The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.60

v3.c30.s1.60

A less pretentious but, in its own way, no less pleasing specimen of the wooden style is the mosque of Shāh Hamadān in Srīnagar. Unlike the *Jāmi‘ Masjid*, which is partly of timber, partly of brick and stone, this mosque is built exclusively of timber, and instead of being planned on the usual orthodox lines, consists of nothing more than a single square hall, thus affording an interesting and instructive parallel with some of the pre-Mughul mosques of Bengal, which, as we have already seen, were all but indistinguishable from contemporary tombs. The qualities that distinguish these two mosques—the qualities of dignified simplicity and spaciousness on the one hand; of grace of line and natural artistry on the other—are far from being peculiar to the Kashmīr school. They are qualities that were common at this epoch to the whole body of Indo-Islamic monuments, and are as conspicuous among those of Delhi as among those of Mālwa, Gujarāt and the Deccan, or wherever else Muslim genius came to resuscitate and enrich the older work of the Hindus. Vary as they might in individual expression, the local schools of Islamic architecture one and all derived their lineage from a common parentage and betray in their lineaments a family likeness that is unmistakable. In the case of Kashmīr this family likeness is specially significant; for differently conditioned as the Kashmīr architecture was, fashioned out of dissimilar materials and cast in a mould unlike that of any other school, it would hardly have been surprising if its development had proceeded on radically different lines. That it did not do so; that it exhibits, on the contrary, precisely the same fusion of Hindu and Muslim ideals, the same happy blend of elegance and strength, is eloquent testimony to the enduring vitality of Hindu art under an alien rule and to the wonderful capacity of the Muslim for absorbing that art into his own and endowing it with a new and grander spirit.