The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.21

Language: English

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Taken all in all, Māndū¹ is of all the fortress cities of India the most magnificent. The plateau on which it stands—an outlying spur of the Vindhyās—rises a thousand feet and more above the plains of Narbadā, its sides steeply scarped and broken by wild chasmal ravines. Crowning its edges and extending over a length of more than 25 miles are battlemented walls of grey basalt, pierced at ten points by arched and vaulted gateways, or rather series of gateways, which guard the steep approaches. Within the walls is a broad expanse of rolling jungle, sparse on the hills, deep and dense in the valleys, interrupted by smiling lakes or dark pools. Pīpal and banyan and teak mingle their shade with the dark *khirnī* and the brilliant 'flame of the forest'; and outstanding among them all are the gaunt misshapen baobab¹ trees which centuries ago the Abyssinian guards of the Mālwa kings probably introduced from Africa. Such is the natural setting amid which the splendid monuments of the Mālwa kings are placed and to which they seem as it were to give solemnity by their own intrinsic beauty. Once the whole plateau within the walls was covered with buildings either of the Muhammadans or of the Paramāras who had occupied Māndū before them. But the vast majority—shops and houses and all small civic structures—are now levelled with the ground; the only ones that have survived the ravages of time and the devastating jungle being the royal palaces or mosques or tombs.

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Of these the oldest is the mosque of Dilāwar Khān Ghūrī (1401–05), the founder of the Mālwa dynasty. Like the *Lāṭ Masjid* in Dhār, which was erected by the same king, it is chiefly interesting for the many members—pillars and architraves and carved ceilings—stripped from Hindu temples and for the manner in which they are turned to account. Dilāwar Khān himself first established his capital at Dhār, the small fort of which had been built, so it is said, by Muhammad Tughluq, but realising the imperative need of larger and stronger defences, he lost no time in transferring it to Māndū. Hūshang, his son, known also as Alp Khān, to whom the task of fortifying the new city was entrusted, seems to have had ideas of building at once as sound and as lordly as his contemporary Ahmad Shāh I of Gujarāt. It was Hūshang who planned and began the magnificent *Jāmi‘ Masjid* afterwards to be finished by Mahmūd Khaljī; it was he probably who built the remarkable Darbār hall now known as the *Hindolā Mahall*, and it was he, too, who was doubtless responsible for the vast scale of the fortifications. Whether these works are the offspring of his own or of his architect’s imagination is not known. Whosesoever they were, they do unbounded credit to their author.

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The style on which they were modelled was the robust and massive style of the early Tughluqs, but among all the monuments at Delhi of that period there is not one that can equal the impressive grandeur of the *Hindolā Mahall* or the *Jāmi‘ Masjid* at Māndū. The former of these two buildings is unique of its kind. Its plan is T-shaped, the stem of the T forming the Darbār hall, and the cross a group of smaller apartments in two storeys intended for the Zanāna and furnished wherever necessary with lattice screens. In length the *Mahall* measures 160 feet, in width nearly 100 feet, and the reader may judge from the illustrations of it what a noble effect is produced from without by its plain battering walls, well proportioned archways, bracketed dripstone and oriel windows¹, and what an equally noble effect is produced within by its wide spanned arches, slightly ogee in form, which supported the wooden and concrete roof². Though there is no reason for supposing that this *Mahall* was ever meant for defensive purposes, it is not fanciful to see in its massive strength a reflection of the disturbed and insecure conditions which then prevailed in Mālwa, with warfare incessantly in the air and enemies threatening the kingdom on every side. The *Jāmi‘ Masjid* is almost as simple as but less vehement in style than the *Hindolā Mahall*. All the ornamental adjuncts that it possesses are intrinsically good in themselves and worthy of the places they occupy;

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but they are wholly subordinate to the structural unity of the fabric, and might, indeed, be stripped away without greatly impairing its majesty³. Like many of its predecessors at Delhi, the *masjid* is raised on a lofty plinth, fronted at ground level with ranges of arcaded chambers. From east to west it measures 288 feet, from north to south some 20 feet less, but projecting from the middle of the eastern side is an imposing entrance porch with ascending steps which adds another 100 feet and more in this direction, while outside the northern wall are two other entrance porches of smaller dimensions. The interior court—a square of 162 feet—is bounded on all four sides by eleven arched bays, each identical in form with its neighbour and each surmounted by a similar small dome, but there is this difference between the four sides that while the eastern *dālān* has only two aisles, the northern and southern have three and the prayer chamber on the west five. The prayer chamber, moreover, is further distinguished from the other sides by the presence of three large domes, one in the centre covering the principal mihrāb and *mimbar*, and one over each of the royal galleries which occupy the rear corners. Compared with Ahmad Shāh's Great Mosque at Ahmadābād, with which it was contemporary, the *Jāmi‘ Masjid* of Māndū is lacking in poetry and creative inspiration. It is too cold and formal and calculated to take rank among the really great architectural creations of India.

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On the other hand it is far from being open to the charge of dull monotony in the sense in which the Ādīna *Masjid* at Pāndua is open to that charge. Even within its courtyard, the heroical simplicity of its arcades, its spaciousness and perspicuity of detail produce an effect not of barren vacuity like the Ādīna *Masjid* but of impressive solemnity; and if we contemplate the exterior with its arcaded façade, and harmoniously proportioned porticos aglow with weathering tints of pink and orange, it is impossible not to feel the eloquence of its forceful, silent appeal.