The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.13.2

v3.c30.s1.13.2

Fortunately for the future of this school the annexation of Gujarāt took place at the very moment when the Imperial architecture of Delhi had reached its highest expression under ‘Alā-ud-dīn Khaljī, and the builders who came from Delhi to the new province must have been deeply imbued with the spirit of that architecture; indeed it is more than likely that some of them had personally participated in the building of the splendid structures erected by ‘Alā-ud-dīn at the *Dargāh* of Nizām-ud-dīn and the Qutb. This point which has hitherto escaped notice, had an intimate bearing on the subsequent development of the Gujarāt school. It meant that the sense for symmetry and proportion and the almost faultless taste which had characterised Khaljī architecture became, from the outset, the key-notes of the Gujarāt style also. The effect of this influence from Delhi is well evidenced in the noble façade of the *Jāmi‘ Masjid* at Cambay, which was erected as early as 1325, i.e. within fifteen or twenty years of the Jamā‘at Khāna at Nizām-ud-dīn; and it is also evident a little later (1333) in the mosque of Hilāl (or Buhlūl) Khān Qāzī at Dholka, which in spite of its insignificant minarets and other shortcomings, is imbued nevertheless with the same breadth of conception and purity of taste.