A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c21.125

c21.125

Bidar comes up from the time of Ahmad Shah Wali (1422-35). Here are two separate groups of tombs, one of later Bāhmani kings and the other of Barid Shahi. The former number twelve and resemble the Gulbarga tombs 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 that of Ahmad himself which has its interior decorated with brilliantly coloured paintings in the Persian style and bands of Kufic and other inscriptions worked out in letters of gold on a ground of deep blue or vermillion. Persianization is carried further in the Chand Minar at Daulatabad of the time of Ala-ud-din Ahmad Shah (1436-58), and in the tomb of that emperor, of which the façade is covered with enamel tiles in various shades of blue. But the Madrasa of Gawan in Bidar (1472) is the most remarkable building in the Persian style (Pl. XX). Three storeys in height with towering minarets at its two front corners, it covers an area of 205 feet by 180 feet. ‘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.’ The corner towers are like the Chand Minar in form and the whole front façade between them was emblazoned with a glittering surface of encaustic tile work, ‘which with its chevron patterning and deep bold bands of sacred texts, would challenge comparison with anything of its kind in Persia’.