Architecture in India During the Sultanate Period

by

Saarthak Singh

• LAST MODIFIED: 20 March 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920105-0190

Introduction

For more than three centuries, Delhi served as the seat of five successive Muslim regimes in a composite empire known as the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1556) and remained a reference point for its successor states across the Indian subcontinent (c. 1350–1550). Before the centralized rule of the Mughal Empire, architecture flourished at multiple centers of patronage in the sultanates of Bengal, Delhi, Deccan, Jaunpur, Kashmir, Khandesh, Gujarat, Malwa, and Sindh, as well as in the non-Muslim kingdoms of Gwalior, Mewar, and Vijayanagara. While stone was the privileged medium of durable construction in India, carved brick was widely used in the regional architecture of the Indus and Gangetic valleys from Sindh to Bengal, often with stucco and glazed tile ornament. Large congregational mosques (jamiʾ) with domes, arches, and epigraphic bands were erected as lasting monuments of sultanate rule, but the building of smaller trabeate halls of worship (masjid) was no less inventive in accommodating Islam to the charged urban landscape of temple Hinduism. Funerary monuments for rulers, nobles, and saints in the form of domed mausoleums (rawza, dargah) and graves with inscribed cenotaphs (qabr, taʾwidh) were built in increasing numbers as popular places of pilgrimage (ziyarat), enriching established networks of shrine visitation that continue to this day. Aside from religious monuments, royal palaces (qasr), castles (hisar), fortresses (qalʿa), towns (qasba), and cities (shahr) highlight the importance of fortification to the evolving forms of urbanism. Hydraulic architecture was particularly well developed in the monsoon climate of India, and patronage of monuments for water storage furnished with steps and pavilions on deep wells (baʾoli) and surface reservoirs (talab) continued as part of larger public and private complexes. Architectural practice was also engaged in the appropriation of building sites, the reuse and emulation of antique carving, and the restoration of past monuments, including temples. New building types, spaces, and ornamentation were adapted, absorbed, and reinvented within the repertoire of stonemasons trained in stereotomic traditions that continued to be theorized in Sanskrit architectural treatises (vāstuśāstra). Architecture of the Sultanate period thus displays a rich diversity of deeply rooted regional traditions that were combined in astonishing ways with those of Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia, and Turkey. Moving beyond narrow typologies, this bibliography highlights key themes in the architectural history of the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, and identifies essential readings on developments in the Delhi Sultanate and various regions of the Indian subcontinent. It excludes the period of the later Deccan Sultanates, namely Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Bidar, and Berar, which arose with the fall of the Bahmani kingdom (1347–1527) and alongside the Mughal Empire (1526–1857), bringing us into very different forms of architectural patronage.

General Overviews

The architectural history of the Sultanate period has been surveyed in a number of books, either subsumed within the whole sweep of South Asian history or rather narrowly conceived in the framework of Indo-Islamic architecture. The best introduction for the general reader that overcomes the persistent divide between “Indian” and “Islamic” architecture, while situating key developments within a nuanced cultural history is Asher and Talbot 2006. A detailed survey of Islamic architectural styles was taken up in Brown 1968, whose tripartite framework of imperial Delhi, provincial, and Mughal styles is continued, even if somewhat refined, in Alfieri 2000, Merklinger 2005, and Porter 2009. An important shift in focus toward considering the Delhi Sultanate within the broader range of Indian sultanates is represented by the essays in Lambah and Patel 2006. The most reliable and insightful reference work on Islamic architectural forms and sites is Burton-Page 2008, which draws attention to nuances of terminology and building form. The Islamic architecture of the Deccan has received extensive coverage in the last decades, the most recent magisterial survey being Michell and Philon 2018. A concise overview of Sultanate architecture in Flood 2019 highlights key historiographic trends and new lines of inquiry in the pre-Mughal architecture of northern India. Additionally, there are several open-access online resources, notably the digital archive of Tokyo University’s Institute of Oriental Culture, the ARCHNET database of Islamic architecture and Urbanism by the Aga Khan Program at MIT and Harvard , and the MAP Academy website on the art history of South Asia with accessibly written entries, glossaries and courses.

• Alfieri, Bianca Maria. Islamic Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent. Edited by Federico Borromeo. London: Laurence King, 2000.

  A reliable and handsomely illustrated survey of Islamic architecture from the eighth to eighteenth centuries, including the Indian sultanates.

• Asher, Catherine B., and Cynthia Talbot. India before Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

  DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511808586

  The best available overview of architecture and cultural history of the Indian subcontinent during the twelfth through sixteenth centuries, covered in chapters 2 to 5.

• Brown, Percy. Indian Architecture: The Islamic Period. 5th ed. Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons, 1968.

  The standard reference work on the Islamic architecture of India, with reconstruction drawings of many of the monuments.

• Burton-Page, John. Indian Islamic Architecture: Forms and Typologies, Sites and Monuments. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2008.

  DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004163393.i-258

  A concise and authoritative survey of Islamic architectural forms and monuments across thirty-two cities, together with a glossary of Indian architectural terms, published posthumously by George Michell.

• Flood, Finbarr Barry. “Before the Mughals: Material Culture of Pre-Mughal North India.” Muqarnas 36 (2019): 1–40.

  DOI: 10.1163/22118993-00361P02

  A synthetic overview highlighting general trends in the history and historiography of pre-Mughal material culture of North India in relation to architecture.

• Khan, Ahmad Nabi. Islamic Architecture in South Asia: Pakistan, India, Bangladesh. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2003.

  A sweeping survey of Islamic monuments in South Asia over more than a millennium, with a useful account of the carved brick buildings in Pakistan and the wooden architecture of Kashmir.

• Lambah, Abha Narain, and Alka Patel, eds. The Architecture of the Indian Sultanates. Mumbai: Marg, 2006.

  A revisionist approach to sultanate architecture (Indus, Delhi, Jaunpur, Mandu, Gujarat, Bengal, Deccan) emphasizing local idioms and regional traditions, the multiplicity of motivations, and the fluidity of forms and identities against the overarching, monolithic force of a dominant center acting upon the peripheries.

• Merklinger, Elizabeth Schotten. Sultanate Architecture of Pre-Mughal India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2005.

  The only dedicated study of sultanate architecture, covering the developments across the major dynasties and regions of the Indian subcontinent.

• Michell, George, and Helen Philon. Islamic Architecture of Deccan India. Woodbridge, UK: ACC Art Books, 2018.

  A fresh survey of Islamic architecture and urbanism across principal sites in the Deccan region from the mid-fourteenth to the seventeenth century, stunningly illustrated with plans and photographs of a wide variety of building types, civic facilities, and ornamental techniques.

• Porter, Yves. The Glory of the Sultans: Islamic Architecture in India 1100–1880. Translated by Gérard Degeorge. Paris: Flammarion, 2009.

  An accessible and well-illustrated account of Islamic architecture, from early engagements through the sultanates of Delhi, Bengal, Deccan, Gujarat, Jaunpur, Kashmir, and Malwa, to the Mughal Empire.