DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27192#0249
INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. Book VII.
2 14
looks like an afterthought, and the production of an unpractised
hand working in an unfamiliar style. Wherever and whenever
miners were afterwards introduced, preparations for them were
always made from the foundations, and their lines are always
carried down to the ground, in some shape or other, as in true
art they ought to be. This solecism, if it may be so called,
evidently arose from the architects being Hindus, unfamiliar
with the style; and to this also is due the fact that all the
arches are constructed on the horizontal principle. There is
not a true arch in the place; but, owing to their having the
command of larger stones than were available at Delhi, the
arches are not here crippled, as they were there before the
repairs.
It is neither, however, its dimensions nor design that makes
this screen one of the most remarkable architectural objects in
India, but the mode in which it is decorated. Nothing can
exceed the taste with which the Kufi and Tughra inscriptions
are interwoven with the more purely architectural decorations,
or the manner in which they give life and variety to the whole,
without ever interfering with the constructive lines of the design.
As before remarked, as examples of surface-decoration, these
two mosques of Altamsh at Delhi and Ajmir are probably
unrivalled. Nothing in Cairo or in Persia is so exquisite in
detail, and nothing in Spain or Syria can approach them for
beauty of surface-decoration. Besides this, they are unique.
Nowhere else would it be possible to find Muhammadan large-
ness of conception, combined with Hindu delicacy of ornamenta-
tion, carried out to the same extent and in the same manner.
If to this we add their historical value as the first mosques
erected in India, and their ethnographic importance as bringing
out the leading characteristics of the two races in so distinct and
marked a manner, there are certainly no two buildings in India
that better deserve the protecting care of Government; the one
has received its fair share of attention ; the other has, till quite
lately, been most shamefully neglected, and most barbarously
ill-treated.1
Later Pathan Style.
After the death of ’Alau-d-Din (a.d. 1316) a change seems
to have come over the spirit of the architects of the succeeding
Tughlaq Shahi and Sayyid dynasties, and all their subsequent
buildings, down to the time of the Afghan Sher Shah, A.D.
1 Owing to the Muhammadan part being
better built and with larger materials, the
mosque is not in the same ruinous condi-
tion as that at the Qutb was before the
repairs of some thirty-five years ago.
There is, so far as I can judge, no building
in India more worthy of the attention of
Government than this.
2 14
looks like an afterthought, and the production of an unpractised
hand working in an unfamiliar style. Wherever and whenever
miners were afterwards introduced, preparations for them were
always made from the foundations, and their lines are always
carried down to the ground, in some shape or other, as in true
art they ought to be. This solecism, if it may be so called,
evidently arose from the architects being Hindus, unfamiliar
with the style; and to this also is due the fact that all the
arches are constructed on the horizontal principle. There is
not a true arch in the place; but, owing to their having the
command of larger stones than were available at Delhi, the
arches are not here crippled, as they were there before the
repairs.
It is neither, however, its dimensions nor design that makes
this screen one of the most remarkable architectural objects in
India, but the mode in which it is decorated. Nothing can
exceed the taste with which the Kufi and Tughra inscriptions
are interwoven with the more purely architectural decorations,
or the manner in which they give life and variety to the whole,
without ever interfering with the constructive lines of the design.
As before remarked, as examples of surface-decoration, these
two mosques of Altamsh at Delhi and Ajmir are probably
unrivalled. Nothing in Cairo or in Persia is so exquisite in
detail, and nothing in Spain or Syria can approach them for
beauty of surface-decoration. Besides this, they are unique.
Nowhere else would it be possible to find Muhammadan large-
ness of conception, combined with Hindu delicacy of ornamenta-
tion, carried out to the same extent and in the same manner.
If to this we add their historical value as the first mosques
erected in India, and their ethnographic importance as bringing
out the leading characteristics of the two races in so distinct and
marked a manner, there are certainly no two buildings in India
that better deserve the protecting care of Government; the one
has received its fair share of attention ; the other has, till quite
lately, been most shamefully neglected, and most barbarously
ill-treated.1
Later Pathan Style.
After the death of ’Alau-d-Din (a.d. 1316) a change seems
to have come over the spirit of the architects of the succeeding
Tughlaq Shahi and Sayyid dynasties, and all their subsequent
buildings, down to the time of the Afghan Sher Shah, A.D.
1 Owing to the Muhammadan part being
better built and with larger materials, the
mosque is not in the same ruinous condi-
tion as that at the Qutb was before the
repairs of some thirty-five years ago.
There is, so far as I can judge, no building
in India more worthy of the attention of
Government than this.