The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.8.1

v3.c30.8.1

Of the many and various groups into which the Islamic monuments of India are divided, that of Delhi occupies the central and pre-eminent place; for it was at Delhi that the Muhammadans erected their first splendid memorials, and it was at Delhi that there afterwards arose a succession of buildings extending over the whole six centuries of their rule. But before approaching Delhi we must cast back for a moment to the older Muslim kingdoms of Sind and Afghānistān and see what contribution, if any, they made to the development of Islamic art in India. With the Arabs, who in the beginning of the eighth century possessed themselves of Sind, our concern is small. Like other Semitic peoples they showed but little natural instinct for architecture or the formative arts. Though the Caliphs retained Sind for more than a century and a half and though Muslim rule endured there until the close of the tenth century, the sole surviving relics of it are the foundations of some small mosques unearthed a few years ago in the buried city of Mansūra¹, which, so far as can be judged from their remains, possessed no artistic merit. But if the Arabs were a negligible factor, it was far otherwise with the Ghaznavids of Afghānistān, who overran Northern India in the first quarter of the eleventh century. At that time Persia occupied an all-important place in the world of Islamic art.