The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.49

Language: English

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To the period between 1294 when ‘Alā-ud-dīn Khaljī invaded the country, and 1347, when Bahman established the Bahmanī dynasty, only two monuments can with confidence be ascribed, namely the *Jāmi‘ Masjid* at Daulatābād (circ. 1315) and the Deval Mosque at Bodhan of Muhammad Tughluq’s reign (1325–51). Neither of these structures, however, was anything more than an adaptation of a Hindu shrine, slightly altered to suit the new exigencies, and neither of them, therefore, has any real bearing on the history of local Islamic architecture. During this provincial period, however, much sound work must have been put by the Muhammadans into the fortification of strongholds such as Devagiri (Daulatābād) which they had wrested from the Hindus. Unfortunately, the military architecture of the Deccan has attracted little or no attention from archaeologists, and the data at present available are insufficient to enable us to discriminate with confidence between successive periods of building or to determine which parts are attributable to the Hindu founders, which to the provincial governors from Delhi and which to the Bahmanī, Qutb Shāhī or other dynasties that followed them.

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In the case of Daulatābād, however, there can be no doubt that though some of its defences were devised by the Yādavas and others by the Bahmanīs or their successors, some also were the work of Muhammad Tughluq at the time (1339) when he transferred the population of Delhi to Daulatābād, and constituting, as this city does, one of the most striking examples of fortification known to the mediaeval world, it rightly deserves special notice. Its inner citadel stands on an isolated conical rock 600 feet in height, with sides scarped sheer for 150 feet and a moat hewn out of the living rock at their base. The only entrance is through a devious tunnel which in times of siege was rendered impassable by an ingenious contrivance. At a bend in the tunnel which came near to the outer edge of the rock was a small chamber provided with a flue pierced through the thickness of the wall and fitted, in addition, with a staging of iron plates. On these plates a charcoal fire was lit which, fanned by the wind blowing incessantly through the flue, would quickly fill the tunnel with its fumes and make any ingress impossible. Round about this almost impregnable acropolis, which, be it added, possesses its own perennial springs of water, was a highly complex system of fortifications designed to protect the city.

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The outer wall has a perimeter of 2¾ miles and between it and the acropolis are three inner walls, each loopholed and battlemented and each furnished with fortified gateways, outworks and bastions, all so disposed that with the help of salient and re-entrant angles the maximum of fire could be directed against an assailant; in addition to which the outer wall is surrounded by a moat and glacis in much the same manner as the mediaeval fortresses of Europe. In the military architecture of Northern India—even including that of the Mughuls—there is nothing at all comparable for strength and ingenuity to these elaborate defences of Daulatābād. The Bahmanīs, indeed, who were largely responsible for them, seem to have done more for military engineering than any of their contemporaries, though it was left, it is true, to their successors in the following century to make the radical changes in military architecture which the introduction of artillery rendered necessary. Threatened as they constantly were by powerful enemies on every side—by the Rājas of Vijayanagar, Telingāna and Orissa, by the Gonds, and by the Sultans of Khāndesh, Mālwa and Gujarāt, the Bahmanīs were compelled to safeguard themselves by multiplying the number and increasing the strength of their fortresses.

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On the north, the *taraf* of Berar was defended by its capital Ellichpur as well as by the two strongholds of Gāwīlgarh and Narnāla, the former of which was built and the latter extensively repaired by Ahmad Shāh Walī I between the years 1425–28. Māhūr, in the modern district of Adilābād, served to keep in check the highland chiefs of the Sātpuras and the wild tribes beyond the Wardha. On the west, besides Daulatābād, there were the powerful fortresses of Parenda, Naldrug and Panhāla and, a little farther south, the capital Gulbarga itself. Nearer the centre of their dominions stood Bīdar to which the capital was subsequently transferred; and, towards the east, Warangal and Golconda; while in the south-west corner, watching the ever-dangerous Vijayanagar border, were Mudgal and Rāichūr. Some of these fortresses (and there are many more of lesser note that might be added to their number) had been taken over from the conquered Hindu states but so transformed by the Muhammadans as to retain little of their original character. Such were Rāichūr built in 1294 by Gore Gungāya Ruddivāru; Mudgal, once the seat of local Yādava governors; Warangal, Gulbarga and Bīdar captured by Muhammad bin Tughluq, and Golconda ceded to Muhammad Shāh I in 1364. Some, again, stood in the open; others like Māhūr and Naldrug, were built on precipitous rocks or among the hills, and relied as much on their natural as on their artificial defences.

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Of those, like Daulatābād, which possessed an elaborate system of fortification, the most remarkable perhaps and second only to Daulatābād itself, are Bīdar and Parenda¹. The former was mainly constructed by Ahmad Shāh I in 1426-31, at the time when it supplanted Gulbarga as the Bahmanī capital. Its walls, which are some 50 feet in height and 3 miles in circumference, are furnished with battlements, bastions and outworks—all very solidly constructed, and are further protected by a triple ditch (75 feet wide and 45 feet deep) hewn out of the solid rock. The Parenda Fort is traditionally attributed to Mahmūd Gāwān, but whether the tradition has any basis in fact is questionable. Though relatively small in area, its defences are singularly efficient. They comprise an inner and outer wall separated by a covered passage, a moat from 80 to 110 feet in width, a second and broader covered passage outside the counterscarp and a glacis which rises to the height of the faussebraye. The outer or scarp wall is strengthened by 22 bastions and, like the inner, provided with loopholes, battlements and projecting galleries. The only entrance was by way of a drawbridge and gateway at the north-west corner, and thence through a narrow and devious vaulted passage to a second gateway defended by traverses and redoubts.

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Anyone familiar with the military architecture of mediaeval Europe will perceive at once the close resemblances between it and the system of fortification described above, which is followed not only in these but in many other Deccan forts of the period. So striking, indeed, are these resemblances that there can be no doubt but that the works in the Deccan were directly imitated from the European, and, though nothing is known of the engineers responsible for this imitation, it may be assumed that men well capable of planning such fortifications would not be difficult to find among the Turkish and other foreign mercenaries in the armies of the Bahmanī Sultans and their successors, by whom these fortresses were largely added to and improved. This adoption of western principles of military engineering must not, however, be taken to imply that western influence also accounts for the architectural style of these forts. With a few notable exceptions, that style belongs essentially to the Deccan. It is a style which combines sincerity of purpose with an innate sense for the decorative.

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The Indian builders of these forts grasped what was required and designed their structures accordingly, not slavishly following established precedent nor matching one feature meticulously against another as the later Moghul builders did, but setting each where it was needed, making it of such size and strength as was required, and giving to the whole that touch of beauty that comes naturally and instinctively to the artists of Southern India¹. It is this quality of simple purposefulness in their architecture that gave to these fortresses of the Deccan much of their romantic charm—a charm which was denied to many a building in which beauty was more consciously aimed at. What this particular charm signified can perhaps best be appreciated by comparing, for example, the dignified but unpretentious gateway of Golconda (Fig. 90) with the highly ornate and conventionally laboured Mahākālī gateway of the Narnāla Fort erected in 1486 during the reign of Shihāb-ud-dīn Mahmūd Shāh and manifestly inspired by the contemporary Lodī architecture of Delhi.