A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c18.27

c18.27

At the close of the fourteenth century many provinces broke away from the suzerainty of the Sultans of Delhi, and set up as independent kingdoms. Among such mushroom states one of the most notable was that known as the Sharkī, or Eastern Sultanate, with its capital at Jaunpur, forty miles from Benares. Its independence lasted until 1476. During its short period of glory the local sovereigns occupied themselves by destroying Hindu temples and replacing them by mosques designed on a grand scale, and in a distinctive style. The handsomest of the Jaunpur mosques is the Atāla, completed in 1408, of which the main portal is shown in Plate XCIII. The gateways and great halls are thoroughly Muslim, with radiating arches and true domes, but in the cloisters and interior galleries, where there was no need to roof large spaces, square pillars, often borrowed from Hindu temples, are used, and the construction is Hindu. The style, while it has much of the massiveness of the Tughlak buildings at Delhi, is less severe and more attractive, a curious hybrid of Muslim and Hindu.