The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.58

Language: English

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Finally, there remains the remote valley at Kashmīr. When, in the fourteenth century, the Muhammadans entered into possession of this highland valley, they found there a legacy of many fine buildings left by their predecessors, some of stone, but the vast majority of wood, which has always been the principal building material in these well-wooded tracts of the Himālayas. The stone buildings, however,—imposing structures of peculiarly classic stamp—belonged to a bygone age, and the art of the stone-mason had been too long forgotten for the Muhammadans to revive it. True, they did convert a few of the stone temples of the unbelievers into mosques and tombs for themselves, but this they did merely by using such of the old architectural members as they could, and completing the rest of the structure in rubble or brick. One such reconstructed temple is the tomb of Mandanī, with mosque adjacent, which bears an inscription recording its erection in the year 1444—in the reign of Zain-ul-‘Ābidīn; but the remarkable tile decoration on its eastern face, for which this tomb is celebrated, belongs not, as is generally supposed, to the original edifice, but to a later restoration of the Mughal period. Another monument of Zain-ul-‘Ābidīn’s reign (1420–70) is the tomb of his mother, the wife of Sikandar Butshikan.

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In this case the builders left the enclosure wall and gateways of the desecrated temple much as they had found them, but of the temple itself they kept only the plinth, and on it erected an entirely new superstructure of brick and plaster, embellished here and there with glazed bricks. In style this tomb is typically Saracenic, if not purely Persian; nor is there anything in its design (nor indeed, in the design of any other brick or stone building of this period) to indicate that the old stone architecture of the Hindus exerted any appreciable influence upon it, beyond contributing some of the materials for their building. Far different is it with the wooden architecture of this epoch. Unfortunately, owing to their perishable nature, none of the old Hindu structures of wood have survived to the present day: but there can be no question that from time immemorial, wood had been, and under the Muhammadans still continued to be, the chief building material of the Kashmīrīs. Even in the reign of Akbar stone-masons had to be imported into Kashmīr to build the fort of Harī Parbat;

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and two generations later wood was still, according to Bernier, preferred to stone 'on account of its cheapness and the facility with which it could be brought from the mountains by means of so many small rivers.' Although, however, in the matter of this wooden architecture the Muhammadans carried on the established tradition of the valley and adopted the architectural style of their predecessors, they were by no means content to perpetuate that style unchanged. They did in Kashmīr what they did everywhere else in India. They made the indigenous style the basis of their own; but they gave it a new complexion by grafting on to it the structural forms and decorative motifs peculiarly associated with Islam, and—which was more important—they gave it a breadth and spaciousness that could hardly have been dreamt of by the older Hindu builders. Of the style as we find it in the Muslim period, the most telling characteristic is the treatment of the roof. Boldly projecting eaves, carried on several tiers of carved and overlapping brackets, and enriched with pendant drops at their corners; sheets of growing irises or tulips covering the gently inclined roof; and crowning all a tall and graceful steeple—these are the features that first arrest the eye and give peculiar distinction to the mosques and tombs of Srīnagar. They are not, however, the only distinctive features; for the well-finished timber work of the walls with its pleasing diaper of headers and stretchers;

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the magnificent pillars of deodar in the larger halls, and the delicate openwork traceries of window screens and balustrades, skilfully put together out of innumerable small pieces of wood, all help to enhance the charm and accentuate the stylishness of this architecture. As a protection against the heavy rain and snows of Kashmīr, the use of birch bark nailed in multiple layers above the roofs and overspread, in turn, with turf and flowers could hardly have been improved upon; and the planting of irises and tulips on the roofs was a singularly happy inspiration, not only because of their own intrinsic beauty, but because their tenacious roots gave added strength to the fabric of the roof covering. For the rest, however, it must be confessed that the construction of these buildings leaves much to be desired. The Muslim builder knew no more than the Hindu about trusses or struts or other devices familiar to the modern architect, and when there was an unusually large area to be roofed, the best he could do was to insert intermediate pillars for the support of the ceiling with ponderous piers of logs above the pillars to carry the sloping roof—as extravagant and cumbersome an arrangement as could well be imagined, and one which inevitably led to the premature collapse of the overweighted structure.