Twilight of the Sultanate c16.s1.63

c16.s1.63

About the architecture of Gujarat, Fergusson remarks: "Of the various forms which the saracenic architecture assumed in India, that of Ahmadabad may probably be considered as the most elegant, as it certainly is the most characteristic of all. No other form is so essentially Indian."³⁹ For long Gujarat had been a bulwark of Jainism and it contained a considerable number of big and beautiful Jain and Hindu temples. Even after its conquest by 'Alāuddīn Khaljī in A. D. 1299, the Chalukyan style of architecture continued to persist. When Muzaffar Shāh, a converted Rajput of the Tank clan,⁴⁰ and the governor of Gujarat, declared his independence there was, as it were, conversion of Rajput government into Muslim, of Rajput architecture into Muslim. In A. D. 1411 his grandson Ahmad Shāh, moved his capital to Karnavati, which was then renamed Ahmadabad,⁴¹ and he and his successors decorated Ahmadabad and other towns for the next two centuries.