Before The Mughals - Material Culture

Before the Mughals: Material Culture of Sultanate North India 1
Finbarr Barry Flood
Before the Mughals: Material Culture of Sultanate

North India
There can be little doubt that the pre-Mughal material material culture of Islamicate north India from that of
culture of Islamicate South Asia has suffered by com- the wider Islamic lands to the west and north.
parison with the quantity and quality of that surviving Minority communities of Muslims had existed in
from the Mughal period. Apart from architecture, which northern and coastal India from at least as early as the
is reasonably well represented among extant materials Umayyad period (r. 661–750), and two major polities
and in modern scholarship, the relevant artifacts are ruled by Muslim amirs, who claimed Arab descent, had
scattered, poorly documented, or unpublished. Al- flourished in the Indus Valley and Sindh until the late
though scholarship is episodic, sometimes inconsistent, tenth century. It was, however, the conquest of large
and often marked by striking lacunae, the extant materi- swaths of north India by the armies of the Ghurid sultans
als are perhaps more numerous and more illuminating (r. ca. 1150–1210) in the last decade of the twelfth cen-
than this suggests. The recent proliferation of research tury that permanently transformed the cultural and po-
on the art of the Deccani sultanates has been a welcome litical landscape of north India (fig. 1). The Ghurid
sea-change and is likely to galvanize future interest in sultanate was short-lived. Its demise saw a period of
the centuries before Mughal hegemony. By comparison, internecine struggle for power among the mamluks of
however, the material culture of the pre-Mughal north the Ghurids, with Delhi emerging as the center of new
remains vague and often elusive. sultanate under Shams al-Din Iltutmish (r. 1211–36). The
This essay offers a synthetic overview that traces gen- new center benefited from the westward flow of those
eral trends both in the history of pre-Mughal material fleeing the Mongols, and became a magnet for ambi-
culture and in modern scholarship. It cannot claim to tious individuals seeking their fortune, with palpable
offer a comprehensive treatment or deal with all media effects on sultanate art and architecture.
and regions equally. The focus is largely on the regions During the rule of the succeeding (primarily Turkic)
that lie to the north of the Narmada River, and on the Delhi sultans, a combination of deeply rooted regional
material culture produced by and for those who pro- traditions and those with filiations in the wider Islamic
fessed the faith of Islam. This was often marked by its world to the west repeated itself in the architecture of
engagement with an eclectic array of both local and the sultanate as it expanded southward toward Gujarat,
translocal artistic traditions. A subsidiary aim is, there- Malwa, and the Deccan. This process of expansion was
fore, to emphasize the extent to which the material cul- among the factors that precipitated the eventual frag-
ture of the period was inflected by the mobility of mentation of the sultanate, beginning with the seces-
artisans, artifacts, practices, and techniques across geo- sion of Bengal in 1338, of Kashmir in 1339, and the
graphic and sectarian boundaries sometimes imagined emergence of the Bahmanid sultanate in the Deccan in
as absolute in modern scholarship. Conversely, the ma- 1347. This was followed by the independence of Malwa
terials to be considered are also marked by the persis- in 1393, Jaunpur in 1399, and Gujarat in 1407. As was of-
tence of regional characteristics that distinguish the ten the case in the wider Islamic world, the breakdown
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2 Finbarr Barry Flood
Fig. 1. Qibla screen and iron pillar, Qutb Mosque, Delhi, 1199 and later. (Photo: Finbarr Barry Flood)
of centralized authority and the process of political frag- clear preference for courtly chronicles supplemented by
mentation were conducive to the emergence of multiple historical inscriptions, other genres of sources that may
centers of artistic production, with a consequent flour- be no less useful for histories of material culture (among
ishing of architectural patronage, the arts of the book, them ḥisba, fiqh, and tazkirat, for example) have gener-
and calligraphy. Despite commonalities and connec- ally been neglected.
tions between the arts of these independent polities
there is also considerable regional divergence, so that
the unifying rubric “sultanate art” is something of a mis- Architecture
nomer.
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are best rep- The most extensive scholarship on the material culture
resented in existing scholarship, with a surprising dearth of pre-Mughal north India is focused on architecture.
of scholarship on architecture associated with the un- Until recently, the monuments of Delhi have attracted
settled rule of the Sayyid dynasty (r. 1414–51), the Afghan the greatest interest, despite the wealth of monuments
Lodis (r. 1451–1526), and the following Suri dynasty (r. surviving from other regions and sultanates. In Gujarat,
1540–55). This reflects a general neglect of the fifteenth a distinct regional stone architecture developed which
century, often seen as a period of decline initiated by nevertheless shows awareness of earlier developments
Timur’s conquest and occupation of Delhi in 1398.1 Yet in Delhi; the architecture of the region reached its apo-
the very high quality of the monuments built by the lat- gee under the independent Muzaffarid dynasty (r. 1407–
ter dynasties would seem to belie this, as would the evi- 1573), especially after the foundation of its capital at
dence for manuscript production during this period. A Ahmedabad in 1411.2 The Sharqi rulers of Jaunpur de
further problem lies in the narrow range of textual veloped an equally distinctive stone architecture
sources traditionally exploited for the period: with a marked by the use of monumental domes and elevated

Fig. 2. Tomb of the Samma ruler Jam Nizamuddin II (d. 1509), Makli Necropolis, Sindh. (Photo: Finbarr Barry Flood)
ropylons, whose tapering profiles continue a charac-

p Maru Gurjara architectural tradition of western India
teristic tradition inaugurated by the Tughluq sultans of (fig. 2) and, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
Delhi.3 In Bengal, stone and brick monuments patron- with the Timurid and post-Timurid architecture of Cen-
ized by the Ilyas Shahis (r. 1342–1414, 1435–87) show ele- tral Asia.5
ments of continuity with the architecture of the With some notable exceptions, much of the relevant
preceding Hindu Pala dynasty, while also incorporating literature is primarily descriptive, reflecting a desire to
elements with more transregional resonances.4 In Mal- advance a process of basic recording of sultanate-era
wa, the Khalji sultans (r. 1436–1531) developed a court monuments that is far from complete. Coverage is of-
culture whose art and architecture combined elements ten erratic, with an evident focus on mosques, tombs,
of earlier sultanate derivation with those drawn from and religious architecture and to a lesser extent on pa-
broader Indic and Persianate traditions. latial structures, which rarely survive (reflecting a pat-
Although related, the architecture of Bangladesh and tern familiar from the Islamic world more generally).
Pakistan has tended to be discussed within art histories Much less attention has been paid to utilitarian struc-
often fractured along nationalist lines, divorced from tures such as domestic and commercial architecture,
the broader transregional contexts to which it belonged. hammams, military structures, and waterworks.6 Some
The relative neglect of the spectacular medieval and of these idiosyncrasies may reflect telling variegations
early modern monuments of Sindh (today in Pakistan) in the historical record. There is, for example, little
is particularly regrettable. In addition to developing a evidence for construction of a dedicated madrasa in
strong regional tradition of architecture in brick and Delhi before the second half of the thirteenth century,
stone, many Sindhi monuments show filiations with the although it seems likely that one or more of the upper

domed chambers at the northeastern and southeastern in the remarkable tomb of ʿUmar al-Kazaruni (d. 1333)
corners of the Qutb Mosque (1192 and later) fulfilled adjoining the Friday Mosque (1325) in the port city of
this function.7 In addition, certain kinds of monuments Cambay. The complex combined elements derived from
that are relatively rare in the wider Islamic world are Indic, Ilkhanid, and Gujarati sources—a cosmopolitan
unusually well represented in north India even if they experiment entirely appropriate to the tomb of one de-
existed elsewhere. These include the ʿīdgāh, an extra- scribed as malik al-tujjār (king of merchants) and a re-
urban open-air prayer enclosure for ʿīd prayer, of which minder of how the architectural choices available to
several substantial thirteenth- and fourteenth-century patrons in the coastal regions of western India were
examples are found throughout north India.8 perhaps greater than those offered by the metropolitan
The first north Indian mosques built after the Ghurid traditions of Delhi alone.14 Conversely, the high-quality
conquest of the 1190s were all constructed from stone, white marble cenotaphs and tombstones produced at
with widespread use of spolia and the addition of a char- Cambay for Gujarati elites such as al-Kazaruni were ex-
acteristic arched screen in the mosques at Delhi and ported around the Indian Ocean rim to Arabia, the Gulf,
Ajmir (fig. 1). This use of spolia along with the presence and East Africa, and even appeared as far east as Java.15
of certain recurrent formal features has given rise to sug- While the pattern of constructing imperially spon-
gestions that this early type constituted a distinct “con- sored mosques was repeated as the Delhi sultanate ex-
quest mosque.”9 And yet there are significant formal panded its reach southward into the Deccan, at the Qutb
differences between the four or five Ghurid-era mosques itself, the subsequent additions and extensions by Iltut-
that survive in Delhi and Rajasthan. These fall into two mish and ʿAla⁠ʾ al-Din Khalji (r. 1296–1316) are notable for
distinct groups based on the absence or presence of cer- their use of dressed stone rather than the abundant
tain formal features, further complicating any idea of stone spolia found in the first incarnation of the mosque.
any singular mosque template. No adequate explana- In the early decades of the fourteenth century, the tech-
tion has been offered for these palpable formal differ- niques and materials of construction employed in the
ences, but one possibility is that they reflect the impact imperial monuments of the capital underwent a further
of earlier regional traditions of non-imperial mosques significant change, associated with patronage of the
built for communities of Muslims living under Hindu or Tuqhluq sultans (r. 1320–1413), whose advent marked a
Jain rule.10 Examples of such earlier mosques are well watershed in the scale and range of architectural patron-
documented among mercantile communities living on age.16 In place of the reused carved stone blocks and
the western coast of India (especially Gujarat), whose carefully cut ashlar favored in earlier sultanate monu-
early connections with the wider Islamic world across ments, Tughluq-era structures show a clear preference
the Indian Ocean have recently been underlined by for rubble masonry faced with whitewashed plaster, or
finds of Abbasid luster ceramics almost certainly im- more rarely ashlar. This shift had significant aesthetic
ported from Basra in the maritime emporium of Sanjan, and technical implications. While it made for a more
north of Mumbai.11 Many of the early coastal mosques rapid construction of large-scale architectural projects,
show a clear adaptation of the forms and stone medium it was also responsible for the current rather austere or
associated with the local Maru-Gurjara style, but their plain appearance of many Tughluq monuments com-
plans belong to a broader Indian Ocean and Gulf tradi- pared with their Khalji and early sultanate counterparts.
tion.12 Some of these coastal communities of Muslims One further feature introduced at this time is a pro-
pronounced the khuṭba (Friday sermon) in the names of nounced batter or slope to the walls of many Tughluq
rulers whose domains lay across the sea, in Arabia or the buildings, which is also seen in the brick monuments of
Gulf, providing an interesting coincidence between tan- the Indus Valley region over which the first Tughluq sul-
gible and intangible connections with the broader In- tan, Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq (r. 1321–25) had governed
dian Ocean world.13 (fig. 3), and which may ultimately derive from the pisé
These connections continued to shape the architec- architecture of Central Asia. The feature is apparent in
ture of western coastal regions even after their incorpo- the stone tomb of the latter at Tughluqabad (fig. 4), the
ration into the Delhi sultanate, appearing, for example, new purpose-built capital,17 which established a pen-

chant for urbanism that was to be a hallmark of many

north Indian Islamic dynasties until the Mughal period.
Under the Tughluqs, a succession of imperial capitals
extended progressively northward, from Tughluqabad
to Jahanpanah and Firuzabad—a pattern of shifting
capitals that was to be repeated later by the Bahmanids
in the Deccan.18
The phenomenon is already documented under the
Khaljis, who had built their own capital at Siri in Delhi.
Its distinct batter apart, the debt to Khalji architecture
is apparent when one compares the tomb of Ghiyath
al-Din Tughluq (fig. 4) with the ʿAla⁠ʾi Darwaza (1310) at
the Qutb complex in Delhi (fig. 5), which clearly inspired
it. This was a monumental domed gateway supported
on stone squinches, translating into a north Indian stone
medium of a mode of making the transition between
dome and square chamber that was standard in the
brick architecture of Iran and Central Asia. The ʿAla⁠ʾi
Darwaza displays a penchant for bichromatic stonework
that is incipient, if more muted, in the arrangement of
reused stones in the adjoining Qutb Mosque, construct-
ed a century earlier. The dramatic contrast between
white marble and red sandstone seen in the gateway is
Fig. 3. Tomb of Rukn-i ʿAlam, Multan, ca. 1320. (Photo: Jon in marked contrast to the plastered rubble construction
Arnold Images, Ltd./Alamy Stock Photo) favored in most Tughluq monuments, and stands at the
Fig. 4. Tomb of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq, Tughluqabad, 1325. (Photo: David Haberlah, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0,
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62796320>)

Fig. 5. ʿAla⁠ʾi Darwaza, Qutb Complex, Delhi, 1310. (Photo: Finbarr Barry Flood)
head of an aesthetic tradition that was to enjoy a long this gate, one faces in the direction of the minaret as-
history in sultanate and Mughal architecture. It seems sociated with the Qutb complex (fig. 7), a relationship
likely that the chromatic qualities of the stone added underlined by the reproduction of the minaret’s most
additional valences, since there are indications that characteristic feature, including the alternation of
both the color red and white marble had royal associa- rounded and pointed flanges.21 Such mimetic allusions
tions in the sultanate period.19 to the iconic Qutb Minar by means of engaged flanged
This self-conscious engagement with earlier arche- towers occurred earlier in the Friday Mosque at Daula-
typal monuments was something of a hallmark of the tabad (1318) (fig. 8), one of the earliest in a series of for-
architecture of Firuz Shah Tughluq (r. 1351–88), ex- mal allusions to the Qutb Minar that extend into the
pressed in the appropriation of antique pillars, architec- Mughal period.22 Similarly, the courtyard façade of the
tural citation, and the restoration of earlier monuments Friday Mosque of Cambay (fig. 9) was provided with a
and tombs of the Delhi sultans.20 Forms of architectural stone screen recalling those added to the Qutb Mosque
citation sought to associate Tughluq mosques with the in Delhi in 1199 (fig. 1), and the Ghurid mosque at Ajmir
ur-monument of the Delhi sultanate, the Qutb complex. slightly later. It has been plausibly suggested that the
In the Khirki Mosque in Delhi (ca. 1340s), the engaged appearance of this feature (and others, including en-
battered minarets flanking the eastern entrance are gaged flanged towers) was not only a generic reference
flanged, the only such feature at any of the entrances to to the earliest sultanate mosques, but echoed the rein-
the mosque (fig. 6). Entering the Khirki Mosque through vestment of the Qutb complex by ʿAla⁠ʾ al-Din Khalji,

Fig. 6. Khirki Mosque, Jahanpanah, Delhi, ca. 1340s, detail Fig. 7. Qutb Minar, Qutb Mosque Complex, Delhi, 1190s and
of eastern entrance showing engaged bastions with flanged later. (Photo: Finbarr Barry Flood)
sections. (Photo: Finbarr Barry Flood)
Fig. 9. Prayer-hall façade of the Friday Mosque, Cambay,

1325. (Photo: Mufaddal Abdul Hussain, Wikimedia Commons,
CC BY-SA 3.0, <https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/in
dex.php?curid=21044747>)
←
Fig. 8. Friday Mosque of Daulatabad, 1318, detail of flanged
corner bastion. (Photo: Finbarr Barry Flood)

the sultan’s new foundations; the lat at Fatehabad in the

Punjab was inscribed with the genealogy of the Tu-
ghluqs.25 This was among an “eclectic pool of symbols”
mobilized in the promotion of Firuz Shah’s authority, a
phenomenon that seems to anticipate the Mughal em-
peror Akbar’s later innovative experiments at Fatehpur
Sikri.26
Mosques in other regional centers drew on other cel-
ebrated archetypes from pre-Islamic history. The spec-
tacular iwan of the Adina Mosque in Padua (776/1374-5),
the cynosure of the architectural patronage of the Ilyas
Shahi dynasty of Bengal, spans a width of 317 feet and
rose 565 feet high (fig. 11); it is difficult not to see in its
monumental scale a reference to the fabled iwan of the
Sasanian palace at Ctesiphon in Iraq, a monument that
was cited in a series of fourteenth-century imperial
structures as far west as Egypt.27 Such a reference would
locate the ambitions of the Ilyas Shahis in a broader
transhistorical and transregional context; according to
ʿAli b. Mahmud Kirmani, the chronicler of the Khalji dy-
nasty of Mandu, the iwan of its madrasa (known as the
Ashrafi Mahal, 1442) was greater than the iwan of Ctesi-
phon.28 Such transregional intertextual references ap-
pear to have been common in sultanate monuments,
where they sometimes assumed a competitive edge:
Muhammad Tughluq reportedly ordered that the dome
of the tomb he built for the last Khalji sultan, Qutb al-
Fig. 10. Firuzabad, Delhi, detail of palimpsest inscriptions Din Mubarak Shah (r. 1316–20), should exceed by twen-
on an Ashokan pillar first inscribed in the third century BCE ty cubits the height of the celebrated tomb built at
and again in the twelfth century CE and reerected in 1356 Tabriz for the Ilkhanid ruler Ghazan (r. 1295–1304).29
atop the pyramidal structure seen in fig. 12. (Photo: Finbarr Engaging with past precedents, Tughluq architecture
Barry Flood)
was also marked by formal and ornamental innovations.
Some of these were without issue. The quadripartite
who massively expanded the mosque and extended its multidomed form of Jahanpanah’s Khirki Mosque (fig.
prayer-hall screen around 1310.23 6) produced a rather gloomy interior effect, which does
The citational practice that is such a feature of Tugh not seem to have been widely adopted with the excep-
luq period architecture even outside of Delhi was not tion of the mosque of Khan-i Jahan (1372), vizier of Firuz
confined to the Islamic past. The Indic past was quite Shah Tughluq.30 The striking multitiered pyramid ad-
literally incorporated through the inclusion of a series joining the Friday Mosque at Firuzabad (ca. 1351), built
of Ashokan pillars in the monuments of Firuz Shah Tu- as a platform for an Ashokan pillar described as a minār,
ghluq (fig. 10). The practice recalls a presultanate tradi- also remained a unicum (figs. 10, 12).31
tion of reerecting such fragments of the antique past, However, some of the forms pioneered in Tughluq
which continued into the early sultanate period, to Delhi enjoyed a surprising durability and dissemination;
judge from the raising of a Gupta-era iron victory pillar among them is a form of pyramidal dome later adopted
in the courtyard of the Qutb Mosque (fig. 1).24 These an- for the bazaars of the Deccan. Some were adopted as
tique lats (stone pillars) were generally associated with models by the regional dynasties that flourished in the

Fig. 11. Qibla façade with ruined monumental iwan, Adina Mosque, Pandua, Bengal, 1374-5. (Photo: Yves Porter)
Fig. 12. Firuzabad, Delhi, pyramidal structure in the Kotla of Firuz Shah, ca. 1350. (Photo: Finbarr Barry Flood)
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including the four- elongated single-storeyed audience hall with battered
iwan plan first seen at Tughluqabad, the new Tughluqid walls first seen at Tughluqabad (1320) was also later re-
capital near Delhi, built by the rūmī (Anatolian) archi- produced in the Kush Mahal at Tughluqid Warangal, in
tect and vizier Ahmad ibn Ayaz.32 The elevated cuboid the Bahmanid capital of Gulbarga, and in the Hindola
domed chamber that projects from the façades of many Mahal at Mandu (fig. 14), seat of the independent sultans
of the imperial mosques of Tughluq Delhi (including the of Malwa.34
Jahanpanah Mosque, Firuzabad Mosque, and the Kalan The fourteenth century also saw significant inno-
Mosque of 1387) to form a monumental entrance (fig. 13) vation with ornamental forms and media. The use of
was later incorporated into many of the Friday mosques polychromatic stonework (primarily red and yellow
built by the Bahmanids in the Deccan.33 Similarly, the sandstone and white marble) associated with early sul-

Fig. 13. Firuzabad, Delhi, Friday Mosque as seen from the adjacent pyramidal structure, ca. 1350 CE. (Photo:
Finbarr Barry Flood)
Fig. 14. Hindola Mahal, Mandu, fifteenth century (?). (Photo: Muk.khan, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0,
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23363105>)
tanate and Khalji monuments declined, as plastered had pillars of painted wood and a carved wooden ceiling,
rubble masonry became the favored mode of construc- similar perhaps to the talars of Central Asia.35 The early
tion. There are also textual references to the existence of fourteenth century saw the introduction to north India
painted wooden architecture, nothing of which survives; of novel media and modes of decoration, such as carved
the “thousand pillared” (hazār ustūn) hall of sultan Mu- and molded stucco (first documented in Tughluqabad),
hammad ibn Tughluq in Delhi (probably Jahanpanah) and the emergence around the same time of blue-glazed

Fig. 15. Jahanpanah Mosque, Delhi, ca. 1340, blue-glazed lo-

tus in an arch spandrel of the southern façade. (Photo: Fin-
barr Barry Flood)
ceramic elements. Used tentatively at first, these are

seen in the elegant small lotus flowers filling the span-
drels of the exterior façade of the Jahanpanah Mosque
(ca. 1340s; fig. 15), which also has square glazed tiles with
geometric patterns, and in the use of the blue-glazed Fig. 16. Detail of stucco ornament in the Bara Gumbad, Lodi
tiles in the rebuilt Friday Mosque of Bada⁠ʾun in 1326.36 Gardens, Delhi, later fifteenth century. (Photo: Finbarr Barry
A more extensive and confident use of the medium is Flood)
seen in the tomb of Rukn-i ʿAlam (Pillar of the World) in
Multan (ca. 1320; fig. 3), itself a monument possibly in- ornamented tilework in the madrasa known as the
spired by the tomb of the Ilkhanid sultan Uljaytu built at Ashrafi Mahal (1442).40
Sultaniyya in western Iran (1307–13).37 The prevalence of Further north, the use of stucco and tilework reached
a stone medium is probably responsible for the absence its apogee in Lodi architecture (fig. 16), even if the archi-
of the alternating glazed and plain bannāʾī brickwork tecture of this period is among the most neglected. Lodi
popularized in Timurid architecture; the one area where architecture is best represented by a handful of mosques
this appears is southern Sindh, where a brick medium and an expansive series of tombs constructed in Delhi
had been standard for centuries. (fig. 17); indeed, the number of extant tombs from this
The appearance of glazed tilework in India may be period is significantly higher than at any period during
related to the influx of artisans from Iran or the Indus the sultanate. Whether this reflects the vagaries of sur-
Valley, reflecting accounts of immigrants from Egypt, vival or something more programmatic (suggestions
Iraq, Khurasan, Khwarazm, Sistan, Syria, and Transoxi- include the expansion of the patronage base under Af-
ana during the reign of Muhammad ibn Tughluq ghan rule) is unclear. However, the royal tombs of the
(r. 1325–51),38 but there are also some earlier indigenous Lodis are larger in scale and more elaborate in their or-
precedents.39 Even later, the stone monuments erected namentation than many earlier sultanate-era tombs.41
by the sultans of Malwa (r. 1401–1526) at Mandu dis- They also include inscriptions in Arabic and Persian.
played Timurid-style tilework, the work of Iranian arti- Remarkably, the funerary mosque built in 1494 by Sikan-
sans who are said to have executed the inscribed and der Lodi (r. 1489–1517) for his father, Bahlul, includes

Fig. 17. Tomb of Sikander Lodi, Delhi, 1517-8. (Photo: Finbarr Fig. 18. Tomb of Sher Shah Suri, Sasaram, 1545. (Photo: DB
Barry Flood) Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo)
Persian rubāʿī and ghazal poems. Some of these are by

Masʿud Beg, a Sufi poet who flourished during the reign
of Firuz Shah Tughluq, an interesting choice given the
appearance of Tughluqid elements such as battered
(sloping) walls and corner towers in some Lodi build-
ings.42 These are combined with innovative features,
some of Timurid origin, such as the double dome that
crowns the tomb of Sikander Lodi (fig. 17).
The current landscaped setting of the Lodi tombs in
Delhi is a recent creation, albeit one that probably cap-
tures something of the spirit of the original setting. Al-
though evidence for the existence of planned gardens in
pre-Mughal India is scattered, the importance of con- Fig. 19. Bijay Mandal, a palatial structure in the Tughluq en-
trolled natural settings, including reservoirs, tanks, and semble of Jahanpanah, Delhi, ca. 1340. (Photo: Finbarr Barry
water-courses, is abundantly clear at many sites.43 The Flood)
aqueous setting of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq’s tomb (1325)
is echoed later in the artificial lake within a pleasure gar-
den on which the tomb of Sher Shah Suri (1545) was set (fig. 20), which lies directly to the south (fig. 21). The
at Sasaram in Bihar (fig. 18).44 At the complex of Firuz inclusion of this feature in the mosque continues a tradi-
Shah Tughluq in Hauz Khas, Delhi, a Khalji-era reservoir tion established in the Qutb Mosque, while the deliber-
was exploited to form a lakeside setting for a complex ate orchestration of sight lines between palace and
that includes a madrasa and the founder’s tomb. Along- mosque is documented at Warangal, also in Muhammad
side such manicured settings, there is evidence for care- ibn Tughluq’s reign.45
fully orchestrated topographic relations between
structures built as part of royal ensembles. A good ex-
ample is the raised pavilion atop the Bijay Mandal, a The Portable Arts
palatial structure in the Tughluq ensemble of Jahan
panah (fig. 19), in which a large north-facing window is The relationship between architecture, topography, and
arranged so that it perfectly frames the view of the authority could also be extended through the use of por-
mulūkkhāna or royal enclosure that projects from the table artifacts, which were central to the visual articula-
northwestern corner of Jahanpanah’s Friday mosque tion of power. Alongside robes (sing. khilʿa) and insignia,

such as standards sent from Baghdad and (after 1261)

from Cairo by the Abbasid caliphs, the use of the parasol
(chatr), a de facto portable dome, was common to Indic
and Islamic courtly protocols. The treatment of chatrs is
of particular interest, for these were sometimes dis-
played post mortem in the tombs of north Indian sul-
tans, reflecting their dual role as state emblems and
personal possessions, infused with charisma. More
mundane objects fulfilled the same function. The trav-
eler Ibn Battuta (d. 1369) reports that sultan Muhammad
ibn Tughluq venerated the sandal of the last Khalji sul-
tan, Qutb al-Din Mubarakshah (r. 1316–20), in whose
service he had been, which was placed on a cushion be-
fore the Khalji sultan’s tomb, following established cus-
tom.46 In Mandu, the respective chatrs of Hoshang Shah
Fig. 20. Prayer-hall façade, Jahanpanah Mosque, Delhi, ca. (r. 1406–32) and Ghiyath al-Din Khalji (r. 1469–1500)
1340. (Photo: Finbarr Barry Flood) were displayed above their tombs, whence they were
seized by those seeking to usurp power and rule in their
own right. These practices continue rituals already es-
tablished in the Ghurid sultanate, where the investiture
of Ziya⁠ʾ al-Din, the son-in-law of the newly deceased
sultan Muʿizz al-Din ibn Sam in 1206 entailed the use of
the latter’s parasol, which was removed from his tomb
in Ghazni.47 Such continuities between Ghurid and sul-
tanate courtly practices await further investigation, but
they also echo funerary practices in other contemporary
Turkic polities: when the mamluks of the last Ayyubid
sultan al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub (d. 1249) built him a
funerary monument in Cairo, his personal banners and
military equipment (including helmet and bow) were
placed next to his tomb.48
None of these objects survives, and with the excep-
tion of calligraphy and painting (discussed below),
scholarship on the decorative or portable arts of pre-
Mughal India is thin on the ground. This is the case from
the outset, for with the exception of some spectacular
cast bronze door-knockers excavated at Mansura in
Sindh, few objects can be definitively identified with the
Habbarids, the earliest Arab rulers of the southern Indus
Valley. Surprisingly, perhaps, the same is true of the
Ghurid and early sultanate periods. The artifacts that
can be identified indicate artistic production of a high
Fig. 21. View north from the pavilion crowning the Bijay quality. They include one of the greatest pre-Mongol
Mandal, Jahanpanah, showing the framing of the qibla dome Qurʾans, calligraphed by a Nishapuri scribe for the
seen in fig. 20 and mulūkkhāna, ca. 1340. (Photo: Finbarr Ghurid sultan Ghiyath al-din Muhammad ibn Sam
Barry Flood) (r. 1163–1203) in 584/1189, and a gold repoussé amulet

box bearing the name of the same sultan.49 A pair of

silver-inlaid brass tables produced in Herat or the Pun-
jab bears the name of Muhammad ibn ʿAli al-Kharpusht,
a Ghurid malik who governed Peshawar and played an
important role in Ghurid attempts to repel the Khwa
razmshah until his death in 1220.50 A stone mold used
for producing a similar small tray or wallet in leather is
engraved with the name of Malik ʿIzz al-Din Husayn ibn
Kharmil, the Ghurid governor of Sialkot and later Herat
before his death in 1210 or 1211 (fig. 22, a and b), one of a
number such leather molds with a probable Khurasani
or even Punjabi provenance.51
In the absence of securely provenanced pieces, a
handful of cast brass- and silver-inlaid bronze objects a
preserved in various collections and museums has been
tentatively identified as sultanate metalwork from the
Punjab, mainly on the basis of iconographic details, for-
mal features, or their failure to conform to the perceived
norms of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Khurasani
metalwork.52 Such a scenario is not unlikely, given sug-
gestions that contacts with India and the experience of
inlaid north Indian metalwork may themselves have
provided the impetus for the development of an inlaid
metalwork industry in Herat between roughly 1150 and
1210.53 Later vessels identified as products of north India,
such as a group of ewers with dragon handles, show clear
affinities with late Timurid metalwork.54 Further re-
search may enable the definitive identification of more
extant artifacts with pre-Mughal north India.
Despite the dearth of extant metal objects, textual
evidence suggests that north India was a major exporter
of raw iron and steel, and of related manufactured
goods, especially swords. Indian swords and iron are
mentioned in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and both al- b
Kindi (d. 873) and al-Biruni (d. 1048) discuss the role of
Fig. 22a and b. Stone mold and drawing of an impression of
India in the development of metal technology, including the same bearing the name Malik ʿIzz al-Din Husayn ibn
exports of steel weapons.55 In the fourteenth century, Kharmil, the Ghurid governor of Sialkot and Herat, 1206–11,
Indian swords circulated as far west as al-Andalus, while limestone carved and incised, 16.3 × 15 × 1.9 cm. (Nasser D.
the grilles of the tomb of the Ilkhanid sultan Uljaytu at Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, MXD 17)
his capital of Sultaniyya in western Iran are said to have
been fashioned from Indian steel. Damascened steel
swords are mentioned as a specialty of north India by the historian emphasizes that they were much sought
Fakhr-i Mudabbir (d. 1236), who gives an account of after by ranas and thakurs.56
their manufacture in Kachchh (Kutch), confirming that Archaeological and textual sources indicate that In-
their production continued into the sultanate period; dian textiles also circulated westward during the early

Fig. 24. Dukhang, Alchi, ca. 1200, detail of a royal rider wear-

ing a qabāʾ with ṭirāz bands inscribed in pseudo-Kufic. (Pho-
to: Jaroslav Poncar, DK JP EC 21)
inscribed armbands (ṭirāz) bearing pseudo-Arabic in-

Fig. 23. Fragment of block-printed and resist-dyed cotton scriptions in angular Kufic or Kufesque script (fig. 24),
textile from western India found in Egypt (probably Fustat), similar to that found on portable objects produced in
thirteenth to fourteenth century. (Metropolitan Museum of
the neighboring Ghaznavid and Ghurid sultanates. The
Art, New York, V. Everit Macy Gift, 1930, 30.112.40)
adoption of modes of dress and elite self-representation
associated with the central Islamic lands seem to be re-
centuries of the sultanate period. Block-printed cottons flected in the appearance of Arabic, Persian, and Turkic
from western India (chiefly Gujarat), some featuring sartorial terms in Indic languages during the thirteenth
Arabic inscriptions in Kufic script, have been found in and fourteenth centuries.59
substantial quantities as far west as the Red Sea and Fu- In the thirteenth century, Indian muslins were espe-
stat (Old Cairo) (fig. 23), where they may even have cially favored for turban cloths in Anatolia,60 one of a
served as vectors for the dissemination of specific pat- number of material and textual indications of trade con-
terns that appear in other media, including architec- tacts and human traffic between Anatolia and north
tural decoration, attesting to a lively trade during the India. These include a series of gold and silver tanka
tenth through thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.57 Dur- coins with both Arabic and Sanskrit inscriptions and
ing the same period, Indian textiles, including silks, were featuring a galloping horseman carrying a mace, which
reportedly in use among the elites of Ethiopia.58 were struck after the conquest of Bengal by Muhammad
This maritime trade around the western Indian Bakhtiar Khalji in 1204 and continued down to 1220. The
Ocean and Red Sea appears to have been complemented coins may have been modeled on the contemporary
by a terrestrial trade in other kinds of textiles. Circum- coinage of Seljuq Anatolia; base metal coinage featuring
stantial evidence for the circulation of Islamic or Islam- a similar image were struck under the Seljuq ruler Malik
icate textiles (whether of Afghan, Iranian, or north Sulaymanshah (r. ca. 1193–1201). But they seem to have
Indian origin is unclear), even outside the regions under been particularly popular during the reign of Rukn al-
the control of the Delhi sultanate, can be found in wall- Din Sulayman II ibn Qilich Arslan (r. 1197–1204), when
paintings at Alchi in Ladakh. Datable to around 1200, they were stuck in both copper and silver in the Seljuq
these depict the local Buddhist elite wearing a qabāʾ (a capital of Konya and other cities, and so were current at
mid-length coat) of Turkic inspiration tailored from the time that the Bengal coins were issued.61 Earlier
luxury fabrics (probably silks) with animal roundels and precedents for the adoption of eastern Mediterranean

models can be found in the coinage of the Ghurid sul- marble portico added in the fourteenth century to Sul-
tans.62 tan Ghari, the funerary madrasa built for the son of the
There are numerous additional indications of mobil- Delhi sultan Iltutmish (fig. 25).66 The remarkable tran-
ity between Seljuq Anatolia and north India during the sregional filiations of sultanate architectural forms, and
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is worth remem- their legacy, is manifest in the domes associated with
bering that, in addition to freemen, large numbers of the lateral entrances of the Qutb Mosque (1192), which
Indian slaves are likely to have been brought west after recur in Delhi’s Jahanpanah Mosque (fig. 20) and in the
Ghaznavid and Ghurid campaigns in north India, even Bibi Khanum Mosque in Samarqand (1398–1405), where
if the numbers given in the chronicles are exaggerated. their presence may have been inspired by the Jahanpa-
Since many of these would have taken Arabic or Persian nah Mosque, which Timur visited after the conquest of
names, they remain invisible to the historical sources. Delhi in 1398.67
Invisibility is often compounded by low social status, Among those heading east in the thirteenth and four-
but it is clear that some manumitted Indian slaves pros- teenth centuries, some seem to have been motivated
pered in their new homelands. Perhaps the best exam- neither by mercantile concerns nor by the search for
ple is that of Shadbakht, an Indian eunuch and mamluk patronage, but by the ghāzī or frontier warrior culture
of the Zangid ruler Nur al-Din ibn Zangi (r. 1146–74), who perpetuated by the southward expansion of the Delhi
wielded considerable influence in Aleppo and founded sultanate into the Deccan. Perhaps the most unusual
several madrasas there, including the Shadbakhtiyya, material testimony to this culture is a pair of luster ce-
which he dedicated in 589/1193 as a freedman.63 ramic plaques produced in Kashan in 711/1312, one in the
One hint at the movement of individuals between form of the hoof of a camel, the other the hoof of a horse.
India and the West lies perhaps in the appearance of An accompanying inscription explains that these repro-
Indian nisbas. While notoriously unreliable as indicators duce the impressions left by the mounts of Imam ʿAli
of individual biography, such nisbas indicate at least a and his companions, who had appeared to the commis-
family origin; they seem especially common in Anatolia. sioner of the piece in a dream in which they revealed
Among the most interesting of these is one Mukhlis ibn that they were headed to India in order to convert its
ʿAbd Allah al-Hindi, who illuminated several manu- populace and ordered the dreamer to build a shrine at
scripts, including a Qurʾan dated 677 (1278) produced in the place of the vision for those unable to travel as far as
Konya.64 While there is no need to assume that the il- India.68 If the tale concerns eastward migration to India,
luminator (rather than his ancestors) ever saw India, in Sufi ṭarīqas and the transregional networks they devel-
other cases the al-Hindi nisba referred to individuals oped and maintained may also have facilitated a bidi-
who were based in Anatolia but traveled back and forth rectional mobility: a tale attributed to Rumi involves an
to India in order to negotiate the passage of the Indian Indian dervish and a Sufi from Nishapur, although
goods (among them the aforementioned muslin textiles whether it takes place in Anatolia or Iran is unclear.69
favored for use as turbans) that were clearly in high de- Just as the human traffic linking north India with re-
mand in Anatolia. These include a merchant Sharaf al- gions further west flowed both ways, so the mercantile
Din al-Hindi, a contemporary of the Konya-based Sufi activity that integrated north India into broader transre-
mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), who went back and gional commercial networks was multidirectional. Few
forth to India bringing back merchandise that was of the original furnishings of the buildings that sultan-
strange and wondrous (gharīb va ʿajīb).65 Contacts be- ate-period elites commissioned survive, but in many
tween north India and Anatolia appear to have contin- cases they must have been sumptuous. The madrasa
ued into the first decades of the fourteenth century, adjoining the tomb of Firuz Shah Tughluq (r. 1351–88) at
when a rūmī (Anatolian) architect is mentioned at the Hauz Khas in Delhi was reportedly provided with car-
Tughluq court of Delhi. Such mobility might go some pets from Shiraz, Yemen, and Damascus, a fact of par-
way toward explaining striking visual similarities be- ticular interest given that the spectacular stucco
tween some Tughluq monuments and those of Anatolia, ornament in the adjoining tomb (fig. 26) shows affinities
including perhaps the unique conical dome and white with the illuminations of Ilkhanid manuscripts.70 When

Fig. 26. Tomb of Firuz Shah Tughluq, Hauz Khas, Delhi, ca.

1388, detail of painted stucco dome revetments. (Photo: Fin-
barr Barry Flood)
while underlying how deeply embedded the sultanates

were in transregional redistributive networks.
Reports of imported carpets in Tughluqid tombs
highlight how much has been lost and how difficult it is
to imagine the original appearance of the interior space
Fig. 25. Sultan Ghari, Delhi, 1231, detail of mid-fourteenth- of sultanate-period monuments. The lists of gifts as-
century white marble portico and conical dome preceding sembled for diplomatic missions provide one indicator;
the mihrab. (Photo: Finbarr Barry Flood) an embassy sent by Muhammad ibn Tughluq to the
Yuan ruler Toghon Temür in the 1340s lists a wide range
of silk wool and linen textiles, precious metal basins,
candelabra, ewers, embroidered robes, pearl-encrusted
he restored the tomb of Muhammad ibn Tughluq, Firuz scabbards, and arrow quivers.73 Similarly (and some-
Shah used as a canopy for the tomb the sitāra, the piece what paradoxically), a “bonfire of the vanities” under-
of the kiswa (the covering of the Kaʿba) that hung before taken by Firuz Shah Tughluq and recorded in an apologia
its door.71 The kiswa was renewed annually, at which originally inscribed on the walls of the Firuzabad
point coveted fragments of the earlier covering were mosque (fig. 13) preserves some sense of how rich the
gifted or sold. Whether the fragment in Delhi was bought material culture of the Tughluq court was:
or gifted is not clear, but such fragments were valued
symbols of legitimacy among the fourteenth-century Still another favour of God was this. It had been the es-
tablished practice in previous age [sic] to use gold and sil-
sultanates: the second Bahmani sultan, Muhammad
ver vessels at the time of taking meals and mount the hilt
Shah (r. 1358–75), had his royal chatr made from a piece of the sword and bow string with gold. We mounted our
of the kiswa brought back by his mother from the hajj.72 weapons with the bones of the hunted animals and accus-
Both cases represent an attempt to negotiate the dis- tomed ourselves to the use of vessels which were permit-
tance between centers of political and sacred authority ted by religious injunctions. Again it had been the custom

and practice in by-gone days, that they painted figures on scholarly attention in the central Islamic lands, the phe-
their garments, and robed the people in them as a mark nomenon remains largely unexplored in scholarship on
of honour by the royal court. Similarly they used to carve sultanate India. Nonetheless, such imports appear to
figures on bridles, saddles, collars of their mounts, censers
have been widespread at least by the fifteenth century,
of aloe-wood, drinking-pots, cups, jugs, bowls, parasols,
tents, screens, thrones, chairs and all other instruments and when blue and white vessels are integral to courtly
articles and had paintings in their possession. By divine scenes depicted in numerous illustrated manuscripts
guidance and heavenly favour, we directed that they should (fig. 36). Gifts presented to the sharif of Mecca in
remove all figures and paintings from all articles and make 942/1535 by envoys of the Gujarat sultan were delivered
those things which are not forbidden but sanctioned and in large Chinese, presumably porcelain, jars.79 The
approved by the religious Law; we commanded that they vogue for such ceramics anticipates the tastes of later
should obliterate all carved and engraved figures chiselled Mughal royal collectors while also linking the rulers of
out on the houses, walls and palaces.74
pre-Mughal north India to their contemporaries in the
Alongside silks and gold brocades, historians mention Islamic West.80
figural banners and standards among the list of disap- The presence of such imported Chinese ceramics
proved objects.75 This inventory of artifacts on which (and probably silks) could act as a vector for the recep-
figures and devices appeared is reminiscent of those tion of new forms of ornament, to judge from the ap-
listed in an early fifteenth-century arzadasht, a rare pe- pearance of Chinese-style (rather than indigenous) lotus
tition to the Timurid ruler Baysunghur Mirza from the and peony motifs on some of the rare examples of north
head of his royal atelier (kitābkhāna). This mentions art- Indian metalwork from the fifteenth century.81 It has
ists working on bindings, calligraphy, illuminations, even been suggested that the blue and white tilework
paintings, and tents, as well as designs that could be ap- favored in sixteenth-century Indus Valley architecture
plied to book illuminations, leather, saddles, tents, and owes a debt to the popularity of imported Chinese ce-
tilework.76 Although evidence is lacking, it is possible ramics or perhaps even the Safavid blue and white ware
that such an atelier existed earlier at the Tughluq court, (“Kraak porcelain”) that they inspired.82
as it almost certainly did at the contemporary Jalayirid Although not widespread, the deployment of such
court in Baghdad. chinoiserie in north Indian art is almost contemporary
Firuz Shah’s list gives some indication of how image- with the appearance of motifs of Chinese inspiration
rich the ambience of the court of the Delhi sultans was (such as lotus and peonies) in the Mamluk metalwork
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and how dra- and monuments of Egypt and Syria, a reminder of the
matic the changes wrought by this reversion to piety transregional connections fostered within the Mongol
must have been. It has been suggested that fragments of world system. The sources of at least some of the latter
imported Chinese ceramic bowls and plates (mostly are likely to lie in portable objects produced in the Ilkha-
blue and white with some celadon) bearing figural im- nid realms of Iran (where motifs of Chinese origin pro-
agery found in Firuz Shah’s palace at the Kotla of Firuz- liferated from the late thirteenth century onward),
abad in Delhi (1354) may have been the result of the which may also have mediated the sinicizing elements
pottery being smashed at this time. The palace was de- such as cloud bands, which appear in western Indian
stroyed during Timur’s invasion of Delhi in 1398, provid- Jain painting in the course of the fifteenth century.83
ing a terminus ante quem for vessels that bear Persian However, the chinoiserie found in the Adina Mosque at
inscriptions indicating that they were used in the royal Pandua in Bengal (fig. 27), for example, is as likely to
kitchens.77 Whether or not this is the case, the discovery have been inspired directly by Chinese imports, includ-
provides a crucial window into imports of Yuan and ing silks, as by manuscript illuminations or other sourc-
Ming ceramics in sultanate north India.78 These seem to es reflecting the mediation of Ilkhanid chinoiserie.84
have been substantial during the fourteenth and fif- Into the fifteenth century, Bengal under the Ilyas Shahis
teenth centuries; the finds from Delhi provide valuable was the source for a number of giraffes that were taken
confirmation of textual references to such imports. to the Ming court and even depicted there.85 The un-
While these kinds of imports have received sustained likely provenance of the Ming emperor’s giraffes is

Fig. 27. Royal loggia, Adina Mosque, Bengal, stone carving above the southern mihrab showing elements of chinoiserie,
including Chinese-style lotuses. (Photo: Yves Porter)
indication enough of the dynamic diplomatic contacts from the Qanati Masjid of the same date in Delhi con-
between the two regions, but also hints at direct or indi- taining the ḥilya (description) of the Prophet Muham-
rect contacts between the east coasts of Africa and India mad, one of its earliest recorded occurrences; the text
that remain to be documented and explored. promises all those who look upon the text relief from the
fires of hell.87
Non-Qurʾanic inscriptions on sultanate monuments
Calligraphy and Epigraphy also highlight the increasing use of Persian as the thir-
teenth century progressed. During the twelfth century,
Qurʾanic inscriptions on pre-Mughal monuments have interlinear Persian glosses or translations appear on
only attracted attention relatively recently, being previ- Qurʾans produced in the Ghaznavid and Ghurid do-
ously neglected in favor of historical texts. It is now mains, while Persian terms and phrases sometimes ap-
clear, however, that in many cases the selection and pear on metalwork and other objects from the same
combination of Qurʾanic quotations assumed a pro- regions, often alongside Arabic.88 Persian first appears
grammatic character, investing forms and materials in the monumental inscriptions of north India during
with specific iconographic resonances. Much less atten- the reign of Iltutmish, although Persian titles appear in
tion has been paid to the appearance of particular ha some South Asian inscriptions of the Ghurid period. By
diths or even the occasional quotation from tafsīr the second decade of the thirteenth century, Persian was
(exegesis) alongside historical and Qurʾanic quota- in use for foundation inscriptions as far east as Bengal.89
tions.86 Among the most remarkable of these is a four- From the 1260s, mixed Arabic and Persian inscriptions
teenth-century stucco inscription in Arabic and Persian are documented as are the earliest bilingual inscriptions

in Sanskrit and Arabic or Persian; some funerary inscrip-

tions of this date make extensive use of Persian poetry.90
It is, however, only from the fourteenth century that the
use of Persian in public texts became widespread: on the
ʿAla⁠ʾi Darwaza, the monumental gate added to the Qutb
complex in Delhi as part of a Khalji extension in 1310 (fig.
5), the prominent foundation texts are in Persian, in
contrast to the use of Arabic for the earlier foundation
texts at the complex.91
It has been plausibly suggested that the proliferation
of Persian in public texts from this period reflects chan-
cery conventions, if not the involvement of the chancery
in the design of at least royal inscriptions. This was far
from standard, however: at least one more modest in-
scription from Petlad in Gujarat was written (designed?)
in 633/1236 by a jeweler or jewel-trader (jauharī), sug-
gesting the mobility of scripts between different media
and scales.92 There are hints at intersections between
chancery scripts and monumental epigraphy as early as
the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. Modern
scholars usually identify the script used in the Qutb
Mosque in Delhi and other early sultanate mosques as
naskh, a type of cursive that gained currency during the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, but the medieval sourc-
es are unanimous in identifying it as ṭughrā, a script
characterized by symmetrical arrangement of elongated
verticals. The identification is significant, for the term
designated both a composite device, a kind of imperial
monogram common among the Turkic dynasties of the
Islamic world, and a chancery script often used for royal
orders, patents of investiture bearing it (the farmān-i
ṭughrā), and fatḥnāmas or victory missives.93 The visual
qualities of the scripts used in the Delhi mosque may,
therefore, have suggested associations with other con-
texts and media.
Pre-Mughal firmāns were documents of imposing cal-
ligraphy and scale. The earliest published fīrmān of the
Delhi sultanate was issued in 725/1325 in the name of
Muhammad ibn Tughluq, whose ṭughrā is at the head of
the document (fig. 28). There are textual references to
earlier sultanate firmāns and at least one reportedly is-
sued by the Delhi sultan Balban (r. 1266–87) awaits pub-
lication.94 Inscribed on paper backed with cotton (a Fig. 28. Firmān of Sultan Muhammad ibn Tughluq Shah al-
common Indian practice), the 1325 Indian example is a Sultan, ink on paper (116.84 × 28.58 cm), Shawwal 725
scroll measuring 116 × 27.5 cm, almost thirty centimeters AH/1325. (The Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the
longer than a slightly earlier extant firmān issued in Dallas Museum of Art, K.1.2014.25)

692/1293 in the name of the Ilkhanid ruler of Iran,

Geikhatu.95 The style of the calligraphy, including the
ṭughrā, shows parallels with contemporary monumen-
tal inscriptions. The document clearly belongs to a well-
established tradition, although, as a material genre, the
manshūr (patent) or firmān has received remarkably
little attention from scholars: what little scholarship
there is is focused on Mughal and Ottoman examples.96
The basic format, size, and structure of the Tughluq
firmān show similarities to those of early Mamluk ex-
amples.97 Whether these served as models or reflect a
common debt to Abbasid firmāns is unclear. Such
firmāns certainly circulated outside of north India; they
were, in their turn, reciprocated by firmāns and
manshūrs originating in the western Islamic world, in-
cluding those issued by the Abbasid caliph installed in
Cairo after 1261.98
Whatever the relationship between chancery docu-
ments and monumental inscriptions and scripts, there
is evidence of calligraphic experimentation in early sul-
tanate architecture that merits further investigation: the
appearance of mirrored scripts in early thirteenth-cen-
tury monuments such as the tomb of Iltutmish (fig. 29),
contemporary with its appearance on coinage of the
Khwarazmshahs, is a case in point. A further character-
istic feature of pre-Mughal Arabic and Persian epigraphy
is regional diversity. Bengal, in particular, developed a Fig. 29. Tomb of Iltutmish, Delhi, 1236, detail of interior
distinctive form of ṭughrā script marked by exuberant mihrab carving with mirrored script. (Photo: Finbarr Barry
verticals. This regional dimension in sultanate epigra- Flood)
phy is in marked contrast to the calligraphy associated
with pre-Mughal copies of the Qurʾan, which shows a religious texts in India for several centuries.101 Qurʾan
striking uniformity. This quality is related to the emer- manuscripts (maṣāḥīf) were written on paper, the use of
gence of a type of script conventionally known as bīḥārī, which seems to have begun in north India already before
a distinctive script characterized by sublinear wedges, the sultanate period, although sparingly compared to
with familial relationships to both angular Kufic and palm leaves and tree bark. From the late thirteenth cen-
more cursive scripts such as naskh and muḥaqqaq. tury at least, paper was being manufactured in India. By
Bīḥārī seems to have been developed in the last quarter the fifteenth century the fame of Indian paper had
of the fourteenth century, possibly in the regions around spread as far west as the Ottoman sultanate, to which it
Bihar included in the Sharqi sultanate of Jaunpur (1394– was evidently exported, although whether from north
1479).99 Epigraphic occurrences of bīḥārī are quite rare, India or the Deccan is unclear.102
but include a Persian inscription from Sultanganj in The earliest extant dated Bihari Qurʾan was produced
Bengal datable as early as the late thirteenth or early in 776/1374 in Lohri, possibly Lahori Bandar in Sindh.
fourteenth century.100 The manuscript awaits further study on the scale of that
Whereas used infrequently for profane inscriptions, which the so-called Gwalior Qurʾan has recently attract-
bīḥārī became the dominant (although not exclusive) ed.103 The latter, a rare example of a dated Bihari Qurʾan,
script favored for the production of the Qurʾan and o ther was completed by the scribe Mahmud Shaʿban in

Fig. 30. Qurʾan manuscript written in bīḥārī script, completed in Gwalior on 7 Dhu’l-Qaʿda 801 (July 11, 1399) by Mahmud
Shaʿban, ink and watercolor on paper (28.9 × 22.2 cm). (Photo: © The Aga Khan Museum, AKM281)
Gwalior in 801 (1399), when the city was controlled by graphic idiosyncrasies of this manuscript anticipate
the Tonwar Rajputs. The illuminations in the Gwalior those of the bīḥārī script later adopted for Indian
Qurʾan are superlative (fig. 30), finding affinities in ear- Qurʾans.106
lier Indian painting and Shirazi—even Mamluk—man- The fact that the earliest extant dated Bihari Qurʾans
uscripts. The eclectic range of filiations might be were produced in the Indus Valley and Gwalior respec-
compared with those found in regional sultanate archi- tively suggests a very wide regional distribution; sev-
tecture of the fourteenth century, which shows a similar eral dated fifteenth-century examples give no place of
range of transregional connections.104 In particular, the production, but an extant copy dated 1003 (1594-5) was
Mamluk affinities of the manuscript are among a num- produced in balād Bīḥār.107 The floruit of bīḥārī script
ber of tantalizing hints of Egyptian or Syrian connec- was in the fifteenth century, although it remained in
tions in architecture, calligraphy, and painting that common use for a century later; its use seems to have
merit sustained attention.105 declined in the Mughal period, but rare examples can
A further notable feature of the Gwalior Qurʾan is an be found as late as the nineteenth century.108 Remark-
internal fourfold division that seems to perpetuate in ably, recent research has indicated that the script trav-
attenuated single-volume form an uncommon division eled around the Indian Ocean, especially to Yemen and
that structures the four-volume Qurʾan dated 584 (1189) Ethiopia, where both manuscripts written in bīḥārī and
and presented to the Ghurid sultan Ghiyath al-Din Mu- the use of bīḥārī as a “display script” have been docu·
hammad. It has been suggested that some of the calli- mented.109

Fig. 31. Talismanic shirt, north India or the Deccan, fifteenth to early sixteenth century, ink and gold on cotton. (Metro-
politan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Friends of Islamic Art Gifts, 1998, 1998.199)
Given this distribution, the standardization or unifor- epigraphy, illuminations, and palette, this usage of the
mity in the format of the Bihari Qurʾans is all the more Bihari Qurʾans relates them to an extensive and equally
remarkable. All are executed on paper rather than standardized series of painted cotton talismanic shirts
parchment, following a trend established in the eastern that survive from sultanate-period India (fig. 31). These
Islamic world. They range between 19 and 45 centime- make use of magical designs combined with protective
ters in the height of the page, with the most elaborate and Qurʾanic texts written in micrography, a phenom-
examples being calligraphed in gold. There is a certain enon likely to reflect not simply a desire to cram in as
consistency in the illuminations, executed in black, much text as possible, but a perceived relationship be-
blue, gold, green, and red, which are distinctive and eas- tween scale, visibility, and efficacy.111 Although the exact
ily recognizable; lines of calligraphy in alternating colors dates and provenance of this extensive series of in-
are common. scribed shirts are unknown, the series is closely related
Some Bihari Qurʾans are richly annotated with mar- to a rare Qurʾan calligraphed in minute ghubārī script
ginal commentaries and other kinds of data, providing on cotton in the form of a scroll; it has been suggested
valuable information on the social life of the text and that the scroll bears a chronogram giving the date 798
suggesting that the manuscripts remained in use (1395).112
through time. These annotations, often in Persian, relate While numerous Bihari Qurʾans survive, fewer extant
to variant readings (qirāʾāt), glosses and Persian transla- sultanate-era Qurʾans were executed in the less stylized
tions of Arabic text, merits (faḍāʾil) of certain verses muḥaqqaq script favored in Qurʾans from the central
(sing. āya) and suras. This suggests that some were used Islamic lands. A juzʾ from a multivolume Qurʾan now in
for bibliomancy, a likelihood confirmed by the inclusion the David Collection in Copenhagen has been attributed
of what is the earliest dated book of divination (fālnāma) to sultanate India around 1300 on the basis of its paper,
at the end of the Gwalior Qurʾan.110 Along with their script, and illuminations. The text is written in elegant

muḥaqqaq script consisting of three lines a page, an ar-

rangement that bears comparison with some of the
Qurʾans produced in Ilkhanid Iran, which also seem to
have served as prototypes for the earliest Qurʾans pro-
duced in Yuan China.113 The Indian attribution and dat-
ing await confirmation, but if correct they would suggest
that Qurʾans in scripts other than bīḥārī were being pro-
duced earlier than previously thought. An early fif-
teenth-century Qurʾan also written in muḥaqqaq script
held in 893/1488 in the (apparently extensive) library of
Mahmud Shah I Begara (r. 1459–1511), sultan of Gujarat,
may have been produced in Gujarat, although an Iranian
(likely Shirazi) origin is also possible (fig. 32).114 A spec-
tacular, heavily illuminated, early fifteenth-century In-
dian Qurʾan, which has been tentatively attributed to
Gujarat (Walters Art Museum W563; fig. 33) combines
the use of muḥaqqaq with modes of illumination that
were being developed in Timurid ateliers of Herat and
Shiraz and some characteristic features of Bihari
Qurʾans. These include the peculiar fourfold division of
the text, abundant marginalia, and the inclusion of a
fālnāma. In other words, the manuscript seems to com-
bine aspects of a distinctly regional structure with a for-
mat and calligraphic style that have transregional Fig. 32. Folio from an early fifteenth-century Qurʾan written
filiations.115 Like the rich and diverse illuminations of in muḥaqqaq script and held in the library of Mahmud Shah
the Gwalior Qurʾan, it attests both the remarkable open- I, sultan of Gujarat, in 1488 (Photo: © The British Library
ness, eclecticism even, of Indian calligraphers and illu- Board, Add. 18163, fol. 438r.)
minators working on the Qurʾan in the late fourteenth
and early fifteenth centuries.
Given their associations with divination and Qurʾanic mentation.118 A colophon mentions that it was com-
learning, it has been suggested that Bihari Qurʾans were pleted in 851 (1447-8) during the reign of the sultan
produced for mosques and Sufi shrines, in contradistinc- Abu’l-Muzaffar Mahmud Shah. The dedicatee has been
tion to those written in muḥaqqaq script, which were identified as the Sharqi sultan of Jaunpur, but might
intended for a more elite audience.116 There are, how- equally be identified as Nasir al-dunya wa’l-din Abu’l-
ever, cases of Bihari Qurʾans that seem to have circu- Muzaffar Mahmud Shah of the Ilyas Shahi line of Bengal
lated in courtly milieus. These include an example (r. 1435–59), making it a rare example of an Ilyas Shahi
calligraphed in gold, red, blue, and black by a calligra- Qurʾan. Given its decorative elaboration it is likely that
pher with a Razi nisba, suggesting that he or his fore- it was housed in a royal library or was even a royal com-
bears hailed from Rayy. It has a colophon dated 811 mission.
(1408) mentioning the patron as the last Tughluq sultan Thanks to their easy portability, such manuscripts
Nasr al-Din Mahmud Shah II (r. 1394–95, 1399–1412).117 were remarkably mobile. Looting and warfare were
In addition a spectacular example of a Bihari Qurʾan among the mechanisms for the dissemination of manu-
preserved in the National Museum of Pakistan in Kara- scripts in India, before and after the establishment of the
chi makes use of large-scale folios (55 × 37 cm) calli- Delhi sultanate,119 just as both Qurʾans and profane
graphed in gold set against floral sprays, with each juzʾ manuscripts were gifted between Indian rulers and
marked by riotous polychromatic double-page orna- those in the Islamic lands to the west. The Ādāb al-ḥarb

textiles and other goods. In one of his letters, the cordial

relations between the Bahmanid and Ottoman states are
described as like those between Turkish paper (bayāz)
and [Indian] ink (sawād).122
Both artists and manuscripts also traveled east. The
circulation of manuscripts between Shiraz and India
during the fourteenth century is, for example, attested by
a fourteenth-century report, attributed to the Tughluqid
courtier and later ascetic shaykh Mubarak al-Anbayati
(or al-Anbati). It states that a number of manuscripts,
including a copy of Ibn Sina’s Kitāb al-shifāʾ calligraphed
by the celebrated thirteenth-century Iraqi calligrapher
Yaqut al-Mustaʿsimi, were brought by the son of the qāḍī
of Shiraz as a gift to sultan Muhammad ibn Tughluq of
Delhi, at some point before 1340.123
Textual references to the circulation of Shirazi manu-
scripts in India find their corollary in the appearance of
Shirazi features in sultanate painting and in Indian
Qurʾans of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centu-
ries.124 Some of the floral illuminations in the Gwalior
Qurʾan have, for example, been convincingly related to
the ornamentation of fourteenth-century Shirazi
Qurʾans, while Mahmud Shah Begara’s Qurʾan (fig. 32)
Fig. 33. Part of an illuminated double folio introducing sura was clearly inspired by fourteenth-century Iranian In-
Maryam from a Qurʾan calligraphed in muḥaqqaq script, juid or Muzaffarid Qurʾans from Shiraz, even if it was
north India, later fifteenth century (31 × 40 cm). (Walters Art produced in India.125 Shiraz was a fulcrum for the circu-
Museum, Baltimore, Ms. W.563, fol. 274b) lation of things and persons along the maritime routes,
a key nexus between the Gulf, western India, and the
port cities of southern China that lay beyond. Its impact
(Etiquette of War) of Fakhr al-Din Mubarakshah, writ- was felt in north India even far from the coastal regions
ten in north India during the reign of Iltutmish, men- where one might reasonably assume it to have the stron-
tions Qurʾan manuscripts (maṣāḥīf) as among the gest impact. As early as 713/1313, the foundation text of
suitable gifts for diplomatic embassies.120 The afore- a madrasa at Tribeni in Bengal uses the title vāris-i mulk-
mentioned David Collection Qurʾan was reportedly i Sulaymān (inheritor of the kingdom of Solomon) as-
gifted to the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, al-Nasir Muham- sociated with the Injuids and Muzaffarids of Shiraz,
mad (r. 1294, 1299–1309, 1310–41), while W653 bears the while as late as 1531, an illustrated Bengali Iskandarnāma
seal of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512), and perpetuates elements of earlier Shirazi painting.126
may have been among the diplomatic gifts sent by an Despite its strong Shirazi affinities, the use of color
Indian sultan to Bayezid or his predecessor Mehmed II and red highlighting in Mahmud Shah Begara’s Qurʾan
(r. 1452–81), the Ottoman conqueror of Constantino- also suggest a relationship to contemporary Jain manu-
ple.121 Such Indo-Ottoman contacts would not be sur- scripts produced in western India. The relationship has
prising, for during the same period the vizier of the been noted in other sultanate Qurʾans whose marginal
Bahmanid sultans of the Deccan, Mahmud Gawan, was ornaments sometimes show affinities with those found
in communication with the Ottoman sultans, among in contemporary Jain manuscripts.127 In fact, the artistic
other contemporary rulers, and sending agents as far connections between the Jain manuscript tradition of
west as Bursa in Anatolia and the Balkans to trade in Gujarat, a region long important to long-distance trade,

and the Islamic manuscripts of Shiraz may have been of God, ordered that they should not make pictures (taṣvīr)
quite long established. The striking use of a red ground [of animate forms] in those galleries because it is in conflict
in Injuid manuscripts, a feature documented in earlier with the Shariʿa: and in the place of the depiction of figures
(ṣūratgarī) they should draw a design (naqsh) with various
Jain manuscripts produced in western India, might con-
kinds of garden [sic]….131
ceivably reflect contacts between the two regions.128
In addition to evidence for the circulation of manu- No such wall-paintings survive, although wall-paintings
scripts between Fars and Gujarat, Gujarati manuscripts are known from Iran and Central Asia; they are also
reached the Hijaz. For instance, in 1519 the sultan of Gu- mentioned in Jain sources,132 hinting at a likely relation-
jarat, Muzaffar Shah II (r. 1511–26), who sought refuge for ship between wall-painting and manuscript painting.
his household and valuables in Mecca when under pres- An additional problem is the dearth of firmly dated
sure from the Mughals, is said to have sent a large Qurʾan examples of sultanate-period manuscripts and multiple
copied by his own hand to the holy city, where it was uncertainties about centers of production. The past few
received with appropriate ceremonial.129 It was there decades have seen increasing scholarly interest in sul-
that Muhyi al-Din Lari’s important pilgrimage guide, tanate-era manuscripts, but they remain significantly
Kitāb futūḥ al-Ḥaramayn, was completed and dedicated understudied compared to Mughal painting. What is
to the same sultan, reminder of the strong connections clear is that the style of manuscript painting developed
between Gujarat and Arabia at a time when the region
in the century or so before the establishment of the
was threatened by both the Mughals and Portuguese.130
Delhi sultanate and best represented by the Jain manu-
The text seems to have been often copied in India, un-
scripts of western India continued to develop in the cen-
derlining the role of pilgrimage in forging links between
turies between the emergence of Delhi in the 1220s and
the subcontinent, the holy cities of Arabia, and the cen-
the arrival of the Mughals in 1526. While relatively con-
tral Islamic lands.
servative, this tradition was also receptive to Islamicate
elements and forms. Conversely, what appear to be the
Painting earliest extant Islamicate manuscripts produced in
north India often integrate Indic elements with forms
The bīḥārī script developed in north India for inscribing and styles related to painting traditions that had been
Islamic texts represents an entirely indigenous tradi- established in Iran and Iraq during the thirteenth cen-
tion, albeit paralleled by alternative (and apparently less tury, and which had flourished under the rule of the
widespread) calligraphic traditions with strong Iranian, Ilkhanids and successor dynasties such as the Jalayirids
especially Shirazi, connections. When it comes to paint- of Baghdad or the Muzaffarids of Shiraz.
ing, the situation is more heterogeneous. Little is known The earliest extant painted Indian manuscripts date
about sultanate-era wall-painting, although, wall-hang- from the eleventh century and were produced for Bud-
ings and paintings sometimes appear as part of the ar- dhist and Jain communities; illustrated Hindu manu-
chitectural scenes depicted in sultanate manuscripts scripts appeared in the following century. Illustrated
(e.g., fig. 37). Paradoxically, Firuz Shah Tughluq’s at- Jain manuscripts from Gujarat and Rajasthan were ex-
tempt to memorialize his purge of figural art mentioned ecuted on elongated palm leaves gathered and bound
above also reveals something of what has not survived: between wooden covers (some also painted); among the
underlining that the sultan forbade all things not in con- most popular texts were the Kalpasūtra and the
formity with the Shariʿa, Shams-i Siraj ‘Afif (d. 1388) ex- Kālakāchārya-katha (fig. 34). The major centers of pro-
plains that these included wall-paintings: duction were in the domains of the Palas and western
Chalukyas or Solankis, especially their capital of Anhil-
One of these (was) the drawing of images (naqqāshī-yi
muṣavvar) in the private apartments of the sultan: and (as vad Patan in Gujarat. It has been suggested that the
for) that, it is the custom of kings that they always arrange graceful iconography of the extant manuscripts reflects
picture galleries (nigārkhānahā-yi muṣavvar) with figures lost wall-paintings; there is also evidence for the exis-
in their place of rest. Sultan Firuzshah, out of his great fear tence of larger scale paintings on cloth.133

Fig. 34. Kalaka and a Sahi, from a manuscript of the Kālakāchārya-katha, western India, fifteenth century, ink, gold, and
watercolor on paper (10.8 × 25 cm). (RISD Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Maurice H. Shulman and Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Bin-
ney III 60.020.1)
From the middle of the fourteenth century, a major Hindu manuscripts remained distinct from the vertical
change in medium occurred, with paper being adopted or codex format favored in Arabic and Persian manu-
even for Jain and Hindu manuscripts. The development scripts, including those produced in north India.
reflects the impact of Islamicate modes of book produc- Despite differences in format, there were similarities
tion, either through contact with the wider Islamic in the production processes of north Indian Jain or Hin-
world or mediated through the manuscript traditions of du and Islamicate manuscripts. In both cases, the text
sultanate north India. The oldest dated illustrated paper was inscribed first and spaces left for the addition of the
manuscript of any type from India (including Arabic and paintings, sometimes with outline sketches, captions, or
Persian manuscripts) is a copy of the Kālakāchārya- other instructions intended to guide the artist illustra-
katha produced in the Jain stronghold of Yoginipura at tors. Given the paucity of extant examples of bindings
Delhi in 1366, just slightly before the oldest dated Isla associated with sultanate manuscripts (or, at least, ex-
micate manuscript, the Lohri Qurʾan of 1374. As late as tant examples recognized as such), little is known of the
1440, it is reported that palm leaves were still in common binding of sultanate-era manuscripts, despite a recent
use in Gujarat but that the use of paper was general in scholarly interest in the subject of binding in general.
Cambay, a major nexus in the Indian Ocean trade and, Some of the fifteenth-century western Indian Jain
along with neighboring Bharuch, a locus for the produc- manuscripts show the impact of Islamicate painting tra-
tion of Jain manuscripts.134 The adoption of paper did ditions. Of particular interest is the appearance of Cen-
not spell the demise of the poṭhī or palm-leaf format, tral Asian Sahis, many showing affinities with figures
which was generally maintained in the manuscripts pro- depicted in sultanate painting (fig. 34). These are some-
duced in western India; even the circular piercings for times central to the narrative (Kalaka is, for example, a
binding the leaves were often reproduced in paint, al- monk who sought the help of Sahi kings dwelling be-
though functionally redundant (fig. 34). Thus, the for- yond the Indus) and at other times appear as marginal
mation of the Delhi sultanate and its successors effected ornaments, with the artists showing remarkable atten-
a major change in medium that had little effect on form, tion to details of dress and accoutrements; many of the
with the result that the horizontal format of Jain and qabāʾs are ornamented with cloud collars, a form of

Sinicizing ornament popularized during the Timurid transport of an Ashokan pillar from Topra to crown the
period. A Kalpasūtra and Kālakāchārya manuscript dat- pyramid adjoining the Friday Mosque of Firuz Shah
able to around 1475 and a copy of the Kālakāchārya- Tughluq’s capital, Firuzabad (figs. 10, 12). The original
katha manuscript from Patan dated 1501 show an manuscript was completed in 1371, presumably in Delhi.
unusual range of Sahi types engaged in a variety of ev- Although the only extant copy dates from 1002/1593-4,
eryday activities, including dancing, feasting, hunting, it is extensively illustrated with schematic paintings of
playing polo, practicing archery, and riding; they include each stage of the undertaking, paintings that have much
the familiar figure of the Sasanian ruler Bahram Gur, a in common with didactic or scientific paintings in four-
popular motif in Persianate painting and the portable teenth-century Mamluk manuscripts.141
arts.135 Curiously, this interest in genre scenes echoes Based on certain stylistic features, attempts have
the earliest extant Arab painting of the twelfth and thir- been made to group the extant sultanate painted manu-
teenth centuries, a development perhaps also sustained scripts into distinct groups, although there is little con-
by the emergence of a strong mercantile and middle sensus on the implications of these taxonomies for
class, as earlier in the central Islamic lands.136 questions of date or provenance.142 Some manuscripts
Some of the marginal ornaments in Jain manuscripts can be associated with the relevant regional courts such
from Gujarat and Jaunpur are similar to those found in as those in Gujarat under the Muzaffarid sultanate,
Bihari Qurʾans, raising the possibility of overlaps in pro- which remained a major center of production for Jain
duction.137 In addition, while depictions of Sahis in Jain paintings, among them a spectacular painted banner
manuscripts may be indebted to contemporary Persian- (yantra) produced in Ahmedabad in 1447 and the cele-
ate or sultanate painting, the latter also shows a clear brated painted scroll of the Vasantavilāsa (Spring
relationship to Jain painting, even if the implications of Sports) in the same city in 1451-2.143 The region of Jaun-
this for understanding patterns of patronage and the pur was also a center of Jain manuscript production, as
context of production are as yet poorly understood. This attested by an illustrated Kalpasūtra produced in Jaun-
relationship is perhaps most apparent in the “Jainesque” pur in 1465 by a Bengali Hindu, and an illustrated
Shāhnāma, a copy of the Persian epic produced in north Kāraṇḍavyūha produced in northern Bihar or Bengal a
India ca. 1425–50 in which familiar Persian scenes are decade earlier.144 The production of illustrated Islami-
“filtered through a Jain prism” (fig. 35).138 With folios cate manuscripts in Bengal is also documented; a partial
measuring 32 × 25 cm, the text of the Shāhnāma is writ- copy of Nizami’s Sikandarnāma made for the Hussain
ten in naskh, accompanied by sixty-six extant paintings, Shahi sultan Nusrat Shah in 938/1531-2 shows a clear
most in the form of narrow bands across the page, recall- debt to earlier Jalayirid and Timurid painting from Bagh-
ing the palm-leaf format. Many of the royal figures show dad, Herat, and Shiraz.145
clear similarities with the Sahis depicted in contempo- Similarly, the Khalji capital of Mandu in Malwa was a
rary Jain manuscripts. Although it has been suggested center for both Islamicate and Jain book production,
that the scribe was most likely a Muslim, there is no with an illustrated Kalpasūtra produced there in 1439,
reason to assume this.139 possibly by an artist better versed in Persianate than Jain
Despite uncertainties about dating and provenance, painting. In other cases, Persianate manuscripts were
based on colophons Bengal and Malwa can be identified illustrated by artists more conversant with the conven-
as centers of production for illustrated and illuminated tions of Jain painting.146 The extant Islamicate manu-
copies of Arabic and Persian profane books; Gujarat and scripts from Mandu were produced under the sultan
Jaunpur are suggested by circumstantial evidence. Odd- Ghiyath al-din Khalji (r. 1469–1500) and his son Nasir
ly, Delhi is not represented among provenanced exam- al-Din (r. 1500–1510). They include a lectionary, a copy of
ples, although Jain manuscripts were produced at Saʿdi’s Bustān and a Persian translation of a classic Ara-
nearby Yoginipura during the fourteenth and fifteenth bic work on automata by al-Jazari (d. 1206).147 Perhaps
centuries.140 However, circumstantial evidence for the the most remarkable is the Niʿmatnāma (Book of De-
production of illustrated Persian manuscripts in Delhi lights), an illustrated royal recipe book (ca. 1505). Show-
might be sought in an illustrated account of the riverine ing Ghiyath al-Din Khalji enjoying aphrodisiacs, rare

Fig. 35. Siyavush faces Afrasiyab across the Jihun River; folio from the “Jainesque” Shāhnāma. (Photo: Museum Rietberg,
Zurich)
drinks, freshly prepared food, and perfumes in a range ing a poisonous buttercup of the ranunculus family
of richly textured architectural and textile-adorned whose very presence is no less effective in averting the
spaces (fig. 36), the imagery perhaps evokes the idea of interest of insects. This talismanic function underlies its
kāma or sensory pleasure that was central to the perfor- appearance on Islamic manuscripts produced from
mance of Indic kingship, while also owing something to Anatolia to Ethiopia and Indonesia, further evidence for
Timurid and Turkmen painting traditions.148 A particu- the integration of Mandu into transregional traditions
larly interesting feature of the Niʿmatnāma manuscript of manuscript production.150
is the invocation yā kabīkaj (O kabikaj!), which appears The stylistic diversity of the Khalji manuscripts likely
on its opening folios.149 The term is variously under- reflects the variety of models and perhaps of artists
stood as invoking the jinn king of the cockroaches, working for the sultans of Malwa, who may have bene-
whose presence is believed to induce insects to avoid fited from an influx of artists after the fall of Jaunpur to
feasting on the organic materials of the book, or as nam- the Lodis in 1476. Most were written in naskh, but two

Fig. 36. Ghiyath al-Din Khalji supervises his cooks; Niʿmatnāma, Mandu, ca. 1505, image 14 × 13 cm. (Photo: © The British
Library Board, I.O Islamic 149, f.8v., detail)
make use of the nastaʿlīq script favored in the central Little is known of the ateliers and workshops in which
Islamic lands from the fourteenth century, anticipating such manuscripts were produced. Despite the likely ex-
later developments in Mughal manuscript produc- istence of court ateliers and a penchant for royal imag-
tion.151 Just as Persian ceramicists were imported to ery in many profane manuscripts, as with Qurʾans of the
decorate the monuments of Mandu, many of these show pre-Mughal period, it is not necessary to assume that all
a clear engagement with earlier developments in the sultanate manuscripts were produced in a courtly mi-
wider Islamic world. A copy of the Bustān of Saʿdi dated lieu. The overall impression is of court ateliers likely
908 (1502-3) is, for example, closely related to the supplemented by more informal modes of production.
Timurid manuscripts produced in Herat, while other Just as Hindu and Buddhist monasteries (maṭhas and
Mandu manuscripts show the impact of Shiraz, a major vihāras) seem to have functioned as sites of manuscript
center of Timurid and Turkmen book production.152 production in presultanate north India, so some of the

addition to suggestions of a Sufi milieu for the Gwalior

Qurʾan, one of the most popular illustrated story cycles
of the sultanate period, the Chandāyana, was written (in
the vernacular of Awadhi) by the Chishti Sufi Maulana
Da⁠ʾud in 1379 and dedicated (perhaps conventionally)
to the vizier of Firuz Shah Tughluq. A ripping yarn about
a tortured love triangle, the narrative of the Chandāyana
could also be read metaphorically as an edifying tale
about love, loss, and the search for ultimate union with
the true beloved. Five richly illustrated sultanate-era
copies of the text survive (fig. 37).154 Many of the images
in these manuscripts have text on the verso of the im-
ages, underlining an association with traditions of oral
storytelling. In this, and in their remarkably extensive
illustrations, they anticipate a monumental copy of the
Ḥamzanāma (adventures of the Prophet Muhammad’s
uncle), produced for Akbar around 1560, shortly after he
assumed the throne.155 The analogies are not fortuitous,
given that the traditions of north Indian painting repre-
sented by some of the surviving Chandāyana manu-
scripts were integral to the development of a Mughal
tradition of book illustration under the emperor Huma-
yun (r. 1530–10, 1555–56 ) and Akbar (r. 1556–1605).156
Conclusion
As this suggests, while the emergence of a hegemonic

Mughal center would eventually spell the end of the ar-
Fig. 37. Laurak in Chanda’s bed chamber; Chandayana, tistic heterogeneity associated with regional court cul-
north India or Mandu (?), early sixteenth century. (Photo: tures of the sultanate period, the advent of Mughal rule
©The University of Manchester, Hindustani MS 1, folio 160r) after the Lodi defeat at Panipat in 1526 did not necessar-
ily mark an immediate break or uniform change in the
nature of north Indian material culture, even at the
level of ruling elites. The century after the establishment
Qurʾan manuscripts discussed above were likely pro- of Mughal rule saw the decline of certain characteristic
duced in madrasas and mosques or even Sufi shrines: a sultanate cultural forms—the use of bīḥārī scripts, for
fourteenth-century North Indian Ḥanafi ḥisba manual example, or the related production of talismanic
specifically censures the activities of calligraphers and shirts—but it also saw continuities and innovations in
copyists (warrāq) in mosques.153 established forms of material culture.
The distinction between the production of sacred and In addition to Indic precedents, including sultanate
profane texts and manuscripts cannot be mapped onto painting, the early Mughal atelier also drew heavily on
a neat distinction between courtly and religious ambits, Persianate painting traditions, especially after the mi-
however. Both kinds of texts were, for example, asso gration of the Safavid masters ʿAbd al-Samad and Mir
ciated with the activities of north Indian Sufis, many of Sayyid ʿAli to India with the emperor Humayun.157 Sim-
whom had close associations with amirs and sultans. In ilarly, while early Mughal monuments such as the tomb

of Humayun (ca. 1570) follow Central Asian precedents, dition with little qualitative distinction between early
both in terms of scale and many formal qualities, they and late monuments. In this, his attitude contrasts with
also continue a tradition of exploiting the aesthetic and more ambivalent attitudes to the sultanate legacy man-
iconographic possibilities of red sandstone and white ifest in much modern scholarship.
marble that were a hallmark of imperial architecture of
the sultanate period.158 Equally, the use of glazed tiles in Institute of Fine Arts and Department of Art History,
Mughal monuments may be seen as importing Timurid Director of Silsila: Center for Material Histories, New York
and Uzbek techniques to north India, but it should also University
be understood against a background of glazed tile orna-
ment in north India that had made a tentative appear-
ance in Tughluq-era monuments and reached a Notes
crescendo in the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century
architecture of the Indus Valley, Delhi, and Malwa.159 Author’s note: This survey was originally commissioned by Rich-
ard Eaton and Ramya Sreenivasan for an edited volume. Unfor-
Whether one chooses to describe these phenomena tunately, its unanticipated length and need for heavy illustration
in terms of homology, hybridity, syncretism, or synthe- precluded publication in the context for which it was commis-
sis, the basic point is clear: in its engagement with both sioned. I am grateful to both colleagues for providing the impetus
regional and transregional artistic traditions, the early and for their forbearance, and to Gülru Necipoğlu for accepting
Mughal court followed a precedent well established in the final essay for publication in Muqarnas.
1. For welcome exceptions, see Francesca Orsini and Samira
sultanate art and architecture from at least the four- Sheikh, eds., After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in
teenth century. This is no less marked in the architec- Fifteenth-Century North India (New Delhi: Oxford Univer-
ture, manuscripts, and metalwork of the fifteenth sity Press, 2014); Aparna Kapadia, In Praise of Kings: Rajputs,
century, a period generally neglected by textual histori- Sultans and Poets in Fifteenth-Century Gujarat (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2018).
ans and historians of material culture alike. It has often 2. Jas. Burgess, On the Muhammadan Architecture of Bharoch,
been presented as a murky time of decline or transition Cambay, Dholka, Champanir, and Mahmudabad in Gujarat
between the floruit of the Delhi sultans and the advent (London: Wm. Griggs and Sons, 1896); Alka Patel, “From
of the Mughals, despite the high quality of the architec- Province to Sultanate: The Architecture of Gujarat dur-
ing the 12th through 16th Centuries,” in The Architecture
tural monuments surviving from the period and the in- of the Indian Sultanates, ed. Abha Narain Lambah and
creasing evidence for the flourishing of a vibrant Alka Patel (Mumbai: Marg, 2006), 68–79. For the historical
manuscript culture. background, see Samira Sheikh, Forging a Region: Sultans,
Responding to such condescension on the part of Traders, and Pilgrims in Gujarat, 1200–1500 (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2010).
modern scholarship, perhaps we should take our cue 3. Alois Anton Führer, The Sharqi Architecture of Jaunpur
from Babur, the Mughal conqueror of north India. In (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing Press,
April 1526, just days after defeating the last Lodi sultan, 1889); Anna J. Sloan, “The Atala Mosque: Between Polity
Babur embarked on a tour of the ancient mosques and and Culture in Medieval Jaunpur” (PhD diss., University
of Pennsylvania, 2001); Abha Narain Lambah, “The Sharqis
shrines of Delhi; in this he followed in the footsteps of of Jaunpur: Inheritors of the Tughluq Legacy,” in Lambah
Timur, who had toured the sultanate monuments of and Patel, Architecture of the Indian Sultanates, 42–55. On
Delhi after he conquered the city in 1398.160 Babur’s itin- the legacy of Sharqi architecture to that of the later Suri
erary included the shrine of the Chishti saint Nizam al- dynasty, see Catherine B. Asher, “The Mausoleum of Sher
Din Awliya (d. 1325), but it also included the Qutb Minar Shāh Sūrī,” Artibus Asiae 39,3–4 (1977): 273–98, at 288–92.
4. George Michell, ed., The Islamic Heritage of Bengal (Paris:
(1199 onward; fig. 7) and the tombs of sultans Balban (d. Unesco, 1984); Naseem A. Banerji, The Architecture of the
1287) and ʿAla⁠ʾ al-Din Khalji (d. 1316), and the Lodi sul- Adina Mosque in Pandua, India: Medieval Tradition and
tans Bahlul (d. 1489) and Sikandar (d. 1517) (fig. 17).161 In Innovation (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).
acknowledging his predecessors and the monuments 5. For a discussion, see Fatima Quraishi, “Necropolis as
Palimpsest: The Cemetery of Maklī in Sindh, Pakistan”
associated with their rule from the thirteenth through (PhD diss., New York University, 2019). For general surveys,
the early sixteenth century, Babur appears to have been see Ahmad Hasan Dani, Thatta: Islamic Architecture (Islam-
paying homage to over three centuries of sultanate tra- abad: Institute of Islamic History, Culture and Civilization,

1982); Yasmeen Lari and Suhail Zaheer Lari, The Jewel of Indian Ocean Rim, Late Thirteenth–Mid-Fifteenth Centu-
Sindh: Samma Monuments on Makli Hill (Karachi: Heri- ries,” Ars Orientalis 34 (2004): 99–133.
tage Foundation and Oxford University Press, 1997); Holly 16. Anthony Welch and Howard Crane, “The Tughluqs: Master
Edwards, Of Brick and Myth: The Genesis of Islamic Architec- Builders of the Delhi Sultanate,” Muqarnas 1 (1983): 123–66.
ture in the Indus Valley (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 17. Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H. Shokoohy, “The Tomb
2015); Kaleemullah Lashari, Epigraphy of Makli (Karachi: of Ghiyāth al-Dīn at Tughluqabad: Pisé Architecture of
Sindh Exploration and Adventure Society, 2018). Afghanistan Translated into Stone at Delhi,” in Cairo to
6. But see Tatsuro Yamamoto, Matsuo Ara, and Tokifusa Kabul: Afghan and Islamic Studies Presented to Ralph Pin-
Tsukinowa, Delhi: Architectural Remains of the Sultanate der-Wilson, ed. Warwick Ball and Leonard Harrow (London:
Period, vol. 3, Waterworks (Tokyo: University of Tokyo, Melisende, 2002), 207–21.
1968–70); K. K. Mohammed, “Ḥammāms (Baths) in Medie 18. Catherine B. Asher, “Delhi Walled: Changing Boundaries,”
val India,” Islamic Culture 62 (1988): 37–53; Julia A. B. Hege- in City Walls: The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective, ed.
wald, Water Architecture in South Asia: A Study of Types, James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Developments and Meanings (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 2000), 247–71; Jutta Jain-Neubauer, “The Many Delhis: Town
7. Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Cul- Planning and Architecture under the Tughluqs (1320–1413),”
ture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton: in Lambah and Patel, Architecture of the Indian Sultanates,
Princeton University Press, 2009), 160. 30–41.
8. Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H. Shokoohy, “The Indian 19. Flood, Objects of Translation, 177–78, 234–35. For a dis-
ʿīdgāh and Its Persian Prototype the namāzgāh or muṣallā,” cussion of the continued significance of these materials
in Sifting Sands, Reading Signs: Studies in Honour of Profes- in Mughal architecture, including their resonances with
sor Géza Fehérvári, ed. Patricia L. Baker and Barbara Brend shastric traditions, see Lisa Golombek and Ebba Koch, “The
(London: Furnace Publishing, 2006), 105–19. Mughals, Uzbeks, and the Timurid Legacy,” in Necipoğlu
9. Phillip B. Wagoner and John Henry Rice, “From Delhi to and Flood, A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture,
the Deccan: Newly Discovered Tughluq Monuments at 2:811–45, at 832.
20. Welch and Crane, “Master Builders,” 127.
Warangal-Sulṭānpūr and the Beginnings of Indo-Islamic
21. Ibid., 138.
Architecture in Southern India,” Artibus Asiae 61,1 (2001):
22. Ebba Koch, “The Copies of the Quṭb Mīnār,” Iran 29 (1991):
77–117.
95–108.
10. Flood, Objects of Translation, 148.
23. Lambourn, “Collection of Merits,” 133–36.
11. Rukshana J. Nanji, Mariners and Merchants: A Study of the 24. Anthony Welch, “Architectural Patronage and the Past:
Ceramics from Sanjan (Gujarat), BAR International Series The Tughluq Sultans of India,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 311–22;
2231 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011), 38–42. Finbarr B. Flood, “Pillars, Palimpsests and Princely Prac-
12. Mehrdad Shokoohy, Bhadreśvar, the Oldest Islamic Monu- tices: Translating the Past in Sultanate Delhi,” Res 43 (2003):
ments in India (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988); Alka Patel, Building 95–116. For the suggestion that such a pillar had already
Communities in Gujarat: Architecture and Society during the stood on a platform at the southeast corner of the earlier
Twelfth through Fourteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Friday Mosque of Tughluqabad, see Mehrdad Shokoohy
Elizabeth Lambourn, “Islam beyond Empires: Mosques and Natalie H. Shokoohy, “Tughluqabad, the Earliest Sur-
and Islamic Landscapes in India and the Indian Ocean,” viving Town of the Delhi Sultanate,” Bulletin of the School of
in A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, ed. Gülru Oriental and African Studies 57,3 (1994): 516–550, at 547–48.
Necipoğlu and Finbarr B. Flood, 2 vols. (New York: Wiley, 25. Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H. Shokoohy, Ḥiṣār-i
2017), 2:755–76. Fīrūza: Sultanate and Early Mughal Architecture in the Dis-
13. Elizabeth Lambourn, “India from Aden: Khuṭba and Mus- trict of Hisar, India (London: Araxus Books, 1988).
lim Urban Networks in Late Thirteenth-Century India,” 26. Will Kwiatkowski, “The David Collection Stele: A New
in Secondary Cities and Urban Networking in the Indian Source for Firuz Shah Tughluq’s Jajnagar Campaign,” Jour-
Ocean Realm, c. 1400–1800, ed. Kenneth R. Hall (Lanham, nal of the David Collection 3 (2010): 114–29, at 125. See also
MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 55–97; Elizabeth Lambourn, Anthony Welch, “A Medieval Center of Learning in India:
“Khuṭba and Muslim Networks in the Indian Ocean (Part The Hauz Khas Madrasa in Delhi,” Muqarnas 13 (1996):
II): Timurid and Ottoman engagements,” in The Growth 165–90, at 173–75.
of Non-Western Cities: Primary and Secondary Urban Net- 27. Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier,
working, c. 900–1900, ed. Kenneth R. Hall (Lanham, MD: 1204–1760 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califor-
Lexington Books, 2011), 131–58. nia Press, 1993), 42–47. On the Adina mosque, see Yolande
14. Elizabeth Lambourn, “‘A Collection of Merits…’: Architec- Crowe, “Reflections on the Adina Mosque at Pandua,” in
tural Influences in the Friday Mosque and Kazaruni Tomb Michell, Islamic Heritage of Bengal, 155–64, who also plau-
Complex at Cambay, Gujarat,” South Asian Studies 17 (2001): sibly relates the iwan to that of the early fourteenth-century
117–49. Friday Mosque built in Tabriz by Taj al-Din ʿAli Shah, vizier
15. Elizabeth Lambourn, “Carving and Communities: Marble of the Ilkhanid sultan Uljaytu; Banerji, Architecture of the
Carving for Muslim Patrons at Khambhāt and around the Adina Mosque.

28. Michael Brand, “The Khalji Complex in Shadiabad Mandu,” of Gold: Sikandar Lodī’s Mother (c. 837/1433–922/1516) and
(PhD diss., Harvard University, 1987), 258; Bernard O’Kane, the Tomb Attributed to Her at Dholpur, Rajasthan,” Bul-
“Monumentality in Mamluk and Mongol Art and Architec- letin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 81,1 (2018):
ture,” Art History 19,4 (1996): 499–522, at 500–501, 509–10. 83–102.
29. H. A. R. Gibb, trans., The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, A.D. 1325– 42. Simon Digby, “The Tomb of Buhlūl Lōdī,” Bulletin of the
1354, 3 vols. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1993), School of Oriental and African Studies 38,3 (1975): 550–61,
3:760. esp. 560–61.
30. Welch and Crane, “Master Builders,” 133–38; Maulvi Zafar 43. W. H. Siddiqi, “Découvertes des vestiges d’un jardin en ter-
Hasan, A Guide to Niz̤amu-d Dīn, Memoirs of the Archaeo- rasses tughluq à New Delhi,” Arts asiatiques 44 (1989): 21–24;
logical Survey of India No. 10 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Yves Porter, “Jardins pré-moghols,” Res orientales 3 (1991):
Government Printing Press, 1922), 35–37. 37–53 (= Jardins d’orient, ed. Rika Gyselen); Anthony Welch,
31. Welch and Crane, “Master Builders,” 133. “Gardens That Babur Did Not Like: Landscape, Water, and
32. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 3:655; Mehrdad Shokoohy and Architecture for the Sultans of Delhi,” in Mughal Gardens:
Natalie H. Shokoohy, Tughluqabad: A Paradigm for Indo- Sources, Places, Representations, and Prospects, ed. James
Islamic Urban Planning and Its Architectural Components L. Wescoat and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (Washing-
(London: Araxus Books, 2007), 24, 113–22, pl. 7.29. ton, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collec-
33. For the suggestion of a Gujarati origin for this feature, see tion, 1996), 59–94. This does not include abundant recent
Lambourn, “Collection of Merits,” 143. research on the gardens of the pre-Mughal Deccan.
34. Wagoner and Rice, “From Delhi to the Deccan,” 79–84. 44. Asher, “Mausoleum of Sher Shāh Sūrī.” Like many of its Lodi
35. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 3:660. predecessors, the tomb assumed an octagonal form.
36. Finbarr B. Flood, “Persianate Trends in Sultanate Architec- 45. On the mosque and palace, see Welch and Crane, “Master
ture: The Great Mosque of Bada’un,” in The Iconography Builders,” 130–32, 148–49. Porter and Castinel (“Jahanpa-
of Islamic Art: Studies in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand, ed. nah’s Jamiʿ Masjid”) seem to be the only scholars who have
Bernard O’Kane (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, noted this visual relationship. For Warangal, see Rice and
2005), 159–95, at 178–80; Yves Porter and Richard Castinel, Wagoner, “From Delhi to the Deccan,” 83, 111–12, fig. 29.
“Jahanpanah’s Jamiʿ Masjid (Circa 1343): A Reassessment,” Already in the early thirteenth century there is evidence
Muqarnas 35 (2018): 83–123; Yves Porter, “The Shahi ʿIdgah for the orchestration of framing views relating iconographi-
of 1312 at Rapri (Uttar Pradesh): A Landmark in Indian cally significant features within sultanate mosques: Flood,
Glazed Tiles,” Muqarnas 35 (2018): 281–91. Objects of Translation, 177, fig. 115.
37. Robert Hillenbrand, “Turco-Iranian Elements in the Medi- 46. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 3:758. See also the veneration of
eval Architecture of Pakistan: The Case of the Tomb of the Prophet Muhammad’s footprint in the dargāh (shrine)
Rukn-i ʿAlam at Multan,” Muqarnas 10 (1992): 148–74. established by Firuz Shah Tughluq, which anticipates a
38. Yves Porter, Painters, Paintings, and Books: An Essay on proliferation of such shrines in north India in the Mughal
Indo-Persian Technical Literature, 12–19th Centuries (New period: Anthony Welch, “The Shrine of the Holy Footprint
Delhi: Manohar, 1994), 139; Ishtiyaq Ahmad Zilli, trans., in Delhi,” Muqarnas 14 (1997): 166–78.
Tarikh-i Firoz Shahi (Delhi: Primus Books, 2015), 284. 47. Brand, “Khalji Complex in Shadiabad Mandu,” 132, 212–15;
39. Edwards, Of Brick and Myth, 151–53; Tanvir Hasan, “Ceram- H. G. Raverty, trans., Ṭabaḳāt-i-Nāṣirī: A General History of
ics of Sultanate India,” South Asian Studies 11 (1995): 83–106. the Muhammedan Dynasties of Asia, Including Hindustan, 2
40. Ghulam Yazdani, Mandū: The City of Joy (Oxford: Oxford vols. (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1970
University Press, 1929); Brand, “Khalji Complex in [1881]), 1:418.
Shadiabad Mandu,” 252–58; Yves Porter, “Décors émaillés 48. Jo Van Steenbergen, “Ritual, Politics, and the City in
dans l’architecture de pierre de l’Inde centrale: Les monu- Mamluk Cairo: The Bayna l-Qaṣrayn as a Mamluk ‘lieu de
ments islamiques de Mandu (15e–16e siècles),” Archéologie mémoire’, 1250–1382,” in Court Ceremonies and Rituals of
islamique 7 (1997): 121–46. Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean: Com-
41. While basic descriptions of the key monuments exist, parative Perspectives, ed. Alexander Beihammer, Stavroula
there is little attempt to analyze their context or extensive Constantinou, and Maria Parani (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 227–
inscriptions: Muhammad Siraju’l-Islam, “The Lodi Phase of 76, at 252.
Indo-Islamic Architecture (1451 to 1526 A.D.)” (PhD diss., 49. Finbarr B. Flood, “Islamic Identities and Islamic Art:
Freie Universität Berlin, 1960); Matsuo Ara, “The Lodhī Inscribing the Qurʾan in Twelfth-Century Afghanistan,” in
Rulers and the Construction of Tomb-Buildings in Delhi,” Dialogues in Art History, from Mesopotamian to Modern:
Acta Asiatica 43 (1982): 61–80; Subhash Parihar, “Tomb of Readings for a New Century, ed. Elizabeth Cropper (Wash-
Subhan: A Little-Known Monument of the Lodi Period,” ington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2009), 91–117; Flood,
Marg 52,3 (2001): 69–75; Sara Mondini, “Gardens of Death Objects of Translation, 94–96.
in Lodhi’s Delhi,” in Essays in Medieval Delhi, ed. Nirmal 50. Formerly in the Mahboubian Collection, London.
Kumar (New Delhi: Research India Press, 2015), 196–217; 51. Ralph Pinder-Wilson, “Stone Press-Moulds and Leather-
Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H. Shokoohy, “The Lady working in Khurasan,” in Science, Tools and Magic: Part

Two, Mundane Worlds, ed. Emilie Savage-Smith (London: 59. Moti Chandra, “Indian Costumes and Textiles from the
The Nour Foundation, 1997), 338–55, at 346–47, no. 215; Eighth to the Twelfth Century,” Journal of Indian Textile
Kjeld von Folsach, “Three Eastern Islamic Leather Wallets History 5 (1960): 1–22, at 10, 13–14, 18, 22; Flood, Objects of
and Three Related Stone Press-Moulds in the David Collec- Translation, 65–72.
tion,” in From Handaxe to Khan: Essays Presented to Peder 60. Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad Aflākī, Manāqib al-ʿārifīn, 2 vols.
Mortensen on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, ed. Kjeld (Ankara: Chāpkhānah-i Anjuman-i Tārīkh-i Turk, 1959–61),
von Folsach, Henrik Thrane, and Ingolf Thuesen (Aarhus: 1:257, 2:687, 808; Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad Aflākī, The Feats of
Aarhus University Press, 2004), 225–39. the Knowers of God (Manāqeb al-ʿarefīn), trans. John O’Kane
52. See, for example, Douglas Barrett, Islamic Metalwork in the (Brill: Leiden, 2002), 178, 476, 564.
British Museum (London: British Museum, 1949), x, xxii, 61. Michael Broome, A Survey of the Coinage of the Seljuqs of
figs. 9, 10; A. S. Melikian-Chirvani, “Studies in Hindustani Rūm (London: Royal Numismatic Society, 2011), 56–57. On
Metalwork, I: On Some Sultanate Stirrups,” in Art et société the Indian issues the horseman gallops to the left rather
dans le monde iranien, ed. C. Adle (Paris: Editions Recher- than to the right, which is the case on the Seljuq coins, but
che sur les civilisations 1982), 177–95; Toby Falk, Treasures both riders hold a mace in the right hand.
of Islam (Bristol: Artline Editions, 1985), 269, no. 266; Rachel 62. Flood, Objects of Translation, 102–4.
Ward, Islamic Metalwork (London: British Museum Press, 63. Ernst Herzfeld, Inscriptions et monuments d’Alep, 2 vols.,
1993), 72–73, fig. 53; Christie’s catalogue “Islamic Art and Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum Arabicarum,
Manuscripts” (Tuesday, 16 October 2001), 90, fig. 217. deuxième partie, Syrie du Nord (Cairo: Institut français
53. Ward, Islamic Metalwork, 74, 79; Finbarr B. Flood, “Gild- d’archéologie orientale, 1954–56), 1:255–60.
ing, Inlay and the Mobility of Metallurgy: A Case of Fraud 64. Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
in Medieval Kashmir,” in Metalwork and Material Culture University Press, 2006), 366–70, fig. 9.1; Cailah Marie Jack-
in the Islamic World: Art Craft and Text. Essays Presented son, “Patrons and Artists at the Crossroads: The Islamic Arts
to James W. Allan, ed. Venetia Porter and Mariam Rosser- of the Book in the Lands of Rūm, 1270s–1370s” (PhD diss.,
University of Oxford, 2017), passim.
Owen (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 131–42.
65. Al-Aflākī, Manāqib al-ʿārifīn, 1:91; al-Aflākī, Feats of the
54. Mark Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India
Knowers of God, 67.
(London: Alexandria Press, 1997), 32–36.
66. Finbarr B. Flood, “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Tax-
55. Robert G. Hoyland and Brian Gilmour, Medieval Islamic
onomy and the Eastern ‘Turks’,” Muqarnas 24 (2007):
Swords and Swordmaking: Kindi’s Treatise “On Swords and
79–115, at 96–98. See also Shokoohy and Shokoohy, “Tomb
Their Kinds” (Edition, Translation, and Commentary) (Lon- of Ghiyāth al-Dīn,” 214; Lambourn, “Collection of Merits,”
don: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2006), 94–96, 100, 164. 133.
56. James Allan and Brian Gilmour, Persian Steel: The Tanavoli 67. Lisa Golombek and Donald Wilber, The Timurid Architec-
Collection, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art XV (Oxford: Oxford ture of Iran and Turan, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
University Press, 2000), 113–15. sity Press, 1988), 1:259.
57. Rudolph Pfister, Les toiles imprimés de Fostat et l’Hindoustan 68. Chahryar Adle, “Un disque de fondation en céramique
(Paris: Les Éditions de l’art et d’histoire, 1938); Ruth Barnes, (Kâšân, 711/1312),” Journal asiatique 260,3–4 (1972): 277–93;
Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Col- Chahryar Adle, “Un diptyque de fondation en céramique
lection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Oxford: Oxford lustrée (Kâšân, 711/1312),” in Adle, Art et société, 277–97;
University Press, 1997). For the role of textiles in the transre- Oliver Watson, Persian Lustre Ware (London: Faber and
gional mediation of ornament, see Yolande Crowe, “Gujarat Faber, 1985), 146–47.
and Mamlūk Egypt: A Pattern Link,” in South Asian Archae- 69. Al-Aflākī, Manāqib al-ʿārifīn, 1:445; al-Aflākī, Feats of the
ology 1985: Papers from the Eighth International Conference Knowers of God, 306.
of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, ed. Karen 70. Welch, “Medieval Center of Learning,” 182; Finbarr B. Flood,
Frifelt and Per Sørensen (London: Curzon Press, 1989), 459– “Eclecticism and Regionalism: The Gwalior Qurʾan and the
64; Ruth Barnes, “The Painted Ceiling of the ʿAmiriyya. An Ghurid Legacy to Post-Mongol Art,” in Le coran de Gwalior:
Influence from Indian Textiles?,’ in The ʿAmiriya in Radaʿ: Polysémie d’un manuscript à peintures, ed. Éloïse Brac de la
The History and Restoration of a Sixteenth-Century Madrasa Perrière and Monique Burési (Paris: Éditions de Boccard,
in the Yemen, ed. Selma Al-Radi (Oxford: Oxford University 2016), 153–69, at 155, fig. 4.
Press, 1992), 139–47. See also Lambourn, “Carving and Com- 71. N. B. Roy, “The Victories of Sulṭān Fīrūz Shāh of Tughluq
munities,” 109. Dynasty (English Translation of Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī),”
58. Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik Islamic Culture 15 (1941): 449–64, at 460; Abdur Rashīd and
al-amṣār, vol. 1, L’Afrique, moins l’Égypte, trans. Gaudefroy M. A. Mokhdoomi, Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī (Aligarh: Aligarh
Demombynes (Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Muslim University, 1954), 14–15.
1927), 25. The presence of Indian textiles, mostly block- 72. H. K. Sherwani, “The Bahmanī Kingdom on Maḥmūd
printed cottons, is well documented in Ethiopia during the Gāwān’s Arrival at Bīdar,” Islamic Culture 14 (1940): 1–16,
seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. at 5.

73. Gibb, Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, 3:757–58. 86. As noted by Bernard O’Kane, The Appearance of Persian
74. Roy, “Victories of Sultān Fīrūz Shāh,” 458; Rashīd and Mokh- on Islamic Art (New York: Persian Heritage Foundation,
doomi, Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī, 14. Despite such assertions 2009), 103. But see Maulvi Muhammad Ashraf Hussain, A
of orthodoxy, the same sultan erected a celebrated if enig- Record of All the Quranic and Non-Historical Epigraphs on
matic monument next to the Great Mosque of his capital, the Protected Monuments in the Delhi Province (Calcutta:
Firuzabad, in which was incorporated an antique Buddhist Government of India Central Publication Branch, 1936).
pillar (figs. 10, 12 above) guarded at each of the four cor- 87. W. H. Siddiqi, “A Fourteenth Century Unique Inscription
ners of the monument by a single monumental stone lion: from Delhi, Describing the Physical Features of Prophet
Welch, “Architectural Patronage and the Past,” 317. Muhammad (P.B.H.),” Journal of the Pakistan Historical
75. See ʿAfif in H. M. Elliott and John Dowson, The History of Society 49,4 (2001): 81–87.
India as Told by Its Own Historians, 4 vols. (Delhi: Low Cost 88. Travis Zadeh, The Vernacular Qurʾan: Translation and the
Publications, 1990 [1867–77]), 3:363. Rise of Persian Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
76. Wheeler M. Thackston, A Century of Princes: Sources on 2012). A remarkable cotton shawl produced in Afghanistan
Timurid History and Art (Cambridge, MA: The Aga Khan (possibly Bamiyan) in the late twelfth or early thirteenth
Program in Islamic Architecture, 1989), 323–27. century is embroidered with a lengthy love poem written
77. Ellen S. Smart, “Fourteenth Century Chinese Porcelain exclusively in Persian, suggesting more extensive usage
from a Tughlaq Palace in Delhi,” Transactions of the Ori- in profane contexts: Giovanni Curatola, ed., Art from the
ental Ceramic Society 41 (1975–77): 199–230; B. R. Mani, “A Islamic Civilization: From the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait
Hoard of Chinese Blue and White Porcelain from Delhi,” (Milan: Skira, 2010), 98–99, no. 74.
in Studies in South Asian Heritage: Essays in Memory of M. 89. O’Kane, Appearance of Persian, 69–71.
Harunur Rashid, ed. Mokammal H. Bhuiyan (Dhaka: Bangla 90. See, for example, Samira Sheikh, “Languages of Public Piety:
Academy Dhaka, 2015), 195–97; Aprajita Sharma, “Inscrip- Bilingual Inscriptions from the Sultanate of Gujarat, c.
tions on Chinese Porcelain Finds in India,” Central India 1390–1538,” in Orsini and Sheikh, After Timur Left, 186–212.
Journal of Historical and Archaeological Research 1,4 (2012): 91. Sunil Kumar, “Assertions of Authority: A Study of the Dis-
98–102. cursive Statements of Two Sultans of Delhi,” in The Mak-
78. Basil Gray, “The Export of Chinese Porcelain to India,” in ing of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies,
Basil Gray, Studies in Chinese and Islamic Art, vol. 2, Islamic ed. Muzaffar Alam, Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye, and Marc
Art (London: Pindar Press, 1987), 67–91; John Guy, “China Gaborieau (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), 37–65.
in India: Porcelain Trade and Attitudes to Collecting in 92. Ghulam Yazdani, “Inscriptions in the Tomb of Baba Arjun
Early Islamic India,” in China and Southeast Asia: Historical Shah, Petlad,” Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1915–16), 15–18,
Interactions, ed. Geoff Wade and James K. Chin (London at 15–16; Lambourn, “Carving and Communities,” 115–16. On
and New York: Routledge, 2019), 44–84. sultanate-period epigraphers, see S. Farrukh and A. Jlali,
79. Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “A View from “Some Calligraphers of the Sultanate Period,” Aligarh Jour-
Mecca: Notes on Gujarat, the Red Sea, and the Ottomans, nal of Oriental Studies 1,2 (1984): 165–66.
1517–39/923–946 H.,” Modern Asian Studies 51,2 (2017): 268– 93. Mohammad Yusuf Siddiq, “Calligraphy and Islamic Culture:
318, at 296–97. Reflections on Some New Epigraphical Discoveries in Gaur
80. Asok Kumar Das, “Chinese Porcelain at the Mughal Court,” and Pandua, Two Early Capitals of Muslim Bengal,” Bulletin
Silk Road Art and Archaeology 2 (1991–92): 381–409. of the School of Oriental and African Studies 68,1 (2005):
81. Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze, 35, fig. 7. 21–58, at 32–34; Flood, Objects of Translation, 244–45.
82. Hasan, “Ceramics of Sultanate India,” 102. 94. Jeremiah P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India (London:
83. Saryu V. Doshi, “The Master of the Devasano Pado Kalpasu- The British Library, 1982), 55, no. 17; Claus-Peter Haase,
tra and Kalakacharya Katha,” in Masters of Indian Painting, ed., Sammlerglück: Islamische Kunst aus der Sammlung
1100–1650, ed. Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B. N. Edmund de Unger (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2007), nos. 18,
Goswamy (= vol. 48 of Artibus Asiae: Supplementum), 2 vols. 28–29; Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, 385; Éloïse Brac de la Per-
(Zurich: Artibus Asiae, 2011), 1:53–64, at 61. rière, L’art du livre dans l’Inde des sultanats (Paris: Presses
84. Yves Porter, “Lotus Flowers and Leaves, from China and de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008), 40–41. The earlier
Iran to the Indian Sultanates,” Brac de la Perrière and firmān is reportedly among the collections of the National
Burési, Le coran de Gwalior, 171–90. Museum of Pakistan in Karachi, and awaits publication.
85. Sally K. Church, “The Giraffe of Bengal: A Medieval Encoun- I am grateful to the director, Muhammad Shah Bukhari, for
ter in Ming China,” The Medieval History Journal 7,1 (2004): this information.
1–37. On maritime connections between China and South 95. Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni, eds., The Legacy of
Asia, see Tansen Sen, “The Formation of Chinese Maritime Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia,
Networks to Southern Asia, 1200–1450,” Journal of the Eco- 1256–1353 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002),
nomic and Social History of the Orient 49,4 (2006): 421–53. no. 68, fig. 47.

96. “Farmān” (H. Busse, U. Heyd, and P. Hardy), Encyclopaedia ogy of the Manuscript and of Its Decoration. A Preliminary
of Islam, Second Edition, ed. P. J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, Study,” in ibid., 57–84.
C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs, 12 vols., 105. See, for example, Mohammad Yusuf Siddiq, “An Epigraphi-
(Leiden: Brill, 1960–2004), 2:803–6. cal Journey to an Eastern Islamic Land,” Muqarnas 7 (1990):
97. See, for example, a patent issued in the name of the Mam- 83–108, at 93–94; Eaton, Rise of Islam and the Bengal Fron-
luk sultan Baybars in 665/1266, which measures 127.6 × 12.3 tier, 57; Brac de la Perrière, L’art du livre, 221–25; Brac de la
cm, small for such a Mamluk document: Christian Müller Perrière, “Du Caire à Mandu: La transmission des modèles
and Johannes Pahlitzsch, “Sultan Baybars I and the Geor- dans l’Inde des sultanats (XIIIe–XVIe s.),” Cahiers de Studia
gians: In the Light of New Documents Related to the Mon- Iranica 40 (2009): 333–58. See also n. 141 below.
astery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem,” Arabica 51,3 (2004): 106. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, 386–88; Flood, “Eclecticism and
258–90, at 261. Regionalism.”
98. Up until the reign of Firuz Shah Tughluq (d. 1388), the 107. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, 387–88; Brac de la Perrière,
sources make frequent reference to patents and insignia “Manuscripts in Bihari Calligraphy,” 81.
being dispatched to the Delhi sultans and their contem- 108. For a diachronic survey, see Brac de la Perrière, “Prisme
poraries in other parts of the subcontinent. Blain H. Auer, indien”.
Symbols of Authority in Medieval Islam: History, Religion 109. These connections are currently being studied by Sana
and Muslim Legitimacy in the Delhi Sultanate (London: I.B. Mirza, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, as part
Tauris, 2012), 107–17. In the following century, the Ottoman of her doctoral dissertation, “An African Scriptorium:
sultan Mehmed II sent a firmān to the Bahmanid court of The Qurʾans of Harar and Their Global Milieu.”
the Deccan, while the Bahmanid vizier Mahmud Gawan 110. Sabrina Alilouche and Ghazaleh Esmailpour Qouchani,
frequently requested firmāns from the rulers of the cen- “Les gloses marginales et le fālnāma du coran de Gwalior:
tral Islamic lands: Maḥmūd Gāwān, Riyāḍ al-inshāʾ, ed. G. Témoignages des usages multiples du coran dans l’Inde
Yazdani and C. B. Hussain (Hyderabad: Sarkār-i ʿAlī, 1948), des sultanats,” in Brac de la Perrière and Burési, Le coran de
372–76, 393–98, letters nos. 133, 144. Gwalior, 85–112; Brac de la Perrière, “Prisme indien,” 126–42.
99. Éloïse Brac de la Perrière, “Bihârî et naskhî-dîwânî: 111. Éloïse Brac de la Perrière, “Les tuniques talismaniques in
Remarques sur deux calligraphies de l’Inde des sultanats,” diennes d’époque pré-moghole et moghole à la lumière
Studia Islamica 96 (2003): 81–93. d’un groupe de corans en écriture bihārī,” Journal asiatique
100. Siddiq, “Calligraphy and Islamic Culture,” 29, pl. 10. 297,1 (2009): 57–81.
101. David James, “India in the Age of Bihari,” in After Timur: 112. Sotheby’s catalogue, Arts of the Islamic World, 15 October
Qurans of the 15th and 16th Centuries, ed. David James, The 1998, lot 15. For a lead figurine of the eleventh or twelfth
Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, vol. 3 (London: century from either al-Andalus or Khurasan, said to be
Azimuth Editions, 1992), 101–8. The most extensive study wearing an inscribed talismanic shirt, see Bashir Mohamed,
is that of Éloïse Brac de la Perrière, “Prisme indien: Recher- ed., The Arts of the Muslim Knight: The Furusiyya Art Foun-
ches sur les corans en écriture bihari des origins à nos jours,” dation Collection (Milan: Skira, 2008), no. 287.
Dossier d’Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches, Aix-Mar- 113. The David Collection, Copenhagen, Inv. no. 25/2004:
seille Université, Septembre 2015. <https://www.davidmus.dk/en/collections/islamic/materi
102. See, for example, Esra Akın-Kıvanç, ed. and trans., Mustafa als/calligraphy/art/25-2004>.
ʿÂli’s Epic Deeds of Artists: A Critical Edition of the Earliest 114. Losty, Art of the Book in India (London: The British Library,
Ottoman Text about the Calligraphers and Painters of the 1982), 57, no. 21; Elaine Wright, “An Indian Qurʾan and Its
Islamic World (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 175–76. 14th-Century Shiraz Model,” Oriental Art 42,4 (1996/7): 8–12.
103. First mentioned by M. Abdullah Chaghatai, the Qurʾan’s The suggestion of a Gujarati origin for the manuscript is
existence in the Kabul Museum has been doubted until especially relevant in view of the well-documented connec-
recent research by Éloïse Brac de la Perrière documented tions (including the transfer of manuscripts) between the
its existence: Éloïse Brac de la Perrière, “Manuscripts in Muzaffarid sultans of Gujarat and the Ottoman sultanate
Bihari Calligraphy: Preliminary Remarks on a Little-Known in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: Alam and
Corpus,” Muqarnas 33 (2016): 63–90, at 79. Subrahmanyam, “View from Mecca,” 289. See nn. 129, 130
104. Éloïse Brac de la Perrière, Frantz Chaigne, and Mathilde below.
Cruvelier, “The Qurʾan of Gwalior, Kaleidoscope of the Arts 115. Simon Rettig, “A ‘Timurid-Like Response’ to the Qurʾan of
of the Book,” in Treasures of the Aga Khan Museum: Arts of Gwalior? Manuscript W563 at the Walters Art Museum,
the Book and Calligraphy, ed. Margaret S. Graves and Benoît Baltimore,” in Brac de la Perrière and Burési, Le coran de
Junod (Geneva : Aga Khan Trust for Culture, 2010), 114–23 ; Gwalior, 191–206.
Frantz Chaigne and Mathilde Cruvelier, “The Ornamen- 116. Brac de la Perrière, “Prisme indien,” 144–60.
tation of the Gwalior Qurʾan,” in Brac de la Perrière and 117. Sotheby’s, Catalogue of Fine Oriental Miniatures and Manu-
Burési, Le coran de Gwalior, 17–56; Nourane Ben Azzouna scripts, Monday, 17th July and Tuesday, 18th July, 1978, no.
and Patricia Roger-Puyo, “The Gwalior Qurʾan: Archaeol- 110. I am grateful to Sana Mirza for this reference.

118. N.M. 1957.1033: Hidayat Ullah Siddiqui, Qurʾan Manuscripts, Fifteenth-Century Persian Painting: Problems and Issues
a Catalogue (Karachi: National Museum of Karachi, 1982), (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 63.
no. 16. I am grateful to the director of the National Museum 129. Guy Burak, “Between Istanbul and Gujarat: Descriptions of
of Pakistan in Karachi, Muhammad Shah Bukhari, for mak- Mecca in the Sixteenth-Century Indian Ocean,” Muqarnas
ing the manuscript available to me during a visit in January 34 (2017): 287–320, at 308.
2017. 130. Rachel Milstein, “Futuh-i Haramayn: Sixteenth-Century
119. During his victories in Malwa in the 1130s, for example, the Illustrations of the Hajj Route,” in Mamluks and Ottomans:
Solanki ruler Jaisimha (r. 1093–1142) is said to have seized Studies in Honour of Michael Winter, ed. David J. Wasser-
the contents of the royal library at Ujjain. Similarly, a poetic stein and Ami Ayalon (London: Routledge, 2006), 166–94.
anthology, illuminated around 1400 for Mubarak Shah, the 131. Shams-i Sirāj ʿAfīf, Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, ed. Maulvi Vilayat
Sharqi sultan of Jaunpur, was likely seized and taken as Husain (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1891), 374–75, transla-
booty by the Lodis to Delhi, where it was in 935/1529: Doshi, tion adapted from Simon Digby, “The Literary Evidence for
“Master of the Devasano Pado Kalpasutra,” 55; Losty, Art of Painting in the Delhi Sultanate,” Bulletin of the American
the Book in India, 56, no. 19. Academy of Benares 1 (1967): 47–58, at 53. See also B. N.
120. Fakhr al-Dīn Mubārakshāh, Ādāb al-ḥarb wa’l-shujāʿa, ed. Goswamy, “In the Sultan’s Shadow: Pre-Mughal Painting
Aḥmad Suhaylī Khwānsārī (Tehran: Eqbāl, 1346sh/1967), in and around Delhi,” in Delhi through the Ages: Essays in
147. Urban History, Culture and Society, ed. R. E. Frykenberg
121. Rettig, “Timurid-Like Response,” 203. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), 129–42, at 133. The
122. Maḥmūd Gāwān, Riyāḍ al-inshāʾ, 125–29, no. 32; M. A. idea of a relationship between wall-paintings and the affec-
Nayeem, “Foreign Cultural Influences of the Bahmanis tive dimensions of certain kinds of spaces finds antecedents
(1461–81 A.D.),” Studies in the Foreign Relations of India, ed. in both Islamic and Indic traditions. Firuz Shah Tughluq’s
P. M. Joshi and M. A. Nayeem (Hyderabad: Government promotion of vegetal imagery over figuration anticipates
of Andhra Pradesh, 1975), 391–404, at 397–98; Gilles Vein- the palace decoration of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan
stein, “Commercial Relations between India and the Otto- (r. 1628–58), who appears to have rejected the figural scenes
man Empire (Late Fifteenth to Late Eighteenth Centuries): favored by his father, Jahangir: Ebba Koch, Mughal Art and
A Few Notes and Hypotheses,” in Merchants, Companies Imperial Ideology: Collected Essays (New Delhi: Oxford Uni-
and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Period, ed. versity Press, 2001), 37.
Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morinea (New York: Cam- 132. Porter, Painters, Paintings, and Books, 128–32.
bridge University Press, 1999), 95–115. 133. John Guy, “Indian Painting from 1100 to 1500,” in Beach,
123. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī, Kitāb al-wāfī bi’l- Fischer, and Goswamy, Masters of Indian Painting, 15–28,
wafayāt, 32 vols. (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1931–93), 3:173. at 16–21.
For reports of an antique manuscript sent from the Abbasid 134. Ibid., 25.
caliph in Cairo to the Tughluq sultan, see Khaliq Ahmad 135. Karl J. Khandalavala and Moti Chandra, New Documents of
Nizami, Religion and Politics in India during the Thirteenth Indian Painting: A Reappraisal (Bombay: Prince of Wales
Century (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 350. Museum, 1969), 30–40, pl. 7a–f; Saryu Doshi, “Islamic Ele-
124. For an overview of Shirazi connections in sultanate paint- ments in Jain Manuscript Illustration,” in An Age of Splen-
ing, see Brac de la Perrière, L’art du livre, 226–30. For book dour: Islamic Art in India, ed. Karl Khandalavala (Mumbai:
production in contemporary Shiraz, see Elaine Wright, The Marg Publications, 1983), 114–21, at 117–18, figs. 4–8; Saryu
Look of the Book: Manuscript Production in Shiraz, 1303–1452 Doshi, “Sahi Figures in Jain Painting: The Widening Con-
(Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institu- text,” in Indian Painting: Essays in Honour of Karl J. Khan-
tion, 2012). dalavala, ed. B. N. Goswamy and Usha Bhatia (New Delhi:
125. Losty, Art of the Book in India, 57, no. 21; Wright, “Indian Lalit Kalā Akademi, 1995), 128–43; Doshi, “Master of the
Qurʾan.” Devasano Pado Kalpasutra,” 59–62.
126. O’Kane, Appearance of Persian, 82; A. S. Melikian-Chirvani, 136. Doshi, “Master of the Devasano Pado Kalpasutra,” 62 for
“Le royaume de Salomon: Les inscriptions persanes des the fascinating suggestion that both unrelated phenomena
sites Achéménides,” Le monde iranien et l’islam 1 (1971): 1–41. might be parallel effects of the rising power of a mercantile
See n. 145 below. or middle class.
127. Brac de la Perrière, L’art du livre, 232–45; Nalini Balbir, 137. Brac de la Perrière, L’art du livre, 232–45; Balbir, “Kalpasūtras
“Kalpasūtras et Corans: Réflexions sur l’écriture et la pein- et Corans.”
ture de manuscrits jaina du Gujarat aux XIVe–XVIe siècles,” 138. Guy, “Indian Painting from 1100 to 1500,” 26.
in Brac de la Perrière and Burési, Le coran de Gwalior, 127– 139. B. N. Goswamy, A Jainesque Sultanate Shahnama and the
38. Context of Pre-Mughal Painting in India (Zurich: Museum
128. Although it has sometimes been assumed that the use of Rietberg, 1988); B. N. Goswamy, “The Master of the Jain-
a similar red ground in the sultanate paintings of India esque Sultanate Shahnama,” in Beach, Fischer, and Gos-
derives from Shirazi prototypes: Basil William Robinson, wamy, Masters of Indian Painting, 41–52.

140. For a convenient summary of the evidence, see Brac de la 151. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, 392.
Perrière, L’art du livre; Éloïse Brac de la Perrière, “The Art 152. Brac de la Perrière, L’art du livre, 225–32.
of the Book in India under the Sultanates,” in Orsini and 153. Muḥammad ibn ʿAwaḍ Sanāmī, Niṣāb al-iḥtisāb, ed.
Samira Sheikh, After Timur Left, 301–38, at 334–38. See also Murayzin Saʿīd Murayzin ʿAsīrī (Mecca: Maktabat al-Ṭālib
Goswamy, “In the Sultan’s Shadows,” 137. al-Jāmiʿī, 1986), 163. See also Flood, “Eclecticism and
141. J. A. Page, A Memoir on Kotla Firoz Shah, Delhi, Memoirs of Regionalism,” 164.
the Archaeological Survey of India, no. 52. (Delhi: Manager 154. The most extensive study is that of Qamar Adamjee, “Strat-
of Publications, 1937), 33–42. For rare color images of the egies for Visual Narration in the Illustrated Chandayan
illustrations in the manuscript, see Imtiaz Ahmad, “Rein- Manuscripts” (PhD diss., New York University, 2011); Qamar
stallation of an Ashokan Pillar,” Kriti Rakshana 4–5 (April Adamjee, “Artistic Agency in Painted Narratives: The Case
2009–March 2010): 5–7. See also the likely Mamluk con- of the Chandayan Manuscripts,” in A Magic World: New
nections of a copy of ʿAjāʾib al-ṣanāʾīʿ, the Persian transla- Visions of Indian Painting, ed. Molly Emma Aitken (Mum-
tion of al-Jazari’s work on automata produced in Mandu in bai: Marg, 2016), 116–29.
914/1509: Brac de la Perrière, “Art of the Book,” 314, no. 28. 155. John William Seyller, Ebba Koch, and Wheeler M. Thack
142. See, for example, Robinson, Fifteenth-Century Persian Paint- ston, The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in
ing, 61–75; Losty, Art of the Book, 40–41; Brac de la Perrière, Mughal India (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Smith-
L’art du livre; Brac de la Perrière, “Art of the Book in India.” sonian Institution, 2002). For a fifteenth-century illustrated
143. Nachiket Chanchani, “Telling Tales: The Freer Vasanta copy of the Ḥamzanāma from north India, see Losty, Art of
Vilāsa,” Artibus Asiae 72, no. 1 (2012): 123–40. the Book, 63, no. 33. The folios of the Mughal manuscript
144. Karl Khandalavala and Moti Chandra, “An Illustrated were not bound and were backed on stiffened cotton, a
Kalpasūtra Painted at Jaunpur in AD 1465,” Lalit Kala 12 medium used earlier for some western Indian painted ban-
(1962): 9–15; Moti Chandra, “A Pair of Painted Wooden ners and scrolls.
Covers of the Kāraṇḍavyūha Manuscript Dated A.D. 1455 156. John Seyller, “Overpainting in the Cleveland Ṭūṭīnāma,” Arti-
from Eastern India,” Chhavi: Golden Jubilee Volume, ed. A. bus Asiae 52 (1992): 283–318; Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, “The
Krishna (Banaras: Banaras Hindu University, 1972), 240–42. Chandayana and Early Mughal Painting,” in Themes, His-
145. Robert Skelton, “The Iskandar Nama of Nusrat Shah,” in tories, Interpretations: Indian Painting. Essays in Honour
Indian Painting: Mughal and Rajput and a Sultanate Manu- of B. N. Goswamy, ed. Mahesh Sharma and Padma Kaimal
script (London: P. & D. Colnaghi, 1978), 133–52; Losty, Art (Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2013), 105–24.
of the Book, 68–69, no. 44. 157. Priscilla P. Soucek, “Persian Artists in Mughal India: Influ-
146. Losty, Art of the Book, 45, 47, nos. 28, 33. ences and Transformations,” Muqarnas 4 (1987): 166–81.
147. Ibid., 42. See also Barbara Brend, Perspectives on Persian 158. For a recent evaluation of the debt to both traditions, see
Painting: Illustrations to Amīr Khusrau’s Khamsah (London: Golombek and Koch, “Mughals, Uzbeks, and the Timurid
RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 73–100. Legacy.”
148. Robert Skelton, “The Niʿmat nama: A Landmark in Malwa 159. Maninder Singh Gill, “Glazed Tiles from Lodhi and Mughal
Painting,” Marg 12, no. 3 (1959): 44–50, at 44–48. Northern India: A Technological Appraisal” (PhD diss., Uni-
149. Norah M. Titley, trans., The Niʿmatnāma Manuscript of the versity College London, 2015).
Sultans of Mandu: The Sultan’s Book of Delights (New York: 160. Henry Miers Elliot, History of India, in Nine Volumes, vol. 5,
Routledge, 2012), xii. For the text of folio 8v (= my fig. 36), The Mohammedan Period as Described by Its Own Historians
see ibid., p. 6. (New York: Cosimo Books, 2008 [1907]), 220.
150. Emilie Savage-Smith, “Introduction,” in Magic and Divi- 161. Babur, Babur Nama: Journal of Emperor Babur, trans. Anette
nation in Early Islam, ed. Emilie Savage-Smith (Aldershot Susannah Beveridge (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006),
2004), xiii–xliv, at xxv; Adam Gacek, “The Use of ‘kabīkaj’ 263–64.
in Arabic Manuscripts,” Manuscripts of the Middle East 1
(1986): 49–53.
Abstract tecture anticipate a feature often seen as characteristic of

early Mughal art and architecture.
This article presents an overview of the current state of knowl-
edge regarding the material culture of north India under the
Delhi sultans and the regional sultanates that emerged in Keywords
Bengal, Gujarat, Jaunpur, and Malwa during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. Highlighting lacunae in existing Architecture – calligraphy – Delhi – Ghurid – Gujarat – Jain
scholarship, it also draws attention to material and textual – painting – Mandu – mosque – Shiraz – Sultanate – textiles
sources that underline the strong transregional filiations of – Tughluq
Sultanate art and architecture. It suggests that negotiations
between regional artistic forms and styles and those that
reflect transregional connections in Sultanate art and archi-


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Before the Mughals: Material Culture of Sultanate North India 1

Finbarr Barry Flood

Before the Mughals: Material Culture of Sultanate

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/22118993-00361P02

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­ ropylons, whose tapering profiles continue a charac-

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chant for urbanism that was to be a hallmark of many

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Fig. 9. Prayer-hall façade of the Friday Mosque, Cambay,

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the sultan’s new foundations; the lat at Fatehabad in the

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Fig. 15. Jahanpanah Mosque, Delhi, ca. 1340, blue-glazed lo-

ceramic elements. Used tentatively at first, these are

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Persian rubāʿī and ghazal poems. Some of these are by

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such as standards sent from Baghdad and (after 1261)

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box bearing the name of the same sultan.49 A pair of

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Fig. 24. Dukhang, Alchi, ca. 1200, detail of a royal rider wear-

inscribed armbands (ṭirāz) bearing pseudo-Arabic in-

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Fig. 26. Tomb of Firuz Shah Tughluq, Hauz Khas, Delhi, ca.

while underlying how deeply embedded the sultanates

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in Sanskrit and Arabic or Persian; some funerary inscrip-

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692/1293 in the name of the Ilkhanid ruler of Iran,

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muḥaqqaq script consisting of three lines a page, an ar-

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textiles and other goods. In one of his letters, the cordial

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addition to suggestions of a Sufi milieu for the Gwalior

As this suggests, while the emergence of a hegemonic

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ropylons, whose tapering profiles continue a charac-