the example of Ajmer

in many de ta i ls38 - or the Chauras i Khamba mosque a t

Kaman and the Ukha Mandir mosque a t Bayana . Yet

fa langes reapp ear sud denly in the second d ecade of the

14th century, in the decoration of the 'idgah at Jalor in

Rajasthan, dated by inscription to 718/1318-19, at the

Friday mo sque a t Dawla tabad in the Deccan, cons truc ted

un de r Khalji patro nag e in 1318 AD (Koch, 1991, pp . 100

and 103) and in the pair of stellate plan "turrets" or

pseudo-minare ts above the centra l ga teway of the Ukha

Masjid in Bayana, dated by inscription to 720/1320-21

(Shokoohy, 1987, p. 126). Falanged corner buttresses are

also found on the so-called Kothi gateway at Cambay, a

structure that probably also dates to the 1320s (Fig. 28).

Many later structures across India were to continue this

motif (see Koch, 1991).

28. View of the Kot hi gateway at Cambay, first half of the 14th

century AD . v iew from the south-east showing the falanged

corner buttress.

135



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

Whilst the spread of falanges throughout Indian

architecture was first noted by Ebba Koch (Koch, 1991), i t

was not explicit ly l inked to cAla' al-Din's great project.

The example of the Fr iday mosque at Cambay suggests

th a t t h e a r ch ed f a9 ad e sc reen was b u t an o th er

character is t ic element rev ived by cAla' a l -Din 's p ro ject

and then spread throughout India. As we have seen , in

the 13th century only the Delh i and Ajmer mosques

appe ar to have had facade sc reens, yet these reapp ear

sudd enly in Indian arch i tecture af ter 1310. The f i rs t g erm

of th is idea outs ide Delh i was perhaps in the so-cal led

mosque of Shaykh Barha at Zafarabad near Jaunpur in

eastern India, which carr ied a foundat ion inscr ip t ion

dating it to 711/1311 and the reign of cAla' al-Din Khalji

(Fuhrer, 1889, p. 3). Here the centre of the faςade of the

pray er hal l w as marke d by a large arch betw een tw o

piers whic h appa rent ly ga ve a lo f ty fagade (op . ci t ., p .

30). In Gujarat the idea appears first in the Friday

mosque at Cambay (725/1325) and subsequent ly in the

mosque of Hi lal Mal ik i at nearby Dholka (733/1333) ?9

Other elements of the Delhi project, less directlyindebted to ear ly Sul tanate models , a lso appear to have

been diffused into the provinces to influence the Friday

m o sq u e a t Cam b ay . Th e cAla' i Darwaza clever ly explo i ts

the contrast o f whi te marble and red sandstone for i t s

ex ter ior facing . Polychrome stonework obviously found

favour in Tughluq s t ructures at the capi tal and appears

for the first t ime in the tomb of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq

c. 1325. Ibn Bat tu ta also ment ions a par t ly bui l t mosque

a t De lh i , a l l eg ed ly co n s t ru c t ed b y Mu h am m ad b in

Tughluq wh ich wa s of wh i te , b lack , red and green

stones ( Ibn Bat tu ta , 1976, pp . 27-28) . How ever , an

ear l ier p rovincial example suggests that th is idea may

have al ready begun to spread in the provinces dur ing theKhal j i per iod , in response to work on the Quwwat al -

I s l am m o sq u e . Th e r ed san d s to n e g a t ew ay o f t h e

720/1320-21 Ukha Masj id at Bayana has contrast ing

ban ds of whi te m arble and the cent ral arch is def ined by

a very del iberate use of al ternat ing red and whi te b locks,

wh ich evoked for Si r John Marsha l l mu ch of the

ornam entat io n of the Qutb bui ld ings {Yazdani , 1917-18,

p. 41).40 Th e p o ly ch ro m e s to n ewo rk fo u n d th ro u g h o u t

the Fr iday m osqu e at Camb ay (Figs . 5 ,6 ,9 & 11) may also

be insp i red mo re by Khalj i mode ls than by ear ly Tughluq

architecture at the capital .

The vocabulary of conquest

Given the weight of meaning al ready at tached to the

Quwwat al - Is lam complex , there seems l i t t le reason to

doubt that some of the symbol ism of the complex was

perp etua ted in these quote s . This i s no t a new idea; a

decade ago Ebba Koch argued that the repeated uses of

falanges on minarets , towers , bu t t resses and even domes

throughout Indian Is lamic arch i tecture were del iberate

quotes back to the form of the Qut b Minar . These quotes ,

she prop osed , were ma de by ru lers wish ing to t ransfer

the s ign i f icance of the pro to type, which had become the

landmark of the estab l ishment of Musl im ru le in India,

onto their ow n constru ction s (Koch, 1991, p. 101). Koch

explained the fact that these falanges are often included

as only minor decorative motifs on a variety of structures

(often not minarets) as a reflection of the medieval

pr incip le of evoking the meaning of a pro to type through

selected elements rather than fai thfu l ly reproducing the

ent i re or ig inal . The ev idence rev iewed above suggests

that Ebba Koch 's or ig inal idea can be ex tended to include

o th er e l em en t s o f t h e Qu wwat a l - I s l am co m p lex .

Perhaps i t was the en t i re Quwwat al - Is lam complex , no t

s imply the Qu tb Minar , that becam e the landm ark of

the estab l ishment of Musl im ru le in India , and more

than one elem ent could ca rry wi th i t the significance of

the whole.

Nev er th e l ess , t h e t ask o f d i sen t an g l in g wh a t

precisely these quo tes we re in tended to mea n is far

f rom easy. Ma ny of the bui ld in gs that quot e theQuwwat al - Is lam complex have no inscr ip t ions to clar i fy

thei r symbol ism and in ten t . Fur thermore, the complex

i tself had al ready b ecome imbu ed w i th mul t ip le layers of

symbol ism, that o f the or ig inal mosque and the f i rs t

conquest of India, of Il tutmish's extension, of the Qutb

Minar and then of cAla' al-Din Khalji 's own project. Like

Ebba Koch, we can safely venture that at i ts most generic,

the al lusions to the p lan of the Qu ww at al - Is lam mos que

in t h e F r id ay m o sq u e a t Cam b ay p ro c l a im th e

estab l ishm ent of Mus l im ru le in Gujarat , and more

speci f ical ly Cambay. But the message i s perhaps rather

more speci f ic , and we should take in to account the

twen ty-year delay betw een the actual conque st o f thereg ion and the const ruct ion of the mosque, and the

consequent po l i t ical and mater ial changes.

As the Fr iday mosque at Cambay was not bu i l t in

the immediate af termath of the conquest o f Gujarat in

7 0 4 /1 3 0 4 -0 5 , i t d em an d s i n t e rp re t a t i o n i n an o th er

context. The reasons for the delay are simple: western

India 's long h is tory of Musl im set t lement , go ing back to

the late 10 th century meant that many towns al ready had

mosques and Fr iday mosques. The s i te of Cambay was

developed aroun d 971 AD , and appro pr iately e noug h,

the earliest specific reference to a Friday mosque at

Cam b ay i s i n Ib n Hawq al ' s Ashkal al-Bilad finished in

366/976, where he men t ions that there are Fr idaymo sque s at Famha l , S indan , Saim ur and Kam baya ( Ibn

Ha wq al , 1867-77 , p . 38). At most i t ma y have been

necessary to en large these ex is t ing mosques to provide

for a larger Musl im populat ion . The Adina mosque at

Patan seems to be the only except ion to th is , whe re, a t the

Solanki capital , i t was clearly imperative to construct a

large Fr iday mosque immediately af ter the conquest . As

far as can be gauge d f rom the su rv iv ing bu i ld ings i t was




"ACOLLECTION OF MERITS..."

only from the 1320s onwards that the construction of

monumenta l Friday mosques began on a la rge sca le , a t

Bharuch in 721/132 1, a t Camb ay in 725/1325 4 1 , at

Dholka in 733/1333, a t Kapadw anj in 772/1370-71, and

at Mandal .

The timing of these constructions relates to the

history of Tughluq rule in Gujarat, for though a region

could be conquered, th is d id not mean tha t the ent i reregion had come under secure Musl im government .

Al though Gujara t was conquered in 704/1304-05, the

first twenty years of Muslim rule there were extremely

loose. For much of this time it was, in practice, beyond

the control of Delhi , e i ther quie t ly independent or

somet imes in open secess ion from the capi ta l , an

ins t a b i l i t y tha t c a nno t ha ve e nc oura ge d l a rge

architectural projects . The period around 725/1325-26

marks a critical turning point in the Muslim control of

Gujarat . In 725 Mu ham ma d ibn Tughluq cam e to power

and established strong central control over Gujarat by

radica l ly a l te r ing the s t ruc ture of Musl im government .

Whereas Gujara t was previous ly governed from theregional capital of Anhilawad Patan by a single governor

or na ' ib , Muhammad ibn Tughluq fol lowed the pr inc iple

of d ivid e and rule , in t ro duc ing a four-pa rt p ow er

s t ruc ture wi th i ts own natura l checks and ba lances . 42

Although the Friday mosque a t Cambay was not bui l t

under the pa tronage of the Tughluq Sul tan himself, its

patron al-Butihari was at the heart of this process of

consol ida t ion through his mil i ta ry career in Punjab,

Bengal and later Telangana. In the political context of the

1320s, the allusions to the architecture of the early Delhi

Sul tanate communica ted not only the Musl im conques t

of Gujarat in 704/1304-05 but also and perhaps above all

the renewal of Tughluq central control over the region,and of course specifically Cambay.43

The pre-conquest architecture of western India

We have spoken so far of adop ted no rthern mod els but i t

i s a lso important to underl ine the extent to which the

Friday mosque at Cambay was also a rejection of pre-

conques t Is lamic models . Phys ica l t races of the

archi tec ture of these pre-conques t Musl im communit ies

are genera l ly scare , no pre-conqu es t s t ruc tures ha ve been

identified so far at Cambay or even in the plain of

Gujara t more genera l ly , though there a re plent i fulepigraphic and textua l re ferences to the ir exis tence

(Lambou rn, for thcoming). In spi te of th is , surviving pre-

conques t mosq ues in Saurashtra an d Kutch, and o ther

mater ia l evidence sugges t tha t the Friday mosque a t

Cam bay int roduced a new sca le , mater ia l and p erha ps

even a new ground plan.

An obvious yet basic point is that the use of stone

on such a scale cannot have been usual. The central

alluvial plain of Gujarat is bereft of stone, with the result

tha t m any to wn s in th is a rea came to rely on con s truc t ion

in a mixture of brick and timber.44 Stone was genera l ly

employed only for focal areas such as inscriptions,

mihrabs a n d minbars. Few old structures of this type have

survived owing to the vulnerability of these materials ,

but a late and particularly clear description of this

bui lding method in domes t ic a rchi tec ture is found in the

mid-18th century Mir'at-i Ahmadi. The author s ta tes tha t"walls of houses are built of baked bricks. The roof is

covered w ith teakw ood an d c lay ti les" , and again

"teakwood is used for roofs and pillars of buildings"

(Khan, 1965, p. 12). The old est exa mp le of this type of

cons truc t ion a t Cambay is the mid-17th century mosque

bui l t by the horse t rader and port adminis t ra tor cAli

Akbar; however , the t radi t ion probably goes back to the

very earliest centuries of Islamic architecture. 40 As the

Friday mosq ue and the amo unts of re -used tem ple spol ia

demons tra te , s tone was cer ta inly employed a t Cambay,

but i t was expens ive and brought from grea t d is tances .

James Forbes summed up the impl ica t ions of s tone mos t

succ inc t ly when he remarked tha t the former weal th andmagn ificence of Cam bay could be judg ed from the

quant i ty of marble found there . "The charge of

t ransport ing them thi ther" , remarked Forbes , "mus t

have been immense , the mounta ins from whence they

are hewn being very distant" (Forbes, 1834, p. 321). The

sheer volum e of s tone used for the mosq ue proc la ims the

status of the project and the wealth of its patron. The fact

tha t the Friday mosque was la rge ly bui l t f rom s tone

ta ke n f rom ne a rby t e mple s s imp ly a dds a no the r

dimension to the significance of this material.

I t seems poss ible tha t the mosque a lso broke with

the ground plan of earlier Islamic architecture of the

region. The pre-conques t s t ruc tures tha t survive a t

Junagadh and the former port of Bhadresvar present a

number of s imilar i t ies tha t appear to indica te the

regional characteristics of pre-conquest architecture in

this part of India . The two mid-12th century mosques a t

Bhadresvar in Kutch and the la te 13th century m osqu e a t

Junagadh in Saurashtra a re not hypos tyle plan mosques .

Both the Chhot i mosque a t Bhadresvar and the mosque

of al-lraji at Junagadh in Saurashtra, dated by inscription

to 685/1286, cons is t of smal l covered prayer ha l ls ,

f ronted by subs tant ia l columned porches (Shokoohy,

1988, Figs. 28 & 41) . The Chh ot i mo sque w as appro ached

through a wal led courtyard. Both s t ruc tures had externa l

mihrabs placed o n the outer face of the pray er hall wall.

Mehrdad Shokoohy has a l ready observed tha t la rge

port icoes are not a fea ture of contemporary mosques

elsewhere in the Islamic world and may well be "a local

innovat ion, perhap s based on the Ja in and H indu open

colo nnad es in Gujarat" (Shokoohy, 1988, p. 21). Onl y the

So la kha mbi mos que a t B ha dre s va r ha s a c e n t ra l

courtyard tha t might e l ic i t the appel la t ion hypos tyle

plan mosque . However, th is court i s so smal l as to seem

137



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

an afterth oug ht and it is even m ore difficult to justify the

appel lat ion when one takes in to account the co lumned

portico fronting the mosque (Shokoohy, 1988, Fig. 14). It

seems l ikely then that the very p lan of Cambay 's Fr iday

mosque broke wi th ear l ier t rad i t ions in the reg ion ,

d isor ien t ing the local Musl im v is i to r . I t very probably

also presented a rad ical change in scale , s ince the

Solakhambi mosque at Bhadresvar measures c . 20 by 13

m. ex ternal ly , the Chhot i mosque (as i t s name indicates)

only 13 by 10 m., and that at Junag adh 12 ,5 by just u nder

10 m. By comparison the 64.5 by 60 m. of the Friday

m o sq u e a t Cam b ay sh ran k th e v i s i t o r an d d ro v e h o m e

the might of the Tughluq empire. Even the pr incipal

mihrabs in the mo sque go poin ted ly a gainst local types.

Thei r p lain poin ted arches on inset co lumnet tes are

closer to nor thern Sul tanate models than the lobed

cu sp ed a rch es an d t h ree -d im en s io n a l ly ca rv ed h an g in g

l am p s o f o th er co n t em p o rary Cam b ay mihrabs (compare

Lambourn, 1999b, Plates 9, 10 & 11). Only their semi

ci rcu lar p lan cont inues pre-conquest models (Shokoohy,

1988, p. 16-17).

Like al l g reat bu i ld ings the Fr iday mosque at

Cam bay probably w orked on several levels . I t s message

of conquest ex is ts no t on ly in the sophist icated quotes

back to the Quwwat al - Is lam mosque in Delh i bu t also in

the very s implest elements such as i t s mater ial , g round

plan and elevat ion . Whi ls t no t everyone may have been

able to grasp the speci f ic al lusions to the Delh i mosque

o r h av e k n o wn ab o u t cAla' al-Din Khalji 's project, the

mosque presented a rad ical change in mater ials , scale

an d a rch i t ec tu ra l v o cab u la ry t h a t m u s t h av e b een

evident to all .

PART III

TH E K AZARUNI T O MB CO MPLEX

It is hard to think of a greater contrast to the Friday

m o sq u e t h an t h e Kazaru n i t o m b co m p lex , wh ich i s a s

gene rous in it s gather ing of sources as the Fr iday m osq ue

is s ing le-minded .

Pishtaq an d d o m e - t h e Cen t r a l As i an an d ea r ly

Su l t an a t e b ack g ro u n d

Analysed in basic terms, the cent ral c lement of the

Kazaruni tomb complex is a combinat ion of a domeduni t ( the mausoleum) f ronted by a pishtaq (Figs. 2 & 14)

- a combinat ion wi th a long and s t rong h is tory in I ran ian

archi tecture.

In the funerary context one of the earliest examples

of th is com binat ion i s the 'Ara b Ata maus oleu m at Tim in

Uzb ek i s t an (3 6 7 /9 7 7 -7 8 ) wh ich co m b in es a d o m ed

square wi th a pishtaq fagade. I t s exam ple insp i red a ser ies

of later nt h ce ntury FCarakhanid building s in the regio n

which cont inue th is idea, reconf igur ing and rebalancing

the relat ionship of the two par ts , bu t the idea cont inued

in to the 14th century , for exam ple in the Gunba d- i Man as

at Man as in Kirgistan (c. 734/13 34), the tom b of Baba

Luqman at Sarakhs (757/1356) and the mausoleum of

Tu rab ek Kh an u m a t Ku n y a Urg en ch ( c . 7 7 0 /1 3 6 9 )

(Hillenbrand, 1994, pp. 287-97). Whilst these examples

are important and relate specifically to funerary archi

tecture, they are all Central Asian and it is unclear at

present how di rect an inf luence thay may have had on

archi tecture at Cambay.

I t i s impo rtan t to und er l ine that the combinat ion of

d o m e a n d pishtaq is even mo re comm on outs ide funerary

architecture. Besides a long Seljuq Iranian tradition of

domes f ronted by iwans or pishtaqs, the combinat ion also

had a s t rong independent h is tory in Is lamic India.46

Discussions of the domed st ructure/ i w a n or pishtaq

combinat ion in India have main ly cent red on Tughluq

Delh i , where the combinat ion i s general ly said to appear

for the f i rs t t ime under I ran ian inf luence at the

Jahanpanah or Begampur mosque bui l t around 1343.

Here the combinat ion i s used both for the en t rance

gateway of the mosque and to mark the cent re of the

prayer hall faςade (Welch & Crane, 1993, Fig. 1, Plates 3

& 4) . This v iew tends to over look the ex ten t to which a

seed of this idea was already present in the some of the

ear l ies t Ind ian Sul tanate mosques. At the Quwwat al -

Is lam complex , the main east en t rance to Qutb al -Din 's

m o sq u e i s m ark ed b y a h ig h pishtaq gateway wi th

steps lead ing up in to a large domed bay at the cent re

o f t h e eas t e rn co lo n n ad e . Sm al l e r pishtaqs, wi th o u t

p ro n o u n ced d o m es b eh in d t h em , a l so m ark t h e cen t r es

of the north and south colonnades (Page, 1926, Plates Il ia

& V). In a similar fash ion, hig h pishtaq gatew ays (w i thout

signi f ican t domes behind them) mark the en t rance to the

to m b o f Ab u a l -Fa th Mah m u d o r Su l t an Gh ar i

(629/1231) in Delhi, and the entrances to three late

12th /e ar ly 13th century mosq ues in Rajasthan, the Arha ' i

d in ka Jhompra mosque at Ajmer , the Chaurasi Khamba

mosque at Bayana and the Ukha Mandir mosque at

Ka ma n. The idea first seen in Delhi is obvio usly der ived

direct ly f rom Ghurid monumental por tals such as that o f

th e Sh ah -i Ma sh ad madrasah (561/1165-66) in Ga rgistan ,

Afg hani stan (Cas imir & Glatz er, 1971), wh ich iteslf

ultimately derives from Seljuq prototypes. This pishtaq

t rad i t ion contrasts qu i te markedly wi th the type of

domed, co lumned porch seen in 14th century Gujarat ,

for example in the cast en t rance to the Fr iday mosque at

Cam bay (Fig . 2 ) , and wh ich derv ives f rom local Ind ian

m o d el s .

The ear ly Sul tanate type of pishtaq an d d o m e p o r t a l

also appears to have been of in terest in nor thern India

aroun d the t ime of the const ruct ion of the Kazaruni tomb

complex . Another var iat ion around th is combinat ion i s

seen at the Buland Darwaza at the Khanqah al-Tarikin in





Na gau r in Rajasthan (Shokoohy, 1993, pp . 33-36, Figs. 11

& 12, Plate 7). As its na m e sugge sts , the Bulan d Da rwa za

is a mass ive entrance ga teway tha t leads to the khanqali

conta ining the tomb of Hamid a l -Din Chisht i and is

da ted by inscr ipt ion to 733/1333 under the direc t

pa tronage of Muhammad ibn Tughluq Shah. A mass ive

arched porta l leads through to a t r ip le domed s t ruc ture

behind and thence in to the khanqah c omp ound . Thebalance between the two elements is closer to that first

seen in Delhi, rather than that at Cambay, since the

height and bulk of the Buland Darwazah a lmos t dwarfs

the s ingle s torey domes behind. Neverthe less , as a t

Cambay, the portal has two spiral s taircases in its wings

which lead up to roof level and has a window or balcony

inserted into the upper part of the arch. Whilst the

Buland Darwaza is not a d i rec t model for the Kazaruni

mausoleum, i t demons tra tes the cont inui ty of the ear ly

Sul tanate pishtaq and dome combinat ion in wes tern India

during the 1330s.

The a l -Kazaruni complex seems to si t be twee n two

traditions: the Central Asian line of mausolea with

pishtaq facades and an Indian Islamic line of pishtaq a nd

dom e gatewa ys . The dual i ty of these sources in any case

neat ly ref lec ts the dua l funct ion of a l -K azaru ni 's

mausoleum and porta l . On the one hand, the pishtaq a t

Cambay serves as the entrance ga te to a l -Kazaruni 's

domed mausoleum, but f rom another angle the pishtaq

and domed oc tagon s imply funct ion as a s ingle

monumenta l entrance uni t to the Friday mosque behind.

Meanwhile , the pishtaq po r t a l wa s unde rgo ing a

specific evolution of its own in Il-Khanid Iran, that

appears to have had direct influence on other aspects of

the complex.

I l -Kha n id m ode l s : the pishtaq w i th tw i n mina re t s

Und oub te d ly the mos t impre s s ive e l e me n t o f a l -

Kazarun i 's tomb complex was the pa ir of tower m inare ts

tha t c rowned the pishtaq (Fig. 19). The models here are

overwhelmingly Iranian but can be traced to specific and

contem porary s t ruc tures . Doub le minare ts appe ar to

have been introduced in Seljuq Iran during the 12th

century AD, since portals crowned by pairs of cylindrical

b r i c k mina re t s g ra c e d the ma us o le um o f M u 'mina

Khatu n a t Nakh chiw an in Azerbai jan (582/1186) and the

mosque of Imam Hasan a t Ardis tan in Iran (553/1158),and pa ired minare ts a lso appear to have been used

to mark the central iwan of certain prayer hall fagades.

I cann ot be t te r R. Hi l len bra nd ' s ana lys is of th is

phenomenon: "pa ired minare ts es tabl ished themselves

as a means of lending extra importance to the entrance

gate of a build ing. This articu lating function further

distanced the minaret from any liturgical purpose, but it

allowed the minaret 's long-traditional role as a marker to

develop in new directions" (Hillenbrand, 1994, p. 154). It

is probably from this original Seljuq Iranian source that

the two fa langed towers a t the Arha ' i d in ka Jhonpra

mosque a t Ajmer derive , even though they are not

funct ioning tower minare ts but s imply sol id s tone

tow ers. How ever , there is no reaso n to look to the Ajmer

mosque as the model for a l -Kazaruni 's tomb complex.

From Sel juq Iran, pa ired minare ts , a lways in br ick, were

adopted wes twards in Se l juq Turkey, where a number ofmid -13 th c e n tu ry bu i ld ing s in c e n t ra l a nd e a s t e rn

Anatol ia have impress ive s tone porta ls topped by pa irs

of br ick minare ts . 4 7 This Se l juq t radi t i on w as a lso

enthus ias t ica l ly cont in ued in 14th century Iran un der the

Il-Khanids.

So far, some eleven examples of paired minarets

associa ted wit h pishtaqs or iwans, ha ve be e n d oc ume n te d

in Iran during the first three decades of the 14th century,

beginning with the ga teway of the Rab-i Rashidi , the

tomb complex of the Il-Khanid vizier Rashid al-Din, at

Sultaniyya (709/1309), and that to the tomb complex of

the Il-Khanid Sultan Uljaitu at the same site (Blair, 1986,

p. 144). Man y exam ples of pa ired minare ts w ere tofol low, grac ing the ga teways of the congregat ional

mosque at Ashtarjan (715/1315-16), the iwan over the

grave of a sufi shaykh at Garladan (716/1316-17), the

congregational mosque at Yazd (724/1323-24) and the

tomb of Rukn al-Din in the same city (725/1324-25), the

Du Minar Dardasht , the Du Minar Dar a l -Diyyafa and

the Du Minar Bagh-i Qush Khana all at Isfahan and all

da ted c . 725/1325 , a lso the porta l of the Nizam iyya

madrasah at Abar quh (c. 725/132 5), and finally the to mb

of Sha ms al-Din at Yazd (728/1327-28) (Blair, 1986, p. 28,

Bloom, 1989, p. 179). The sheer number of examples, and

their concentration in central Iran mean that one can talk

of a real fashion for paired minarets in this area duringthe 1310s and 1320s. Give n al-Ka zarun i 's Iranian origins

and the strength of Iranian settlement at Cambay, these

examples provide the mos t obvious source for the

appearance of the idea in the Kazaruni complex.

Although we cannot compare the mater ia ls used

for the construction of the Kazaruni minarets , their form

and articulation with the gateway follow these Iranian

models c lose ly . Like the Iranian examples they are

associa ted with an entrance ga teway and are "smoothly

integrated so that the upper shafts of the minarets shoot

up directly from the iwan roof; the ir lower port ions are

not separa te ly em phas ised" (Hil lenbrand, 1994, p . 156) .In the truest tradition of Persian minarets , those at

Cambay fulfil multiple functions. The pishtaq ga teway

faces south onto the Gulf of Cambay and, as Forbes '

s ke tc h s hows , i ts mina re t s dom ina te d the C a mb a y

skyline (Fig. 19). There is every reason to believe that

these fulfilled m ore th an just a li turgical function as sites

for the call to prayer: their height also made them ideal

wa tc h towe rs fo r t he inha b i t a n t s o f C a mba y a nd

landmarks - perhaps even l ighthouses as the te rm

139



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

manara or "place of light" indicates - for ships coming

in to po r t . Inde e d , mina re t s ha ve func t ione d a s

l ighthouses and road markers from the very ear l ies t

centuries of Islam. Finch's account of Cambay certainly

s t ressed the s t ra tegic na ture of the surviving minare t ,

re ferr ing to it as a "watch tow cr" . The d ouble minare ts of

the Kazaruni tomb complex bring new evidence of the

continuation of an originally Seljuq idea to western

India.

It is impossible to overemphasise the originality of

these minare ts in the Indian context and the ir con sequent

impact on the Islamic architecture of Gujarat. The history

of the minare t in India is of ten dominated by the Qutb

Minar and the other s ingle tower minare ts or v ic tory

towers that it inspired, such as cAla' al-Din Khalji 's

second Qutb Minar or the minare t a t Chota Pandua in

Bengal (c. 1300 bu t usua lly dat ed v arious ly to the 14th

and 15th centuries AD). This focus tends to obscure the

fac t tha t tower minare ts were not genera l ly used in

Indian Is lamic archi tec ture unt i l the Mughal period. As

regards Gujara t in the 14th century, no contemporary

mosques , not even the adjacent Friday mosque a t

Cambay, had minare ts . There are no tower minare ts a t

the 721/1321 Friday mosq ue of Bharuch, a t the 733/1333

mosque a t Dholka , or the la te r mosques a t Kapadwanj

and Mandal , nor in the ir successors in Saurashtra . The

call to prayer was made from the roof of the mosque,

reached via staircases built into the fagade screen or the

side walls of the mosque. The small ckattris found on the

roofs of many of these mosques probably shaded and

hous e d the mu'adhdhin in his call. It is also highly

unlikely that tower minarets existed in Gujarat before the

Musl im conques t . As Forbes ' v iew of Cambay and the

comments of la te r wes tern t rave l le rs i l lus t ra te , tower

mina re t s a l s o ma de a dmi ra b le wa tc h towe rs a nd

l ighthouses . These uses of the tower minare t su gges t tha t

during the pre-conques t per iod Hindu rulers may wel l ,

have l imited or even banned the cons truc t ion of tower

minare ts amongs t the Musl im communit ies they hos ted

simply for strategic reasons.

The archi tec t and planner of a l -Kazaruni 's tomb

complex was certainly not the only one in Gujarat to be

famil ia r wi th these Iranian forms; indeed, the num ber s of

pa ired pseudo -min are ts cons truc ted in Gujara t dur ing

the first half of the 14th century suggest that the

contemporary I l -Khanid fashion for pa ired minare ts was

very wel l known in wes tern India . In the Friday mosquea t C a m ba y the s e ps e ud o-m ina re t s a re s ho r t s qua t

pyra mid s of cut s tone (Fig . 4) , a t Manda l and Mang rol

they are large pla in mason ry colum ns . Perhap s the f inest

pseudo-minare ts in Gujara t a re the two mass ive and

ornately carved pillars , over 4,5 metres or 15 feet high,

which mark the centre of the prayer hall fagade of the

733/1333 Hilal Maliki mosque at Dholka (Burgess, 1896,

Plates XXV & XXVII). However, the technical skill and

funds for cons truc t ing t rue tower minare ts appear to

have been lacking in Gujarat. In this context, pseudo-

minare ts were the idea l solut ion, indica t ing knowledge

of the "correct" Iranian form and its use, even if the real

th ing could not be bui l t . Al-Kazaruni 's tomb complex

was the first s tructure in Gujarat to introduce a pair of

funct ioning tower minare ts , t rue to the Iranian model .

The feat was to influence mosque architecture under the

Ahmad Shahi Sul tans and produce the only regional

tradition of tower minarets in India prior to the Mughal

period.

Local Gujara t i inf luenc es

If the dome and pishtaq combination is a tried and tested

com pone nt of Pers ianate a rchi tec ture , and the porta l and

minare ts a t Cambay can be shown to derive from

contemporary I l -Khanid models , the remaining e lements

of a l -Kazaruni 's complex fol low other sources . The

western part of the complex, with its small prayer space

and s ingle muluk kkanah, is visibly modelled on the

adjacent Friday mosque . With the except ion of the

L-shaped walkway, it is almost as if the unit around one

of the muluk khanas in the mosque had been cut out and

transported next door (Figs. 7 & 24). Indeed, this part of

the complex employs the same dimens ions for the s ize

and height of its bays as the adjacent Friday mosque,

whi ls t the mihrab in the Kazarun i complex is almost

identical to the three main mihrabs in the mosque (Figs.

10 an d 22).

Al-Kazaruni 's mausoleum appears to turn to ye t

other sources . No Iranian brick mausoleum has the

openness of a l -Kazaruni 's oc tagon and the same play of

levels and vistas (Figs. 13, 20 & 25). Along with itstrabeate construction and Gujarati decoration, the form

of al-Kazaruni 's mausoleum finds its most direct sources

in local architectu ral traditio ns. To som e extent the

mausoleum reca l ls the two s toreyed mandapas and

porches somet imes bui l t a t temples in wes tern India .

Famous examples a re the mult i -s torey mandapas a t the

Padmanatha temple at Gwalior, probably of the late 11th

cent ury (Burgess and C ouse ns, 1903, pp . 63-62 and n o.2),

a t the Rudramahalaya temple a t Siddhapur (Burgess and

Cou sens, 1903, pp . 58-92 and P late XXXVII), and at the

Navalakha temple a t Ghumli in Saurashtra , both of the

mid- 12th ce ntur y (C ousen s, 1931, p. 36 an d Plate XXIV).

However, these are genera l ly very la rge , heavys truc tures and fol low a s tepped oc tagonal p lan qui te

different from al-Kazaruni 's pure, open octagon.

Perhaps surprisingly, the closest sources for the

plan and structure of the mausoleum seem to lie in the

stepwell architecture of western India. One of the most

famous and bes t res tored examples is the 11th century

Queen 's s tepwel l a t Pa tan (Mankodi , 1991) but the

region is peppered with such monumenta l wel ls - many,




A COLLECTION OF M ERITS..."

indeed, of the 14th century - consisting of a deep circular

or octagonal well shaft reached by a long stairway

de s c e nd ing d ia gona l ly towa rds the s ha f t . Though

obvious ly cons truc ted down into the ear th as opposed to

above ground, these s t ruc tures make a very s imilar p lay

of walkways and ga l le r ies providing views though and

across to other sections of the structure. The multi-

storeyed octagonal or circular central wells of thesestep-wells provide a far better parallel for the structure

of a l -Kazaruni 's mausoleum then the mandapas jus t

ment ioned. One might even compare the organisa t ion of

the tomb complex to tha t of a s tepwel l . The mausoleum

is inserted between the heavy parallel walls of the Friday

mosque on the north and the exterior wall of the tomb

complex on the south, in the same way that the galleries

and stairs of a step-well are buttressed by the parallel

earthen walls of the well. The only difference is that in a

step-well the central shaft is placed at one en d of the

s t ruc ture , whereas a l -Kazaruni 's mausoleum s i ts a t the

centre of the complex.

Pre-conquest funerary architecture in Western India

As was the case with the adjacent Friday mosque it is

essent ia l to remember the pre-conques t t radi t ion of

Islamic architecture that existed in Gujarat. One cannot

he lp wondering whether the Kazaruni complex owes a

debt, however small, to an earlier local tradition of

Islamic funerary architecture. As always this question

s tumbles agains t the problem of the pauci ty of su rviving

s truc tures , wri t ten sources or inscr ipt ions . Al though the

construction of mosques before the conquest is well

attested to in textual references, inscriptions and a few

survivals , information about funerary architecture is

much sparser .

Al-Kazaruni 's tomb is one of the few Islamic

mausolea ear l ie r than the 15th century to have survived

in we s te rn Ind ia . The " l a rge ma us o le u ms a nd

Mahometan tombs in the form of c i rc les and oc tagons"

seen at Cambay by James Forbes have all disappeared

and, in any case, we have no idea of their dating (Forbes,

1834, p. 320). Tho se structu res tha t do surv ive bea r li t t le

re la t ionship to a l -Kazaruni 's mausoleum, le t a lone his

funerary complex. The shrine of Ibrahim (554/1159-60)

a t Bhadresvar may have been bui l t as a mausoleum

although there is no trace of a grave within the structure

and a funerar y funct ion is not men t ion ed in the

bui lding 's foundat ion inscr ipt ion (Shokoohy, 1988, pp.

14-19, 53-55 & Figs. 3-8). Even if this building can be

proved to have had a funerary funct ion, the shrine

consists of a single storey domed square, fronted by a

small po rch and bears li t t le relation in either scale or p lan

to a l -Ka z a run i ' s ma us o le um. An e x te ns ive I s l a mic

graveyard s t re tches a long the shore l ine be tw een Veraval

and Somnath Patan in Saurashtra and inc ludes a number

of simple chattris. Yet here again we currently have lit t le

idea of the date of these structures which, in any case,

bear l i tt le re la t ion to a l -Kazaruni 's m ausoleu m. T he only

mau soleu m of the Tugh luq period to have survived in

Gujarat, besides al-Kazaruni 's , is that of shaykh Arjun al-

Akhs i a t Pe t lad. In contras t to the Cambay mausoleum,

this appears to have fol lowed Tughluq prototypes s ince

i t has been described as "a square s t ruc ture c rown ed bya s ingle dome. I t i s somewhat squat and heavy in

proport ions and resembles the tomb of Ghiyathu-d-din

Tugh laq at Delh i" (Yazdani, 1915-16, p. 15).

The paucity of early Islamic mausolea in Gujarat

may be part ly due to the famil ia r problems of

cons truc t ion in ephemera l mater ia ls such as br ick and

t imber. However, the pauci ty even of texts and

inscript ions ment ioning mausolea ra ises the poss ibi l i ty

that funerary architecture had very lit t le place within

these communit ies . As a minori ty community within the

Chaulukya and la te r the Vaghela kingdom, Musl ims

could not found bui ldings or use land without the

approval of the loca l adminis t ra t ion. The Sanskri tport ion of the 662/1264 mosque foundat ion inscr ipt ion

of Firuz ibn Abu Ibrahim from Prabhas Patan in

Saurashtra testifies to the fact that the foundation of a

mos que enta i led not only the purchase or donat ion of the

l a nd f rom a non- M us l im l a ndow ne r , bu t a l s o

necess i ta ted the approval of the town's - aga in non-

Mu slim - pan cha ku la or board of adm inistr ator s (Sircar,

1961-62). It can be imagined that the Muslim practice of

burying one 's dead, ra ther than cremat ing them, ra ised

some difficult issues about the pollution of land, and

perhaps discouraged or l imited the development of

I s l a mic c e me te r i e s a nd ma us o le a . A t p re -c onque s t

t rading s i tes such as Bhadresvar in Kutch andKayalp a tnam in Tamil Na du, cem eter ies are c lus tered

around mosques or shrines - thus in land a l ready under

Musl im ownership - and are not s i tua ted outs ide the

town walls , as was common in the rest of the Islamic

world . These pa t te rns may perhaps sugges t cer ta in

constraints on the use of land for burial, and a paucity of

land avai lable for Musl im buria ls would cer ta inly have

prohibi ted or a t leas t d iscouraged the cons truc t ion of

mausolea . More comple te evidence for th is theory is

obviously difficult to come by; however, the 10th century

Musl im geographer a l -Idr is i , c i t ing the authori ty of a l -

M a s c udi , seems to a l lude to such problems w hen he

reports tha t " in a ll the countr ies of Hind an d Sindh thereare Musulmans and they bury the ir dead secre t ly by

night in their houses" (al-Idrisi, 1990, p. 89).

House buria l has venerable precedents in the

M u s l i m w o r l d s i n c e t h e P r o p h e t M u h a m m a d w a s

himself buried in the house of one of his wives at

Medina . However, the passage in a l -Idr is i appears to

suggest that by the 10th century this was peculiar to

Musl im India , or a t leas t more common there than in

141



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

other areas of the Islamic world. Private and secret burial

wi thin the prec inc t of a Musl im house appears to be a

logical solution to restrictions on the use of land for

buria l in pre-conques t Gujara t . Such buria ls would

certa inly have rendered a grave marker unnecessary, and

would obvious ly have he ld back the development of

monume n ta l ma us o le a .

The answer to this problem is stil l a long way off

since only archaeological excavations offer some chance

of recovering details of pre-conquest architecture in

western India, a project that the religious and political

tensions in the state make impossible. Overall i t seems

unl ike ly tha t a s t ron g loca l t rad i t ion of funer ary

archi tec ture had developed in wes tern India before the

c onque s t . Pe rha ps the s t ronge s t e v ide nc e fo r the

weakness of such a t radi t ion is the experimenta l na ture

of the Kazaruni complex and the range of a rchi tec tura l

sources gathered together in its creation.

PA R T IV

THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRIDAY MOSQUE AND

KAZARUNI TOMB COMPLEX

The Fr ida y mos que a nd Ka z a run i tomb c omple x

cons t i tu te one of the mos t ambit ious and impress ive

archi tec tura l projec ts undertaken in Gujara t before the

grea t bui ld ing projec ts of the independent Sul tanate in

the 15th century. Given Cambay 's s ta tus as the premier

port of western India and the fierce architectural rivalry

among i ts fore ign merchants , i t i s hardly surpris ing tha t

architecture of this calibre, so rich in influences and

ideas , should be found there . Tho ugh i t i s t rue tha tnothin g remains of Anh i lawad Patan - th e then capi ta l of

Gujara t - aga ins t wh ich to gaug e th is achievement , i t wa s

Cambay ra ther than Patan tha t Ibn Bat tuta s ingled out

for its architectural excellence and patronage, indicating

the pr imacy of the port . Indeed, as the cont inued

de ve lop me n t o f t he s e a fron t a t C a m ba y un de r the

Sul tans of Gujara t demons tra tes , the Friday mosque and

Kazaruni complex became points of re ference for

s ubs e que n t ge ne ra t ions a nd p rov ide d the bu i ld ing

blocks of la te r Ahmad Shahi mosque archi tec ture .

The use of extant s t ruc tures , inscr ipt ions and

decoration as models for later generations is an im

portan t , if badly docum ented, p hen om eno n in Is lamicart and archi tec ture (Bloom, 1993), as no dou bt in Hi nd u

and Jain practice. The copying of inscriptions at Cambay,

as seen in the case of the Friday mosque inscription, has

a lready been ment ioned. Whils t Ebba Koch has a l ready

examined the inf luence of the Friday mosque a t Cambay

on certa in de ta i ls of Mu ghal a rchi tec ture - com parin g the

chattri a t the centre of the mosque 's courtyard to the so-

called philosopher's seat at Fatehpur Sikri (Michell and

Shah, 1988, p. 170) - the importance of these two

buildings was recognised long before that.

The Tughluq period

The Friday mosque and Kazaruni tomb complex are

important addi t ions to the overa l l p ic ture of provinc ia l

Tughluq archi tec ture . As the analys is of these two

s truc tures shows, the re la t ionship be tween archi tec ture

in the provinces and that in the capital was complex. Just

as the Friday mosque illustrates the diffusion of revived

early Sultanate forms from the capital to Gujarat, the

Kazaruni tomb complex i l lus t ra tes the extent to which

provinc ia l s t ruc tures could in t roduce new archi tec tura l

ideas from outside India and mingle these with local

Indian sources .

The two s t ruc tu res appear to have had only a very

limited local impact in the 14th century. The arched

facade screen was only included in three later Tughluq

mosques in Gujarat: in the Hilal Maliki mosque at

Dholka (733/1333) the Friday mosque a t Mangrol

(785 /1383-84) , a nd the Fr ida y mos que a t M a nda l

(probably late 14th century). The majority of hypostyle

mosques cont inued to have open t rabeate prayer ha l ls .

Al-Kazaru ni 's mau soleum a lso app ears to have had l i t tle

or no influence on subsequent funerary architecture in

Gujara t . Though no la te r 14th century mausolea are

documented so far in Gujarat, those of the 15th century

are essent ia l ly s ingle s torey domed squares surrounded

by a c rown of support ing minor domes . Only some

monumenta l br ick mausolea of the mid-15th century

incorpora ted second s torey walkways , but the ir p lans

and technique appear to derive from fresh sources. At

most perhaps , the Kazaruni complex ant ic ipa tes the

arrangement of mausoleum and funerary mosque - wi th

the two elements facing each other across an open space

- which was cont inued in subsequent Ahmad Shahi

funerary complexes . The pa ired minare ts of a l -

Kazaruni 's tomb complex a lso appear to have had no

immedia te progeny in 14th century Gujara t , doubt less

because the technical skill to build such structures was

only in its infancy. Pseudo-minarets of monumental

propo rt ions pro vided an eas ier , cheaper , and probably

safer solution and are found in practically all later 14th

century mosques in the region.

Howe ve r , a l -Ka z a run i ' s ma us o le um ma y ha ve

engendered a loca l mausoleum type a t Cambay. Del iaValle ment io ns a ma usoleu m, "a high roun d Cu pola , l ike

a tower" on the seafront at Cambay, whilst Forbes

describes see ing severa l "oc tagonal and c i rcular"

mausolea in the suburbs, which all recall the open

airiness of al-Kazaruni 's octagon. Unfortunately, the lack

of fur ther documenta t ion makes i t imposs ible to guess

whe n exact ly th is loca l type de velope d.

In spite of this limited impact, the Friday mosque




A COLLECTION OF MERITS...

29 . View of the Friday mosque at A hmedabad, 827/1427, showing the minaret pair over the centre of the ί3 ς ^ ε of the prayer hall. Engraved by J.

Shury from an original sketch by James Forbes. (From Forbes, 1834.) (Photograph Courte sy of the Yale Center for British A rt, N ew Haven.)

and Kazaruni complex do raise importan t quest ions

about the extent to which provincial styles interacted

with those at the capital . A number of features that are

generally cited as appearing for the first t ime in Tughluq

buildings in Delhi can be seen in embryonic form at

Cambay and o ther s i tes in western India. The dome and

hvan combinat ion f i rs t seen in Delh i in the Jahanp anah

o r Beg u m p u r m o sq u e co n s t ru c t ed a ro u n d 1 3 4 3 i s

pref igured to some exten t by the Buland Darwaza at

Nag aur dated 733/1333, and (d epe nding on the dat ing)

by the Kazaruni tomb complex 's pishtaq g a t eway an d

domed mausoleum. Moving away f rom Cambay, the

incorporat ion of shops in to the p l in th of a mosque, a

feature first seen in Delhi in the Friday mos que built in

Firuz Shah 's ci tadel of F i ruzabad around 755/1354, i s

anticipated by the level of shops incorporated into the

plinth of the qiblah wal l o f the Fr iday mosque at Bharuch

in 721/1 321. I t i s th is Bharuch m osq ue a gain that

provides an ear ly example of the monumental domed

square gateway approached by f l igh ts of s tai rs on

several sides that so prefigures the gateways of the later

Begampur and the Fi ruzabad mosques in Delh i . Western

India, wi th i t s long-estab l ished t rad i t ion of independent

pat ronage by foreign merchants , may have been an ideal

gateway for the en t ry of new archi tectural ideas and

mode ls in to the Tughluq vocabulary .

Th e Ah m ad Sh ah i l eg acy

But the importance of the Fr iday mosque and Kazaruni

complex also goes wel l beyond the 14th century : l ike

many ear ly monuments in the provinces they represent

the foundations of the later regional style of Islamic

architecture that grew up in Gujarat after the collapse of

the Tughluq Empire in the late 14th century.

The arched faςade screen was en thusiast ical ly

rev ived under the independent Sul tans of Gujarat in the

15th century and set the norm for mo sque p lans for m ore

than a century. The screen was first applied to the

t rabeate prayer hal l o f the mosque bui l t by Ahmad Shah

I in the Bhadra in Ahmedabad in 817/1414, and then

with var iat ions to h is great Fr iday mosque bui l t a t

Ah m e d ab ad in 8 2 7 /1 4 2 4 (F ig . 2 9 ). Su ch wa s t h e

enthu siasm for th is feature that i t wa s appl ied even to

mosques that were too smal l and low to carry i t

comfor tab ly . The Haibat Khan mosque bui l t around 1415

at Ah me dab ad see ms weighed d ow n by the th ick screen

wall across i ts prayer hall , whilst i ts low interior is

rendered dark and g loomy rather than p leasant ly shaded

(Michell and Shah, 1988, Plate 2).

Parad o x ica l l y , h o we v er , i t wa s t h e Kaza ru n i

complex - a funerary complex - tha t wa s to ma ke the

m o s t im p ress iv e co n t r ib u t io n t o Ah m ad Sh ah i m o sq u e

1 4 3



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

archi tec ture . The pa ired minare ts in t roduced from Iran

were to mark the Is lamic archi tec ture of Gujara t

indel ib ly . Al though pseudo-minare ts never d ied out , the

Kazaruni complex c lear ly presented a fasc ina t ing

challenge and the first pair of true tower minarets appear

to be those built at Ahmad Shah I 's Friday mosque in

Ahm edab ad (827/1424), wh ere they marked the ra ised

centre of the fagade screen. Though the minare ts

collapsed in the great earthquake of 1819, they were

fortunately recorded in a number of sketches, notably an

etching by James Forbes which show two tall circular

minare ts , wi th mul t ip le ba lconies and a smal l open

pavilion at the top (Fig. 29).4N Their transpo sition from

the entrance gateway of a complex to the fagade screen

of the mo s que m a rks a ne w e m pha s i s w i th in the

mosque .

Though the placement of these pa ired minare ts

evolved over time, being moved to the ends of the

mosque fagade, and the details of their decoration varied

similarly, pairs of tower minarets and large pseudo-

minare ts cont inued to grace the prayers ha l ls of mo sques

a t Ah med abad and a t Cham pane r unt i l the eve of the

Mu ghal co nqu est of Gujarat in 1575. So much so that

whe n 'A l l a m i de s cr ibe d Ahm e da ba d in the A'in-i Akbari,

he noted tha t " the c i ty conta ins one thousand s tone

mosques, each having two minarets" (Âllami, 1927-49,

p. 247). The full h istory of the min aret in western India is

a separate subject, the essential point here is that the twin

minare ts of Gujara t were inspired by the Kazaruni tomb

complex, and go back beyond this to II-Khanid and then

Scljuq Iran. The Kazaruni complex inspired almost the

only - and certainly the stronge st - regional tradition of

tower minarets in India before the Mughal period. 49 The

twin minarets of Gujarat finally complete the complex

"family tree" of Seljuq minarets and their descendants in

the Musl im world .

But the influence of al-Kazaruni 's complex did not

end here . Whilst h is mau soleum does not appear to have

had any direct progeny in funerary architecture beyond

Cambay, the notion of a multi-storeyed, open octagon

was occasionally transposed to the mosque prayer hall .

Thus within the prayer hall of Ahmad Shah's great

Friday m osq ue of 827/1 424 is a three-s torey ed

"pavilion" buttressed by the surrounding fabric of the

pray er hall . The inner p avilion is most clearly visible in

Burgess ' various cross-sections of the prayer hall , at the

first s torey the space under the dome is surrounded by a

squa re walkw ay, with a carved balcony wit h benches

"on which loungers can sit and look down on the floor

and worshippers beneath" (Fig. 30) (Burgess, 1900-05,

vol. 1, p. 33). The com bina tion is also repeated , min us the

minarets , behind the two side arches of the fagade screen

and access to all these upper areas is provided through

the staircases wit hin the screen wall. The central unit - of

screen, minarets and multi-storey pavilion - is an almost

perfect transposition of the pishtaq wi th twin minare ts

and mult i -s toreyed domed oc tagon combinat ion seen a t

Cambay. It is also a subtle reworking of the clerestory

SEC TION IN Pfe R SPEOF THE JAM1 MA S.A M M E D A B A D . O U J A k A T .COI 0.1423.

30 . Section in perspective of the Friday mosque at Ahmedabad, 827/1427, revealing the internal structure of the prayer hall. (From Brown, 1942.)





screen usually built behind the central raised arch of

mosques with fagade screens, as seen in Delhi, then

Cambay and in the ear l ies t Ahmad Shahi mosques . The

idea was not a s imple one-off experiment but

fund ame nta l ly a ffec ted the conce pt ion of Friday

mosques in Gujarat into the early 16th century. The

Friday mosque bui l t a t the new capi ta l of Champaner

between 1508-24 cont inues th is combinat ion and has abe a u ti fu l ope n th re e -s to re y " pa v i l ion" imm e dia t e ly

behind the pishtaq and twin minarets at the centre of its

fagade screen.

The Friday mosque and Kazaruni tomb complex

are t ru ly worthy of the f ie rce archi tec tura l r iva lry

described a t Cambay by lbn Bat tuta . The Friday mosque

is indeed a "wo nderfu l mo sque " and i t i s only a p i ty tha t

the f ine merchant 's houses and so much of the urban

fabric within which these two structures sat has been

los t . There can be no doubt tha t the two bui ldings rank

amongs t the grea t 14th century Is lamic bui ldings in

India, and also deserve to find a place on the wider stage

of medieval Is lamic archi tec ture outs ide thesubc ontin ent. It is a sad reflection of the neglect of Ind ian

Is l a mic a rc h i t e c tu re tha t t he F r ida y mos que a nd

Kazaruni tomb complex have not been subs tant ia l ly

publ ishe d s ince James Burgess ' f irst docu menta t ion over

a century ago.

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

The research on which this article is based was generously funded by the British Academy, the School of Oriental and

African Studies (University of London), the University of London Central Research Fund, and INTACH UK.

NOTES

1 This phrase is a somewhat free translation of a passage fromin Mir'at-i Sikandari of Manjhu ibn Akbar (c. 1020/1611)which describes the patronage of Sultan Mahmud Begadaof Gujarat {late 15th/early 16th century AD) and his effortsin attracting craftsmen and artists from around India andthe Islamic world to the region. The passage concludes withthis observation, "Gujarat, like an accomplished person,

became a collection of merits gather ed from differentsources" (Manjhu ibn Akbar, 1990, p. 69) in Persian: "G ujratnuskhat-i jami

c mithl-i insan-i kamii az takmil-i an hazrat

gasht" (Manjhu ibn Akbar, 1961, pp. 139-401). I haveadhered to the somew hat free English translation because itaccurately conveys the m eaning of the Persian o riginal.

2 Ibn Battuta, 1976, p. 172. For the Arabic original see IbnBattuta, 1914-26, vol. 4, p. 53. The date of Ibn Battuta'sarrival in Cambay is provided by S. Misra, 1982, p. 216.

3 Contemporary historical accounts, both Muslim andHindu, are comparatively unclear about the date of theconquest and this has resulted in a considerable am ount ofconfusion as to when Gujarat came und er perm anent Khaljicontrol. Current scholarly opinion now holds that the finalMuslim conquest and occupation of Gujarat came about in704/1304-05 and not in 1299 as previously believed. Theargument is summarised and reviewed in Desai, 1975.

4 In the central plain of Gujarat fine stone-bu ilt mosq ues havesurvived at: Bharuch (721/1321), Cambay (725/1325),Dholka (two mosq ues, one dated 1333 and the other762/1361), (see Burgess, 1896); also Kapadwanj (772/1370-71) (Burgess, 1900-05, vol. II, pp. 93-94 and plates LXXVIII),Mandal (perhaps 14th century on stylistic grounds, seeBurgess, 1900-05, vol. II, p. 92 and plates LXXV and LXXVI2) and Baroda (perhaps 14th century on stylistic grounds,see H. Goetz, "The Earliest Muslim Monument of Baroda.The Manjalpur mosque". Bulletin of the Baroda State Museum,

IV, 1949, pp. 21-25). Other fine 14th century mosquessurvive in Saurashtra, at Veraval (the Jami' mosque is dated732/1331), at Somnath Patan (the Maipuri mosque ispossibly of 14th century date), at Mangrol (three mosques,the Rahmat mosque dated 784/1382-83, the Jami' mosqueprobably dated 785/1383-84 and the Ravali mosque dated788/1386-87) (C ousens, 1931).

5 The two building s were the object of a brief descriptio nwith plans and photog raphs in James Burgess' 1896 volume

on Gujarati architecture (Burgess, 1896, pp. 23-29 and PlatesXVII - XXIV).6 Mah di Husain , 1957-58, insc .l, pp. 29-34, Plate IX (a). The

inscription has been recorded and edited on a number ofoccasions, see also Burgess, 1885, Appendix, insc. No.l, pp.267-68.

7 Qur'an, surah 72, verse 18 (following the 1924 Caironumbering system).

8 Hadith.9 The correct reading of Dawlatshah Mu ham mad 's nisbah is

still open to interpretation. The major source ofdisagreement has revolved around the problem of whetherthe fourth character should be read as mim or ha', twoletters easily confused in Arabic, and which vowelmodu lates it. The first edited reading of the Cam bay Fridaymosque inscription by Burgess in the late 19th centuryopted for mim and kasrah reading al-Butimari (Burgess,1885, Appendix, insc. No.l, pp. 267-268.) whereas MahdiHusain in a later edited reading preferred the reading al-Butahari with a ha ' and a fathah (Mahdi Husain, 1957-58,insc.l, pp. 29-34, Plate IX (a)). By contrast, on the threeBharuch inscriptions Nazim reads Butmari (see Nazim,1933-34, inscs. No s. 3130, pp. 25-26, Plate XIV (b); No. 3407,p. 26, Plate XIV (c) and No. 3410, p. 27, Plate XV (a)). Theclearest and most fully vowelled rendering of DawlatshahMuhammad's name is in the Bharuch Hdgah inscription of726/1326 where even obvious details such as the shaddah

145



ELIZABETH LAMBOURN

over the mini of Muhammad are c learly indicated. Here the

dubious le t ter c learly seems to be a he ' ra ther than a mint

since i ts form compares favourably with the Iw's in the

name of the supervisor Baha a l-Mulk or in the word cahd in

the second and first lines of the same inscription. The

vowell ing is a lso extremely c lear with a kasrah or sh ort " i"

below this part of h is name. The reading would thus be

Bu t iha r i , o r a t Cambay a l -Bu t iha r i . Bu t iha r does no t

correspond to any known locali ty so i t appears unlikely that

h is nisbah was of a geograph ical type, referr ing to his p laceof origin or a place he had a close association with. The

precise type and origin of h is nisbah rema ins to be

identified.

10 This inscription presen ts one major inconsis tency, as Mah di

Husai n r ightly po inted out in h is 1957-58 reading (pp . 31-

34), the text of the inscription s ta tes that the foundation of

the mosque took place in Muharram 725/January 1325

during the re ign of Muhammad ibn Tughluq Shah. Yet

con tempora ry h i s to r ie s ma in ta in tha t he on ly became

Sultan in May or July 1325. This d iscrepancy w ould suggest

e i ther a s imple error on the part of the author of the

inscription or , more probably , that the mosque was founded

in Muharram 72 5/Jan uary 1325 but that the inscription w as

penned a nd p repa red for p lacemen t a num ber o f mon th s

after th is , during the re ign of Sultan Muhammad ibnTughluq.

11 The current minbar has an extremely "ne w" feel about i t and

is se t apart from its contem poraries in o ther Friday mos ques

in Gujarat by being complete ly undecorated. This is h ighly

unusual and i t may be worth considering the possibil i ty

that the minbar is a modern or a t least 19th century

replacement.

12 The remain s of o ther carvin g buil t haphaza rdly in to the

wall above th is entrance suggests that th is whole area

collapsed and was la ter rebuil t . However, there is no

evidence of restoration and the foundation inscription

app ears to hav e been buil t back in to i ts orig inal posit ion. In

the case of the north-west doorway, there is s imilar

ev idence o f co l lapse and rebu i ld ing , in th i s ca se

substantia l ly less of the doorframe has survived and theremaining pieces are ill-fitting.

13 The precise source of th is tone is not know n at pres ent,

however, the s tone is described in another context by James

Forbes as "yellow antique" and the paralle ls between the

two stones are indeed quite close (Forbes, 1834, p. 320).

14 A num ber of the ceil ings are i l lustra ted in M.A. D haky 's

stu dy on ceilings in west ern I ndia , (Dhaky, 1963, Figs. 76,

80 ,87 ,90 ) .

15 He also mentions the veneration of a subsidi ary bu ria l

within the mosque sta t ing that "within the Meschita , in a

narrow dark place by a wall 's s ide , is a k ind of l i t t le

Pyra mid of Marble , and th is they call P ir , that is Old, which

they say is equivalen t to Holy: I imagine i t the sepulchr e of

some one of their Sect accounted such. The people enter in

with great crowds, especial ly Women, who use to be moreforward in these th ings than others . All who go in s trew

Flowers and Rice there; to which end stand divers persons

near the Gate that se l l F lowers to whoso pleases for such

offerings" (della V alle, 1892, p. 69).

16 Unfortunately , I have not been able to f ind out what

damage, if any, the Friday mosque and adjacent tomb

complex suffered during the recent earthquake in Gujarat .

17 For niibahs see en t ry unde r Nisba in the Encyclopaedia of

Islam, 2nd ed., vol. V1I1 where it is explained that "the nisba

or "noun of re la t ion" is one of the components of the

medi aeval Arabic prop er na me. I ts function is to express the

rela t ion of the individual to a group, a person, a p lace, a

conce pt or a thing . It is mo st often prec eded b y the definite

art ic le a l- . Numerous nisbas are employ ed in the con

temporary period in the function of family names."

18 For the inscription of the Bharuch Friday mos que see N azim,

1933-34, insc. No.3130, pp. 25-26 and plate XIV (b); for the

mosque inscription of 722/1322 see insc. No. 3407, p. 26 and

pla te XIV (c).

19 For the namaz garh inscription see Nazim, 1933-34, insc. No.3410, p. 27 and plate XV (a). Namaz garhs are a lso know n as

îdgahs in Persian and as musallas in Arabic.

20 For the Persia n origina l see Lah awr i, 1967-8, vol. 2, p. 607.

21 For a l-Kaza runi 's cenota ph see: Burgess, 1885, pp. 268, insc .

No.6, pp . 274-75, inscs. No. 15 and No . 19; Burgess, 1896, pp .

27-29, plates XXIII-XX1V; AR1E, 1956-57, insc. D 45; Desai,

1971, in scXX, pp . 39-43, plate X (b); ARIE, 1975-76, insc. D

103; Begley, 1985, insc. no. 15. For the cenotaph of his wife

see Bu rgess, 1885, p. 275, inscs. No . 16 and No . 17; Burgess,

1896, p. 28; ARIE, 1956-57, insc. D 46; Desai, 1971, pp . 55-56,

Plate XlV(b). The two cenotaphs are a lso discussed in

Crow e, 1986.

22 In the Muslim world cen otaphs do not actually contain the

bodies of the deceased but only represent their buria l that

must be in the actual earth .23 Ground plans and sections of these two structures in

Burg ess, 1900-05, vol. I, Plates XXXIX, XL, and LV1.

24 The exact pagina tion of th is engra ving varies in every set of

volum es I have consulted. T he page reference c i ted here is

from the set in the British L ibrary (Forbes, 1834, vol. II, Plate

XL1V).

25 Man y example s of both uses in 13th and early 14th century

India in Horovitz, 1911-12 (insc.lll, p. 14, insc.XIX, p. 22,

insc.XXIIl, p. 25, inscs.XXIV, p. 26, insc.XXVIl, p. 28,

insc.XXXIl, p. 30, insc. No. 13, Appendix A, p. 32,), also

Yazdani, 1913-14 (insc.lll, pp. 16-17, insc.1V pp. 17-18,

insc.Vl, pp. 19-22, insc.VIl, pp. 22-23, insc.lX, pp. 25-26,

insc.XI, pp. 27-28, insc.XIL pp. 28-29, insc.XIII, pp. 29-30,

insc.XVI, pp. 32-33) and again Yazdani, 1917-18 (insc.ll, pp.

11-13; insc.lX, p. 19, insc.X, pp. 19-20, insc.XIII, p. 22,inscXXXV, pp . 40-41, insc.XXXVI, pp. 41-42).

26 Addit ion to 725/1325 text only .

27 Al-K azaruni 's nam e app ears in th is context , not because he

himself was the patron of the mihrab but because i t was

donated by one of h is former s laves who was obliged by

custom to c i te h is former master 's name after h is own, see

also Lambourn, 1999, Cat. No. 54.

28 Th e title wa s also in regu lar use at the Bahma ni court in the

Deccan during the early 15th century AD since one Khalaf

Hasan was honoured with the t i t le by Sultan Ahmad Shah

Wali (r.1422-1436 AD) and was replaced in the post by

Khwajah Mahmud Gawan on the access ion o f Humayun

Sha h in 1458 (Majum dar, 1990, p. 265). A related title "Kabir

al-Tujjar" is recorded in Mamluk Egypt where i t was

conferred on of the great Karimi merchants , Zaki a l-Din a l-Kha rrub i in 786/ 1384 (Labib, 1978, pp . 641-642). This sa id,

the t i t le app ears in the epigraph y of Cam bay well before the

Khalji invasion since it features in the epitaph of one

Ibrah im al-Irbili (d.690 /1291) (Desai, 1961, insc.lX, pp . 22-

24 , plat e V (b)).

29 Ibn B attuta, 1914-26, vol. 4, pp . 53-54 for the Arabic original.

30 The is land of Perim has never been fully surveyed al thoug h

the brief mention in the Imperial Gazetteer of India suggests

that, at least at the beginning of this century, the island was

qu i te r i ch in rema ins inc lud ing ru ined temp les and


http://insc.1v/

http://insc.1v/



A COLLECTION OF MER ITS . .. "

fortifications (Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1909, vol. 1, pp . 265-

66).

31 Ibn Battuta 's accuracy as a reporter of p laces and even ts has

sometimes been questioned but in th is case there are no

reasons to doubt h is narra t ion. Ibn Battuta heard these

detai ls from a personal fr iend of a l-Kazaruni, one Shihab al-

Din Ahmad al-Kazaruni, who had escaped the a t tack and

whom he met la ter a t court in Delhi . Ibn Battuta accurate ly

records a l-Kazaru ni 's nam e and t i t les, and al t houg h thestory of a l-Kazaruni 's murder is not mentioned in other

sources Khwajah Jahan is a well-documented his torical

personage. For deta i ls of Khwajah Jahan Ahmad Ayaz 's

career see W elch and Cra ne, 1983, p. 156; Ibn B attuta, 1976,

footnote 3 , p . 54. He m ay also be mentio ned as govern or of

Gujarat in a mosque foundation text from Prabhas Patan

dated 726/1326 (Desai , 1985, insc . no. 1 in the Junagadh

Museum, pp. 29-31 and plate facing p. 30).

32 See E. Lam bourn, "The Martyrd om of Umar a l-Kazarun i

and his grave a t Cambay in Cujarat (India)" Inscription as

Art in the World of Islam, Hofstra Universi ty , USA,

Conference proceedings in press .

33 Beginning with the tomb of l i tu tmish 's son Nasir a l-Din

Mahmud (d .629 /1231) in De lh i , c

Ala ' a l-Din Khalj i 's

funerary madrasah (Page, 1926), Ghiya th a l-D in Tugh luq 'smausoleum complex in Delhi c . 725/1325, a lso the mosque

and madrasah of Zafar K han at Tribeni in Ben gal (1298 and

715/1315).

34 Only one Iranian Friday mosqu e of the early 14th century

approaches this idea, the Masjid-i Jami at Tabriz (c. 1320)

had a khanqah an d madrasah behind the qiblah wall.

35 Me hta 's s tudy of the topo grap hy of Camba y does not focus

on the seafront (Mehta, 1975).

36 Delia Valle men tions two principal maus olea near the sea

shore and both located quite c lose to the Meschita or

mosque of Cambay. One he describes as "buil t with a great

roof four square , supported by divers p il lars , and under i t a

place open on al l s ides l ike a Porch" which "many persons

came to kiss and venerate" (della Valle, 1892, pp. 69-70).

Ano the r "S epu lch re of a Mah omet an o f qua l i ty " he

describes as located "beyond the above-mentioned Garden,

upo n the Sea-side" with "a high roun d Cup ola , l ike a tower,

which is ascended by a l i t t le ladder, and there you have a

most goodly prospect upon the Sea and Land to a gTeat

dis tance". Whils t the high round cupola of the second

mausoleum init ia l ly appears to correspond to that of a l-

Kazaruni, the fact that i t was reached by a ladde r - w hen al-

Kazaruni 's mausoleum has access s ta ircases buil t within the

gateway - shows that th is cannot be the case . If the four

square roof of the f irs t mausoleum does not correspond to

al-Kazaruni 's octagonal mausoleum, the "divers p il lars"

and open quali ty of th is mausoleum do and i t may be that

della Valle s imply mistook the form of the dome.

Unfortunately , the confusion makes i t impossible to use

della Valle's data.

37 Both sources were incorporated in to the early 15th century

encyclopedia and secretary 's manual, the Suhh al-Acsha fi

Sinacat al-lnsha, writ ten by the Cairene judge Shihab al-Din

al-Qalqashandi and f in ished in 814/1412 (a l-Qalqashandi,

1939, pp . 27-28).

38 For exam ple, the des ign of its mihrab and i t s monum en ta l

s tepp ed entranceway, see Shokoohy, 1993, pp. 107-10, F ig .

45 and plates 31-34.

39 The 721/1321 Friday mosque at Bharuch has no such

screen.

40 For a black and w hit e plate see Shokoo hy, 1987, Fig. 22.

41 As far as can be judge d from the survivin g build ings and

inscriptions a t Cambay, a l-Butihari 's Friday mosque was

the first Friday mosque to be built there after the Muslim

conquest of the region in 704/1304-05. Cambay had, of

course , had a Friday mosque from as early as the la te 10th

century AD to serve the communities of Muslim merchants

that had sett led there aroun d th is date , but a l-Butihari 's was

the f irs t mos que to be buil t af ter the Muslim con quest of the

port .42 The single na'ib was replaced by two governors , one for the

army and another for f inance and revenue. Power in the

province was further d ivided by the in troduction of two

major jagirs appointed directly from Delhi . This quadri

part i te system enabled the Sultan to re ta in far greater

control over events in the region than under a s ingle

governor (S. Misra, 1963, pp. 97-98). A similar process seems

to underl ie the numerous s tone Friday mosques buil t in

Saurashtra during the 1360s to 1380s, the period when th is

western area of Gujarat s ta te was f inally brought under

central control.

43 In a process s imilar to that in Gujarat , the gradua l grow th of

control over Saurashtra f inally encouraged the construction

o f monumen ta l s tone mosques th roughou t the reg ion

mainiy from the 1360s onwards. Though the the Jami 'mosque at Veraval is dated 732/1331 and the Maipuri

mosque at Somnath Patan is of unspecif ied 14th century

date , a t Mangrol three mosques date to the 1360s: the

Rahmat m osque da ted 784 /1382-83 , the Jami ' m osque

probably dated 785/1383-84 and the Ravali mosque dated

788/1386-87.

44 Ih e question of build ing materia ls in Gujarat wil l be the

topic of a forthcoming article entitled "Brick, Timber and

Stone: re thinking Is lamic architecture in western India" .

45 Today, only the four exteri or brick wa lls of the mos que hav e

survived, together with the marble foundation inscription

and marble c lad mihrabs a n d minbar on the qiblah wall. All

the inner supports and the entire roofing system of the

sanctuary ha ve been removed. A description of the m osque

at the end of the last century fortunately records its original

appearance, deta i l ing that the ceil ing was "supported on 32

wo oden pil lars" (B urgess, 1897, p . 96, entry 3) . For a s tu dy

of the Masjid-i Fath and the career of its patron see the

forthcoming art ic le by the author, Lambourn, forthcoming.

46 Dom e and iwan or pishtaq combinations had, in any case ,

long been used in Iran i tse lf in mosque architecture and

other contexts . Many of the principal mosques of the Saljuq

period - those a t Isfahan, Ardistan, Ardabil , Gulpaygan

(c .510 /1116) and S imnan - had monumen ta l domed

chambers fronted by high iwans (H il lenbrand, 1994, pp. 102-

04). The same ideas continued in to the I l-Khanid period and

is seen, for example, in the 715/1315-16 Friday mosque at

Ashtarjan, the (722/1322) mosque at Varamin and a number

of small m osque s (H il lenbrand, 1994, pp. 106-07).

47 The Cifte Minare M edrese of c . 640/1242 in Erzerum , the

656/1258 Sahib 'Ata ' mosque in Konya, the Gok Medrese of

c. 668/1270 at Sivas, and the Cifte Minare Medrese of 1271

in the same town.

48 The reconstruction of these minarets is confirmed by a

second view of the mosque by James Grindlay dated 1809

(Michell and Shah, 1988, plate on p. 15).

49 Alth ough tw in minarets were a lso a feature of several pre-

Mughal mosques a t Burhanpur in Khandesh, their precise

dates and ancestry are not mentioned, see J . Burton-Page,

"Manara - In India" , in Encyclopaedia of Is lam, new ed. ,

vol. VI, p. 361 p. 41.

147



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Documents

Swahili Architectural Influnces