The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.55

v3.c30.s1.55

Bīdar, where from the reign of Ahmad Shāh Valī onwards the story of Deccan architecture continues to unfold itself, boasts, like Gulbarga, of two separate groups of royal tombs: one of the later Bahmanī kings, the other of the Barīd Shāhīs. The former are twelve in number and generally similar to their predecessors at Gulbarga, though their scale is larger, their domes loftier and more bulbous and their façades adorned with a greater multiplicity of arched recesses or screened windows. The finest of them is the tomb of Ahmad Shāh Valī, the interior of which is adorned with brilliantly coloured paintings in the Persian style and enriched with bands of Kūfic, *Tughrā* and *Naskh* inscriptions worked out in letters of gold on a ground of deep blue or vermilion. This Persianising tendency which continued to gather strength during the fifteenth century found further expression during the reign of the next king ‘Alā-ud-dīn Shāh, in the *Chānd Mīnār* at Daulatābād, the whole design of which is characteristically Iranian, as well as in the tomb of the same emperor, the façade of which is covered with a veneer of enamel tiles in various shades of blue. But of all the monuments of this period built in the Persian style the most remarkable is the *Madrasa* or College erected at Bīdar in 1472 by Mahmūd Gāwān, the minister of Muhammad Shāh III. This building, which resembled, so it is said, the College of Ulugh Beg at Samarqand was of imposing appearance. Three storeys in height with towering minarets at its two front corners, it covered an area of 205 feet by 180. In it were a mosque, library, lecture halls, professors' quarters and students' cubicles, ranged about an open courtyard, a hundred feet this way and that. The mosque and library were to the front of the building on either side of the entrance; the lofty lecture rooms (which rose to the full height of the three storeys) in the middle of the other sides; and the professors' rooms in the corners—all planned for convenience and comfort and amply provided with light and air. In form the corner towers resembled somewhat the *Chānd Mīnār* at Daulatābād, but unlike that minar they were emblazoned, as was also the whole of the front façade between them with a glittering surface of encaustic tilework, which with its chevron patterning and deep bold bands of sacred texts would challenge comparison with anything of its kind in Persia. But with all its elegance of outline, its unimpeachable proportions, and refined details, there is little or no feeling in Mahmūd Gāwān's college for plastic form and mass, or for the values of contrasted light and shade. The architect has visualised his subject, as the architects of Eastern Persia habitually did, in two rather than in three dimensions, and has sought to achieve beauty by a glistening display of enamel, helped out by symmetry of outline and a nicely adjusted balance of parts. For sheer loveliness of colour the result could hardly be bettered; but divest the building of its superficial ornament and little is left save a mathematically correct, tame, and highly stylised fabric. To the reign of Muhammad Shāh III there probably belongs also the *Solā Khamb* Mosque in the Bīdar Fort, and near by it an interesting group of palace buildings including the Gagan, Tarkash, Chīnī and Nagīna Mahals. Shorn of all ornament, modernised and converted to baser uses as record office, court and jail, these palace buildings are impressive even in their decay, and with their spacious halls, their water courses and cascades, still awaken echoes of their former splendour. The mosque, too, despite its fallen domes and crumbling masonry, is a good example¹ of the Bahmanī style as illustrated in the royal tombs of Gulbarga and Bīdar—a style which is imposing but never pretentious, solemn in its simplicity but never austere.