The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.58.3

v3.c30.s1.58.3

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;