The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.13.5

v3.c30.s1.13.5

The low flanking wings on either side with their pseudo-arched fronts are unusual adjuncts, but the other features of the façade—its shapely expansive arches, its engaged minars blended more harmoniously than in the foregoing example with the rest of the design, its carved mouldings and string courses and battlements—all these are familiar characteristics of the Gujarātī style. The same is true also of the interior with its 260 graceful columns, now emerging into an established architectural order, its narrow aisles, its clerestory galleries, its symmetrically arranged domes built on the Hindu corbel system, its traceried windows and its rich arabesques. Most of these features are derived from the old pre-Muslim school, and all are repeated time and again in subsequent buildings, though seldom with better effect than here. The mode of lighting and ventilating the interior, which was an invention of the Gujarāt architects, is a specially happy solution of a well-known problem but one, strangely enough, that has never found favour in other parts of India. It consists in carrying the upper roof well beyond the one below it, the overlapping portion being supported on dwarf columns and the outside of the gallery thus formed being closed with perforated screens, the advantage of this arrangement being that all the light and air required can be admitted, while the direct rays of the sun and the rain are effectually excluded.