The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.7.2

v3.c30.7.2

Hence at Delhi they quickly began to assert their own individuality and allowed Hindu craftsmanship only a very limited play. At Jaunpur, on the other hand, and in the Deccan, the local styles enjoyed greater ascendancy, while in Bengal the conquerors not only adopted the established fashion of building in brick, but adorned their structures with chiselled and moulded enrichments frankly imitated from Hindu prototypes. So, too, in Western India they appropriated to themselves almost *en bloc* the beautiful Gujarātī style, which had yielded some of the finest buildings of mediaeval India; and in Kashmīr they did the same with the striking wooden architecture which must long have been prevalent in that part of the Himālayas. But much as Muhammadan architecture owed to these older schools, it owed much also to the Muhammadans themselves; for it was they who, in every case, endowed it with breadth and spaciousness and enriched it with new beauties of form and colour. Before their advent, concrete had been little used in India, and mortar scarcely ever; by the Muhammadans these materials were employed as freely as by the Romans and became two of the most important factors of construction. Thanks to the strength of their binding properties it was possible for the Muslim builders to span wide spaces with their arches, to roof immense areas with their domes and in other ways to achieve effects of grandeur such as the Indians had never dreamt of.