The Architecture of A Deccan Sultanate - Pushkar Sohoni

Pushkar Sohoni is an assistant professor in Humanities and Social
Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune,

and an architectural historian focusing on the medieval and early modern
architecture of the Deccan. Trained as a conservation architect, he received
a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania for his research on the
architecture of the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar. He was a post-doctoral
fellow in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British
Columbia before returning to the University of Pennsylvania as the South
Asia Studies Librarian. He has published extensively on aspects of the
material culture of the medieval and early modern Deccan, including
architecture, numismatics and socio-linguistics. He has recently co-
authored an architectural guide on Jewish architecture in the region, and
written another on Aurangabad and its surrounds.
‘In Pushkar Sohoni’s hands, architectural remains become a palimpsest
for the political, aesthetic and social history of the Nizam Shahi
kingdom. An exhaustive survey of the remains is glimpsed through a
bifocal lens. Whilst one lens captures the entangled political and
aesthetic registers that inform the design choices of different edifices, the
other lens details how social realities of the sixteenth-century Deccan
shaped the execution of those designs. What emerges by blending these
two visions is a unique history of the Deccan that is profoundly local
without being essentialist and, simultaneously, resolutely cosmopolitan
without being rootless.’
Projit Bihari Mukharji, Associate Professor,
University of Pennsylvania
‘This book deals with a period of Indian Islamic architectural history

that is of outstanding interest, but has previously been overlooked. Not
only is this a significant contribution to architectural history, it also adds
to a more complete understanding of medieval Indo-Islamic culture.’
George Michell, The Deccan Heritage Foundation
Islamic South Asia Series
Series Editor
Ruby Lal, Emory University
Advisory Board
Iftikhar Dadi, Cornell University
Stephen F. Dale, Ohio State University
Rukhsana David, Kinnaird College for Women
Michael Fisher, Oberlin College
Marcus Fraser, Fitzwilliam Museum
Ebba Koch, University of Vienna
David Lewis, London School of Economics
Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London
Ron Sela, Indiana University Bloomington
Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam
Titles
Sexual and Gender Diversity in the Muslim World: History, Law and
Vernacular Knowledge, Vanja Hamzic
The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority
in Late Medieval India, Pushkar Sohoni
THE
ARCHITECTURE
OF A DECCAN
SULTANATE
Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in
Late Medieval India
PUSHKAR SOHONI
Published in 2018 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London • New York
www.ibtauris.com
Copyright q 2018 Pushkar Sohoni
The right of Pushkar Sohoni to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part
thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book.
Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.
References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

Library of Islamic South Asia 2
ISBN: 978 1 78453 794 4

eISBN: 978 1 78672 419 9
ePDF: 978 1 78673 419 8
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To Ria and Aarav
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations xii

Acknowledgements xvii
Preface xix
1. Locating Architecture: Social History and

Historiography of the Deccan 1
The Deccan: A Brief History 1
Hindustan and the Deccan as Diverse and Unified
Landscapes 5
The Visual Culture of the Deccan Sultanates 7
Continuities and Ruptures: The Purity and Hybridity
of Architecture in the Deccan 9
Methods to Study Architectural Remains 12
Guilds and Movements of Craftspeople Recovered 13
Sultanate Architecture and Regional Variations 16
Extra-regional Architectural Programmes and Building
Typologies 17
Global Architecture and Local Construction 18
The Urgency to Study, Research, and Recover 20
2. Multiple Pasts: The Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar 22

Drawing Boundaries: Historiography of the
Nizam Shahs 22
The Nizam Shahs 28
Paintings 33
x THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE
Coins of the Nizam Shahs 50

Literature at the Court 60
3. Urban Patterns, Water Supply Systems, and

Fortification 65
Urban Design and Settlements 65
Junnar 68
Daulatabad 71
Ahmadnagar 73
Chaul 78
Parenda 83
Sindkhed Raja 86
Urban Systems: Water Supply and Civic Buildings 87
Military Design and Fortification 89
4. Palaces and Mansions 98

Farah Bakhsh Bagh 102
Hasht Bihisht Bagh 109
Manzarsumbah 114
Palace near Bhatavadi (Kalawantinicha Mahal) 123
Architecture of Palaces for the Sultan 131
5. Mosques: Piety and Prayer 133

Soneri Mosque in the Bara Imam Kotla
(Ahmadnagar) 135
Agha Bihzad or Kari Masjid (Ahmadnagar) 137
Damdi Mosque (Bhingar) 140
Mosque of Sanjar Khan (Dharur) 143
Mahdavi Mosque (Rohankheda) 145
Mahdavi Mosque (Fathkheda/Sakharkheda) 148
Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar) 151
Qasim Khan’s Mosque (Ahmadnagar) 153
Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar) 155
Kamani Mosque (Shivneri) 157
Jamiʾ Mosque (Chaul) 159
Dilawar Khan’s Mosque (Rajgurunagar/Khed) 163
CONTENTS xi
6. Tombs 165
Bagh Rauza – Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I
(Ahmadnagar) 167
Saudagar Gumbaz (Junnar) 169
Sarje Khan’s Tomb – Dō Bōti Chirā (Ahmadnagar) 172
Tomb of Changiz Khan (Ahmadnagar) 174
Tomb of Bava Bangali 176
Tomb of Salabat Khan 178
Rumi Khan’s Tomb 181
Tomb Attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah I
(Khuldabad) 181
Shah Sharif’s Tomb (Ahmadnagar) 184
Tomb of Haji Hamid (Ahmadnagar) 188
Bhonsale Memorials (Verul) 189
Dilawar Khan’s Tomb (Rajgurunagar/Khed) 192
Lakhuji Jadhav’s Tomb (Sindkhed Raja) 194
Malik Ambar’s Tomb (Khuldabad) 195
7. Miscellaneous Buildings 199

The Water System of Ahmadnagar 200
The Waterworks at Manzarsumbah 201
Āb Anbār and Bādgir at Savedi 202
Hammam at Chaul 202
Shahi Hammam at Daulatabad 203
The Dam near Daulatabad 206
Khufiya Bavdi 207
The Caravanserai at Chaul 208
Chini Mahal 211
Chitakhana 212
Conclusion 215
Appendix 220
Notes 236
Bibliography 266
Index 278
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
All maps, photographs and plans were made by the author.
Preface
Map 1 The location of Ahmadnagar in South Asia. xxviii
Chapter 1
Map 2 The major settlements of the Deccan Plateau in the
sixteenth century. 2
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Battle scene from the Tarif-i Husain Shah. 35
Figure 2.2 Dohada scene from the Tarif-i Husain Shah. 36
Figure 2.3 Sultan Husain Nizam Shah I and his queen from
the Tarif-i Husain Shah. 37
Figure 2.4a Sultan Husain Nizam Shah I and Khunzada
Humayun from the Tarif-i Husain Shah. 43
Figure 2.4b Hoysala sculpture of Śiva and his wife Umā. 44
Figure 2.5 Portrait of Murtaza Nizam Shah I in the
Bibilotheque National, Paris. 47
Figure 2.6a Gold coin of Burhan Nizam Shah III, 3.36 gm. 54
Figure 2.6b Gold coin of Murtaza Nizam Shah I, 2.90 gm. 54
Figure 2.7 Silver coin of Burhan Nizam Shah II, 6.85 gm. 55
Figure 2.8 Manuscript of the Kitāb-i hashā’ish at the
˙
University of Pennsylvania Libraries. 62
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 Detail of column in mosque in the fort of Parenda. 84
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 The portal to the estate of Ni’mat Khan, Ahmadnagar city. 101
Figure 4.2 Elevation of Farah Bakhsh Bagh. 103
Figure 4.3 Plan of Farah Bakhsh Bagh. 104
Figure 4.4 Farah Bakhsh Bagh, section. 105
Figure 4.5 Stucco plaster finishes in Farah Bakhsh Bagh. 106
Figure 4.6 Timber framing in the construction of Farah
Bakhsh Bagh. 107
Figure 4.7 Hasht Bihisht Bagh, Ahmadnagar. 109
Figure 4.8 Plan of Hasht Bihisht Bagh. 110
Figure 4.9 Plan of entrance pavilion and octagonal pavilion,
Hasht Bihisht Bagh. 111
Figure 4.10 Badgir close to the Hasht Bihisht Bagh. 112
Figure 4.11 Construction detail of roof, Hasht Bihisht Bagh
and Manzarsumbah. 113
Figure 4.12 Lakkad Mahal. 114
Figure 4.13 View of the palace buildings at Manzarsumbah. 115
Figure 4.14 Plan of the Manzarsumbah site. 116
Figure 4.15 Gatehouse at the site of Manzarsumbah. 118
Figure 4.16 Stone vaulting of the gatehouse, Manzarsumbah. 120
Figure 4.17 Threshold of the gatehouse, Manzarsumbah. 120
Figure 4.18 Buildings. 121
Figure 4.19 Plan of Kalawantinicha Mahal, near Bhatavadi. 124
Figure 4.20 Plan of northern pavilion, Kalawantinicha
Mahal near Bhatavadi. 125
Figure 4.21 Large stones with tether-holes around
Kalawantinicha Mahal. 126
Figure 4.22a Eastern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal. 127
Figure 4.22b Northern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal. 127
Figure 4.22c Southern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal. 128
Figure 4.22d Western pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal. 128
Figure 4.23 Bhatavadi dam, built under the Nizam Shahs and
repaired by the British. 130
xiv THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Plan of the Bara Imam Kotla complex. 135
Figure 5.2 Soneri mosque, Bara Imam Kotla, Ahmadnagar. 136
Figure 5.3 Interior of Soneri mosque, Bara Imam Kotla. 136
Figure 5.4 Entrance portal to the Bara Imam Kotla enclosure. 137
Figure 5.5 Rear façade of the Agha Bihzad mosque, Ahmadnagar. 138
Figure 5.6 Plan of the Agha Bihzad mosque. 138
Figure 5.7 Husaini mosque, now the Kotwali Police Station. 139
Figure 5.8 Interior of the Agha Bihzad mosque. 140
Figure 5.9 Damdi mosque, near Bhingar. 141
Figure 5.10 Plan of Damdi mosque. 141
Figure 5.11 The richly carved stone interior of the
Damdi mosque. 142
Figure 5.12 Mosque of Sanjar Khan, Dharur. 143
Figure 5.13 Plan of the mosque of Sanjar Khan. 144
Figure 5.14 The ruinous interior of the mosque of Sanjar Khan
with remnant column bases. 144
Figure 5.15 The mosque at Rohankheda. 146
Figure 5.16 Exterior of the enclosure walls of the mosque
at Rohankheda. 146
Figure 5.17 Plan of the mosque at Rohankheda. 147
Figure 5.18 Gatehouse in the enclosure wall of the Rohankheda
mosque. 147
Figure 5.19 Mosque at Imampur, 10 km east of Ahmadnagar. 148
Figure 5.20 ‘Idgah at Rohankheda. 149
Figure 5.21 Mosque at Fathkheda (Sakharkheda). 150
Figure 5.22 Plan of mosque at Fathkheda. 150
Figure 5.23 The front fac ade of the Fathkheda mosque. 151
Figure 5.24 Interior of Kali mosque in Burud Ali, Ahmadnagar. 152
Figure 5.25 Plan of Kali mosque, Ahmadnagar. 152
Figure 5.26 Gateway to Qasim Khan’s mosque, Ahmadnagar. 153
Figure 5.27 Interior of Qasim Khan’s mosque, Ahmadnagar. 154
Figure 5.28 Plan of Qasim Khan’s mosque. 155
Figure 5.29 Plan of Kamani mosque, Ahmadnagar. 156
Figure 5.30 Interior of Kamani mosque, Ahmadanagar. 156
Figure 5.31 Plan of Kamani mosque, Junnar fort (Shivneri). 157
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv
Figure 5.32 The early historic cisterns above which the Kamani
mosque at Shivneri is constructed. 158
Figure 5.33 The Kamani mosque at Shivneri. 158
Figure 5.34 Elevation of the mosque at Chaul. 159
Figure 5.35 Plan of the mosque at Chaul. 160
Figure 5.36 The large bulbous central dome of the mosque at Chaul. 161
Figure 5.37 Wooden dowels inside the stone voissoirs,
mosque at Chaul. 161
Figure 5.38 Façade of revetted stone, mosque of Dilawar Khan,
Khed (Rajgurunagar). 162
Figure 5.39 Mosque of Dilawar Khan, Rajgurunagar. 163
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Site plan of Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad
Nizam Shah I), Ahmadnagar. 168
Figure 6.2 Elevation of the tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah
I and gatehouse. 169
Figure 6.3 Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I at Bagh Rauza,
Ahmadnagar. 170
Figure 6.4 Saudagar Gumbaz, Junnar. 171
Figure 6.5 Plan of Saudagar Gumbaz, Junnar. 171
Figure 6.6 Elevation detail. 172
Figure 6.7 Plan of the tomb of Sarje Khan, also known as
Do Boti Chira. 173
Figure 6.8 Tomb of Sarje Khan, Ahmadnagar. 173
Figure 6.9 Plan of the tomb of Changiz Khan, near Savedi. 175
Figure 6.10 Double-storied interior of the tomb of Changiz Khan. 175
Figure 6.11 Tomb of Changiz Khan, near Savedi. 176
Figure 6.12 Plan of the tomb of Bava Bangali, Ahmadnagar. 177
Figure 6.13 Tomb of Bava Bangali, Ahmadnagar. 177
Figure 6.14 Tomb of Salabat Khan, south of Ahmadnagar. 179
Figure 6.15 Plan of the tomb of Salabat Khan. 180
Figure 6.16 Ambulatory gallery on the upper floor, tomb
of Salabat Khan. 180
Figure 6.17 Tomb of Rumi Khan, Ahmadnagar. 182
Figure 6.18 Plan of tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah,
Khuldabad. 183
xvi THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE
Figure 6.19 Interior of tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah,

Khuldabad. 183
Figure 6.20 Tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad. 185
Figure 6.21 Site plan of Dargah Dairah, including the tomb
of Shah Sharif, Ahmadnagar. 186
Figure 6.22 Plan of the tomb of Shah Sharif. 186
Figure 6.23 Tomb of Shah Sharif, Ahmadnagar. 187
Figure 6.24 Plan of the tomb of Haji Hamid, Savedi. 188
Figure 6.25 Interior of the tomb of Haji Hamid. 189
Figure 6.26 Memorial attributed to Maloji Bhonsale, Verul. 190
Figure 6.27 A tomb or a memorial just north of Ghrishneshwar
temple, Verul. 191
Figure 6.28 Tomb west of the Ghrishneshwar temple at Verul. 192
Figure 6.29 Detail of the memorial T2 north of
Ghrishneshwar temple. 193
Figure 6.30 Memorial to Lakhuji Jadhav, Sindkhed Raja. 194
Figure 6.31 Tomb of Malik Ambar, Khuldabad. 195
Figure 6.32 Plan of the tomb of Malik Ambar, Khuldabad. 196
Figure 6.33 The carved stone jalis on the tomb of Malik Ambar. 196
Figure 6.34 Unattributed tomb next to the tomb of Malik
Ambar, around Khuldabad. 197
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Plan of the hammam at Chaul. 203
Figure 7.2 Interior of the hammam at Chaul. 204
Figure 7.3 Plan of the Shahi hammam at Daulatabad. 205
Figure 7.4 Interior of the Shahi hammam at Daulatabad. 205
Figure 7.5 Dam north of Daulatabad, close to old Kagazipura
on the Khuldabad plain. 206
Figure 7.6 Balcony projection on the building near the dam
north of Daulatabad. 207
Figure 7.7 Plan of Khufiya Bavdi, west of Daulatabad fort. 208
Figure 7.8 Khufiya Bavdi. 209
Figure 7.9 Plan of the Caravansarai at Chaul. 210
Figure 7.10 Chini Mahal in the Kala Kot enclosure, Daulatabad. 212
Figure 7.11 Chitakhana, Aurangabad. 213
Figure 7.12 Plan of the Chitakhana, Aurangabad. 213
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This has been a project in the making for a decade, and there have been
several people without whom this would never have been completed,
though some of them are blissfully unaware of it. To thank and
acknowledge them is the least that I can do, and this includes several
phases of living in Philadelphia and Pune. To begin, without the
encouragement of Michael W. Meister and Renata Holod, my research
would neither have commenced nor have been completed.
In Philadelphia, at the University of Pennsylvania, good friends like
Beth Citron, Mandavi Mehta, Leslee Michelsen, Julia Perratore, Milind
Ranade, Yael Rice, Gregory Tentler, and Elif Unlu, among others made
difficult times very easy. Holly Pittman facilitated my visit to Iran, when
I needed that experience, and David Brownlee provided every kind of
imaginable support in his capacity as chair of the History of Art
department. In Pune, I had the pleasure of having several friends at
Deccan College, such as Abhijit Dandekar, Shrikant Ganvir, Amol
Kulkarni, Girish Mandke, Hrushikesh Oka, Shrikant Pradhan, Reshma
Sawant, Gurudas Shete, Abhijit Vaidya, and others. Prof. M.S. Mate
provided guidance whenever it was needed. Rahul Sakhalkar was ever
ready to accompany me on another trip to yet another place that no one
had ever heard of before. In Ahmadnagar, I first met Girish Kulkarni of
Snehalaya, and it was through him that I met Bhushan Deshmukh, who
was kind enough to introduce me to various people and show me around
the city and its environs. The one wonderful year in 2010–11 at the
University of British Columbia in Vancouver introduced me to Ross
King, Anne Murphy, Harjot Oberoi, Adheesh Sathaye, Francesca Harlow,
xviii THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE
and many others who were willing to discuss my research. Green College
was truly wonderful, as were the people I met there, including Florian
Ehrensperger, David Prest, and Amanda Perry. Anne Murphy, Raghu
Rao, and their son Aiden, were my family in Vancouver. Having students
like Timothy Lorndale and Julie Vig made it a very happy period. Over
the years, Richard Eaton, Deborah Hutton, George Michell, Laura
Parodi, Helen Philon, Philip Wagoner, Laura Weinstein, and several
other scholars of the Deccan have been most supportive. Back at the
University of Pennsylvania, Daud Ali, Projit and Manjita Mukharji,
Deven Patel, all kept my spirits high when they were flagging. Having
the Mukharjis as neighbours made everything much easier, as I could rely
on them to provide me with everything from company to victuals. With
Sara Simon, I have spent many evenings, sounding ideas and answering
her curious questions. Robin Seguy and Aditi Chaturvedi were real
companions for several years, and it would be impossible to explain the
relevance of their presence. At the University of Pennsylvania Libaries,
I particularly thank my colleagues Brian Vivier and Molly Des Jardin,
along with several other people in the libraries. Now in Pune at the Indian
Institute of Science Education and Research since 2016, I am lucky to
have colleagues like John Mathew, Venkateswara Pai, Aditi Deo, and
Pooja Sancheti. Prof. L. Shashidhara’s encouragement was reassuring in
Pune, and allowed time for this project. Of course, it would be impossible
not to thank my parents, who never really asked me what I was doing, and
my sister, who made sure that they never did.
PREFACE
The history of South Asia has largely been narrativised as the domination
of polities based in the Gangetic plains over several frontiers: in the north-
west (Afghanistan), west (Gujarat and Sindh), east (Bengal), and the south
(Deccan). For the Deccan, the successive waves of migration of people from
the north resulted in cultural developments that are often read as
derivative of fashions and trends from the north. While it is true that the
Deccan has received crafts, ideas, and peoples from the north, that is only
part of the story. The deep connections of the Deccan with West Asia,
completely independent of Northern India, along with the autonomous
cultural and historical developments in the south have shaped the Deccan
very uniquely. Detailed studies of the polities of the Deccan, therefore, of
architecture and statecraft, need to be undertaken in order to explain
how, in moments of disengagement with the north, unique formations
were created independent of developments in North India.
While strong connections of learning and literary networks, or
pilgrimage circuits, connected the north and south, these connections
were not uniformly relevant or equally strong throughout all periods.
Similar circuits also connected North India with present-day Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and Central Asia, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by
scholars like Scott Levi.1 Yet the exigencies of nationalism have carefully
curated and strengthened some connections while denying others. Thus
the Deccan became a part of the grand narrative of North India, while
regions that became independent nations were written out.
In the seventeenth century, as the Mughals swept across South Asia,
regional idioms and a distinct visual court culture in the Deccan were
xx THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE
replaced by a hegemonic Mughal form. The delightfully quaint

architecture and medieval sensibilities of behaviour and building seen in
the sultanate Deccan were replaced by the grand standardised buildings
schema of the Mughals. It is important to note that the self-fashioned
Timurid idealism of the Mughals was vastly different from the post-
Timurid architectural world of the Deccan sultanates. While both were
inspired by the architectural tropes and forms of the Timurids, they had
their own independent evolution.
Over the past two decades, regional architectural idioms are being
increasingly recognised as the basis of architectural history, and defining
these requires extensive fieldwork in a region where most buildings from
different periods have not even been systematically identified and
documented. Three large academic conferences, an exhibition at the
Metropolitan Museum in New York, and several monographs dedicated
to the architecture and art of the Deccan demonstrate the region’s
emergence as a centre, at least of scholarship. This book on the courtly
architecture of the Nizam Shahs is the first and only survey of its kind
and is presented in tandem with their achievements and aspirations in
other realms of cultural production.
The transliterations used here follow the rules of the Chicago Manual
of Style (seventeenth edition) for all languages, including Arabic, Persian,
Sanskrit, Marathi, and Dakhani.
The period of the Ahmadnagar sultanate is accepted as 1490 to 1636
CE [Map 1], though their capital city of Ahmadnagar was lost to the
Mughals in 1600 CE .2 Ruling from various other fortified locations, they
eventually held court at Daulatabad during the regency of Malik Ambar
until his death in 1626 CE . Malik Ambar’s Habashi and Maratha
generals resisted for a decade, but in 1636 CE , the Mughals signed a
treaty with the kingdom of Bijapur and forced Malik Ambar’s
commander, Shahaji Bhonsale (d. 1664 CE ), to surrender. The last
claimant to the Nizam Shahi throne was captured by the Mughals and
sent to prison in Gwalior Fort. The Nizam Shahi dynasty was the
shortest-lived of the three larger Deccan sultanates, which all arose as
a result of the slow collapse of the Bahmanis around 1500 CE . The
trajectory of the Nizam Shahs is a key to understanding their role in
transmitting an earlier medieval sensibility of kingship until the early
modern period ushered in by the Mughals, when they took over the
Deccan through the seventeenth century.
PREFACE xxi
Ahmad Nizam Bahri (reg. 1496– 1510 CE ), the governor of a

Bahmani province in the northern Deccan, defeated the army of sultan
Mahmud Shah Bahmani (reg. 1482– 1518 CE ) and declared indepen-
dence, assuming the title of Ahmad Nizam Shah I. By 1600 CE
Ahmadnagar was assimilated into the Mughal Empire, and puppet kings
under the regency of Malik Ambar (d. 1626 CE ) continued a nominal
survival of the kingdom. The origins of the Nizam Shahi kingdom may
be understood, at one level, as emerging from the divisions at the
Bahmani court. Malik Naib Nizam-ul-Mulk (d. 1486 CE ), the father of
Ahmad Nizam Shah I, was reportedly from a Brahmin accountant family
(Kulkarni) of the village of Pathri, and converted to Islam as a young
companion of the Bahmani sultan.3
Khwaja Jahan Mahmud Gawan (1411– 82 CE ), the clever and able
minister of Sultan Mahmud Shah Bahmani, played the various factions
(the Deccanis and the new Persian émigrés, the Afāqis) at the Bahmani
court against each other, attempting to neutralise them. The important
nobles in this equation were Yusuf Adil Khan, Quli Qutb-ul-Mulk, and
Malik Naib Nizam-ul-Mulk, along with Fath-ullah Imad-ul-Mulk,
Qasim Barid-ul-Mulk, and others. Yusuf Adil Khan (later founder of the
kingdom of Bijapur) and Quli Qutb-ul-Mulk (later founder of the
kingdom of Golconda) were both from Persianate Central Asia. Nizam-
ul-Mulk was the only Deccani amongst this powerful group of nobles
and acted against the Afāqi (foreign-born) faction, which he felt was
favoured by Mahmud Gawan, who was the powerful chief minister of the
failing Bahmani state. He was instrumental in the conspiracy against
Mahmud Gawan, which led to the latter’s execution. Because of his
alleged high-handedness and arrogance at court, Nizam-ul-Mulk was
isolated and finally murdered by the nobles and amirs in 1486 CE .4 But
he had set the stage for his son to declare independence and proclaim
himself Shah, which Ahmad Nizam Shah I did soon thereafter, in 1490
CE . It was reported that soon thereafter, the latter had a khutbā read in his
own name and started using royal insignia, such as a parasol.5 Ahmad
Nizam Shah I was at the time the decorated governor of Junnar for the
Bahmanis, controlling key territories and a number of forts like
Shivneri, Jivdhan, Lohogad, Kondhana, Jond, Tung, Tikona, Purandhar,
Pali, and Danda Rajapuri, which had all been vested in his name as a
jāgir (hereditary land grant) when he captured them in the name of the
Bahmani sultan.6 After his self-proclamation as a sultan, he mounted an
xxii THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE
expedition from his capital of Junnar every year to try to capture the
strategic and affluent fort city of Daulatabad, for which he founded the
city of Ahmadnagar (between Junnar and the fort of Daulatabad).7
The account of the founding of this city suggests that all the builders,
architects, masons, and other tradesmen were summoned from Junnar.
The foundation of the city is described thus in the translation of Burhān-
i Maasir: ‘When it was finally decided to build a city in that spot, the
king halted there and, having ordered the astrologers to select an
auspicious day for the beginning of the work, summoned architects,
surveyors, and builders from Junnar to lay out and build the city.’8 It is
quite possible that many of the Afāqis were unwilling to associate with
Ahmad Nizam Shah I because of the association of his father Malik Naib
Nizam-ul-Mulk’s seditionary activities at court, Ahmad Nizam Shah’s
rebellion, and the subsequent proclamation of independence. As a result,
initially few foreign-born tradesmen or designers would have been
available to him. Unfortunately, little remains in Junnar from that early
period and almost all the buildings that survive were heavily modified
later. Ironically, Ahmad Nizam Shah I and his descendants tried to
assume a distinctly Persian lineage and culture, particularly after 1490
CE , thus appropriating the symbols and emblems of kingship that were
acceptable to Persianate nobility. This was also in order to attract new
immigrants, who brought cultural capital with them. The only
significant architectural commission that can be definitively attributed
to Ahmad Nizam Shah I is the layout of the fort of Ahmadnagar, which
was built on the spot where he defeated a strong Bahmani force when he
declared independence. Upon his death in 1509 CE , Ahmad Nizam Shah I
was succeeded by his son, Burhan Nizam Shah I.
Burhan Nizam Shah I was a great patron of the arts. He came under
the influence of the Shiʾi ʿalim (learned teacher) Shah Tahir al Husaini
and sometime in the 1530s officially changed the state religion to
Twelver Shiʾism. It is now believed that Shah Tahir was actually a Nizari,
and his reasons for the propagation of the Twelver Shiʾism are unclear.9
Shah Tahir founded the academy of Bara Imam Kotla in the 1530s; as a
result, a steady stream of scholars and men of letters from the Middle
East and the Persian Gulf came to Ahmadnagar. Bara Imam Kotla was
built as a fortified stronghold just outside the city of Ahmadnagar.
Burhan Nizam Shah I even exchanged a few embassies with the Safavid
monarch.10 Burhan Nizam Shah I’s generous patronage of migrants
PREFACE xxiii
became more liberal over time, coupled with Shah Tahir’s fame, and
several soldier-adventurers also came to Ahmadnagar to make their
fortunes. Many of them, such as the master gun-caster Rumi Khan and
the chief minister Salabat Khan, also good engineers and designers, came
to the court from West Asia. As a result, an architecture based on
Persianate design ideals flourished in his reign. The attachment and
connection of the Nizam Shahs with Pathri as their ancestral home was
made clear when Burhan Nizam Shah I (reg. 1510– 53 CE ) proposed a
treaty with Allauddin Imad Shah of Berar in 1518 CE , in which the town
and district of Pathri were to be given to the Nizam Shahs in exchange
for another, on the grounds that their ancestral town was still home to
many of their relatives. When this treaty was turned down, Burhan
Nizam Shah I made war and annexed Pathri. Being rooted in the Deccan,
the Nizam Shahs were initially firmly in favour of Deccani control of the
Bahmani court, as opposed to ‘foreign’ Afāqi domination. Over the
course of the sixteenth century, as new immigrants from Persian lands
became important players at the Nizam Shahi court, the tensions
between immigrant and ‘native’ groups came to a head.
Husain Nizam Shah I (reg. 1553 –65 CE ) ruled for a shorter time, and
his main contributions were improvements in the Ahmadnagar fort,
particularly the replacement of the mud walls of the fort with stone in
1562 CE . He was instrumental in leading the coalition of the Deccan
sultanates in the consequential battle of Talikota (1565 CE ). The Damdi
Mosque and Sarje Khan’s tomb are from his reign and attest to the large
presence of stonemasons in that period.
Murtaza Nizam Shah I (reg. 1565– 88 CE ) was the last of the sultans
who commissioned large building projects. His reign, as mentioned by
contemporary sources, was marred by several massacres of the Afāqis,11
and though many of his court nobility were originally from the Middle
East and Central Asia, this phase saw several Habashi, Deccani, and
Maratha nobles rise to military and political prominence. Architectural
activity was stylistically very mixed, as it was late in his reign that
Mughal architectural forms were also slowly becoming naturalised in the
northern Deccan. The kingdom of Ahmadnagar expanded in his reign
but also became increasingly factionalised.
Burhan Nizam Shah II (reg. 1591–95 CE ) did commission a few
buildings, such as the Kamani Mosque in the fort of Junnar (Shivneri),
but his short reign did not allow time for any significant building
xxiv THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE
campaigns. He had been imprisoned under the Mughals and was released
as a strategy to make him pliant. He decided to resist the Mughals and
was quite antagonistic to them. This period can be understood as the last
of the cultural dominance of Persian émigrés in the affairs of the Nizam
Shahi court.
By the end of the sixteenth century, Portuguese control of the seacoast
also contributed to diminished sea-based immigration from Iran and the
Middle East.12 Moreover, the now-stabilised Safavid and Mughal states
could offer patronage to artists, intellectuals, and soldier-adventurers
from the wider Islamic world. The kingdom of Ahmadnagar was
becoming increasingly unstable because of factional wars, succession
battles, and the military pressure of the Mughals from the north.13 Many
of the eminent literati and courtiers fled to the Bijapur, Golconda, or
Mughal courts, and their Persianate connections easily allowed them this
mobility.14 It is important to note that the borders between various
courts were merely political in terms of who gathered revenues from
certain lands and occasionally on the basis of sectarian differences, but
the Deccan courts shared practically everything else, such as court
rituals, language, and routines. This commonality was not limited to the
Muslim sultans but to all kings in the Deccan, including the kingdom of
Vijayanagara.15 The lack of new émigrés, coupled with the factional
pressures and consequent massacres that the foreign faction had to face,
changed the demography of the Nizam Shahi court in the late sixteenth
century: it was now dominated by Deccanis, Habashis, and Marathas.
The symbols of kingship and legitimacy, however, did not undergo any
significant changes and still conformed to Persianate ideals, though
these ideals themselves were slowly being modified to suit local
sensibilities. After the Mughal takeover of the city of Ahmadnagar in
1600 CE , the capital of the Nizam Shahs moved to Daulatabad and
Khadki (later to be renamed Aurangabad) under the stewardship of
Malik Ambar. In the interim, from 1600 to 1607 CE , was a turbulent
period when the capital was moved from Ahmadnagar to Junnar, Ausa,
and Parenda.16 Murtaza II was crowned at Parenda in 1600 CE , but was
only a puppet king under Malik Ambar. Junnar became the capital of the
Nizam Shahs from 1603 to 1607 CE . Ausa was very briefly an interim
capital, probably only because of the presence of the royal family there, as
mentioned in Portuguese sources. Building activity was eventually
resumed on a grand scale only under Malik Ambar, who added
PREFACE xxv
significantly to Daulatabad and settled the new city of Khadki nearby.

Malik Ambar’s architectural commissions are largely limited to an area
in the core of the territory he controlled as the regent of the kingdom,
around Aurangabad and Daulatabad. Almost all the Afāqis had now fled
the Nizam Shahi court. The few Iranians who remained behind were
known for their steadfast loyalty. A well-known example is that of Afzal
Khan, a Nizam Shahi officer of Iranian origin (under Malik Ambar). The
Mughals, through Prince Murad, tried to win him over to their side by
invoking racial and other cultural affiliations (since Malik Ambar was
ethnically Habashi).17 At this point, many of the grand Persianate
architectural designs that proclaimed the grandeur of the Nizam Shahi
court faded away and were replaced by utilitarian construction, as seen in
the fortifications and waterworks under Malik Ambar. Technologies
were increasingly local, and only in the case of large-scale waterworks
did Middle Eastern technology survive for a couple of centuries more
in its original form.18 Otherwise, in terms of architecture, Mughal
idioms and designs gradually become the norm, as seen at most of
the early-seventeenth-century sites patronised by Malik Ambar
and his contemporaries, such as Dilawar Khan’s tomb (built around
1612–13 CE ).
The Mughals had brought with them their own version of
architecture, which had a serious impact on the Deccan. Right from
1591 CE , when Burhan Nizam Shah II ascended the throne, a Mughal
influence is discernible in the visual culture of the Nizam Shahs. This is
not surprising, considering Burhan Nizam Shah II had spent some years
in the service of the Mughal court while waiting to take over the reins of
the Ahmadnagar kingdom. He was the last builder of the dynasty,
having commissioned some works of civic, religious, and military
importance, such as direction-stones,19 mosques, and fortifications,
respectively.
Malik Ambar is credited with a number of innovations in
administration, military strategy, and revenue assessment that would
eventually become the hallmark of the Maratha state founded by Shivaji
Bhonsale (1630–80 CE ). From the early seventeenth century onwards,
under the stewardship of Malik Ambar, the tombs and palaces of his
family and the memorials of the court nobility (such as the chhatris of the
Bhonsale family at Ellora and the memorial of Lakhuji Jadhav) were
constructed. These are all very interesting transitional buildings which
xxvi THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE
bridge the gap between the Nizam Shahs and the Mughalized Deccan in
terms of architectural style.
In the western Deccan, Persianate ideals of kingship and the
associated material trappings partially lost their significance toward the
middle of the seventeenth century. The rise of local chiefs and
landholders without a strong central power and the successive conflicts
in the region decimated many of the existing architectural traditions,
and new urban developments on a significant scale were not seen in the
region again until the eighteenth century. Political events affected
the choice of architectural designs and techniques. The architecture of
the Nizam Shahs does not follow a linear development from its Persian
origins to the creation of a regional style. The buildings are variously of
broadly Persianate and Indic characteristics, at times both, but to call
them derivative is unfair, as the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs was trying
to create a new architectural language as a regional claim. The ethnic and
political tensions of the court between ‘foreigners’ and locals (Afaqi and
Deccani factions) would have been a factor in the determination of
architectural designs, the building commissions being designed and
discharged to imply favours for and against the various factions. The Farah
Bakhsh Bagh (built in its current form in 1583–84 CE ), for example, is a
direct descendant of Timurid garden palaces in terms of planning, possibly
the only one outside ‘greater Iran’ (Iranshahr). The story of its design and
construction, as reconstructed from textual accounts, reveals the court
intrigues, politics, and factionalism surrounding architectural commis-
sions, as will be narrated later. The closest extant comparable monument is
the later Hasht Bihisht Palace in Isfahan (built late, in 1669 CE ). On the
other hand, the architectural vocabulary of an earlier period, as seen in the
Damdi Mosque, built around 1562 CE , is local: the stone carving shows
direct continuity from earlier building traditions in the region, such as the
temples constructed under the Yadavas, with motifs like the decorative
bands of lozenges seen in Chalukyan and Yadava temples. If the conscious
decisions made by the Nizam Shahs regarding architectural designs from
diverse sources can be understood as a parallel to composite languages in
the Deccan in the sixteenth century, then the use of local architectural
idiom might be argued as a ‘choice that aristocratic men of letters made to
invoke domains of affection and loss’.20
The notion that the buildings constructed in the reign of the Nizam
Shahs of Ahmadnagar constitute a set of conscious design decisions itself
PREFACE xxvii
suggests a deliberate idea of state architecture. Architecture as an

embodiment of state authority was very cleverly embodied in the design,
and the subaltern nature of its construction was inadvertently embodied
in its realisation. Construction technology is often the key to recovering
local agents. Purely Timurid traditions of design and layout are often
seen in Nizam Shahi buildings, as also completely indigenous modes of
design and construction. Some of the characteristic features attributed to
the architecture of the post-Bahmani Deccan sultanates more generally
occur much earlier in Ahmadnagar than in the other sultanates.21 In
Ahmadnagar, Ahmad Nizam Shah’s tomb and the Damdi Mosque
contain excellent examples of carved-stone decoration, much earlier than
the flowering of a similar craft at Bijapur. The primacy of architectural
forms in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar is particularly true of military
structures, but military architecture deserves specialised study and will
not be treated here. It should suffice to note that architectural
innovations in fortification are seen earlier at Nizam Shahi sites than at
the other Deccan sultanates.22 The kingdom of Ahmadnagar, much like
Malwa and Gujarat, attempted to formulate an architectural language as
an identity marker to represent the state; unlike the latter, however, it
could never reach an adequate solution to the problem. Bijapur and
Golconda had almost a century more to achieve the same.
Map 1 The location of Ahmadnagar in South Asia.
CHAPTER 1
LOCATING ARCHITECTURE:
SOCIAL HISTORY AND
HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE
DECCAN
The Deccan: A Brief History

The Deccan plateau has had an important role in the cultural and
political history of South Asia [Map 2]. The Deccan (also spelled
Dakkan, Dekhan, etc.) is a term broadly used to describe the lands south
of the Narmada river, and specifically meant the areas bounded by the
Vindhya ranges to the north, the Western Ghats (Sahyadris) to the west,
the Bay of Bengal to the east, and the Mysore plateau to the south.
Today, the Deccan is comprised of the plateau regions of Maharashtra,
northern Karnataka, and Telangana. Below the Mysore plateau is the
region historically called the Carnatic, but in the North India-centric
view, everything south of the Vindhyas was often called the Deccan. The
Carnatic comprises the states of present-day Tamil Nadu, southeastern
Karnataka, southern Andhra Pradesh, and northeastern Kerala. The
name Deccan is a corruption of the Sanskrit dakśina, literally ‘right-
_
hand’ or ‘south’, suggesting that it was employed by early Indo-
European settlers who traversed the North Indian plains from west to
east in the Indian Iron Age (c. 1200– 600 BCE ), for whom ‘right-hand’
and ‘south’ therefore connoted the same direction. Most historical
narratives of India written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as
the South Asian subcontinent became increasingly imagined as a nation,
2 THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DECCAN SULTANATE
Map 2 The major settlements of the Deccan Plateau in the sixteenth

century.
have been centred on North India (known as Hindustan since

the early second millennium CE ) as the heartland; the Deccan has
usually been represented as an important frontier and region to be
subjugated.
A large intermediate zone about 300 miles wide extends across South
Asia from Gujarat to Orissa, separating the Indus and Gangetic river
basins and alluvial plains from the Deccan. As Hermann Kulke and
Dietmar Rothermund astutely observe, ‘But for military intervention,
this intermediate zone has always been a major obstacle.’1 Traditionally,
few routes connected the North Indian riverine plains to the Deccan.
As this buffer zone was historically traversed only in a very few places,
the connection between Hindustan and the Deccan remained quite
tenuous till the early modern period. Under the Delhi sultanate
(c. 1206– 1526 CE ), the Mughals (c. 1526– 1857 CE ), the British
(c. 1857 –1947 CE ), and the Republic of India (c. 1950–present), efforts
were made to meld these large regions of South Asia – Hindustan and
the Deccan – into a single political entity. The first two efforts lasted less
than a century each, and only the British and Indian Republic
continuum has seen Hindustan and the Deccan comprise a single
political state for over a hundred years. The Deccan and regions further
LOCATING ARCHITECTURE 3
south have therefore always had a distinct cultural development vis-à-vis

the northern regions, Malwa, and the Gangetic plains.
In the first millennium CE , the western seaboard of the Deccan, along
with Gujarat, grew in importance for overseas trade, particularly
connecting West Asia with South Asia. The western seaboard of
peninsular India has been mentioned in Greek and Arab sources from the
first century CE , as seen in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and in works
by Ptolemy, Arrian, Maʾsudi, and others.2 As the emergent Buddhist and
Jain networks spread across Asia, the Deccan became an important centre
for facilitating mercantile, missionary, and monastic networks. The port
cities of the west coast became significant entrepots in facilitating
exchanges between the Deccan and West Asia, even as far as Africa.
From the early historic period onwards, Buddhist and Jain sites are
found profusely throughout the Deccan, including the inscriptions of
the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (c. 304–232 CE ).3 However, there is little
evidence of direct Maurya authority in the Deccan, and the empire must
have controlled the region only through feudatories. The geographical
variations in Mauryan inscriptions suggest regional cultural identities,
including the Deccan. After this period, the next important dynasty
known in the region was that of the Satavahanas (c. 230 BCE -220 CE ).
They were based in the central Deccan, and were challenged by the
trans-local Indo-Scythian Western Satraps (c. 35 –405 CE ) located in the
northwestern Deccan, primarily at Junnar and Nasik. Within a few
hundred years, the imperial Guptas (c. 320– 550 CE ) demonstrated their
presence in the Deccan, usually through marital alliances with the
Vakatakas (c. 250– 500 CE ), a local dynasty in the Godavari basin. These
relationships allowed the Guptas to make nominal claims over the
Deccan as their extended domain, much as the Mauryas would have done
more than half a millennium earlier, but the real extent of their prowess
in these regions is unknown.
From the sixth century onwards, the Chalukyas of Badami
(c. 543– 753 CE ), followed by the Rashtrakutas (c. 753– 982 CE ) and
the Western Chalukyas (c. 973– 1189 CE ), ruled over large areas of the
Deccan. Eventually, the latter two polities were succeeded by several
smaller states, such as the Hoysalas of Dvarasamudra (c. 1026– 1343 CE ),
the Yadavas of Devagiri (c. 1173– 1334 CE ) and the Kakatiyas
of Warangal (c. 1158–1195 CE ). These late kingdoms have been
commonly misunderstood as the political and cultural basis for the three
modern linguistic states of Republic of India, Karnataka, Maharashtra,

and Andhra Pradesh (now bifurcated further into Andhra and
Telangana), with linguistic identities projected retrospectively upon
them. The three medieval polities were eventually subjugated by the
campaigns of the Delhi sultanate in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. The kingdom of Vijayanagara (1336 – 1565 CE ) and
the Bahmani sultanate (1347 – 1547 CE ) were the survivors to
the Khilji-Tughluqs of the Delhi sultanate until their decline
in the sixteenth century, when a host of new sultanates dominated the
landscape of the Deccan.
If the Deccan is to be understood as the area that constitutes
the drainage basins of the Godavari and the Krishna rivers (including all
their tributaries), there emerged two very strong sacred geographies
centred about these two rivers [Map 2]. The Godavari has been
considered a homology of the Ganges. Nasik and Paithan (Pratisthana)
emulated aspects of Varanasi, from hosting Sanskritic learning traditions
to being the locus of festivals like the Kumbh Mela. The familial
networks of learned Pandit families that moved between the Ganges and
Godavari basins in the north and south, respectively, kept alive this
connection for over a thousand years. The creation of homologous places
and shared toponyms between Hindustan and the Deccan provided the
mechanism for a religious unification of the two landscapes of the north
and south. On the other hand, the basin of the upper Krishna, with its
tributaries such as the Tungabhadra, became the locus for another sacred
geography, with towns such as Pandharpur and Hampi that saw the
emergence of new cults focused around the newer forms of devotional
religions (e.g., Bhakti traditions) and temple Hinduism.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw many new players,
including the Portuguese, the Mughals, the English, and the emergence
of the Marathas as an independent political force. The mid-eighteenth
century saw a political consolidation of the Deccan between the Marathas
in the west and Nizam-ul Mulk Asaf Jah in the east, both operating
nominally as vassals of the Mughals, but in reality independent and rival
kingdoms. The Marathas at Pune were finally subjugated by the British
in the Anglo-Maratha wars (1775 to 1782, 1803 to 1805, and 1817 to
1818 CE ), and the Nizams of Hyderabad became British allies and
eventually vassals after their first signing of a subsidiary alliance treaty in
1798 CE . Under the colonial patchwork of British territories and
princely states, the Deccan ceased to be a single cultural region. Only

geographical realities, fauna and flora, and the Deccani language
(understood as a dialect of Hindustani) kept it alive in people’s
imaginations as a shared zone.
Hindustan and the Deccan as Diverse and

Unified Landscapes
With the emergence of the Delhi sultanate and its conquests in the
Deccan, new forms of Islamicate culture came to the region. These
forms of Islamicate kingship borrowed heavily from Timurid models
of kingship, building technology, and visual culture. Models of
architecture and planning from Central Asia and Iran in a style indebted
to the Timurid dynasty found local expression in the emergent
kingdoms settled by the emergent Turco-Mongol dynasties in South
Asia. Most such transmissions of ideas, materials, and people came in
largely through the coastal networks, as the independent kingdoms of
the Bahmanis (c. 1347– 1527 CE ) and Vijayanagara (c. 1336– 1565 CE )
relied on sea routes to facilitate such an exchange. It is important to note
that these states, which shared the Deccan between them, were both
founded through a rebellion against the Delhi sultanate that had briefly
subjugated the Deccan in the fourteenth century.
In early modern accounts, the Hindustan of the Mughals referred to
the Gangetic plains and parts of north-central India. It was surrounded
by various other vilāyats (regions) including those of Bengal, Malwa,
Gujarat, and Afghanistan. Beyond Malwa was the vilāyat of the Deccan
ruled from the sūbah (province) of Ahmadnagar (the sūbah was later
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
called Daulatabad and eventually Aurangabad). In the large and
important frontier province, Mughal princes were often deputed as
viceroys and governors of Daulatabad. Under the emperor Aurangzeb,
the kingdoms of Golconda and Bijapur were also annexed in 1686 and
1687 and added as new sūbahs to the empire.
˙ ˙
As late as the eighteenth century, the Deccan still was understood as a
separate cultural and geographical entity vis-à-vis Hindustan. Partly as a
result, independent kingdoms in the Deccan defined themselves in
contrast to North India and the Hindustanis. Therefore, many of the
regional polities from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such
as the Deccan sultanates (Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, Golconda) and the
Marathas, saw themselves as regional resistance against Hindustani

Mughal expansion. Regional habits and distinct cultural expressions
reinforced this sense of being Deccani. In the interests of realpolitik, the
Deccan sultanates usually were content to congratulate the powers at
Delhi and try to use them to settle scores with their neighbours.
From Firuz Shah Bahmani I (reg. 1397–1422 CE ), who sent a letter of
submission to Timur in 1398 to 1399 CE , and received a firmān
confirming his kingdom in return, to the sultanates of Ahmadnagar,
Bijapur, and Golconda, which all sent congratulatory letters to Babur
upon his takeover of Delhi in 1526 CE , the kingdoms of the Deccan were
interested in the affairs of Hindustan.4 Particularly for the Nizam Shahs,
this was an ongoing fascination, since it allowed them to participate in
the court intrigues of Gujarat, Khandesh, and Malwa, all kingdoms
that bordered them to the north. On several occasions, particularly
under Ahmad Nizam Shah I and Burhan Nizam Shah I, there were
confrontations with the Muzaffarid sultans of Gujarat, usually over the
issues of succession in the sultanate of Khandesh.5 The independent
identity of the Deccan as intimately connected with Shiʾi Iran was being
challenged by new pan-continental networks that were patronised by the
Mughals. The proliferation of Islamicate practices, while understood
as a great unifier, also allowed for a nuanced understanding of regional
differences. The cultural sensibilities of the Deccan were in part shaped
by the landscape and the climate, and along with its unique historical
contingencies had resulted in the genesis of distinctive cultural forms.
It was eventually not just the economic and military might of the
Mughals but the dominant cultural hegemonic practices that helped
their expansion into the Deccan. It was eventually the new north– south
axis of the Naqshbandi Sufi order that integrated the Deccan into a
Timurid– Mughal imperial geography in the sixteenth century, one of
the factors in explaining the eventual expansion of Mughal Hindustan
into the Deccan. In terms of physical networks, Hindustan could be
connected with the Deccan by only two relatively easy routes: either the
Burhanpur gap controlled by Asirgarh Fort, or the Sendhwa pass after
the fort at Mandu. These two axes, through the regions of Khandesh and
Malwa respectively, were the easiest ways of moving people and goods
from north to south across the Vindhyas and the Narmada-Tapti basins.
To the west, coastal routes ran along marshlands, and to the east, the
dense forests of Gondwana prevented such a conveyance. As pointed out
by B.G. Gokhale and Stewart Gordon, Burhanpur therefore became an

important trading centre and manufacturing location, connecting
various trade routes, including one from Surat to Agra.6 Therefore,
it was hardly surprising that control of the Deccan by any power in
Hindustan first meant control over the regions of Malwa or Khandesh,
in order to maintain communication and supply lines. These two areas
had been independent kingdoms for over 200 years after the decline of
the Delhi sultanate in the fourteenth century; it was only under Akbar
(reg. 1556 – 1606 CE ) that the Mughals annexed the Malwa sultanate
in 1562 CE and the Faruqi sultanate of Khandesh in 1601 CE .
The Mughals could only then think of expanding into the Deccan, a
task that would have been impossible without first taking control of
these kingdoms. Thus, as the sultanates of Gujarat, Malwa, and
Khandesh were conquered by the Mughals, the emperors Akbar,
Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb all made forays into the Deccan,
with varying levels of success.
The Visual Culture of the Deccan Sultanates

The sultanate at Delhi, under the Khiljis and then Muhammad bin
Tughluq (reg. 1325– 1351 CE ), territorialised a large part of the Indian
subcontinent in the fourteenth century, either by direct conquest or
through tributary rulers. After Muhammad bin Tughluq’s reign, most of
his territories rebelled and declared independence from the empire that
he had tried to consolidate. The sultanates of Bengal (c. 1342– 1576 CE ),
Deccan (Bahmani: c. 1347– 1518 CE ), Khandesh (c. 1382–1601 CE ),
Malwa (c. 1392– 1562 CE ), Gujarat (c. 1391– 1583 CE ), and Jaunpur (c.
1394–1479 CE ), along with the kingdom of Vijayanagara (c. 1336–
1565 CE ), were all the successor kingdoms to the Khilji-Tughlaq empire.
The mid-fourteenth century saw a rebellion against the Delhi sultans by
various regional governors, one of the strongest to emerge being Hasan
Gangu Bahman Shah (d. 1358 CE ), the founder of the Bahmani dynasty.
He succeeded in establishing a provincial sultanate at Daulatabad (later
shifted to Gulbarga and then to Bidar) in c. 1347 CE and controlled a
large part of the northern Deccan. This declaration of independence
caused logistical problems for the new Bahmani kingdom in terms of
recruiting manpower and military hardware from people loyal to the
Delhi sultanate. As a strategy, Bahman Shah emphasised his Persian
roots. With his nominal lineage being traced to Iran and rooted in
Persian lore,7 it was not surprising that he succeeded in attracting a large
number of emigrants from the Middle East to his kingdom in the
Deccan. Among them were poets, scholars, artists, and artisans. The
architectural and artistic production of the Bahmani dynasty itself was
much like its polity: initially derived from a North Indian sultanate
culture but later shaped by an infusion of people from Persianate lands,
along with local Deccan traditions. A direct import of Persian customs
and visual culture implied a political denial of the North Indian
sultanate, from which the Bahmani sultanate had seceded. Architectural,
literary, and artistic production flourished at the Bahmani court and even
later in the region, after the kingdom disintegrated into the smaller
principalities, the five sultanates of the Deccan. They all declared
independence between 1484 and 1520 CE and effectively ended the
sovereignty of the Bahmani kings. Coeval with the rise of the Bahmani
kingdom was the kingdom of Vijayanagara. Also originating in the
declining control of the sultans of Delhi over the Deccan, the brothers
Harihara and Bukka founded a kingdom in 1336 CE which would
survive through three dynasties (Sangama, Saluva, and Tuluva) at their
capital of Hampi. After 1565 CE , when Hampi was destroyed by an
alliance of the Deccan sultanates, the kingdom of Vijayanagara survived
nominally under the Aravidu dynasty till 1656 CE , but from other
locations in the south Indian peninsula.
In terms of visual culture, the architectural traditions of Malwa,
Khandesh, and Gujarat, though connected, had their own evolution.
Despite a common start with post-Delhi sultanate kingdoms in these
regions, each of the regions formulated its own language of political power
and cultural expression. Similarly, the Deccan, from the Bahmanis to the
post-Bahmani sultanates, had cultivated its own visual traditions and
architectural language. Eventually, through the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, as the Mughals reduced to vassalage and eventually annexed the
sultanates of Gujarat, Malwa, Khandesh, and the Deccan, their imperial
style of architecture became popular and widespread. Mughal architecture
was partially shaped and formulated as a response to encounters with
regional architecture, but after Shah Jahan (reg. 1528–1558 CE ) it ossified
into a collage of stock elements, such as baluster columns, multifoil
arches, and curvilinear roofs on pavilions and kiosks, as shown by Ebba
Koch in her seminal work.8
Continuities and Ruptures: The Purity and Hybridity

of Architecture in the Deccan
In recent years, the political ramifications of history-writing in South Asia
have become increasingly obvious. Many of the arguments are expressed
in terms of simple binaries, such as indigenous versus imported or pure
versus hybrid. In this environment, it is important to stress the
continuities and ruptures in regional traditions, particularly architectural,
which do not neatly map on to the political changes. In the medieval
Deccan, royal commissions of architecture emulated specific visual forms
and literary tropes in order to legitimise the rulers, local custom and
imported Persianate habits being of equal importance in this projection of
political power. Philip Wagoner and Richard Eaton have expounded on
the moment when broader Islamicate ideas of legitimacy and local modes
of sovereignty created a regionalised architectural language of kingship.9
The visual projection of power required the transmission of potent
architectural forms that could evoke a communal literary memory,
shaping architecture with a bias toward the conceptually ideal cities of
Baghdad and Cairo or ideal buildings of mythical lore and poetic tropes
(both partly based on historical sources). For example, after the city of
Ahmadnagar was founded in 1496 CE , Firishtah declared that ‘great
exertions were made in erecting buildings by the king and his dependents,
that in the short space of two years the new city rivalled Baghdad and
Cairo in splendour’.10 This memory was not unlike the ‘period eye’, as
argued by Michael Baxandall for Renaissance Italy, and was partly
comprised of a communal visual culture that was accessible to most of the
subjects of these kingdoms in the Deccan.11 It could be argued as
‘the images and recollections of ancient buildings that find their way into
the collective conscience of a culture’; more importantly, the ‘imagery used
by medieval poets and other[s] . . . was often invoked’.12 Literary works
also display this curious amalgamation of regional tradition and Islamicate
ideals in varied languages such as Persian, Sanskrit, Deccani, Marathi,
Telugu, and Kannada. Identity-building for these new states was
important as a tool of legitimation, and the creation of a new visual
identity has often been referred to in past scholarship as the genesis of
‘hybrid’ styles of architecture. Such notions of hybridity assume the
‘purity’ of styles, an ontologically suspect categorisation that is only a
heuristic device for a stylistic study of architecture.
It would be erroneous to attribute the development of architectural

ideas to singular events as previous scholarship had argued: Hermann
Goetz, in his essay ‘The Fall of Vijayanagara and the Nationalisation of
Muslim Art in the Deccan’, posited that the defeat of Vijayanagara at
the battle of Talikota was the singular catalyst that resulted in the
development of the architecture of Bijapur.13 Elsewhere, the personality of
Ibrahim Adil Shah II (reg. 1580–1627 CE ) has been considered
the singular pivotal factor for the development of the art and architecture
of Bijapur.14 However, events in neighbouring states, political instability
in faraway lands, modes of construction of local ‘guilds’, methods of
architectural transmission, the availability of building materials, the
expectations of the populace in terms of royal emblems and visual
grandeur, and the level of involvement and patronage of the arts by the
sultan were some of the important factors that shaped the architecture of
the Deccan in this period. The local traditions of architecture, both in
design and construction, were also important factors in the visual culture
of the region, as has been demonstrated by Richard Eaton and Philip
Wagoner.15 The late medieval Deccan was thus a palimpsest of various
administrative, architectural, and social systems that had accreted over the
years – a mosaic of cultural practices from a multitude of sources. It is in
this context that the sultanates of the Deccan, namely the Adil Shahs
of Bijapur, the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, and the Qutb Shahs of
Golconda, need to be studied. Their architecture was of a style which,
though problematically called ‘hybrid’, differentially varies in conception
and execution from a wider Persianate world and relies on local design and
construction habits. Similary, the other cultural artefacts of their reign,
including coinage, literature, and painting, also demonstrate a new claim-
making by the Nizam Shahi dynasty. The idea of hybridity is the result of
reifying certain periods of cultural production, assuming that the much-
fetishised purity of earlier cultural forms provides a key ontological
moment. It is therefore fruitful to examine in detail the circumstances and
conditions of the emergence of the Deccan sultanates in order to
understand the independent nature of their cultural expression, as opposed
to a simple discourse of derivative hybrid.
Though this book is focused on architectural history, it presents the
Nizam Shahi sultanate as an important piece in the larger cultural
history of the early modern Deccan. Paintings, gardens, guns, coins,
manuscripts, and other artefacts, along with the important architectural
and town-planning legacy of the Nizam Shahs, comprise a corpus of

evidence that allows a conceptualisation of the political state. The Nizam
Shahi sultanate later formed the basis for the nascent Maratha state that
emerged in the mid-seventeenth century under Shivaji Bhonsale (1630–
80 CE ). Most of the important nobility of this early Maratha state had
served at the court of the Nizam Shahs. It was therefore not surprising
that many of the administrative and cultural forms of the Marathas were
derived from those of the Nizam Shahs and their contemporary
sultanates. An understanding of the Nizam Shahs and the material world
that they created and inhabited changes our understanding of the early
Maratha state, and disabuses the notion that the latter was a revivalist
indigenous state that had no connections with the regional past. The
material culture of the Nizam Shahs reflected their cosmopolitan
concerns, their rootedness in the Deccan, and other cultural traits
that were common to the Deccan before the region was subjugated by
the Mughal administrative and military juggernaut in the late
seventeenth century. This worldview of the Deccan sultanates was also
partially shared by the early Maratha state, though some aspects of it
were muted. Eventually the Maratha state transformed into a
confederacy that ruled over a large part of South Asia in the eighteenth
century, but this later phase of Maratha history was culturally shaped by
Mughal practices.
The colonialist and nationalist narrative of ‘Muslim invaders’
upsetting indigenous practices until the ‘Hindu revival’ under the
Marathas in the seventeenth century is a simplistic and naı̈ve model
of regional history. Unfortunately, this stress on political and regime
changes through the historiography of the medieval and early modern
periods has undermined research regarding the strong regional
continuities that need to be recognised as a dominant theme. The
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were seminal for the Deccan:
completely new administrative and cultural paradigms were created in
this period. The eighteenth century witnessed another reconstitution of
the Deccan under the Peshwas of Pune and the Asaf Jahs of Hyderabad,
both nomimally subservient to the Mughals but independent powers in
reality. It was only in the nineteenth century, when South Asia was
completely reimagined by both colonial and nationalist intellectuals,
that the history of the Deccan was completely reworked into a grand
North-centric South Asian narrative.
Methods to Study Architectural Remains

Existing studies on the architectural and architectonic qualities of the
previously recorded buildings and sites in the medieval Deccan have
been largely repetitious, not making bold claims for social history.16 The
roles of the patron, architect, and builders have been understood only
partially. There have been very few attempts to explain the social
relationships between all these agents in the sixteenth-century Deccan.
For example, while explaining the ambiguity surrounding the roles of
Taj Sultana and Malik Sandal in the construction of Ibrahim Rauza,
Deborah Hutton suggested that ‘the design most likely evolved out of
continuous negotiations between the patron, sar-i-kar, master stone
carver or other senior artisan, and the various levels of craftsmanship
participating in the project’.17 These negotiations cannot be unravelled
for lack of evidence – neither the evidence for discussions between the
patron and the designer nor the records of transactions between
the architects and the local guilds of builders survive. Using material
remains, it is possible to partially model these systems that used
middlemen or negotiators, even if only to fulfil the role of translators,
bridging the gap between Persian-speaking designers and often
indigenous craftspeople. Though contemporary chronicles from the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, such as the Burhān-i Maasir
and Tarikh-i Firishtah, place the late medieval Deccan well within a
historical context, there is hardly any commentary upon the art and
architecture.18 The lack of such extant architectural internalisation and
verbal articulation of design makes it necessary that a large part of
this study be within the realm of archaeology, with insights into
the construction processes and technology. Because of the lack
of comprehensive sources within a single discipline, the history of
architecture in the Deccan sultanates is a prime case calling for the
convergence of archaeology and history to understand these issues.
The material remains of the Deccan sultanates in India have suffered
from insufficient interpretation precisely because the archaeological
record has been overlooked and the emphasis has been on the limited
textual evidence alone. If carefully studied, the material record has the
potential to provide a richer understanding of the artistic, artisanal,
economic, and social processes of the period. Such an approach was
suggested by M.S. Mate more than three decades ago when he said:
This very abundance of written records perhaps led scholars to

treat purely archaeological studies as redundant. The realization
that archaeology provided a tool useful not only for verification of
these records but also for discovering new facts dawned only
slowly. It can hardly be claimed that the full potential of
archaeological studies for the Islamic period has been appreciated
even today.19
In this book, art-historical methods of visual inspection and formal

analysis, along with the documentation of architecture and construction,
expand on earlier attempts to overcome the limited interpretations
of previous text-based histories. The limited available archival
documentary evidence eventually makes more sense and becomes useful
supplementary material in conjunction only with architectural and other
material remains. Thus, this work uses material evidence to propose the
sources and means of transmission of architectural ideas, identifying the
role of local craftsmen and quantifying their engagement. In the process,
the social realities of the kingdom and their effects on architectural
preferences are partially uncovered. The primary sources for this study
are the structures themselves, supplemented with references to their
construction and maintenance in contemporary histories. Architecture
may be viewed as the material expression of these transactions. We can
make general inferences based on the scanty information and extant
monuments, and understand the architecture as a means of establishing
sovereignty and legitimacy for the king or his court.
Guilds and Movements of Craftspeople Recovered

In form alone, the architecture of the Nizam Shahs was not always
radically different from that of the earlier Bahmanis or the other post-
Bahmani sultanates in the region (the Qutb Shahs, Adil Shahs, Barid
Shahs, and Imad Shahs). Therefore, a morphological typology alone is
not sufficient to differentiate Nizam Shahi architecture exclusively, as
many of their buildings share common traits with those of other regional
sultanates in the Deccan. Stylistically, the architecture of the Nizam
Shahs is not always consistent, yet their architectural production has
been grouped together because of its dynastic pedigree. One way it can
be more cohesively understood is through its construction technology
and planning logic. This book, for the most part, is consciously limited
to dynastic and courtly architecture. Even though the history
of architectural forms is not strictly bound by the political history
of dynasties, the systems of patronage and construction teams are
invariably rooted in socio-political realities. The ‘subaltern’ aspect of
architectural history is possible through a study of construction
technology. Details of construction practices and techniques can reveal
more about the relationships between various agencies that contributed
to architectural creations. While partially acknowledging the
limitations of assigning dynastic values to architecture, it is still
possible to defend a dynastic classification for a focused study. Pika
Ghosh discussed some of the methodological issues when she
suggested that
the classification of architecture by dynasties, . . . inevitably

impl[ies] a ‘top down’ approach which ignores subaltern histories.
The inadequacy of this approach is also apparent when we consider
that constructions in less expensive and less permanent materials by
a host of lower classes have been erased from the historical record.20
Yet, even with dynastic and court-related architecture, it is possible to

recover ‘bottom-up’ processes through understanding building
construction, as demonstrated by the archaeological building research
of the Bauforschung school. Each building and site has been considered
and studied as an independent entity while relating it to its cultural and
temporal context, thus providing new evidence for historical arguments.
Stylistic considerations are therefore important, but comprise only
one aspect of this study. The diagnostic features of construction
and structural details are important in order to theorise the design and
construction of buildings. These social aspects of architectural processes
are used to better understand the architecture wherever possible. Most of
the architecture under study is connected by local ‘guilds’ and technical
expertise rooted in the region, along with their choice of building
materials. The word guild here is used to suggest a consistent base of
local building knowledge, not necessarily an organised consortium or
trade association as seen in medieval Europe – though that might be the
exceptional case. The surviving architecture commonly carries an
impression or some index of these ‘guilds’. Arches, for instance, were
built in unique ways by artisans who did not always fully appreciate
the structural logic of the arch and arcuated systems. The arches at
the mosque at Chaul, the Saudagar Gumbaz, and the gatehouse at
Manzarsumbah demonstrate various levels of understanding arcuated
systems. It is clear that local masons who worked alongside and under
master masons and designers from West Asia had a different
understanding, and therefore execution, of designs imported from a
larger Islamicate world. To illustrate, let us consider the double-safety
standards of construction workers who did not trust the implicit
structural logic of the true arch but instead reinforced it with wooden
dowels, as seen at the mosque in Chaul. It is clear that the local masons
improvised on a design and construction technology that was foreign to
them. Such improvisation hints at some elements of a dialogue between
designers and craftsmen, as it is indexed in the material itself. The use of
massive timber beams in conjunction with dressed and rubble stone
masonry is another characteristic of regional architecture. This type of
timber framing is characteristic of seismic zones and might suggest
construction technology from Central Asia; however, in this case, the
alternative explanation that this technique of timber-framed buildings
was employed for expediency is more plausible. Timber-framed
architecture continued as the mode de rigueur in this region through
the eighteenth century, when building design and practice were far more
localised.21 The technique was even used for buildings built in dressed
stone. Timber framing can then be read as a modular solution in the
service of expediency, as it functioned as formwork that was left in situ.
For fast-growing polities like the Nizam Shahs and the Marathas that
were involved in settling new groups of people in their territories, the
technique was probably employed for constructing individual buildings,
and by extension larger settlements, quickly. Building designers would
commission the forms, which local masons would use as the three-
dimensional blueprint around which to build. Already with such
examples, we can uncover socio-political reasons that favoured specific
construction techniques. Our understanding, following the trail of
material evidence, unfolds the course of causality in reverse. The other
contemporary sultanates in the eastern and southern Deccan did not use
wood framing within stone buildings, at least not on this scale,
suggesting regional specificity in defining the relationships between the
patrons, designers or architects, and building masons.22
Sultanate Architecture and Regional Variations

The twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, a period that has been
conveniently albeit somewhat erroneously suggested as a monolithic
period of ‘sultanate architecture’ till the Mughals, did bring to the
South Asian subcontinent certain architectural programmes not realised
locally before, along with new ideas of political legitimacy. But the
local realisation of these architectural programmes, however new,
distinguishes various regions and kingdoms. Mosques and ʿidgāhs,
tombs, hammams (baths), certain types of pleasure palaces, and other
architectural programmes were built on the Indian subcontinent for the
first time under the sultanates. The new typologies came with structural
requirements that were only partially addressed by local crafts and
traditions. For example, large congregational spaces were a part of the
new architectural programmes for the mosque, and true domes were
the obvious symbolic and structural solution. But the technology for
constructing such true domes was not always widespread, and several
creative and hybrid solutions were adopted. Although a few of the
architectural design elements (as opposed to architectural programmes)
were completely indigenous, the sources of architectural forms were
various and often also came from Central Asia or Iran: broadly speaking,
Persianate lands. Idioms of construction were commonly local, mostly
employing craftsmen from the immediate region. The slippage between
the local idiom of construction and an imported architectural
form provides pointers for the sources and patterns of transmission of
architecture.
Until the latter half of the twentieth century, the term
sultanate was applied to a period as large as 400 years before Mughal
rule, and to an area geographically so diverse as to cover most of
South Asia. This crude categorisation is now being increasingly
questioned through detailed studies of individual sultanates, and this
book is part of the larger trend of understanding this period as
architecturally diverse, rich, regionally specific, and nuanced.23
This study of the architecture of the Nizam Shahs thus provides a
model for better understanding the smaller sultanates in India over a
period of six centuries, disabusing prevalent notions of homogenous
‘sultanate’ architecture through the subcontinent. Studies on the
architecture of sultanate Gujarat and Bengal, for example, have
already highlighted regional exigencies and variations in the various

sultanates.24
Extra-regional Architectural Programmes and

Building Typologies
The extant architecture is of a large variety and can be functionally
differentiated into military, residential, religious, and commemorative,
though none of these categories are necessarily mutually exclusive.
Barring the typologies of the mosque and waterworks (including the
hammam), other architectural programmes did not have a unique design
or construction limited to a functional typology. Even tombs, which
appeared to have certain commonalities, were not all purpose-built as
such, and many buildings were converted into memorial structures only
after their patrons had died. Particularly in the case of tombs, the ease of
creating pious trusts (waqf, pl. awqāf) to retain property within control
of the patron’s family was instrumental in creating such mausolea.25
If the lands and estates were grants from the state, the creating of a
quasi-religious trust would ensure that it never reverted to the state.
The trustees were usually the descendants of the person who had been
given the land grant. This process of transforming empty palaces into
tombs, and eventually shrines, is still ongoing. One can witness it in the
palace at Manzarsumbah, where since 2006 one of the rooms within the
palace is being promoted as the shrine of a local pir (holy man, usually of
a Sufi affiliation); increasingly, stories of his miracles are being attributed
to the site, even though no one had even heard of this holy man a
decade ago. Local and sectarian politics, and also the rising value of real
estate, have led to this form of cultural and physical appropriation of
many sites.
The garden pavilion could therefore have the same basic design as a
tomb, a watchtower, a palace, or a library. The use of an architectural
programme as the sole taxonomical tool, though common, is therefore
inherently limited. This functional taxonomy must be cautiously used to
classify Nizam Shahi architecture internally, since there are almost no
stylistic or technological differences within the functional categories.
More complex factors, such as the location of a site with respect to urban
settlements and the wider geography of the region, might be useful in
the creation of a complex typology. However, in the case of this book,
the convention has consciously triumphed over innovation, and a

taxonomy based largely on architectural programmes has been adopted.
Global Architecture and Local Construction

In the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, local idioms of construction technology
were used to build or mimic design ideals from the larger Islamic world.
Yet, as mentioned earlier, construction itself was a bottom-up process,
involving guilds and workmen who had learned their craft through
practice and gesture and passed it on regionally through many centuries.
The designers and patrons were nobility or literati, and their design
principles were theoretically derived from geometry or literary memory,
or drawn from a larger Islamicate imaginaire. The imposition of designs
that were not indigenous was a top-down process. The friction between
design and construction sets up a variety of binaries: imported and
indigenous, elite and vernacular, theoretical and practical, ideal
and realised. These binaries created ‘slippages’ in the buildings
themselves. The resultant incongruities between design and construc-
tion facilitate studies that are not limited to stylistic appraisal.
Investigating construction practices with respect to idealised, imported
designs is useful in recovering the social history of a region using
nondestructive archaeological investigations.
Construction technology and stylistic attributes are important tools
to understand social relations and aesthetic choices in a regime, because
together they reveal something about the different classes of the
peoples involved in building construction. Alone, each presents either a
guild-based or an elite view of construction, respectively. Thus,
textual histories and material documentation are by themselves
inherently limited sources. Construction technology often defines and
dictates stylistic forms. However, the construction of these forms is a
sociopolitical act, reflecting realities greater than what stylistic or
technological studies alone could reveal.
Architecture in medieval and early modern societies was a very
complex social and physical activity involving patrons, designers,
foremen, artisans, and even translators. The roles of all these constituents
kept shifting and changing depending on the architectural commission.
It is possible, to a certain extent, to conjecture what the roles of these
agencies would have been in the execution of projects, but the social
processes and relationships between them are harder to unravel. In the

realisation of architecture in late medieval South Asia, there were two
distinct processes. One was the commission and conceptualisation of the
design (whether as a patron or as a designer), and the other process
comprised the actual construction. For the architecture in question,
design was an elite process informed by theoretical discourses
about philosophy, gnostic beliefs, geometry, or literary memory. This
tended to be a top-down process, initiated by court nobility or literati.
The discourse was transmitted through exograms (memory devices that
are external to the human body, such as paper). These top-down
processes were connected with the knowledge of the larger ‘global’ world
of the sixteenth-century Deccan. On the other hand, construction was
usually a bottom-up process in which the expertise and habits of regional
guilds and artisans were definitive elements. The (master) craftsmen
were usually trained through gesture and practice. The mode of
transmission of this knowledge and expertise was through engrams
(memory devices within the human body).
The slippages expand the possibilities of understanding architecture
beyond the simple linear evolutionary mode typical of stylistic studies.
The dichotomisation of architecture into these two processes is not an
attempt to suggest that one has any superior intellectual value over the
other, but to give both processes equal agency.
The history of architecture has often tended to privilege the design
aspect because of the more durable methods of transmission that
recorded this process. Such a bias is also aided by documentary
evidence, wherein the agendas of patrons and the designers are always
given a dominant voice and recorded because of their social status and
connections with literary production. The actual construction
required local trades and artisans, partially for the sheer logistics
of labour requirements. These individuals and groups belonged to a
different social register and were conversant with the regional habits of
construction technology, and therefore contributed their own traditions
in the architectural design. This process was based on local, indigenous
(or naturalised) building knowledge. Such knowledge was transmitted
through gesture and imitation, both localised and ‘local’, and provides
the other component of the binary.
Thus, two buildings that may have appeared identical in their final
form could in fact have been constructed very differently. This limitation
of conventional architectural history is easy to address in the kingdom of

Ahmadnagar, where most of the architecture under study is adequately
ruinous to provide ready cross-sections that are invaluable in
understanding construction technology.
The Urgency to Study, Research, and Recover

Though the material remains at Ahmadnagar are limited in comparison
to other Deccan sultanates such as the Adil Shahs of Bijapur, the urgency
and necessity for studying them is now far greater. The pressures
of urban expansion and lack of historic consciousness threaten the
architectural record. No more than eight monuments connected and
identified exclusively with the Nizam Shahs have ‘protected’ status.26
Over the last few years alone, at least half a dozen important buildings,
all over 400 years old, have been demolished. Significant historic
structures such as Changiz Khan’s palace have been slated for demolition
soon. Many other structures of the period are being ‘modernised’. Many
of these buildings still serve the same use that they were adapted for
more than a hundred years ago under colonial rule.27 The Husaini
mosque and college were turned into the Criminal Jail, the Adhai
Ghumat (acquired recently by a private developer, slated for demolition)
became the residence of the District Judge, Salabat Khan’s tomb was
converted into the Collector’s residence and later used as an infirmary.
The precincts of Rumi Khan’s tomb are still part of a college hostel, and
the fort of Ahmadnagar is still being used by the army as a supply depot
and garrison. Mashhadi Mosque is the main police station, the Mengni
Mahal is being used as the Civil Jail, Qasim Khan’s mansion (in its
modified form) is the Collector’s residence, and Changiz Khan’s mansion
is the District Judge’s Court (to be demolished soon). The old building
used as offices for the Municipal Corporation of Ahmadnagar has a
core that was originally Niʾmat Khan’s mansion. The finite resources
for architectural history are being decimated, as the few ‘protected’
monuments are being subjected to crude and whimsical repairs carried
out or sanctioned by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).
The corpus of buildings constructed in the reign of the Nizam Shahs
has not been studied together as a group before. One of the reasons is that
the custodians of the sites are different administrative and private
entities: the ASI, Maharashtra State Archaeological Department,
Ministry of Defence, Maharashtra Forest Service, Land Revenue

Department, and many private owners. All these entities have their
own agendas and operations, which are not necessarily in keeping with
the recovery of archaeological and historical data.
The city of Ahmadnagar has been sacked at least half a dozen times
since the late sixteenth century, and large sections of its physical fabric
have been decimated. A preservation bias toward religious buildings
creates a distorted or skewed representation of the total architecture, and,
as a result, mosques and tombs survive in disproportionate numbers.
As expounded earlier, many of the extant royal palaces and noble
residences are still partly occupied by government offices or by squatters
and have often been modified beyond recognition, thereby barring
many of them from this study. This book collates the material remains
of much of the extant architecture of the Nizam Shahs, irrespective
of current custodian or location, and, while not a complete catalogue of
their architecture, provides a representative survey of the significant
architectural remains.
CHAPTER 2
MULTIPLE PASTS:THE NIZAM

SHAHS OF AHMADNAGAR
Drawing Boundaries: Historiography of the Nizam Shahs

The history of the Nizam Shahs has always been mentioned as a marginal
component of the broader history of the Deccan. While it is undeniable
that the other kingdoms and their connected political histories shaped
the kingdom of Ahmadnagar to a great degree, the latter was never the
focus of any substantial research until recently.1 A historical narrative
centred on Ahmadnagar was constructed only in the second half of
the twentieth century. Until this book, there has been no architectural
history of the kingdom based on primary sources and extant structures.
The historic events at the court of the Nizam Shahs were recorded by
three authors in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries:
Sayyid Ali bin Aziz ʿullah at-Tabatabai, Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah
Astarabadi (known as Firishtah), and Rafiʾi al-din Shirazi. Sayyid Ali
Tabatabai was born in Semnan and came to the Ahmadnagar court via
Iraq (sometimes parts of the Safavid kingdom are called by that term)
and Golconda.2 He wrote his history of the Bahmani dynasty and the
sultanate of Ahmadnagar in the early seventeenth century. He was an
eyewitness to many of the events that he described, and on occasion was
also employed in the administration.3 He fled Ahmadnagar for Golconda
early in the seventeenth century. The other author, Firishtah, was also an
insider in the court of the Nizam Shahs. Firishtah’s father, Ghulam
ʿAli, was part of the émigré nobility in Ahmadnagar. Firishtah went to
the Bijapur court after the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah II and produced
MULTIPLE PASTS:THE NIZAM SHAHS OF AHMADNAGAR 23
the work Gulshan-i Ibrahimi (better known as the Tarikh-i Firishtah) in

1606–07 CE .4 This work, in the tarikh genre, attempted to cover the
history of the various sultanates and Islamic kingdoms in India, with
different sections (maqalas) dedicated to each kingdom. Firishtah’s
origin and patronage in the Deccan and his life at the Ahmadnagar and
Bijapur courts make his book a valuable reference. Both these histories
were couched in the conventional rhetorical style. Though they are
the contemporary sources for the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, they
unfortunately do not contain much information on architecture and
building processes. Buildings were mentioned only when political
events were associated with them. The Farah Bakhsh Bagh, for example,
was mentioned in connection with the reception of a diplomatic
embassy. Building sites were described with the usual metaphors and
tropes, which makes it almost impossible to recover any real details of
the architecture from these texts. The Tadhkirat ul-Mulk by Rafiʾi al-din
Shirazi (written around 1608 CE ) exists only in manuscript form; it refers
to the Ahmadnagar sultanate and makes passing mention of events in the
kingdom.5 There exist a number of later works in Persian and Urdu, but
they are mostly based on passages from these earlier histories and do not
reveal anything new in terms of architectural details.6
Translations of Firishtah appeared in English as early as 1794 CE in
the form of Jonathan Scott’s Firishtah’s History of Dekkan.7 However,
the most widely circulated translation of Firishtah, by John Briggs, was
published in 1829 CE as Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India.8
Tabatabai’s writings, specifically on the Nizam Shahi kings, in contrast,
were translated and published only in the first half of the twentieth
century by Lieutenant Colonel (later Sir) Wolseley Haig. The text
initially appeared in a serialised form in Indian Antiquary between 1920
and 1923 CE , after which it was published as a book.9 In the twentieth
century, at least a dozen papers pertaining to research relevant to the
Deccan sultanates were presented in the medieval section of the Indian
History Congress.10 Through these efforts, Ahmadnagar was finally
recognised as an important entity in mainstream historical research.
The reasons for this trend were an emerging emphasis on regionalism
and the rise of local historians in academic positions, most notably in
Marathi-speaking regions.11 Sardar N.Y. Mirikar published a Marathi
book called Ahamadanagara śaharācā itı̄hasa (History of the City of
Ahmadnagar), which was a compilation of information from various
published sources in English and Urdu along with snippets of local

information. Similar ‘histories’ were written in Marathi and English.
Radhey Shyam authored The Kingdom of Ahmadnagar in 1966 CE based
on translations of Firishtah and Tabatabai, supplemented by other
similar sources.12 But there was no attempt at writing a history based on
primary sources.
In 1974 CE , P.M. Joshi and H.K. Sherwani edited a two-volume
work entitled History of Medieval Deccan.13 This work had inputs from
various experts on different topics such as literature, architecture,
political history, etc. These two volumes were the first attempt at
writing a comprehensive history of the medieval Deccan, using
different academic disciplines and cultural loci as their organising
principle. This was the first time in the twentieth century that the
kingdom of Ahmadnagar was treated as a significant political entity, on
par with the other, better-studied sultanates in the Deccan. As opposed
to earlier works (such as Percy Brown’s Indian Architecture),14 Joshi and
Sherwani demonstrated an awareness of the futility of separating
‘Hindu’ and ‘Islamic’ periods. Only the sections on literature and
epigraphy were organised on the basis of sectarian religious identity,
because of the affinities between religion and language that they
perceived. It is remarkable that Joshi and Sherwani resisted the
temptation of recognising the three major linguistic zones as generators
for the three major sultanates and the three Hindu kingdoms preceding
them. The kingdoms of the Nizam Shahs, the Qutb Shahs, and the Adil
Shahs roughly correspond with the kingdoms of the Yadavas, the
Kakatiyas, and the Hoysalas respectively, which are then often seen as
the prime sources for the Marathi, Telugu, and Kannada cultures – an
idea that resonates with the national project of the Republic of India
since the 1960s of recognising linguistic zones as monolithic
administrative and cultural zones. Joshi and Sherwani’s avoidance of
such simplistic analogies is even more creditable since this was a period
of great popular belief in the linguistic basis for modern Indian states
(Andhra Pradesh was established in 1956, Maharashtra in 1960, and
Karnataka in 1973, and recently Telangana in 2015).
Joshi and Sherwani realised that the heart of the sultanate Deccan was
in the ‘shatter zone’15 between the three major language areas and the
three corresponding kingdoms. The two kingdoms in the medieval
period that controlled almost the entire Deccan, at the height of their
respective regimes, were the Western Chalukyas (973–1200) and the

Bahmanis (1347– 1527). Kalyani, the capital of the Chalukyas, was
based in this shatter zone, as were Gulbarga and Bidar, the two capitals
of the Bahmanis. The city of Vijayanagara was also in the same area. Not
only did these rulers of the Deccan prize this zone, but the capital cities
of the later regional kingdoms were also located around this area. The
central Deccan was a key zone between north and south India and existed
as a significant political centre through the early historic, medieval, and
early modern periods,16 though it does not retain the same political
potency today. The contribution of Joshi and Sherwani was the creation
of a regional history not limited to just a singular polity and period, thus
emphasising the unified character of the Deccan.
The most important book focusing solely on the Ahmadnagar of the
Nizam Shahs was Pramod Gadre’s Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar.17
This research was a preliminary catalogue of the pottery, coinage,
architecture, and epigraphs, but limited only to the city of Ahmadnagar
and not the whole kingdom. It provided a good starting point for
understanding the urban growth of the city, but the development of the
kingdom and the patterns of architecture were not explored. The author
himself admitted that it was ‘not intended to present an intensive study
of the architecture that has been attributed to the Nizam Shahi period’.18
The Marathas 1600 –1818, by Stewart Gordon, admirably explains
some of the social and political structures in the sixteenth-century
western Deccan, though the focus of the book is on the seventeenth
century.19 The semifeudal and prebendal systems of the region and the
means and methods of war are presented clearly in the initial chapters of
this book. The continuity of political and revenue systems from the
sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries, and how the failing Nizam
Shahi state provided the basis of the Maratha kingdom, is elucidated in
the book. Recently, M. Siraj Anwar has written a book on the polity of
the Nizam Shahs, with special reference to their relations with the
Mughal Empire.20
George Michell and Mark Zebrowski’s Architecture and Art of the
Deccan Sultanates is a recent comprehensive work.21 In this book, the
authors group the architecture and paintings of all the dynasties in
the Deccan, from the Bahmanis to the Marathas. Some of the sites from
the kingdom of Ahmadnagar are discussed in detail, providing an
appropriate context within which to place the architecture of the
kingdom. Recently, three conference publications and a major exhibition

have refocused interest on the individual Deccan sultanates, ascribing
greater agency to individual kingdoms and celebrating their vibrant
artistic endeavours.22
In terms of architectural documentation, most of the buildings built
under the Nizam Shahs have never been catalogued. Drawings are
available for almost none of the sites, some of which are physically
difficult to access. Most surveys of the architecture of the Deccan have
overlooked Ahmadnagar because it did not possess the numbers of
recorded buildings found in Bijapur, Gulbarga, and Golconda.23
Buildings from the kingdom of Ahmadnagar have only found occasional
mention as convenient comparanda. Since most of the sites and
settlements of the Nizam Shahs were later appropriated by other
kingdoms and rulers, their association with the dynasty has been
conveniently overlooked.
The nineteenth-century model of Indian history, based along
religious periods in India, was in part reproduced in the twentieth
century by Robert Sewell’s History of the Vijayanagara Kingdom, which
glorified it as a ‘Hindu kingdom’ against Islamic invaders.24 The
premise of such narratives was that a great Hindu civilisation and golden
age had been vandalised and replaced by an Islamic one (with the
implication that the ‘Islamic period’ in turn was displaced by an
enlightened colonial regime). This deceptive, simple, tripartite
chronological division of Indian history into Hindu, Islamic, and
British periods still haunts some popular textbooks, though a lot of late-
twentieth-century scholarship has successfully challenged this notion.25
Many of the historic chronicles of the other Deccan sultanates with
regard to Bijapur and Golconda were translated by the mid-nineteenth
century and their histories reconstructed.26 Bijapur and Hyderabad
retained their status as regional capital cities under the Mughals and
later as large provincial cities under the British. The capital cities of the
Nizam Shahs, first Ahmadnagar and eventually Daulatabad, did not
retain this prestige and were marginal and lesser towns. The Bombay
Presidency and the Hyderabad State contained within them almost the
complete kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda, respectively. This enabled
an easier administrative and political patronage to investigate the
history of these kingdoms. The Bombay Presidency and the Nizam of
Hyderabad’s government carried out extensive surveys of the material
remains from the two kingdoms. The kingdom of Ahmadnagar did not
benefit from such research because it did not survive in its entirety as an
administrative unit; its domains were distributed between various
princely states and the British Presidencies.
Sites associated with the Nizam Shahs have recently been hijacked by
more popular or valourised narratives, as is the case with the forts of
Daulatabad and Shivneri. The Nizam Shahs controlled Daulatabad for
over a hundred years and made significant contributions to its built
form, but Muhammad bin Tughluq’s fourteenth-century association
with the site is always invoked, and popular literature remains silent on
the role of Daulatabad in the sixteenth century. At the same time, the
‘pre-Islamic’ layers of sites are being vigorously and disproportionately
emphasised as part of a nationalist project. Shivneri, the fortress
controlling Junnar, the first capital of the Nizam Shahs, served as their
capital on more than one occasion, and was one of the strongholds of the
Ahmadnagar kingdom. The complete site is now being reconstructed,
physically and in literature, as only the birthplace of Shivaji Bhonsale,
the founder of the Maratha state, at the expense of all other layers
of history. The fort of Junnar, Shivneri, is correctly the birthplace of
Shivaji. His father, Shahaji, held the area as a jāgir for the Ahmadnagar
kingdom, then for the Mughals in 1630 CE . When the Mughals asked
for the land to be part of the Mughal empire, Shahaji tried to revive the
Nizam Shahi dynasty by putting forth an imposter and fighting
the Mughals in the latter’s name. Eventually, when the Mughals and the
Adil Shahs signed a treaty in 1636 CE , he was forced to resign and his
territories of Junnar and Sangamner were handed over to the Mughals.
Shahaji himself was assigned to the Bijapur court. Ironically, the
independent Maratha state (founded by Shivaji) did not control the site
of Shivneri till the eighteenth century. Yet the fortress of Junnar has a
legendary status in early Maratha history. This rewriting of history is not
limited to texts but is also being implemented on the actual sites as they
are reappropriated. The accompanying politically motivated ‘restor-
ations’ on various sites make the recording of architectural data
increasingly difficult for future scholarship. The elevation of certain
historical figures as regional heroes and the generation of a mythology
surrounding them have reached unprecedented levels in the Deccan
because of the present-day politics of the region. The assertion of
regional languages, the rise of militant right-wing groups, and other
such events all conspire to create the loss of historical and archaeological
evidence. These agendas are being realised through complete apathy and
mismanagement, if not through direct activism.27 A serious
reconsideration of the history of the Deccan has been a project only in
the late twentieth century, and it competes with the chauvinistic
regional histories being generated. Yet material evidence in the form of
architecture undermines the latter. The sections of this book devoted
to the architectural history of the Nizam Shahs will make a case for
regional continuities with regional dynasties like the early Marathas
and a disjuncture with the Mughals (survived by the late Marathas
in the Deccan).
The Nizam Shahs

The Nizam Shahi sultanate of Ahmadnagar (c. 1490– 1636 CE ) was one
of the key kingdoms in the sixteenth-century Deccan. As one of the
first sultanates to emerge from the crumbling edifice of the Bahmani
kingdom (c. 1347 –1527 CE ), its rich material record remained relatively
unstudied as compared to its contemporaries, the Adil Shahs of Bijapur
(c. 1490–1686 CE ) and the Qutb Shahs of Golconda (c. 1518– 1687 CE ).
The Nizam Shahi state witnessed an architectural and artistic
efflorescence earlier than its two contemporary neighbours, yet, due to
various later political and historical events, the kingdom was never
reconstructed as the important polity it had been.
Through the course of the sixteenth century, the successor states of
the erstwhile Bahmani kingdom (Nizam Shahs, Qutb Shahs, Adil
Shahs, Imad Shahs, Barid Shahs) fashioned themselves along the lines
of other Persianate kingdoms in the post-Timurid lands of Iran and
Central Asia. The reasons for this aspiration were many, in part
attributed to the Shiʾi faith centred on Safavid Iran, to which the later
rulers of the Deccan sultanates often subscribed.28 The Shiʾi connection
of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar was the most consistent, unlike the
courts of Bijapur and Golconda, which vacillated between Sunni and
Shiʾi profession, particularly from the latter half of the sixteenth
century. The kings of Ahmadnagar were firmly Shiʾi from the reign of
Burhan Nizam Shah I onwards, after he converted to the ithna ʿashari
(twelver Shiʾi) faith under the instruction of Shah Tahir al Husaini
around 1537 CE .
The Bahmanis had imagined their own status as a post-Timurid

state, going as far as capitulating to Timur and getting a diploma of
investiture from him. As a result of their self-fashioning as post-Timurid
courts, many of the arts that flourished in the Bahmani courts therefore
found willing patrons in the Deccan sultanates. The three prominent
successor dynasties in the Deccan – the Adil Shahis of Bijapur, the Qutb
Shahis of Golconda, and the Nizam Shahis of Ahmadnagar – became
centres of greater Persianate culture. By the sixteenth century, the
Deccan had long been a central ground for the cultural interaction
between African, Arab, Central Asian, and South Asian lands. Rarely
was this contact one of conflict; on the contrary, it was centred on trade,
exchange, and migration, including the transmission of tangible crafts
and trades. Many of the ports mentioned in the earliest documents, such
as Chaul (called Semylla or Chemula in the classical and Sheool in the
early medieval Arabic sources), Dabhol, Bhatkal, and Goa were active
right through the seventeenth century,29 demonstrating the importance
of this region to Indian Ocean trade into the early modern period. The
courts at Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, and Golconda received a considerable
influx of people from Central Asia and Iran through the sixteenth
century, the continuation of a trend in the Deccan that began earlier
under the Bahmanis. In fact, the nominal suzerainty of the Bahmanis
was maintained as convenient fiction for several decades after the end of
the Bahmani dynasty. For example, the coinage of the Nizam Shahs was
unusual, as they chose to continue with Bahmani coinage for as many
as 80 years after declaring independence. Their behaviour was not
anomalous if studied together with the coins of the other post-Bahmani
sultanates in the Deccan, who also chose to carry on with similar
practices. The Adil Shahs and the Qutb Shahs also did not mint any
coins with their own kings’ names till the Mughal expansion and
monetary policies affected them in the last quarter of the sixteenth
century. They all continued to mint and use coins in the name of the
Bahmani sultans, as expounded upon in a later chapter.
The conversion of Burhan Nizam Shah I particularly amplified the
attraction of Ahmadnagar for scholars, literati, poets, adventurers, and
others from Safavid lands. The sectarian affiliation of the Nizam Shahs
shaped the physical fabric of their cities and the architecture therein. For
example, the distribution and role of mosques in the Nizam Shahi state
was very closely modelled along that of the Safavids, whose nominal
religious hegemony they accepted, partly as a foil to the expansionist

Mughals who threatened from the north. Even the settlement patterns of
the Nizam Shahs reinforced this connection with Safavid Iran;
Ahmadnagar, their capital, does not have any congregational mosque
on a large scale, almost as a response to the debates in early Safavid Iran
against such an architectural programme.30 Such political reflections
were not limited to architectural expression, but were also found in other
classes of artefacts.
The flow of emigrants intensified in the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, as the empire of the Timurids was dissolving and the
Safavids had not yet completely consolidated theirs; large numbers of
artists, craftsmen, and literati migrated to western India in search of
patronage, usually south by the sea routes that ended at Chaul, Dabhol,
Bhatkal, and Goa, among other ports.31 Chaul was the most important
port controlled by Ahmadnagar, and the Nizam Shahs were directly
involved in its shipping trade. Not only were the ports commercially
important, but they were also prestigious, since they handled most of the
traffic of pilgrims from the Deccan on their way to Mecca. The port of
Chaul is mentioned in the travels of the Russian Afanasy Nikitin in the
mid-fifteenth century and the French Franc ois Pyrard de Laval in the
early seventeenth century. The large movement of people from Iranian
and Central Asian centres to the Deccan was responsible for materially
fulfilling the ideological affiliation that the Deccan sultans continued to
cultivate with Iran. Ironically, the decentralisation and devolution of
power of the Timurid courts, which created the conditions for this
exodus, were mirrored by a similar loss of central control of the Bahmani
tarafs (provinces), resulting in the post-Bahmani Deccan kingdoms.32
A new network of patronage emerged in which court nobles and local
fief-holders had the resources and the privileges to patronise artists
and craftsmen, as can be seen with the Jadhavs of Sindkhed Raja. The
fact that a significant number of the buildings are not just royal
commissions but can also be attributed to or associated with other nobles
at the court is testament to such a pattern. As court officials assumed
more power and destabilised the polity, they broadened the bases of
patronage. As opposed to the Timurids in Central Asia a century earlier,
where decentralisation of power did not result in destabilisation of
centres of patronage and allowed the Timurids to survive another half a
century under Abu Saʾid, Sultan Husayn, and Shah Rukh, the devolution
of power in the sultanate Deccan contributed to the instability

of patronage in the Deccan kingdoms. The Timurids under Ulugh Beg
(1394– 1449 CE ) outsourced the expansion of an agricultural basis to
generate revenue and outsourced this enterprise and tax collection to
greater shrines. In the Deccan, the nobility at court were entrusted with
this activity, and these court nobles became semi-autonomous regional
commanders, ready to defect for greater titles and rights. The rise of the
Maratha fief-holders in this period is particularly notable.
A large number of Persian scholars had been forced to migrate to the
Deccan under Muhammad bin Tughluq when he became the Sultan of
Delhi and shifted his capital to Daulatabad (the erstwhile Devagiri,
capital of the Yadavas) in 1327 CE . He shifted his capital in another
forced migration in 1335 CE , but the forced migrations were
unsuccessful and his empire collapsed shortly thereafter. But the
aborted attempt at ruling the subcontinent from Daulatabad had
unintended cultural repercussions: a Turco-Persianate cultural complex
became established in the Deccan. The earliest specimens of Persian
poetry in the region belong to this period, and these literati were one of
the groups that made up the Deccanis. In addition, new flows of men of
letters from Persianate lands reinforced the literary culture of the
Deccan. As the Deccan sultanates established themselves, they became
the magnets for attracting immigrants from the Turco-Persianate lands.
Most sixteenth and seventeenth-century poets, such as Firishtah, ʿUrfi,
and Zuhuri, were at the Ahmadnagar court en route to Bijapur,
Golconda, or the Mughal courts.33 The Deccan courts in the sixteenth
century also had a large population of Sunni Deccanis, Indian-born
Muslims (some of whom had been settled in the Deccan since the time of
the Khiljis and Tughluqs), often pitted against the Shiʾi Afāqis, newly
arrived foreigners from Persianate and Turkic lands and Transoxiana.34
The Habashis, Abyssinian slaves brought from the area around Ethiopia
in Africa, usually sided with the Deccanis. The local Koli and Maratha
chiefs, who eventually sided with the Deccani-Habashi coterie, were the
other key ethnic constituencies. All these factions variously allied and
fought against each other, but the rift between the Deccanis and the
Afāqis was fairly consistent. Since the Marathas were local landed gentry,
their power bases tended to be secure, stable, and loyal to them.
The situation was summed up by P.M. Joshi when he observed that ‘the
king’s sovereignty was limited by his feudal nobility . . . . The perpetual
struggle between the nobles and the king over the question of
sovereignty is the keynote of the history of the Deccan sultanates’.35
When the Nizam Shahi kingdom was on the verge of collapse in the late
sixteenth century, the millenarian Mahdavis transformed into an
important sectarian faction.36 By the early seventeenth century, under
Malik Ambar, the Deccani-Habashi-Maratha axis was largely in control
of the kingdom. Through this period, the caste identity of the Marathas
was consolidated, not unlike the Rajput identity formation in North
India a few centuries earlier.
The court nobles also comprised representatives from the local clans
who had land grants with ‘nested’ rights, particularly among the
Maratha faction at court.37 These were mostly the various deshmukhs
(the local appointed fief-holders and officials, now a common last name)
who held jāgirs and other types of land grants in return for allegiance and
maintaining and furnishing troops and fighting men on demand.38 The
royal court did not usually have a significant presence in the countryside;
barring the central administrative presence in tax assessment and
collection, all functions at the local level were managed and discharged
by the fief-holders and jāgirdars (landed gentry with hereditary fiefs).
Their patronage of architecture emulated the royal court, albeit on a
more modest scale.
The relatively short life of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar provides
convenient boundaries for the study of their polity (formally from 1490
to 1636 CE , though after 1600 CE Malik Ambar and others controlled
the kingdom with nominal monarchs of the Nizam Shahi dynasty). The
first four sultans commissioned large buildings from 1494 to 1595 CE ,
followed by Malik Ambar in the early sixteenth century.
In this book, the name Ahmadnagar has been commonly used to
refer to three entities: the walled city, the kingdom, and also the fort in
close proximity to the city. Today, the administrative district
(county) is called Ahmadnagar, as is the city. To avoid confusion, the
use of the term Ahmadnagar is specified as the kingdom of Ahmadnagar,
the city of Ahmadnagar, or the fort of Ahmadnagar. The ‘Nizam Shahs
of Ahmadnagar’ means the ‘Nizam Shahs of the kingdom of
Ahmadnagar’. It must be mentioned here that the Nizam Shahs
are commonly confused with the later Asaf Jahs of Hyderabad
(reg. 1724 – 1948 CE ), popularly known as the Nizams of Hyderabad,
because of the title as Nizam-ul Mulk of the Mughal court. This later
dynasty, the Asaf Jahs, has little to do with the Nizam Shahs of
Ahmadnagar, other than the fact that the Aurangabad-Daulatabad
region was central to the foundation of both dynasties more than
200 years apart.
Paintings
Painting must be seen as a visual strategy attempting ideological goals,
much like architecture. Unfortunately, there are no extant paintings
associated with the architecture – neither architectural representations on
paper nor large painted surfaces in the buildings, both of which could have
made for a strong case in explaining the intersection of these visual media.
The paintings produced under the patronage of this kingdom are
arguably very similar to its architecture with respect to the process of
merging at least two traditions: regional Indic and an international
Persianate, local and imported, respectively. It is now recognised that
amongst the earliest extant schools of painting in the Deccan,
Ahmadnagar was an important centre which flourished very briefly but
brightly. As Mark Zebrowski remarks, ‘Ahmadnagar [preserved] . . . its
independence for a shorter time than Bijapur or Golconda. Under
Iranian influence, the court converted to the Shi’i sect of Islam . . . .
[Ahmadnagar painting] is the rarest of all Deccani schools and has been
the most elusive to reconstruct.’39 Unlike other centres at Bijapur and
Golconda, it faded before it could be affected by the style of painting at
the Mughal court. Approximately 20 paintings can be ascribed to the
school at Ahmadnagar, or at least associated, and they provide a
convenient control group.40 They are not necessarily representative of
the paintings produced at the court of Ahmadnagar, since the invasions
of the kingdom in the seventeenth century resulted in the looting and
destruction of most of the art produced. As explained by Stuart Cary
Welch for paintings in the Deccan in general:
Reasons for the Deccani muddle are not hard to find: Aurangzeb
[the Mughal emperor] for instance. His lack of respect for painters
and pictures is now legendary, evoking nightmares of destruction
. . . visions of burning Ahmadnagar ragamala sets and shredded
portraits of Ibrahim Adil Shah. Assuredly the losses were frightful
but small, intimidating problems by the survivors are far more
insistent, occasionally making us wish that Aurangzeb had been

more thorough.41
It is now suspected that the Marathas, not the Mughals under

Aurangzeb, vandalised the libraries and art in Ahmadnagar. However,
Aurangzeb tends to be vilified more easily. All the paintings now
associated with this court are attributed to the latter half of the sixteenth
century, under the aegis of Husain Shah I (reg. 1554– 65 CE ) and his sons
Murtaza I (reg. 1565– 88 CE ) and Burhan II (reg. 1591–95 CE ). All
scholarship on these paintings, including that of Stella Kramrisch, Karl
Khandalavala, Stuart Cary Welch, Richard Ettinghausen, Douglas
Barrett, and Mark Zebrowski, agrees that the paintings were produced in
the latter half of the sixteenth century. However, there is minor
disagreement on the precise dating of some of the folios. Twelve of these
paintings are part of a codex that is a panegyric chronicle in praise of the
king Husain Nizam Shah I, and accompany the verse composed by the
poet Aftabi.42 Six depict military scenes [Figure 2.1]. The other
paintings are individual folios that have not yet been recognised as a part
of an album or codex. These are distributed between museums and
private collections in North America, Europe, and Asia. In the past
century, the tendency to designate all paintings from the Deccan
sultanates as Bijapuri has slowly been replaced by a more enlightened
attitude. The poor provenance of most of the paintings from this region
can also often cause them to be misidentified with Rajput, Mughal, or
Persian works.43 As Karl Khandalavala has observed, ‘The tendency
to ascribe all the best work of the late 16th and the early 17th centuries
to Bijapur has been halted and it is now recognised that Golconda was an
equally important centre of painting and that the Nizam Shahi court of
Ahmadnagar also had painters of high merit.’44 The paintings suffer a
similar, if not worse, fate regarding their study as compared to the
architecture in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar. The only significant
observation for architecture that can be gleaned from these paintings is
that not a single one shows a real architectural setting for the king, his
entourage, or the court. Almost all the paintings of the king, his
courtiers, and other nobles are set on a plain white or coloured ground.
A garden landscape setting, which is seen in only three of the paintings
from the Tārif-i Husain Shah, shows the queen in the famous dohāda
[Figure 2.2] or depicts the king, Husain Nizam Shah I, sitting with his
Figure 2.1 Battle scene from the Tarif-i Husain Shah.
Figure 2.2 Dohada scene from the Tarif-i Husain Shah.
Figure 2.3 Sultan Husain Nizam Shah I and his queen from the Tarif-i
Husain Shah.
wife, Khanzade Humayun, on a takht set on a stone platform in a

garden [Figure 2.3]. No other paintings from sixteenth-century
Ahmadnagar depict architecture or landscape to this extent. This
observation has implications for understanding how the Nizam Shahs
governed, and where the seats of the court and ceremonials were located,
which will be discussed later. The only potential argument against the
inference is that the painting draws heavily upon Tabrizi Turkoman
painting, which, very similarly, depicts figures against blank or
sparse grounds.
There is good evidence that Central Asian Persianate artists shaped
the Ahmadnagar school of painting, as demonstrated by Mark
Zebrowski with two illustrations: one from the Freer Gallery in
Washington, D.C., and one from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.45
It is speculated that these sketches were produced to face each other in
the same album and formed a pair. Each sketch has a fierce Central Asian
warrior; both had been ascribed to the Timurid school and dated as
around 1430 CE , suggesting an origin in the greater Iranian cultural
zone. But now a number of small traits have placed these drawings in the
space between the Deccan and Central Asia. The sinuous curves and
the emphasis on weight and volume are typical of Indian paintings.
Zebrowski points out the fashions of the Ahmadnagar sultans with
respect to headgear and the speckling on the clothes and shields of the
warriors as characteristic of the late Ahmadnagar style.46 Even if
produced by a Central Asian artist, he or she must have been an émigré
to the Deccan. Even if the origins of some of these conventions are
Central Asian, their deployment within part of a larger scheme would
typify them as characteristic of Ahmadnagar painting.
The ontological status of these paintings would be established
through an understanding of which cultural space they are located in.
Mere geographical classification or simple stylistic analysis is not
adequate to unravel the layers of complexity that these provincial schools
of painting evolved, nor do those categories define the essence of such
schools of painting. The cultural location can be determined only if their
visual appearance or their thematic elements (or both) are defined as
determinants of their cultural tradition.
If the defining characteristics of Persianate painting are to be
understood as a combination of cultural production contexts and visual
material, the issue would be to understand how the paintings produced
at a court in south-central India would relate to this model; especially

since the paintings are rooted in a local tradition but also strive toward
assuming certain Persian qualities. The issue would involve locating
these paintings in a cultural space, since no extant contemporary
documents from that period theorise them. Perhaps the lack of such
documents could be overcome by the body of historical information
about the court and the political context out of which this tradition of
painting emerges. That would enable at least a partial intellectual
history of what has so far been seen only as an enigmatic provincial style.
For example, it is evident, from looking at the paintings produced at
Ahmadnagar in the latter half of the sixteenth century, that there was not
only one school of painting but many.
Arts in the Deccan seem to have flourished in a multiracial,
multiethnic society. ‘The rhythms of Persia, the lush sensuality of
southern India, the restraint of European and Turkish portraiture’47
sums up the mood for the art produced in the Deccan and also sets the
tone for recreating a context in which to locate these objects.
Could the cultural topoi and themes, along with the standardised
protagonists that Persian paintings employ, be used as being defining
characteristics of Persian painting? This argument is proposed by
Eleanor Sims, who argues that Iranian painting has consistently
maintained certain elements and themes throughout, in the flexible and
imaginary cultural entity of Iranshahr. To her, the visual composition of
these paintings is not as significant as the underlying themes; therefore,
Persian painting is not rooted in the discourse of stylistic history.48
Her categories are the protagonists of the beardless youth, the hero, the
noble prince, and the sage or scholar, and the settings are the garden and
the forest. However, the premise that certain paintings, which she
considers for her study of themes, are to be recognised as Persian is itself
rooted in an understanding of history and style. Therefore, to deny these
parameters in the evaluation of Persian painting in an effort to uncover
the underlying absolute and conceptual entities that permeate all Persian
painting becomes a paradox. Sims argues that stylistic questions are not
urgent anymore, given the number of publications on styles and the
wealth of new paintings and collections being discovered. Instead, she
argues that Persian painting should be understood in the light of the
study of standard themes, protagonists, settings, and landscapes that
recur throughout time.
If paintings are to be called Persian only on the basis of themes and

types, how does the non-Persian content of a non-Persian manuscript fit
this paradigm? The Khāmseh of Amir Khusro Dehlavi contains stories
that are set within Persian models of khāmseh literature. Using Persian
tropes, the characters are loosely modelled on the people around the poet
in India. Amir Khusro’s Khāmseh was composed between 1298 and
1302 CE .49 The congruency between the political events in the courts of
the patrons of Amir Khusro and the timing and themes of Khusro’s
literary works is explored by Barbara Brend. Loosely modelled on
Nizami’s Khāmseh, Amir Khusro’s Khāmsah localises many of the stories
with references to local geography and politics. In the first chapter of the
Khāmsah, the ‘Matla-i-Anvar’, he describes a Brahmin protagonist’s
pilgrimage to Somnath in Gujarat, a reference to a local place and
people, also corresponding with the military campaign of his patron that
year.50 The fourth chapter, the ‘Ainah-i-Iskandari’, contains a story of a
dervish offering advice to a young Alexander. Amir Khusro’s patron at
this time was Ala-ud-din Khilji, who often saw himself as a world
conqueror á la Alexander. The story seems to be a metaphor for the
sultan seeking counsel from the poet’s patron saint, Nizam-ud-din
Awliyah. Stories of Persian origin were given a local twist in order to
serve a dual counselling and sycophantic function for the patrons.51
Is an illustrated manuscript for such a literary work to be called Indian,
if it is produced in India and if the text references an Indian location,
even if the text and the illustrations are thematically and stylistically
Persian?
The mode of collection of paintings and manuscripts in Indian courts
was based on the system of commissioning and collecting albums. These
compilations of calligraphy, paintings, and other arts as an album was
part of the Persianate culture that permeated India. But no one would
suggest that the mode of commissioning and collecting alone would
qualify such albums (muraqqā) as Persian, given that they were produced
in India.52
The geographical and cultural contexts of the production, therefore,
cannot be recognised as being definitive of Persian painting, at least by
themselves, whether those are the court culture that commissions them,
the mode of collection, the location of the production, or the references
to local narratives. Neither do the thematic descriptions of paintings, as
outlined by Sims, provide an answer.
However, the importance of all these factors in the conjectural

construction of a court culture is important, since such constructions of
history are the key to recreating the circumstances under which an
intellectual deconstruction of the paintings would have occurred. The
patterns of patronage visible through the circumstances of production
would prove useful in situating these paintings within a social context,
and their visual characteristics, in Morellian ways, would help locate the
affinities and attachments of the artists’ schools.
The treatment of visual space was often dictated by the school of
painting. Tabriz, for example, had a vigorous style in which all
elements seem animated. Herat, Tabriz, Qazvin, and Shiraz all had
schools which had unique traits, such as the system of using the
mathematical ratio of 3:5 to define the highlights and strong lines of
the composition.53 Even the palettes used in the various centres of
artistic production were different. Yet, transcending the colour palettes
and theoretical bases for the composition, there were certain visual
elements that most Persian painting had in common. Painting on
paper with human figures of a certain acceptable relative scale with
respect to the size of the folio, all the paintings render human figures
with a very similar attitude. The visual characterisation of Persian
painting is also a matter of studying details, and then tracing their
lineage.
Some ateliers of Persian painting moved to India in the period
between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and transfer of these
techniques and technologies to local artists are potentially responsible
for many of the formal similarities with indigenous iconography, as seen
in the Tārif. Multiple factors seem to suggest that there was a large
movement of artists from the Persian world who immigrated to the
Deccan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Only about 20 paintings are attributed to the court of Ahmadnagar,
many of them only stylistically. The most famous paintings produced at
Ahmadnagar are the illustrations that accompany the masnavi written by
Aftabi, Kitāb-i Tārif-i Husain Shāh Pādshāh-i Dakan, suspected of being
commissioned in the middle of the seventh decade of the sixteenth
century. These are the only paintings from Ahmadnagar that appear
within the context of a codex manuscript. Curiously, this bound book
does not have strong connections between the images and the text.
According to David Roxburgh, this combination of painting and
calligraphy in a single codex was popular in Persian courts since the

Bahram Mirza album in the mid-sixth century, the absence of such
providing another proof of the early date of the Tārif.54 This is in
keeping with Ahmadnagar paintings in general, which are neither
intimately connected with any text, nor do most of them have any
writing at all. The book originally had 14 paintings of which only
12 remain. Stella Kramrisch suggests that the indigenous style suggests
that it was not produced with royal patronage.55 This seems to be a
case of imposing twentieth-century tastes on the fifteenth century. They
are undoubtedly a royal commission, given the lavish use of material,
but whether the manuscript was completed in the life and reign of
Husain Shah I is controversial. The paintings can be thematically
categorised as court and battle scenes (‘feasting and fighting’, razm va
bazm), a distinctly Persian paradigm for royal paintings. The mode of
transaction between the royal patron and the artists also is distinctly
Persianate. However, the paintings can visually be recognised as Indian,
with indigenous elements.
Of the 12 extant paintings, five feature a historic queen, Humayun
Shah, an anomaly in paintings commissioned by Islamic courts. The
representations of the queen were later erased, commonly speculated as
being by the order of her son.56 The queen appears with Sultan Nizam
Shah I in characteristically Indic poses, seated by his side. The portrayal
of a royal or divine couple seated next to one another on a couch or a
bedstead, or with the queen on the king’s lap, was a common Indian
prototype [Figure 2.4a, b]. In reading this as an Indian theme,
suggestions have been made that a logical extension of this theme would
suggest that the king was caressing the breast of the queen or touching
her navel (as would be commonly found in Indian art).57 Numerous such
representations are found in the Deccan since as early as the second and
third century CE . This is a typical theme in Indian art known as a dohāda
scene. In one of the paintings, the queen is touching the tree, which is
shown in full bloom [Figure 2.2]. She is surrounded by six women, all of
whom are dressed in saris. The shapes of the eyes and the rendering of
their garments is evocative of the tradition of painting in Malwa. The
image of a beautiful lady touching a tree and making it blossom is an
idea rooted in classical Sanskrit literature from the fourth century CE
onwards. The earliest representations of this theme are found at Bharhut
from the first century BCE . Khandalavala saw in this scene a continuity of
Figure 2.4a Sultan Husain Nizam Shah I and Khunzada Humayun from
the Tarif-i Husain Shah.
Figure 2.4b Hoysala sculpture of Śiva and his wife Umā.
the mural painting tradition of Vijayanagar Vijayanagara, claiming that

the composition was well suited for an alcove.58
The issue here is to understand the representation of the king and the
queen as deified entities, depicted in postures and actions that equate
them with divinity. The striking beauty of the queen and her immortal
love of the king are the themes painted; this is in keeping with
suggestions that the manuscript was commissioned by the queen after
the death of Husain Nizam Shah. However, the incomplete verses and
the lack of mention of the king’s death suggest that it was commissioned
in his lifetime and abandoned when he suddenly died. The manuscript is
also a metaphor for the queen’s accession to power, probably finished
during the period when she was regent for the young prince. The queen
was scraped off and painted over with thick washes, though it is possible
to make out the outlines of her original figure, mostly as a silhouette.
It is speculated that her images were ordered to be scraped off upon the
ascension to the throne of her son, the young prince Murtaza I.59
Six of the paintings depict the battle of Rakshas Tagidi of 1565 CE , in
which Nizam Shah I led the armies of the five sultanates in victory
against the Raja of Vijayanagar. The Tārif is a panegyric that details this
battle. All the battle scenes are in strict alignment, with three tiers of
soldiers or cavalry across the composition. The feet of the soldiers are
deliberately imposed upon the frame, reminiscent of similar Persian

devices, although here it is more restrained. The animals, horses, and
elephants are richly covered with brocaded cloth. The animals are set
against monotone backgrounds of blue, pink, or green, bringing them
into relief. Husain Nizam Shah is depicted in five of the paintings,
accompanied by his standard bearer in three of the scenes.
Visually, the paintings are all in a vertical format, ranging in size
from 18 by 12 cm to 18 by 15 cm within the demarcated frame. The
palace scenes depict interior architecture, but not with the finesse of
Persian masters such as Bihzad (1455 – 1536 CE ). Stella Kramrisch
claims that there are subtle attempts at using techniques of shading
to overcome this inadequacy,60 but this is not evident in the
reproductions of these paintings. Kramrisch has described these
paintings as possessing ‘Turkish compactness, Vijayanagar influence in
their sinuosity and Safawi [sic, Safavid] vegetation’.61 The colours are
vibrant, geometric designs are absent for the most part, and the
paintings lack fine detail in the way that later illustrations from
Ahmadnagar do. The paintings are related to painting traditions from
Malwa and Mandu in central India, but these links merely point
toward similar sources, not necessarily a sequence of evolution
and transformation. The common Rajasthani themes of hunts, court
ceremonial, or Hindu ritual are not common, but a general
connoisseurship of poetry, music, and the arts is reflected.
The difference between paintings from this manuscript and the later
paintings from Ahmadnagar is remarkable. The artistic tradition of the
Tārif continues only in certain themes later on, such as the series of
ragamala paintings. The divergence between the two schools within such
a short time suggests either the existence of multiple schools of painting
or a sudden infusion of artistic traditions from elsewhere. Though the
preclassical formative stages are not identified in any extant manuscripts
in India, traces of stylistic origins are found in drawings from Central
Asia and also local painting traditions. Thematically and stylistically,
these paintings are a curious synthesis of Persian and Indian sources,
almost a microcosm of social and literary changes and products in the
period. The Tārif itself is a precursor to the fully flourished style of
the Ahmadnagar court, and the link between the two is provided by a
sketch in the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad. The sketch depicts a
male figure dressed in a long skirt-dress, gesturing to an elephant with its
mahout. It is unclear if the difference in scale between the elephant and the
gesturing figure is meant to evoke illusions of spatial distance or if they
represent a hierarchy. The sketch appears to be a portrait of Husain
Nizam Shah, and the wavy lines of the Sultan’s skirt hem and the cloth on
the elephant seem to suggest calligraphic strokes without any actual
writing.62 There is a floral design rendered as a light wash in the
background, similar to the margins in Persian paintings.
The other paintings attributed to Ahmadnagar are in collections
dispersed throughout the world. Two paintings, one in the library at
Rampur and the other at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, are
thought to be portraits of Murtaza I painted by the same artist, to whom
is also ascribed a third painting [Figure 2.5]. Zebrowski argues, with
lots of good evidence, that the sultan depicted is Murtaza and not
Burhan, though Barrett has proposed these as portraits of Burhan from
the 1590s.63 These three paintings attest to the high quality of
portraiture at the Ahmadnagar court, for which no precursors are found
in the region. If Zebrowski’s argument is to be accepted and these
paintings are attributed to the year 1575 CE , then there were arguably
two schools of painting at the Ahmadnagar court. The Tārif was
produced around 1565 CE , given that it mentions the battle of Rakshas
Tagidi (January 1565) but does not mention the death of Husain I later
in the year. The illustrations in the Tārif, where the portraiture does not
reach the same standards as these paintings just ten years later, have a
very earthy and basic form. It could also be that under Murtaza, more
painters moved to Ahmadnagar, a real possibility given that, under his
relatively longer and peaceful reign, many poets (such as ʿUrfi) moved to
his court from Iran.64 But even these later sophisticated portraits have
traits characteristic of the paintings of Ahmadnagar. It might be worth
exploring the links with Shiraz and Tabriz in these later paintings, given
the circumstances of those centres of artistic production. Barbara Brend
has also suggested that the Chester Beatty manuscript defines the
sultanate as being a part of the ‘Shiraz orbit’.65
Though it is not possible to ascribe most of the paintings from
Ahmadnagar based on historical evidence or colophons, the visual clues
in many of the paintings are distinct. The ‘magical Deccan breeze’ is
noted in many of the paintings, as seen in the sketch of a running
elephant from around the last decade of the sixteenth century. The rider
has a long skirt-dress which is gently rippling at the hem. This kind of
Figure 2.5 Portrait of Murtaza Nizam Shah I in the Bibliotheque

National, Paris.
effect is not seen in the Tārif but is common to all the later works of
Ahmadnagar art. The sketch of Husain Nizam Shah at the Salar Jung
Museum is an important link because it details this feature for the first
time, though in a very controlled and inhibited way.
The forms of yakshas, local pre-Hindu demonic deities, which form an
almost continuous style of anthropomorphic representation throughout
Indian art, are seen in paintings from Ahmadnagar. The yaksha
characteristic is a slightly pot-bellied countenance (later associated with
affluence, but a symbol of demonic strength) as opposed to the idealised
human forms in classical Persian painting. Zebrowski also notes that

certain paintings seem to bear the characteristics of paintings by Abdʾus
Samad, Mir Sayyad ʿAli, and Dost Muhammad.66 Perhaps these
stylistic attributions are possibly more a function of having artists
trained in the schools of these artists. Other visual cues for paintings
from Ahmadnagar are the contemporary fashions of Ahmadnagar,
usually depicted in the art.67
The sketch of the young seated prince in the Edwin Binney collection
in San Diego clearly depicts the bullet-shaped amulets worn across the
upper arms, the purse hanging around the waist from a belt, and a jama
with widely crossed lapels, all distinctive fashions from the Ahmadnagar
court. This drawing shows a young prince being embraced by a small girl.
The same question arises with respect to scale; is the difference in the
relative size of the prince and the girl attributable to hierarchy? The
headgear with the feathered brush and the rippled sash ends are
unmistakable symptoms of Deccani painting. Using these cues and
fashions alone, it is possible to locate another sketch historically; the
geographical location of this other drawing is however presently
unknown. Zebrowski sees the hand of Mir Sayyid ʿAli in this drawing,
suggesting that the master himself, or one of his pupils, made it in India
or Iran.68 However, he also detects a feebleness of line not evident in the
reproductions, which casts the suspicion that this is a latter-day copy. The
pupils of eyes depicted in the portraits are rendered as small vertical lines
in some of the pictures. It is proposed that this mannerism is derived
from Mughal sources, suggesting that these paintings are from the latter
part of the sixteenth century and therefore that the portraits represent
Burhan II.69 However, if they were influenced by early Mughal ateliers,
the portraits would be of Murtaza I who ruled from 1565 to 1588 CE .
If the portraits are indeed of Murtaza, it might be speculated that the
young prince with the little girl (in the Edwin Binney collection) is his
son, Husain, who was married to a young girl in 1582 CE .
The most important but abstract visual clue in the painting tradition
of the Deccan was the handling of the body to convey mass and weight,
unlike the light and idealised Persian bodies. There is an effect of
bulkiness that is conveyed through the representation of people.
This emphasis on the weight of the body is not found in Persian
painting, nor in any indigenous tradition before the sixteenth century.
The school of painting that carries on the pictorial tradition of the

Tārif is the series of ragamala paintings attributed to Ahmadnagar and
dated to the 1590s. The illustrations are not Persian derived and neither
are the themes. Created as pictorial expressions of musical ragas, these
painting folios depict women in the same dress as the Tārif, and the only
Persian influences are minor elements such as the decorative ornament
shown on the couch. Of course, the format and the material (paper) are
Persian influences.
The paintings in the Deccan, particularly at Ahmadnagar, are best
described as paintings in a Persian mode in an Indian setting, if
taxonomical operations are required to locate them. However, mere
taxonomy would obfuscate rather than clarify the context of the
production of these works of art, since multiple classes of paintings
were simultaneously produced under the same patronage. Since the
material is scattered, not only stylistically but also in its physical form,
ranging from a codex to individual folios and sketches, a typological
analysis as a means of understanding the culture would have limited
value. Locating these paintings in the milieu of the court culture
of Ahmadnagar in the sixteenth century would be the method to
understand the circumstances of their production and hence their
intended meaning.
Visual space is embedded in cultural space, and only a combination of
the two can be considered characteristic of a style of painting. Thus, a
style is not to be described only visually. The visual culture of a place has
to be understood as a material manifestation of society. The stylistic and
thematic changes in painting, as also the material and technological
(there were no paintings on paper in the Deccan before the sultanates),
were reflective of the larger changes in polity and society in the
kingdoms of the medieval Deccan. As a result, the region was in a
temporal space of flux, shifting between the traditional models of
patronage and artistic traditions, resulting in the creation of a new
period eye.
Unfortunately, there is no internal theorisation of the painting
tradition available, thereby subjecting these painting traditions to
processes of archaeology. In the absence of such literary evidence, they
have to be recognised as the product of organic processes, and not the
results of a theoretical discourse. This fits well with the understanding
of these painting traditions as syncretistic, and might explain the
parallel schools of painting that could coexist without the baggage of

a canonical aesthetic theory. The paintings can be read in
correspondence with the social and political milieu of the Ahmadnagar
sultanate (as opposed to an understanding of the art as objects by
themselves, studying only their physical elements and processes of
production.)
The paintings can thus be based on a core of iconography that was
rooted in Indian art, with the superficial stylistic elements of Persian
painting. The overarching mode of commissioning and collecting them
was rooted in the Deccani Persianate environment of the Ahmadnagar
court. These paintings, therefore, were exploring liminal spaces, cultural
as well as geographical, which set the tone for Persianized courts in
central and southern India for over half a millennium.
Though the paintings are not a central part of this study, they deserve
attention for at least two reasons: the act of painting has an agenda that
overlaps with that of architecture, and that the paintings corroborate
some of the physical evidence from the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs.
Another group of paintings that are not attributable to the
Ahmadnagar kingdom, but circumstantially could be understood as
such, are the ragamala paintings that have long been attributed to the
northern Deccan.
Coins of the Nizam Shahs

The coins of the Nizam Shahs70 pose an interesting conundrum, as they
were not minted until at least 1580 CE , though the kingdom was
established almost a hundred years before that date. This is all the more
unusual because the two prerogatives of kingship in medieval and early
modern Islamic kingdoms were the khutbā and the sikkā, both potent
symbols of sovereignty.71 The former was the Friday prayer sermon
read in the name of the ruler, and the latter was the right of the
sovereign to strike coins. These were often the first actions of any rebel
who wanted to declare independence and sovereignty. In South Asia,
various sultanates made it a point to mint coins bearing the name of the
ruler and have the khutbā read in their name, along with the
appropriation of other insignia and actions associated with royalty,
such as rights to have an umbrella over their head (chutr) and the
privilege of announcing their arrival with drums (naqqar). Several
kings are known to us only through the numismatic evidence that

yields their names, even if other documents are silent about their rule,
thus confirming the symbolic potency of the act of minting coins.72
Rulers in the Deccan, such as Daud Shah II (reg. 1397 CE ) and
Mujahid Shah (reg. 1375 – 78 CE ), both Bahmani sultans, had coins
minted in their names even though they ruled for insignificant periods
of time.73
The striking of coins had precedents in the practices of early Islam,
which were borrowed from the Byzantine and Sasanian empires to
which the Arab caliphate was heir, but the right of placing the ruler’s
name on coins did not appear immediately in the seventh and eighth
centuries.74 By the ninth century, it was a well-established custom that
any person desirous of staking a claim to sovereignty struck coins
carrying his own names and titles to authorise his legitimacy.
Theologically, the ruler was only the lowest in the hierarchy below
God, the Prophet, and the Caliph, all of whom had to be mentioned
before the former in any document or pronouncement. However, a
large number of coins retained only the names of politically favourable
entities.75 Minting coins bearing the insignia or the names of other
dynasties or rulers meant either vassalage or a form of subservience, at
least nominally. Such an occurrence is seen in the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth century South Asia, when the rulers of Khandesh
minted coins as vassals of the Gujarat sultans.76 The symbolic and
psychological implications of such practices cannot be underestimated
and are seen in many periods of history in South Asia as a means of
appropriating the authority of the old regime, as described by Deyell
and Frykenberg in their essay on sovereignty and coinage:
Authority stamped its seal on the coin . . . depended for its

acceptance (a) upon the ability of people to recognise the device of
the issuing authority [and] (b) degree of confidence of people in
the integrity and longevity of the issuing authority . . . This
feature of the sikkā gave rise to two psychological phenomena, . . .
taste in coinage devices and styles was conservative, and refined.
There was a constant pressure to maintain and preserve. Familiar
forms appeared on the coinage of new or unstable regimes . . . .
[Minting privilege] came to be regarded as prestige-enhancing
and as a sign of authority and power.77
Beyond the symbolism of royalty and the precedents of the practice of

sikkā, there were pragmatic reasons for controlling the production and
circulation of coins stamped with royal symbols and produced by
centralised mints. As C.E. Bosworth notes, apart from the revenues
accrued by channelling bullion through mints by mechanisms of
devaluing older coins, control of coinage also allowed the sovereigns to
have power over economy and trade.78 Thus, the striking of coins in the
name of the ruler served not only a significatory function but to
enforce territorial control through monetary policies. In the medieval
and early modern Deccan, continuity with the coinage of an earlier
dynasty was adequate to fulfil both these roles, until the arrival of
the Mughals.
The first kings from the post-Bahmani dynasties known to have
considered themselves independent sultans using the title Shah were
Ahmad Nizam Shah I, Ibrahim Adil Shah I (reg. 1535– 38 CE ), and
Sultan Quli Qutb Shah (reg. 1518 –43 CE ). In Bidar, within a few years
after the death of the last Bahmani king around 1538, Ali Barid Shah I
(reg. 1542– 80 CE ) declared himself the king of Bidar.79 Berar of the
Imad Shahs (of whom we have no coinage) was the fifth independent
post-Bahmani sultanate, and they declared independence in 1529 CE .
It is indeed very strange that these five post-Bahmani kingdoms of
the sixteenth-century Deccan (the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, Adil
Shahs of Bijapur, Qutb Shahs of Golconda, Barid Shahs of Bidar, and
Imad Shahs of Berar) seemed to deliberately avoid the right of striking
coins in their own name for a long period after declaring independence.
Beginning in 1490 (when Ahmad Nizam Shah I declared himself
independent) until around 1580, when Ali Adil Shah I of Bijapur
(reg. 1558–1580 CE ) and Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar first
issued coins, there are almost no coins issued by any of these post-
Bahmani Deccan sultanates.80 A decline in monetisation has often been
advanced as a possible reason for the lack of direct numismatic evidence.
But for many reasons (argued by John Deyell), for an earlier period in
North India,81 demonetisation can be discounted as an adequate
explanation for this hiatus. Neither the lack of monetisation nor the
paucity of precious metals could be culpable for missing currency.82
Besides, these Deccan sultanates were actually in various phases of
economic expansion and growth through most of the sixteenth century,
as can be inferred from the archaeological and material record.
Curiously, all the Deccan sultanates issued coins in the names of their
rulers almost simultaneously, around 1580 CE . The earliest dated coins
struck by the post-Bahmani sultans were the hairpin-shaped silver larins
from 986 H (1578 CE ) struck by Ali Adil Shah I, but these were used
only in international trade. Ali Adil Shah I is also credited with minting
copper coins but these are undated. It is likely that he had these copper
coins struck only in the last years of his reign, which would date them
closer to 1580 CE .83 The earliest dated circulating copper coins minted
by the post-Bahmani sultans are from 989 H (1581 CE ), struck by
Murtaza Nizam Shah I. The coins of the Qutb Shahs appeared as regular
issues only under Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (reg. 1580– 1611 CE ), and
the Barid Shahs also struck coins under Ibrahim Barid Shah for the
first time in the same year. After Murtaza Nizam Shah I, Burhan Nizam
Shah II, Murtaza Nizam Shah II (reg. 1600– 10 CE ), and Burhan Nizam
Shah III are the only kings who minted coins in their own name;
the primary mints were Ahmadnagar, Burhanabad, Parenda, and
Daulatabad.84
In the absence of a large volume of primary sources, numismatic
data can provide some of the narratives which would otherwise be
inaccessible.85 Though this discussion is limited to copper coins, the
scarce gold and silver issues also are in conformance with this narrative.
The Nizam Shahs can be credited with two gold coins both toward the
end of the sixteenth century and one in the early seventeenth
[Figure 2.6]. These are all extremely rare. The coins would most likely
have been ceremonial issues, given their occurence in single instances.
Two silver coins has been attributed to this dynasty quite recently
[Figure 2.7].86 The Adil Shahs seem to have had gold coins only from
the reign of Muhammad Adil Shah in the early seventeenth century but,
even then, these issues are very infrequently encountered. The few Adil
Shahi gold coins that exist shared exactly the same metrology as the
Vijayanagara ‘pagoda’ or the hun, which were widely in circulation
throughout south India.87 A number of minuscule gold fractions called
fanams can be found in Bijapur domains, but none of them can
definitively attributed to the Adil Shahs. No silver coins of the Adil
Shahs have ever been recovered.88 Of the Qutb Shahs and the Barid
Shahs, we are not aware of any gold or silver coins.89
We can thus infer that copper constituted more than 99 per cent of all
coinage of the post-Bahmani sultanates.90 Gold and silver coins were
Figure 2.6 (a) Gold coin of Burhan Nizam Shah III, 3.36 gm. (b) Gold
coin of Murtaza Nizam Shah I, 2.90 gm.
either absent or extremely rare, suggesting their role as ceremonial issues

for very specific occasions. It is very likely that none of the gold or silver
coins issued by these five sultanates were actually used as currency
(except for the silver larin used in overseas trade). The actual volumes of
coins in circulation cannot be posited with direct evidence. However,
extensive surveys and interviews with coin-dealers and collectors, along
with the sampling of lots of coins, does suggest that Bahmani coinage
was, in fact, the most voluminous in the sixteenth century across the
entire Deccan. Towns in Khandesh and Berar (such as Dhule and
Ellichpur) have yielded rich stockpiles of Gujarat coins in addition to the
Bahmani coins.91
Figure 2.7 Silver coin of Burhan Nizam Shah II, 6.85 gm.
The Adil Shahs declared themselves Shahs, as opposed to Khans, from

the reign of Ibrahim Adil Shah I.92 But no coins of this dynasty are
known before the reign of Ali Adil Shah I. The only dated coin of Ali
Adil Shah I is the silver larin, a hairpin-shaped currency used widely in
the Persian Gulf region. This silver issue suggests a shortage of Gujarat
silver coinage in Indian Ocean trade, not surprising since no common
silver issues of Gujarat sultans were issued after 1570 CE .93 Copper coins
of Ali Adil Shah I must have appeared toward the end of his reign,
sometime around 1578 to 1580 CE , when the larins were first issued in
his name. The Nizam Shahs were the earliest of the post-Bahmani
sultanates to declare independence, but historical accounts do not
mention sikkā as a marker used by Ahmad Nizam Shah I, as opposed to
the chutr and the khutbā, which he appropriated.94 The earliest known
coins are from the reign of Murtaza Nizam Shah I, and can be dated from
989 H (1581 CE ) to 996 H (1587 CE ).95 The Nizam Shahs also
counterstruck Bahmani and Gujarat coins with their own dies,
suggesting that their own currency quite literally replaced that of the
Bahmani and Gujarat kingdoms.96 The Qutb Shahs minted coins very
early, but these seem to have been curiosities, and were not used as
currency. This can be inferred from the rarity of these issues.97 Many
scholars are suspicious of the authenticity or attribution of the coins of
Jamshid Qutb Shah (reg. 1543 – 50 CE ) and Subhan Quli Qutb Shah
(reg. 1550 CE ).98 Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah (reg. 1550 – 80 CE ) has a
single coin type attributed to his reign, and that is on the basis of a
single specimen, an event not entirely convincing.99 Muhammad

Quli Qutb Shah was the first Qutb Shahi sultan who issued coins as
currency on a significant scale, with a large number of coin types.
Qasim Barid became the Mir Jumla of the Bahmani kingdom in
1492 CE . He died in 1504 CE and was succeeded by Amir Barid I
(reg. 1504 – 42). However, the first coins of the sovereign Barid
Shahs are only from the reign of Ibrahim Barid Shah (reg. 1580 –
87 CE ). These coins were modelled on the coinage struck in Kalimullah
Shah Bahmani’s name, and several mules exist to corroborate this
continued use of Bahmani coins.100 No coins of the Imad Shahs have
been recovered yet, but Bahmani and Gujarat coins are recovered
from their territories (Berar). We know that Imad ul Mulk had the
khutbā read in his own name as early as 1529 CE .101 The lack of any
coins is explicable since the kingdom was annexed by Ahmadnagar in
1572 CE , a period when none of the Deccan sultanates were yet
minting coins in their own name, and possibly just carrying on with
old Bahmani dies.
We know that coins were minted in the name of the Bahmani
sultans till 1538 CE , while Kalimullah Shah (reg. 1525– 38 CE ), the
last of the puppet kings, was alive. Bahmani currency seems to have
been commonly used across all the post-Bahmani kingdoms, and it
continued to be the common currency of the Deccan, for which it
must have been minted in enormous quantities even after his death.
There is proof that coins in the name of the last three Bahmani kings,
Mahmud, Waliullah, and Kalimullah, were minted by the Baridis
posthumously,102 if not also by other kings in the region.103 The sheer
volume of Bahmani coins in all the caches found across the states of
Maharashtra, western Andhra Pradesh, and northern Karnataka support
that hypothesis.104
We have several examples of Bahmani and Gujarat sultan coins
counterstruck by the Nizam Shahs.105 In the sixteenth century, coinage
was a common medium of exchange and coins were in widespread use as
tokens of money, in contrast to the bleak picture of low monetisation
that is sometimes presented. The overseas trade by volume in this period
was certainly very high, though it is difficult to ascertain the exact
balance of trade.106 The significant import through most of the sixteenth
century was the prized commodity of war-horses. This trade even
weighed on political considerations and forged an uneasy peace between
the Portuguese and the sultanates, as most of the Middle Eastern sea
routes were increasingly controlled by the former in the sixteenth
century. This Indian Ocean trade used standard acceptable currencies
with high true metallic content. Gujarat was a sultanate that
consistently minted copper and silver coinage in very large quantities
for more than a century until it was annexed by the Mughals in 1576 CE .
In the fifteenth and most of the sixteenth century, Gujarat and Malwa
coins were widely in circulation across at least the northern Deccan, an
inference based on the large quantities recovered. Coins were struck in
Gujarat under the Muzaffarid Gujarat sultans from the reign of
Shamsuddin Muzaffar Shah I (reg. 1407– 11 CE ) to the second reign of
Shamsuddin Muzaffar Shah II (reg. 1583 –84 CE ) in the names of all the
sultans, barring Daud Shah (reg. 1458–59 CE ). Even the Mughals, quite
aberrantly, allowed Muzaffarid coins to be minted for a short time after
the conquest of Gujarat, acknowledging the sphere of circulation the
coinage enjoyed. The other common currency in the Deccan were the
posthumously struck Bahmani coins, which enabled trade within and
among the kingdoms of the Deccan. Since the institution of Bahmani
rule was nominally acknowledged into the early sixteenth century
though they had no real power, it leads to the question: was the myth of
the Bahmani dynasty kept alive for a long time for the sole cause of
maintaining a common currency, or were Bahmani coins ‘frozen’ from
the early sixteenth century because of the caliphal legitimacy that the
Bahmanis had received in the fifteenth century?
Coins were issued as tokens of currency only with the presence
of Mughal coinage in the Deccan, after the annexation of Malwa
(1562 CE ) and Gujarat (1576 CE ). Mughal practices of accepting their
revenues only in their coin was one of the mechanisms of control for
their expansionist aspirations. The Mughals promoted their coinage
very aggressively, insisting that every territory that they held, even
though a feudatory, be required to use their currency.107 As explained
by J.F. Richards:
Akbar and his successors established mints in every provincial

capital city and in other important trading cities throughout the
empire. Centrally appointed officers and employees of the mints
accepted bullion or coin from local moneychangers, from
merchants, or other private individuals. These officers, . . .
returned to the patron newly struck gold, silver and copper

coins. . . . The Mughal coinage system, with its uniform imperial
standards of weights and measures, was imposed throughout the
subcontinent over dozens of local monetary systems. The finance
ministry’s unyielding requirement that all tax and tribute be paid
in imperial coin was the effective impulse for diffusion of the
rupee.
On the basis of coin hoards analysed, it appears that the Ahmadabad

mint in Gujarat was the most prolific of all the mints under Akbar, and
was at its productive apogee in the 1590s.108 Akbar radically changed
monetary and minting policies to create the monetary system that would
endure for most of the Mughal Empire.109 Thus minting currency,
which had been a non-issue for the Deccan sultanates, became an
important economic and symbolic action in refuting Mughal aggression.
The Mughals, starting with Akbar, had aggressively turned Persian
into the language of discourse for the empire and were competing in
patronage with the Safavid court, which had become Twelver Shiʾi in a
narrow sense.110 The kingdoms in the Deccan had been wary of the
Mughals and their expanding empire in North India and were trying to
find a rival power from which they could source their own legitimacy.
The Safavid court provided them with just that and, to that effect, they
sent several missions and embassies to the Safavids.111 The loss of a
single caliphal power from the early sixteenth century onwards had
resulted in at least three bases of legitimisation of Islamic kingdoms: the
Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal courts. The Ottomans claimed the
mantle of the ‘shadow’ Abbasid caliphate after their conquest of Egypt in
1517 CE . Akbar proclaimed himself as the spiritual fount of the Islamic
ʿumma by issuing his famous mazhar in 1579 CE , in which he declared
himself the caliph of the age.112 It is precisely around this time that the
Deccan sultanates realised the implications of Mughal expansionism,
started minting coins in their own name; this was also the period when
the Mughals laid claims to an overlordship of the Deccan.113
The Bahmanis had received sanction for the sikkā and khutbā from the
Abbasid caliph in Cairo in the reign of Muhammad Shah I (reg. 1358–
75 CE ).114 The successor states of the Bahmanis operated partly under
the rubric of having received caliphal sanction to rule the Deccan.
With Akbar’s caliphal declaration in 1579 CE , the legitimacy of the
Bahmanis, and by extension their successors, was in question.

Their identity as successors of the Bahmanis ceased to confer legitimacy.
Mughal claims to political authority over the Deccan, which were
implied in assuming the mantle of the caliphate, were challenged
through the action of minting coins in the name of the Deccan sultans
themselves, who all sought allegiance to a different caliphal power.
The lack of coins from the Berar sultanate reinforces this view. Berar
was annexed by the Nizam Shahs in 1574 CE , before the Mughals and
their coinage were established in the Deccan. Since the Nizam Shahs
were not using their own coins and coinage either as currency or as tools
of their statecraft in this period, they must have chosen to continue with
Bahmani currency in Berar.
There is one more factor to account for the relative paucity of
sixteenth-century Deccan coinage. Mughal occupation of the Deccan
kingdoms over the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries led to the
transformation of large amounts of local Deccan coins and bullion into
issues minted by the Mughals.
In the successor states of the Bahmanis, monetary transactions for most
of the sixteenth century used Bahmani coins, which are found in large
quantities across the Deccan. The symbolic attributes of minting coins
were therefore not an issue for these sultanates until the arrival of the
Mughals. Up to then, the reinforcement of a connection with the Bahmani
sultanate was actually a plan for legitimacy.115 Monetarily, since Bahmani
coins were acceptable across the Deccan, there was no need to replace them
with others, and most of these kingdoms were minting Bahmani coins
posthumously. The sixteenth-century sultanates of the Deccan did not
view the Bahmani sultanate as capable of any revival and, since all of them
accepted Bahmani currency, there was no polemical or political reason to
issue their own coins. By the end of the sixteenth century, Mughal
economic policies were mirrored by the Deccan kingdoms and they started
issuing their own coinage as a counter-statement to Mughal presence,
especially since Muzaffarid silver coins from Gujarat were also no longer
available in large quantities in the northern Deccan. Minting and
circulating coins as a means of resistance and sovereignty was one of the
strategies used by the sultans of the Deccan. This was a unique instance in
the sixteenth century, when five functioning Islamic monarchies chose not
to exercise a right to mint coins in their own names for as many as 90 years
after declaring sovereignty as independent sultans. Surely the larger
question is how one interprets ‘legitimacy’ and whether the act of issuing
coinage should be read as a presumptive declaration of accession (which
would hardly qualify as legitimacy), the effect of which could be
researched by historians in a variety of ways.
The role of the khutbā, sikkā, and a caliphal diploma of investure have
been thought of as the absolute prerequisites for Islamic kingship. Yet it
would appear that at least the role of sikkā has been overestimated in the
light of historic practice. These symbolic attributes and actions of
kingship were decided by political ground realities at a local level, as
opposed to practices dictated by received Islamic conventions. Only when
sovereignty was challenged did sikkā become important. Otherwise, the
post-Bahmani Deccan sultans were comfortable in their mutually accepted
status as sovereign monarchs, an arrangement without challenge from any
of their neighbours. The striking of coins was an affirmation of kingship,
more than a presumptive declaration. In this light, it is not surprising that
as many as five sultans chose not to exercise a convention that they felt
redundant to their acceptability as kings. The shared histories of the
origins of their royal houses was the source of their mutual understood
legitimacy. The minting of coinage in their own names became a
superfluous act for all of them. It was only Mughal monetary policies and
pressures that made them strike their own coins, to counter both the
monetary and symbolic effects of the former’s expansionism. One might
be tempted to suggest that Mughal monetary policy was of purely
economic motivation, whereas the Deccani monetary resistance was purely
symbolic. The latter was therefore doomed to fail because it lacked the
structural state support required to sustain it. The Mughal monetary
system was based on the standard of a silver rupee (with the large
quantities of silver coming in from the new world), whereas the coinage
issued by the Deccan sultans was almost all in copper, by this time
devalued by the discovery of cheap Japanese mines, and was thus relegated
to being used in local small circuits.
Literature at the Court

The Nizam Shahi state patronised a large number of literary works in at
least three languages: Dakkani (e.g., Divān-i Hasan Shauqi), Persian
(e.g., Burhān-i Maasir) and Sanskrit (e.g., Rasa Manjiri). Between these
three languages different levels of patronage can be inferred, whether
from the royal court or various court nobles. Persian and Sanskrit were
clearly prestige languages; Dakkani was commonly received. The
number of Persian texts that can be attributed to the reign of the Nizam
Shahs is voluminous, as the court competed with the other sultanates of
the Deccan to attract Persian literati from West Asia. Malik Qummi,
Zuhuri, and others were at the court of the Nizam Shahs, and we know of
their poems composed on the occasion of the completion of the Farah
Bakhsh Bagh. Apart from literature, there are several other genres of
texts produced under the patronage of the court and its nobility. For
example, a medical manuscript called the Zakhira-yi Nizam Shah was
completed under the reign of the dynasty, as we know from its
colophon.116 Such scientific works produced in the Deccan include an
incomplete manuscript, the Kitāb-i hashā’ish (Persian translation of
˙
Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbos), which is profusely illustrated
117
[Figure 2.8]. The manuscript is from around 1595 CE and might have
been produced at Ahmadnagar, given that the academy of Bara Imam
Kotla, by the old city, was a major academy of learning.
The two major sources of Deccan history from this period, Tabatabai
and Firishtah, were at the court of Ahmadnagar before moving on to seek
patronage under the Qutb Shahs and the Adil Shahs, respectively.
An envoy to the Safavid court also authored a text called the Tarikh-i
Qutbi, which was later completed at Golconda.118 The famous Saqinamah
by Zuhuri was also written, at least in part, at the court of Ahmadnagar.119
It is no surprise that the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs produced
Sanskrit works, particularly because of the conceit that they were
actually Brahmins from Pathri. Some of their high-ranking
officials, such as Sabaji Prataparaja, are credited with writing (or at
least commissioning) texts such as the Parasuramapratapa and
Nrsimhaprasada.120 A widely circulated text, the Rasa Manjiri, was
authored by Bhanudatta of Mithila at the court of the Nizam Shahs.121
The fact that the court managed to attract scholarship from far lands is a
testament to the milieu of learning and patronage in the kingdom.
The recent claim, substantiated by Minkowski, that vilomakavya was
invented by one of the poets who received patronage from the Nizam
Shahs demonstrates the patronisation of Sanskrit works in the
Ahmadnagar kingdom.122
In terms of Deccani works, the most celebrated is the Divān-i Hasan
Shauqi,123 a most unusual text not just for its use of the local idiom but
Figure 2.8 Manuscript of the Kitāb-i hashā’ish at the University of
˙
Pennsylvania Libraries.
also because of the themes it tackles. Its author, Hasan Shauqi, like other
intellectuals of the period, moved between courts and eventually to the
Bijapur court, where he wrote the Mizbani Namah.124 The difference in
language also seems to represent a completely different point of view
than that of the Persian texts composed around the same period when
dealing with the battle of Talikota.125
There is also another corpus of texts which we know were composed by
people living in Nizam Shahi lands, sometimes even in the employment of
the state. The works of the saint poet Eknath (c. 1522–1599 CE ) are
emblematic of such literature. From several sources, including the works
of Eknath himself, we know that he was employed at the fort of
Daulatabad, as was his spiritual preceptor, Janardan Swami (c. 1504 –
1575 CE ), who was in a high office there. The links between various
spiritual lineages and their world of connected texts is a completely
different topic, but several Sufis, such as Chand Bodhale, seem to have
been connected with the Nizam Shahi dynasty in various ways. Simplistic
models of cultural encounter can be questioned, with the biographies and
works of holy men such as Shaikh Muntoji, Shaikh Muhammad
Srigondekar, and Hussain Ambar Khan, Shah Muni, Latif Shah, and
others, who all chose to write in either Sanskritized Marathi, often using
metres like the ovi; they expounded on philosophical themes of the
Vedanta school. Yet these authors never denied or denounced their
Muslim identity, and their hagiographies often contain narratives of their
negotiation of the multiple identities and social complexities that they
created. While being part of lineages of Vaishnava or Shaiva teachers, they
continued to simultaneously be affiliated with Sufi silsilahs, most notably
the Qadiri order.126 While the more conventional (perhaps orthodox)
modes of Brahminical, Bhakti, Islamic, and Sufi practices were always
current, the lived religion relied on holy men and their glosses on
spiritual texts more than canonical or organised religion.127 Several
literary Muslim holy men in the sixteenth and seventeenth century
northern Deccan chose to write in Marathi, and occasionally in Deccani.
In a milieu where Persian, Sanskrit, Deccani, and middle Marathi were the
languages of literature, many of them chose to write in Marathi or
Dakkani, which S.G. Tulpule has called ‘somewhere between Persian and
Marathi’.128
From the last decade of the sixteenth century, when various factions at
court, such as the Afāqis, were persecuted, the high Persian literati seem
to have fled to other Deccan sultanates and eventually the Mughals

to seek patronage and favour. The emergent groups, such as the
Habashi–Maratha axis and the Mahdavis, do not seem to have
patronised literary activity, but as the period from 1600 onwards was a
time of turmoil in the kingdom, political instability seems to have been
a major limiting factor in the production of texts and manuscripts.
Even if the writers in the sixteenth-century northern Deccan were not
directly commissioned by the court, the milieu for producing such
works could certainly be credited to the Nizam Shahs.
CHAPTER 3
URBAN PATTERNS, WATER

SUPPLY SYSTEMS, AND
FORTIFICATION
Urban Design and Settlements

Mahmud Gawan (1411– 1481 CE ) was the illustrious prime minister
of the Bahmani kingdom under several kings. He was credited with
defusing several crises in the kingdom caused by courtly factions. As a
response, to keep important court personages in check, he divided each
of the four provinces (tarafs) of the Bahmani kingdom into two sub-
provinces, each of which in turn would have a military commander and
an administrative governor. The appointees to these offices were usually
from different ethnic court factions – a way of neutralising ambitions,
factionalism, and rebellion. It was under him that the taraf of
Daulatabad was thus split into the administrative units of Junnar and
Daulatabad.
The kingdom of the Nizam Shahs, when it was founded in 1490 CE ,
was based in the city of Junnar, which served as their capital in the early
years, along with associated fortress (later called Shivneri). Ahmad
Nizam Shah I began annually waging war against Daulatabad
immediately after he declared independence. The first urban settlement
to be founded as a symbol of the Nizam Shahi legacy and legitimacy, and
as a proclamation of independence, was the city of Ahmadnagar in 1494
CE . It served as the Nizam Shahi capital for over a hundred years till
1600 CE . The physical layout of the city, along with the architectural
connections of ‘memory’ that it sought to reinforce with other parts of

the world, was a very cognisant statement of the aspirations of the new
kingdom. On the other hand, upon its eventual conquest by the Nizam
Shahs in 1500 CE , Daulatabad remained very important and was often
used as an administrative retreat when the city of Ahmadnagar was
under attack. It retained its position as a prestige city even in periods
when it did not serve as the capital or the primary residence of the king.
Eventually it served as the capital of the Nizam Shahs for over 15 years,
until 1626 CE . The historic port settlement of Chaul was another type of
urban settlement, different from the other cities of the kingdom largely
by virtue of its position as a coastal trading port.1 Other important
locations, such as Parenda, Ausa, and others, were significant as key
fortified locations, offering refuge in a large, flat landscape and providing
the network of administrative and military islands in the Deccan plains,
very often semi-autonomous. For example, the relatively small town of
Parenda itself was not fortified, and all the economic and military power
was concentrated in the fort. Though the fort is known to have been
built by Mahmud Gawan for the Bahmani kings, after its acquisition,
the Nizam Shahs always maintained a loyal qilaʾdar (fort commander,
sometimes also a regional governor) in that fort. Such an appointment
was not exceptional, but only a typical example of maintaining loyal, yet
semi-autonomous, fort commanders in order to control a fort town and
administer the surrounding territory. The history of Parenda
demonstrates the semi-autonomous feudatory mode in which most
appointed fort commanders behaved. Khan Jahan and his son
were commanders of Parenda for the Nizam Shahs, but the son, at a
convenient moment, defected to the Adil Shahs. Later, a different Adil
Shahi commander of the fort received a huge consideration from the
Mughals and turned the fort over to them.2 Fort commanders and landed
elites, with their own revenue administration and local power bases,
often chose to side with the political state that guaranteed their rank and
revenue, leaving them as virtually independent feudal lords who were
the building blocks of the greater kingdoms. Another example of a
feudal town is Sindkhed Raja of the Jadhav family, who were local lords
and held important positions at the court of the Nizam Shahs. This
chapter will study six settlements: Junnar, Daulatabad, Ahmadnagar,
Chaul, Parenda, and Sindkhed Raja. All of them have completely
different histories and circumstances, resulting in unique physical
URBAN PATTERNS, WATER SUPPLY SYSTEMS 67
characteristics. The question then remains: what unifies them as

settlements of the Nizam Shahi kingdom, or as towns in the northern
Deccan? Perhaps the unity in all these towns is reflected by two features:
the construction and management of waterworks (hammams, pools, and
piped water supply) and the administrative and feudal apparatus that
dictated the control of the sites. Otherwise, there is no single trait that
would unify all these settlements and towns in terms of their physical
layout or urban character.
Junnar, Daulatabad, Ahmadnagar, Chaul, Parenda, and Sindkhed
Raja show remarkably diverse physical forms and architecture, in part
dictated by the primary specialised functions of these settlements. André
Wink’s characterisation of Indo-Islamic cities best suits the Nizam Shahi
sites under study: ‘the Indian city as such was certainly not the
privileged locus of sustained and cumulative social change’.3 As
mentioned earlier, the locus of power was not the city, but the palace.
The Nizam Shahs made this divergence between the city and the palace
very clear, thus keeping their power centres distant from the fickle and
fractured court, and also away from the general public. Since most of the
palace sites were on the outskirts of urban settlements, the Nizam Shahs
could maintain effective control of visitors to the court. Control of the
larger settlements meant little in terms of symbolic and military power,
but was important in terms of economic power. This is corroborated
through archaeological and historical investigations on these ‘urban’
settlements. The urban patterns of Islamic towns in India, other than
Mughal cities, have been inadequately studied,4 and the present study,
though localised in its scope, contributes to the larger project that is
required. This becomes all the more interesting because the Timurids
had been residing largely outside cities, and before them the Ilkhanids
too. The Safavids did not really have a proper residence until Tahmasp
built one in Qazvin, and even that was not exactly in the city. The other
Deccan sultanates and the Mughals were more observant of the Indo-
Islamic practice of living in the city. The capital of the Mughal king
Humayun (reg. 1508– 56 CE ) at Din Panah (in Delhi, which was razed to
the ground by Sher Shah Sur (reg. 1540 –45), who built his own capital
on the same site) was a way of reviving or maintaining an Indic practice.
The notion of an Islamic city typology that has been variously
presented in past scholarship needs to be revised, at least for the
settlements that were built in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar.5 The usual
sixteenth-century spatial relationship in the Deccan, between the walled

city, the fort, and a citadel, did not apply at all to the city of
Ahmadnagar, where three different settlements stood discretely within a
short distance of each other: the unfortified city of Ahmadnagar, the fort
of Ahmadnagar, and the walled enclosure of the Bara Imam Kotla.
Similarly, all the large urban settlements in the kingdom of
Ahmadnagar have very different characteristics, and many of them
might not be recognised as urban because they did not conform to the
norms of urbanity in terms of density, economy, or the urban complexity.
Many of these sites served a single primary function, such as a garrison
town or a market town. Junnar, Daulatabad, Ahmadnagar, Chaul,
Parenda, and Sindkhed Raja are notionally all urban nodes, but the
completely varied nature of these sites has to be appreciated [Map 2].
Junnar
The city of Junnar predates the rule of the Nizam Shahs. The settlement
is located at a control point on a trade route that was used for at least
2,000 years. Junnar was the administrative headquarters of the Bahmani
taraf of Daulatabad, and some early tombs from this period in the
fifteenth century were constructed here. But it was in Junnar that the
Malik Hasan Nizam-ul-Mulk’s son, Ahmad Nizam Shah I, declared
independence upon the murder of his father at Bidar in 1490 CE . For a
few years it was the capital of the newly founded kingdom, and even after
the construction of Ahmadnagar it retained its importance as a place of
trade and as a control point for the Naneghat mountain pass across the
Western Ghats to the Konkan and its ports. Junnar was particularly
noted for its paper industry, which survived well into the nineteenth
century.6
Junnar and the surrounding region have played an important role in
the political and administrative histories since the Satavahanas, followed
by the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, the Yadavas, the Bahmanis, and the
Nizam Shahs. It was a capital of the Western Kshatrapas (35 – 405 CE )
who were warring against the Satavahanas. The Mughals were the
custodians for this region during the early seventeenth century. This
general area is claimed as the core for the independent Maratha kingdom
under Shivaji (though he could never gain possession of Junnar and
Shivneri in his lifetime); the Marathas acquired it from the Mughals only
in the mid-eighteenth century. The basin of the Kukdi River, in which

Junnar is located, is rich in archaeological remains and Buddhist sites
from the first millennium CE . Just 20 kilometres downstream is evidence
for Palaeolithic cultures in the region.7 The hill fort of Junnar itself has
several important Buddhist caves.8
During Satavahana rule (second century BC to second century CE ),
Junnar became a key controlling point for the Naneghat pass. Control of
this pass, which is 27 kilometres west of the Junnar region, meant
control of an important trade route from the western coast to central
India and the Deccan. As a result, the location never lost its importance
through the medieval and early modern periods. The fortress of Shivneri,
often associated with the town of Junnar and called the fortress of Junnar,
has many structures, albeit in a ruinous condition, that could be
attributed to the Nizam Shahs on stylistic and architectural grounds.
The badly damaged and badly restored set of palace buildings at the
northern end of the fort are most certainly of Nizam Shahi origin, as is
the ʿidgāh and the tomb on the high ground called Bālā-i Qil’a (citadel,
lit. top of the fort, bālekilla in Marathi). The Kamani Mosque, a most
unusual structure, can be dated to the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah III
(reg 1610–31 CE ) on the basis of an inscription [Appendix, Inscription
12]. The plan of the mosque is the simplest in its interior spaces: a single
large room with the eastern side open. Yet the buttressing towers that
flank the mosque are of enormous proportions; it is possible that a design
template for a fortified gateway with flanking bastions was used as a
design for the mosque. Such use of an architectural form or typology for
varied architectural programmes is characteristic of the period. The
whole structure is built on top of an early Buddhist water tank excavated
in the living rock below it. This would have served a secondary purpose
as a nominal ritual ablution pool for the mosque. A large flying arch
connects the two minarets that rise from the buttresses. The motif of two
minarets connected by a flying arch is essentially Nizam Shahi, and we
see it in many of the smaller mosques in the city of Ahmadnagar, though
on a lesser scale. This is an important feature and is considered unique to
the kingdom of Ahmadnagar.9
The defensive works of Shivneri have been modified through
successive regimes and occupations of the fort, and though it is possible
to attribute portions of the walls to different periods, that study is not of
particular architectural value here. The town of Junnar is set away from
this hill fort, lower in the plains, a little over a kilometre northeast as the
crow flies. This town was later walled, and the extant walls are largely
from the period of Mughal occupation. The town of Junnar has a large
number of mosques, suggesting a town-planning pattern not unlike
Ahmadnagar, where a large Jamiʾ mosque was not present; instead, a
large number of neighbourhood mosques patronised by various nobles,
groups, or guilds could be seen. Such a pattern also corroborates what we
know of Ahmadnagar: that the Nizam Shah sultans never lived in the
town and had their khutbās read in the fort, from where they were
communicated to the town. Junnar still has a fine water system from the
late medieval period: some of the aqueducts are still in working
condition, particularly the one that brings water to the Gulshan-i
Shahanshah-i Junnar Mosque.
There are at least four large tombs within Junnar, all built in the
reign of the Nizam Shahs. On the outskirts of Junnar are a large palace
and a tomb. The area is now called Hapus Bagh (the District Gazetteer
from the nineteenth century suggests that it was called Afiz Bagh), but it
might be a corruption of the term Habshi Bagh, given the large numbers
of Habashis here, particularly under Malik Ambar’s regency.10 The
palace can be dated to the regency of Malik Ambar. Even though there is
no inscriptional or textual evidence to date the tomb, stylistically it
belongs to the first half of the sixteenth century.
The fort of Junnar (Shivneri) is the largest fort in the area, set on a
large mesa. It served as the headquarters of the fort cluster that
encompasses all the other forts on the horizon. This organisation of the
hill fort as a large administrative centre circumscribed by a ring of
smaller outposts and fortresses was common in the Western Ghats, and
other Bahmani and Deccan sultanate forts also are the foci of such
clusters: for example, the forts of Panhala and Lohogad. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such an arrangement became all
the more important, as the administrative and military centres in the
Western Ghats were all located in such hilltop ‘islands,’ proximal to but
disconnected from the civilian and mercantile towns that were located
on the plains below.11
The city of Junnar was later an important urban centre for the
Mughals, as it was on a key trade route connecting routes from the north
to the Deccan and the west coast. The fort of Junnar (Shivneri) remained
an important administrative centre till the end of Maratha rule.
The town of Junnar now has a municipal council and a population of

around 25,000.
Daulatabad
Daulatabad was one of the most important settlements in the kingdom
of the Nizam Shahs. They could not shape it from scratch, like
Ahmadnagar. But it provided a centre of legitimacy for the control
over the northern Deccan. Daulatabad served as a capital city with a
continuity of royal occupation since the Yadavas in the twelfth century,
followed by Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s unsuccessful attempt at
transferring his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad for a brief period
from 1327 to 1335 CE . Eventually the location where the Bahmanis
declared independence, it was later an important site for the Nizam
Shahs, the Mughals, and finally the Asaf Jahs of Hyderabad, as it meant
administrative control of key trade routes and the region. The citadel
was the old established locus of power, and control over it was essential
in order to claim a dynastic right to succession over the northern Deccan.
Even after the fall of the city and fort of Ahmadnagar to the Mughals in
1600 CE , Daulatabad continued as the capital of the Nizam Shahs and as
the centre of resistance against the Mughals under Malik Ambar.
In many ways, it continued to have relevance as the ‘Delhi of the South,’
a status conferred upon it first by Muhammad bin Tughluq, when he
moved his capital here.
The fortress of Daulatabad itself was impregnable, with its multiple
walls, moats, and natural disposition. The fortified lower town was the
hub of several important trade routes connecting Ahmadnagar, Bidar,
Bijapur, Burhanpur, Chaul, Dabhol, Ellichpur, Golconda, and various
other places in the Deccan and Malwa. It was also at the frontier of
Berar, thus being an important garrison town for military exercises in
that region. When the city of Ahmadnagar was lost to the Mughals in
1600 CE , the Nizam Shahi kingdom was later managed from
Daulatabad, and Malik Ambar founded nearby Khadki (later
Aurangabad) in 1610 CE . Eventually, in 1633 CE , the Mughals took
over the fort after a long siege.
There is some controversy regarding two palaces in Daulatabad,
namely the lower and higher Mughal palaces (both called baradari). The
construction technology used in these palaces, which was later modified,
certainly suggests that they were built by the same guilds as those
working for the Nizam Shahs.12 There is an extensive use of wood and
stone that is not shared with the other Mughal structures in this region.
But stylistically, the ubiquitous baluster columns common in Mughal
architecture in the Deccan are absent from these palace buildings.
In terms of planning, there is little doubt that these palaces contain the
core of pre-Mughal buildings, as evidenced in the western pavilion of the
lower palace. In the absence of inscriptions or other hard evidence,
however, that contention is hard to prove.13
The most important military improvements at Daulatabad were
made in the reign of Murtaza Nizam Shah I and later under Malik
Ambar. Under the latter, the site was the capital of the kingdom of the
puppet Nizam Shah kings, and he made a number of significant
improvements to the fortifications. Some of the defensive works
constructed by him were modelled along the lines of the improvements
made by Mahmud Gawan to Bahmani forts over a century before him.
Unfortunately, the change in military technology in this intervening
period made Malik Ambar’s military architecture already obsolete at the
time of construction.14
The fortified city has multiple concentric enclosures, and the
Ambarkot comprises the outermost set of defensive walls, built under
Malik Ambar. Within, almost all the earlier urban fabric connected with
the site is contained, and includes streets and markets, various mosques
and mansions, and a large Jamiʾ mosque constructed in the early
fourteenth century. There are many smaller tombs and structures strewn
around the plains of Daulatabad, and further investigation would
undoubtedly suggest that many of them have a Nizam Shahi dating.
Among the structures that can be dated to the Nizam Shahs by
inscription is a magnificent hammam. The masons’ marks on this
building are repeated on some sections of the fortification walls
commonly referred to as the Mahakot. Another structure that dates from
the same period is an underground set of galleries surrounding a well,
locally known as the Khufiya Bavdi.
The medieval settlement of Daulatabad has not been systematically
excavated nor researched; a large number of Nizam Shahi and later
structures are spread across several square kilometres around the fortified
walls of Ambarkot and do not find a place in the narrative constructed
for the site. Within the fort, the Chini Mahal, which is a small fraction of
the palace complex of the Nizam Shahs, is in such a fragmentary state

that it cannot be understood in terms of its complete planning.
There is no doubt that the water systems in Daulatabad are the work
of the late Nizam Shahs, especially under the de facto reign of Malik
Ambar.15 The water systems in Daulatabad are the most sophisticated in
the Deccan, with their use of multiple devices, apart from the unique
drainage system, which has been documented extensively in the
excavation report of Daulatabad.16 Aurangabad also has at least two
qanats that supply it with water from a nearby lake, a system borrowed
directly from Iran but adapted to suit the local basaltic conditions.
Importantly, control of Daulatabad meant control of Rauza (later
called Khuldabad), which was arguably the most important holy
necropolis for Muslims in the Deccan. The settlement of Daulatabad
with its citadel is the closest to an idealised medieval city in the Deccan.
It must be borne in mind, however, that the site is a palimpsest of at least
900 years, and many phases of construction and fortification are
discernible in its physical fabric. Today the site, a large sprawling area of
approximately nine square kilometres, includes several small villages
(with historic market names such as ʿAbdi Mandi) and is a major tourist
destination.
Ahmadnagar
The city of Ahmadnagar was the primary capital of the Nizam Shahs for
the longest period, almost continuously from its establishment in 1492 CE
until 1600 CE , when it was captured by the Mughals. Ahmadnagar
came closest to the ideal of the city as envisioned by the Nizam Shahs as
they had shaped it from scratch. The development of gardens as an
integral part of urban and suburban planning is particularly seen in
Ahmadnagar. Such a settlement pattern is not dissimilar to the way that
the Timurids and the early Safavids conceived their cities, with suburban
gardens serving as locations of royal residence and the court, and even to
entertain embassies. The foundation of Ahmadnagar itself was on a site
close to a garden: to commemorate his victory over the Bahmani general
Jahangir Khan (the governor of Telangana) in 1490 CE , Ahmad Nizam
Shah I built a garden with a palace (bagh) or possibly even a garden
pavilion.17 This was later called Bagh-i Nizam, and when Burhan Nizam
Shah I walled the garden and improved upon it, it was known as
the Baghdad Palace. Timur also had a suburb by this name in his capital of
Samarkand, another example of post-Timurid ideas and their currency in
the Deccan. This garden was on the eastern bank of the river Sina, and the
site is now contained within the fort of Ahmadnagar.
The capital of the Bahmani taraf that became the core of the kingdom
established by Ahmad Nizam Shah I was at Junnar. He used to mount
expeditions to plunder Daulatabad regularly, and the city of
Ahmadnagar, midway between Junnar and Daulatabad, was reportedly
founded in 1494 CE for this reason: the new city was founded close to the
Bagh-i Nizam, a convenient and defensible location.18 The Bagh-i
Nizam in this period was only a royal citadel, a ceremonial and military
camp from where Ahmad Nizam Shah could wage his campaigns against
Daulatabad, serving a similar function as Firuzabad on the Bhima did for
the Bahmanis.19 The city of Ahmadnagar grew quickly into a major
urban centre. It has been continuously occupied since and is now a major
city. Consequently, the physical structure of the city has changed
significantly over time: it is not possible to completely surmise its
original layout and functions and its evolution through time, though an
attempt was made by Pramod Gadre half a century ago.20
The foundation of the city of Ahmadnagar was described in the
Burhān-i Maasir: ‘An auspicious day was selected, and the surveyors,
architects and builders obeyed the king’s commands, and laid out and
began to build the city in with its palaces, houses, squares and shops, and
laid around it fair gardens.’21 This passage suggests that gardens with
pavilions and palaces were intended in and around the city. Of course, it
could also be a trope employed by a court writer in the best conventions
of literary representation to depict Islamicate cities. In a translation
of Firishtah’s Tarikh-i Firishtah by John Briggs, the foundation of
Ahmadnagar is described as follows:
In 900, he [Ahmad Nizam Shah I] laid the foundation of a city in

the vicinity of the Sena river, to which he gave the name of
Ahmadnagar. So great exertions were made in erecting buildings
by the king and his dependents, that in the short space of two years
the new city rivalled Baghdad and Cairo in splendour.22
The city of Ahmadnagar did not have city walls till after its takeover by
the Mughals in 1600 CE .23 Soon after 1494 CE , when Ahmad Nizam
Shah I conquered Daulatabad, he built himself a new fort outside the

city of Ahmadnagar. This fort near the city of Ahmadnagar came to be
known as the fort of Ahmadnagar, and it encapsulated the older Bagh-i
Nizam, which he had established less than a decade earlier. After this
point, the Nizam Shahs never lived within the city of Ahmadnagar.
Except for the stray reference to a royal palace in the city,24 there are no
records that the Nizam Shahi kings ever owned a residence in the city.
They either lived and entertained in suburban garden palaces, such as the
Hasht Bihisht Bagh and the Farah Bakhsh Bagh, or conducted their
affairs from the fort, as references in the period chronicles indicate.
Often, the kingdom was controlled from Parenda, Shivneri, Ausa, and
Daulatabad, particularly after the Mughal takeover of the city of
Ahmadnagar in 1600 CE . Garden palaces around the city continued to
play an important royal and administrative role.
Within the city, constructing estates with garden mansions seems to
have been the norm. Court nobles of standing, such as Niʾmat Khan and
Farhad Khan, built their palaces with gardens, public amenities, and
mosques around them. The city was settled in various wards by these
nobles, who often lent their names to these areas of the city by virtue of
their large mansions and estates. For example, the area called the Niʾmat
Khani in Ahmadnagar city contained a market, a caravanserai, a mosque
with its associated pious complex, Niʾmat Khan’s tomb, and various
other structures all set within a planned landscape.25 Other estates
include the Farhad Khani, the Qasim Khani, and other wards. There was
little immediate royal control over the development and planning of the
city, apart from the sanctioning of areas to various court nobles.
The estate of Niʾmat Khan Semnani is located in an area called the
Mangalwar bazaar (or Tuesday market) in the southern part of the old
city of Ahmadnagar. The physical remains are completely fragmented
and fractured today and can be pieced together only with speculative
imagination. A row of shops created a barrier between the fully public
street and the semi-public interiors of the estate. There are at least two
portals through which one enters the inner grounds that Niʾmat Khan
once owned. One of them is a large pishtaq that is undoubtedly of Iranian
or Central Asian origin. The other portal is a more modest-looking pair
of gateways, both along a common axis. Each one of these gateways has
an inscription. The surviving part of a palace building is now owned and
occupied by municipal offices, and a descendant of Niʾmat Khan has
turned the bottom storey into a small tomb, allegedly of Niʾmat Khan.
The conjectural plans for this complex are sketch plans, made on the
basis of earlier descriptions and inscriptions. Every quarter of the city
owned and managed by a noble at court would have had such a complex
at its heart. With a market, a hammam, a caravanserai, a mosque, and
other components, it would have been the core of social and economic
activity in this ward of the city, enhancing the prestige and clout of the
patron. Niʾmat Khan’s estate is briefly described by Firishtah in passing:
At this time, the king expressed a desire to visit the palace and
garden of Ahmadnagar, which was known as Baghdad and on Safar
2 AH 992 [14 February 1582] he left the old garden of the
watercourse . . . and inspected the palace and buildings of the city.
The king had never seen the beautiful garden known as the
watercourse of Niʾmat Khan, since its completion, and he therefore
turned to it, to inspect it.26
He came back from his self-imposed exile and was surprised to see the
pleasant garden and associated watercourse.27 This incident suggests
that it would have been built sometime between 1570 and 1580.
Inscriptional evidence dates this building to 1578.28 The inscription
records the caravanserai and the public bath associated with this site and
date the construction of the complex. They are published in ‘Some
Unpublished Inscriptions from the Bombay Presidency’ by Ghulam
Yazdani [Inscriptions 1, 2].29 Another inscription associated with the
site is published by M. Nazim [Inscription 3].30
Most cities in the Deccan through the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries have a walled citadel for the ruling family that was
situated on the edge of the walled city. However, Ahmadnagar is unusual
in this regard as compared to Gulbarga, Bidar, Golconda, or Daulatabad.
As noted earlier, the royal citadel is the Ahmadnagar fort, and the city is
at a short distance from this fort. The city was walled only under Mughal
occupation, not during the reign of the Nizam Shahs. This was probably
one of the greatest legacies of the Nizam Shahs to the later Maratha
kingdom. It would also be the beginning of a trend by which unfortified
settlements would become increasingly common, as Hyderabad and
Khidki would demonstrate a century later. Most of the cities of the early
Marathas (until 1725 CE ) similarly had no enceinte. For the Marathas,
the administrative, judicial, and military power were all concentrated in

the forts.31
It is tempting to see the mode of suburban development with royal
garden palaces as being similar to the development of Timurid Herat
under Shah Rukh (reg. 1397–1447 CE ) in the fifteenth century. Garden
palaces around Ahmadnagar were constructed at great expense and were
no doubt the setting for various majālis.32 But, as George Michell
cautions, it would be too presumptuous to suggest any direct
connections between Timurid Herat and cities in the medieval Deccan
in the absence of any real comparative work.33 The role of gardens and
garden pavilions centred about the city and the semi-urban citadel
(fort of Ahmadnagar) confirm that the city and fort together were the
weighted centre of various royal suburban gardens and palaces.
Apart from the absence of royal buildings in the city of
Ahmadnagar,34 the lack of a large congregational mosque also suggests
the absence of royalty in the city. Supporting that contention is the
absence of a discernible processional route lined with state architecture,
which would have been a central feature of royal appearance and
ceremony had the king ever paraded through the city. Admittedly, the
loss of physical fabric hampers such a recreation, but there is nothing
even vestigial in this city to suggest such a ceremonial ever took place.
There are several references to triumphal processions to the fort of
Ahmadnagar. But it is likely that the main axis of the ceremonial
procession was from one of the gardens to the fort, not within the city.
Because of the royal residence and the treasury, the fort was clearly the
locus of political power, not the city. Approximate and highly
conjectural maps of Ahmadnagar from the various phases of Nizam
Shahi rule, despite their speculative nature, corroborate the layout of the
city as devoid of any processional route.35 It is possible that a
processional route from the gate of the city to the fort existed.
Important proclamations were made at the fort, not in the city. The early
Mughals too had a similar mode: we know that Babur and Humayun’s
armies were reviewed at garden sites and marched out of there for
military campaigns.
Every neighbourhood in Ahmadnagar has at least one small mosque,
a feature that can be attributed to the fractured and fragmented
development of the city under various court officials. There might be
more to this, as it is clear in the case of Tughluqabad,36 that a fort or a
city might be quickly constructed by entrusting a court noble with a city

ward or a gate, and the rewards were the resultant revenue from the
market on the estate. References to architecture in the city of
Ahmadnagar usually pertain to court nobles and their mansions, never to
any royal buildings.
The fort and the city of Ahmadnagar, from their foundation in the
last decade of the fifteenth century to their occupation by the Mughals in
1600 CE , were the centres of court intrigues, diplomacy, military
adventures, and several sacks by invading armies.
The whole city of Ahmadnagar was supplied with water from
distances far away, using a system of qanats and aqueducts. Many of these
were functional until recent decades, and there are colonial accounts
and details about the system.37 Today, the city of Ahmadnagar has a
population of over 300,000 people administered by a municipal
corporation, surrounded by large cantonment areas and military
establishments. The fort is controlled by the army and contains
fragmentary remains of various palaces and pavilions. The city and the
fort are still noticeably discrete.
Chaul
The Nizam Shahs controlled two major seaports on the west coast, Chaul
and Rajapuri, which was protected by the fort of Janjira.38 Chaul was the
larger of the two. Chaul was important not only as a major distribution
point for trading inland and along the coast but also because of its
strategic location. Therefore the Portuguese, who had permission from
the Nizam Shahs to build a factory at the site, also had major conflicts
with the latter over the nature of trade and concessions.
An important port of trade since the early centuries of the common
era, if not earlier, Chaul was mentioned by several early travellers. By the
fifteenth century, it had become one of the key ports of the Bahmanis.
It might have been cautiously used by the Bahmani kingdom because of
its proximity to Gujarat, especially as the Gujarat sultans were
aggressively trying to expand along the coast.39 The Bahmanis operated
largely from the port cities that were closer to their capitals of Gulbarga
and later Bidar. Thus, for the Bahmanis, Goa and Dabhol were
significant. Chaul was important for the northwestern Deccan, the
Bahmani taraf of Daulatabad and Junnar. This province became the basis
for the new independent state founded by Ahmad Nizam Shah in 1490
CE ; Chaul became its principal port. In the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, several European traders came to South Asia through the port
of Chaul; many of them, such as Afanasy Nikitin (d. 1472 CE ), Cesare
Federici (c. 1530–1600 CE ), Duarte Barbosa (1480– 1521 CE ), Franc ois
Pyrard de Laval (c. 1578 –1623 CE ), and Pietro della Valle (1586– 1652
CE ), left accounts of the port.
The changes in geographical conditions around this port, which
accelerated in the seventeenth century, caused the harbour to be
inundated with sediments that completely choked it. The rise in sea
level and the transformation of geographical conditions around this area
have recently been proven quite conclusively using archaeological
methods.40 A variety of historical sources had also previously mentioned
these natural changes.41 In the seventeenth century, the presence of large
numbers of pirates and several attacks on the town, coupled with the
physical changes to the harbour, completely devastated Chaul as a port of
trade.42 The sack of the town by Shivaji Bhonsale in the 1660s was
conclusive and resulted in a complete decline.43 The sixteenth century
saw the last significant occupation of the town as a trading port
(although Chaul does get occasionally mentioned as a ‘considerable
seaport’ as late as 1781 CE ).44 Chaul declined with the end of the
Nizam Shah dynasty (1490– 1536 CE ) and, as the Mughals took over
the Deccan, Surat (further north, in present-day Gujarat) became
their key port.
The old settlement of Chaul is in an area now under cultivation, and
the new town has shifted to the north. A mosque and a hammam are in
this quarter, whereas on the routes out of the old town are the remains of
a caravanserai and a tomb. There have been some excavations carried out
in Chaul, and the location of the extant buildings and the archaeological
evidence corroborate some of the historical descriptions.45
Chaul became very important as a port under the Nizam Shahs. It was
the largest port that they controlled, their only major source of trade,
and their sole point of cultural interaction with other countries of the
Indian Ocean. The port was at its greatest in the middle of the sixteenth
century, when the Nizam Shahs and the Portuguese were at peace.
Portuguese Chaul (Revadanda) and the Chaul of the Nizam Shah
(referred to as upper Chaul, later as Muhammadan Chaul) were twin
settlements, both with prospering trade. The mutual benefit in being at
peace and allowing trade was realised in both ports (Portuguese and
Nizam Shahi Chaul) through most of the sixteenth century. In upper
Chaul, crafts such as woodcarving supplemented the trading activities.46
The Portuguese and the Nizam Shah were on peaceful terms for the
middle third of the sixteenth century, and Chaul prospered enormously
in this period. It was also in the sixteenth century (in the beginning and
towards the end) that the most important battles for the control of the
port of Chaul were contested. In 1508 CE , the Governor of Diu,
appointed by the Sultan of Gujarat, along with navies from the Mamluk
king of Egypt, the Zamorin of Calicut, and the Deccan sultanates of the
Nizam Shah and Adil Shah, jointly defeated the Portuguese off the coast
of Chaul, an event recorded in the text Tuhfat-ul Mujahidin.47 In 1509 CE ,
the Portuguese avenged this loss, Burhan Nizam Shah I signed a peace
treaty, and the Portuguese were allowed to appoint a Factor at
Chaul.48 The Portuguese governor, Lopo Soares de Albergaria, and
Burhan Nizam Shah signed a further treaty in 1516 CE , under the terms of
which the Portuguese would be allowed to construct a factory.49 When the
factory was attacked in 1521 CE by a fleet from Bijapur, the Portuguese
were allowed by Burhan Nizam Shah I to build a fort at lower Chaul, by
the mouth of the estuary (a site today known as Revadanda). In 1557 CE ,
Husain Nizam Shah I (reg. 1553–65 CE ) was in power, and sensing a
relatively new and possibly weak king, the Portuguese proposed the
cession of the promontory of Korlai. Husain Nizam Shah not only refused
but sent his officers to build a fort on Korlai instead. The resultant conflict
was resolved by an understanding that none of the powers would occupy
or build on that peninsula.
Under a new king, Murtaza Nizam Shah I, the Nizam Shahs tried to
lay siege to Portuguese Chaul in 1570 CE ; the attempt failed and peace
negotiations ensued. The next Nizam Shahi king, Burhan Nizam Shah
II, tried to build a fort at Korlai, and this time the Portuguese crossed
the bay and captured the fort. They also improved their fortifications at
Revadanda. Thus the mouth of the estuary came completely under
Portuguese control.
The Portuguese, by the late sixteenth century, had control over a lot of
the Indian Ocean trading activity, including the important trade in
horses that every peninsular Indian polity relied upon.50 To ensure a
steady supply of horses, and to outmanoeuvre their rivals, the Nizam
Shahs maintained cordial relations with the Portuguese, whose system
of issuing cartazes or passes for trading ships meant control over the
high seas.
Akbar’s forces, in his conquest of the city and fort of Ahmadnagar,
briefly captured Chaul around 1600.51 In 1609 CE , there was an
unsuccessful attempt to capture Portuguese Chaul for the Nizam Shah
by Malik Ambar, who had become the regent.52 He was trying to
consolidate his power as custodian of the Nizam Shahi state, and
therefore soon signed a peace treaty with the Portuguese so that he
would not be fighting on multiple fronts. The rise of Surat, the
Portuguese losses at Hormuz, the fall of the Nizam Shahs, and the
arrival of the Mughals and the English in the Deccan, ensured that by
1630 CE Chaul was in serious decline as a port. It was briefly captured by
the forces of Bijapur, who handed it over to the Mughals.53 After this,
Chaul never recovered as a major trading centre; it was described as a
ruin as early as 1672 CE .54 Chaul had been known by several names since
classical antiquity.55 Medieval Arab geographers and merchants have
also left us with descriptions of ‘Sheool’ or ‘Saimur’.56 However, the first
verifiable European source was the Russian trader Afanasy Nikitin, who
described the people and the customs of the country around ‘Chivil’,
under the administration of Mahmud Gawan in the mid-fifteenth
century.57 Unfortunately, Nikitin did not describe the town in any
detail. Ludovico Varthema, a Bolognese merchant, visited ‘Cevul’ around
1506 CE . Very similar to Nikitin’s description, most of the people are
described as going around almost naked, except for some of the Moorish
merchants. He also mentioned Chaul as possessing a very beautiful river
along which foreign vessels plied. He described the king of Chaul as a
pagan, suggesting an identity for the governor of the town in this
period.58 Cesare Federici, a Venetian merchant, came to Chaul in 1563 CE .
His descriptions confirm the location of the Chaul of the Nizam
Shahs and of Portuguese Chaul. The most valuable descriptions of the
port are by Pietro della Valle, who visited Chaul in 1623 and 1625 CE .59
He described two ways to get from Revadanda to Chaul; the longer
way was by a winding road through meadows, palm trees, and forests
(much the same as today), and a shorter passage was by means of a small
boat across the small tongue of water. Most importantly, he describes a
low-density habitation with trees and gardens where a mosque, a public
bath, courts, and other public buildings stood.60 The physical evidence
for the settlement fits these descriptions well. The port was further to the
south, and most of the city would have been the port and the market, with
its mosque and bath-house. There have been significant changes in the
creek, but there are some remains of what appear to be marine structures
such as jetties and embankments close to the southwest corner of the areca
plantations, near the mosque. There is also the presence of a mound dotted
with several graves in the area where the historic town was located.61
Other miscellaneous structures, such as a store (perhaps a granary) and a
few stray walls of the port commander’s quarters (locally called Rajkot),
also remain.
The caravanserai is located on the medieval and early modern route
out of Chaul heading inland. Close by a direction-stone was reported,
with the names and directions to neighbouring towns.62 Such direction-
stones were common in the reign of the Nizam Shahs and confirms the
role of this structure as a caravanserai, which would be at the crossing of
such routes leading out of the port town. The mosque is located on the
peninsula of Chaul and would have been visible from the harbour; it
would have been a feature of the skyline visible from the incoming ships,
with its large bulbous dome. We know that the mosque was badly
damaged by Portuguese cannon; ‘the western side and the minarets’ were
totally ruined.63
The few extant buildings allow us to piece together a picture of a
settlement on the peninsula of Chaul, inland from the Arabian sea in the
estuary of the Kundalika River. We know from medieval historic sources
that this area was called upper Chaul (upstream on the river) as opposed
to the Portuguese Chaul (Revadanda) downstream by the sea. The Chaul
of the Nizam Shahs was a navigable port on the north bank, separated
from Revadanda by a thin tongue of water on the west; on the east were
marshes. The north was guarded by hills, the pass through which was a
controlled point of access to the town. To the south was the harbour, and
beyond the bay was the southern bank of the Kundalika River, which led
to the promontory and fort of Korlai.
Duarte Barbosa described the town in 1514 CE as more of a fair or
carnival than a city.64 There are no travellers’ descriptions of the richness,
grandeur, or even the urban character of Chaul. In fact, the relatively
austere and poor lifestyle of the people was worthy of commentary for
many of the travellers.65 Alberquerque, the Viceroy of Goa, wrote a
letter to the King of Portugal in which he suggested in the same
sentence that Danda and Chaul were the two important places on the
western seaboard that the Portuguese should capture. Danda was

described as a beautiful town with palaces; Chaul was not described at
all.66 It would be fair to infer that Chaul was not a real urban centre in
this period but only a trading port.
Under the Nizam Shahs, Chaul was an important trading port with a
key garrison to keep the Portuguese in check, but the region itself did
not seem to have benefited from or engaged in the trade. The local
populations were at best drafted as labour in the months of trade,
when the settlement’s population swelled. The archaeological and
textual evidence suggest that Chaul was a seasonal place of exchange, a
market in a true sense, without most of the paraphernalia of a city or a
large wealthy residential population. As André Wink had suggested,
many Indian towns and cities in the medieval period were largely
labile.67 Chaul was even more so, because its raison d’être was trade, an
activity that was seasonal, as it depended on the weather and winds.68
As most of the armies in the Deccan sultanates were also part-time
cultivators, even the garrison in Chaul would have ebbed in certain
seasons. Chaul then was a seasonal port town, not a permanently
inhabited city. Chaul is today a town with a municipal body and a
population of approximately 10,000.
Parenda
Parenda is one instance of an important fortified military centre that was
built by the Bahmanis and appropriated by the Nizam Shahs. Like other
forts, such as Sholapur, Kandahar, Naldurg, and Ausa, this site often
switched hands between the rival post-Bahmani kingdoms. It was the
site where important military commanders from the royal court were
given charge as qilaʾdar s and carried on the administration in a semi-
autonomous manner. The site remains largely undocumented, but has
been published in a note by Ghulam Yazdani in an Annual Report of the
Archaeological Department of His Exalted Highness the Nizam’s Dominions
and in a report published for the Government of Maharashtra following
the 1994 earthquake.69 One of the curious buildings in the fort of
Parenda is the large congregational mosque, which was most certainly
built under the reign of Malik Ambar. The mosque has decorative
columns made by local artisans in a style comparable to those of temples,
but without any figurative decoration [Figure 3.1].
Figure 3.1 Detail of column in mosque in the fort of Parenda.
Today, the settlement of Parenda is a village that has encroached on

the glacis of the fort, thus destroying valuable historical and
archaeological evidence. The fort is compact and filled with buildings,
and that suggests that the town would have been just outside the fort as
is the present settlement. The fort had a fausse braye added to the outer
wall in the fourteenth or early fifteenth century. This is similar to almost
all the forts of the Deccan plateau that were held by the Bahmanis, and
was a response to changing military technologies.70
Two structures within the fort of Parenda are worthy of mention,
though it is impossible to establish the period in which they were built.
For stylistic reasons, one of them would be easy to assign to the Nizam
Shahs, but the lack of any substantial evidence thus far precludes this
conclusion. The Chor Well, as it has been described,71 is a fantastic
subterranean structure, the focus of which is an actual freshwater well.
It is surrounded by subterranean galleries, a feature common to the Indic
tradition as seen in the famous vāvs in Gujarat.72 A similar well (sardāb)
is found in the vicinity of Daulatabad (Khufiya Bavdi), and in the
absence of inscriptional evidence, it too can be stylistically attributed to
the Nizam Shahs. Features that prevent a Mughal or post-Mughal origin
for this underground structure include the lack of brickwork, which was
a common feature in most Mughal construction in the region, including
the Mughal buildings at Khuldabad, the caravanserai at Nizampur in
the proximity of Daulatabad, the camping ground and final resting place
for Aurangzeb at Alamgiri, and so forth. Mughal architecture in the
sixteenth century also has its own architectural vocabulary, including
baluster columns and certain types of arch profiles, which are all missing
in this structure.
The other structure in Parenda that might be attributed to the Nizam
Shahi reign is a mosque, most probably built under the regency of Malik
Ambar. The mosque is remarkable for the use of local crafts and motifs in
its decoration. The mosque might be attributed to the period when the
fort was the temporary capital of the Nizam Shahs, from 1600 to 1603
CE , during which the architectural vocabulary of the kingdom was
undergoing a significant change. This was a period of great turmoil
when the existence of the kingdom was itself in danger; the
ornamentation of the mosque might be an attempt, most likely by
Malik Ambar, to seek a new identity.
The village of Parenda lies beside the fort, encroaching on important
military features of the site such as the glacis, as mentioned earlier. The
village itself is not a fortified settlement and there are no indications of
any defensive structures having been around it. Again, this pattern ties
into the commoner type of urban settlements in the sixteenth-century
Deccan. The fort or the castle was the place of administrative, military,
and political power. The civilian part of the town or village was without
any defensive apparatus, and quite discretely positioned vis-à-vis the

former. Parenda is a small town today, besides the fort, which is under
the custodianship of Maharashtra State Archaeological Department.
Sindkhed Raja
Now a small village in the district of Buldhana, Sindkhed Raja is best
known as being the hereditary fief of the Jadhavs, who were important
landed Maratha nobles at the court of the Nizam Shahs. Lakhuji Jadhav,
who is credited with most of the sixteenth-century architecture here, was
famously the father of Jijabai (1598–1674 CE ), who was the mother of
Shivaji Bhonsale, founder of the seventeenth-century Maratha kingdom.
Though there is evidence of early occupation of the site, little is known
about it historically.73 The only buildings that are datable from the
Nizam Shahi period are the fortified mansion in the centre of the village,
a large walled enclosure called the Kala Kot, a building known as the
Rang Mahal, a small artificial reservoir with a pavilion in the midst, and
the dams that create the reservoir. The grandest extant building is the
memorial built in honour of Lakhuji Jadhav, who ruled here through the
latter half of the sixteenth century.
The fortified mansion, locally known as Lakhuji Jadhav’s wada, is a
large enclosure with high walls, covering an area of 90 by 85 metres.
At the centre is a large elevated platform of 40 by 40 metres on which
the ruins of the actual residential structure stand. Small rooms surround
a central courtyard in this building, and it is architecturally
unremarkable. One of the rooms is believed to be the birthplace of
Jijabai Bhonsale (née Jadhav). There are traces of a wooden
superstructure. The palace is dateable to the last quarter of the sixteenth
century.
To the west of the village of Sindkhed Raja is the impressive
memorial (samadhi) built for Lakhuji Jadhav. It is a large double-storied
masonry building, not unlike the Islamic tombs built in this period.
There is a tripartite division of the fac ade, with two blind arches flanking
a small doorway. Internally the space is organised as a pancayatana
temple, with one central cella surrounded by four smaller sanctums in
the four corners. All the cells contain sivalingas and suggest Saivite
affiliations. In terms of architectural decoration, several motifs that can
be seen on Bahmani and Nizam Shahi buildings are to be seen. Lakhuji
Jadhav was killed by the Nizam Shahs in Malik Ambar’s regency because
he had defected to the Mughals. He died sometime around 1600 CE .
In the grounds are several smaller memorials, which are the scale of small
cenotaphs and commemorate the lives of other members of the family.
They all appear to be of a later date.
To the west of the village is also a large tank called Chandani Talab,
with retaining dams on the eastern and southern side. In the midst of the
water body is a two-storied pleasure pavilion, not unlike the leisure
architecture in the palace complexes of the Nizam Shahs. The southern
wall of this tank also contains within it a number of pleasure chambers,
including a hammam. The village contains a number of spatially
distributed temples and a few small mosques, following much the same
pattern as Nizam Shahi towns.
The whole village of Sindhkhed Raja, including its significant
buildings, are an emulation of Nizam Shahi architecture, albeit on a
smaller scale. Like the royal court, the residence is placed at the edge of the
settlement. But, other than that, the presence of small garden pavilions
and waterworks, memorials and tombs, along with the scattered places of
worship and prayer, are all similar to Ahmadnagar and Junnar.
Urban Systems: Water Supply and Civic Buildings

The water-supply systems of the Nizam Shahs were the most
sophisticated in the Deccan, with an understanding of local geology
and hydrology, often lifting water to high plateaus from lowland areas.
The Nizam Shahs often incorporated local building craft and knowledge
in their attempt at creating a regional identity. Their technology was a
happy co-existence of local and imported knowledge. A good example is
the hill of Manzarsumbah. Water is raised almost a hundred metres from
a series of tanks carved into the intermediary compact basalt. The
technique of carving water tanks in porous impure layers of rock
(amygdaloidal basalt) sandwiched between two layers of compact basalt
is traditional knowledge in the Deccan, and many Buddhist caves have
a potable water supply based on this technique.74 However, the lifting
systems and the subsequent network of conduits, pipes, and cisterns are
frequently based on technology imported from Iranian regions. Most of
the hydraulic technologies in the early modern Deccan were first utilised
by the Nizam Shahs.75
Prakrit inscriptions in Buddhist caves in the region often make

references to kings as the patrons and benefactors of cisterns and water
systems. Traditional step wells (baoris or baravs) are common in the
kingdom, some having possible Yadava origins. The symbolism of these
earlier systems was not lost, merely overlaid with a new interpretation
under the Nizam Shahs. Water storage and supply systems were a mix of
indigenous and imported technologies, with excavated stone cisterns
provided with aqueducts and pipes.
Another aspect of the waterworks was the display of water, a Timurid
and possibly earlier West Asian conceit from the classical world. For the
Nizam Shah kings, large static pools were the spectacle with which to
proclaim their control of water, for example, the large water bodies at
Farah Bakhsh Bagh, Hasht Bihisht Bagh, Manzarsumbah, etc. This was
in marked contrast with the Mughals, for whom the dynamic and fluid
qualities of water were the most important. The Mughals exploited these
attributes through cascades, fountains, and flowing channels. Within the
architecture of the Nizam Shahs, small watercourses and fountains can
also be observed and are mentioned in the literary accounts at their
court.76 The manipulation and control of water in large quantities was
their real achievement, which they sought to display visually and also
through civic works. This effect is very different from the meritorious
provision of water supply by indigenous dynasties, which did not aspire
to control water visually, only as a utilitarian system.
In addition to these exercises in visual display, the Nizam Shahs did
provide water-management systems for the benefit of the people. Such
works made it possible for them to set up towns distant from rivers or
natural sources of water. The most impressive water-distribution systems
in the Nizam Shahi domains are in urban and suburban areas, where
artificial lakes are created with dams and the water is carried by
aqueducts and pipes punctuated by siphon towers.77 Wells and cisterns
are the termini of these distribution networks. Unfortunately, today
these water-supply systems do not survive well in Ahmadnagar city.
But enough has been documented to suggest a very extensive network.
The Ambarkot area of Daulatabad and the old city of Aurangabad
(Khadki) also have large water-distribution systems. The Nizam Shahs
aspired to control water resources and had the knowledge required to
build and manage water-distribution systems. Such works were often
embellished with pavilions and other recreational architecture, as seen in
the enigmatic pavilion close to the topmost dam that supplies water to
Daulatabad. This structure is very likely of the Nizam Shahi period. The
design is not unlike the pavilion built by the Adil Shahs at Kumatgi and
the building called Kabutarkhana, built by the sultans of Gujarat at the
Vada Talao lake in Champaner.
The Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar were the only significant post-
Bahmani sultanate dynasty in the medieval Deccan to have local origins
(as opposed to the Persian or Turkic lineage that the Adil Shahs and the
Qutb Shahs claimed). They were well aware that water management and
control was an essential part of successful kingship in the region.
Providing water storage was a pious and meritorious act in the Indic
tradition of kingship, while at the same time grand displays of water
were the prerogative of Persianate royalty. Merging technologies in the
same way as ideologies, the Nizam Shahs combined older indigenous
systems of water storage, such as cisterns excavated into the living rock,
with Persian techniques of water conveyance like underground pipes and
qanats. Their ideological and religious affiliation with Persianate lands
was often given material expression in the form of the visual arts, but the
regional idiom of craft and construction was always evident. Their
expertise at water management is also typified in their construction of
beautiful hammams.
Military Design and Fortification

Many of the military structures, such as the fortress of Daulatabad, have
phased construction histories stretching over 800 years or more.78 It is
a difficult task to assign different additions, building campaigns, and
repairs to the various dynasties, though military technology can be a
pointer in this direction. The size of merlons, the thickness of walls, the
use of specific shapes in planning, are all architectural responses to
changing war technologies, allowing a rudimentary dating of many of
these accretions. It is often difficult but possible to isolate architectural
features, such as a balcony on a fortified tower, and attribute it to the
Nizam Shahs. In Daulatabad fort, for example, some of the old bastions
had defence features made redundant by the construction of a newer set
of fausse braye external walls built by the Nizam Shahi kings. These
obsolete defence features were converted into ornamental balconies by
the Nizam Shahs. Evidence of masons’ marks and the style of masonry
are proof that these balconies were constructed under the Nizam Shahs.
A securely dated hammam at Daulatabad has similar masons’ marks, also
seen on the other defensive walls at the site. Even the dressed building
stones in these elements are visually comparable in tooling and size. The
study of such isolated elements does not necessarily add value to this
research and therefore such observations about buildings and sites are
not presented unless relevant for constructing larger arguments.
Though very few military structures apart from forts can be called
exclusively defensive, many buildings have at least symbolic defensive
attributes, such as non-functional merlons. These features clearly have
their roots in military construction, but are often decorative or symbolic,
as seen in Bagh Rauza, the necropolis created under Ahmad Nizam Shah I
but which was discontinued as the later Nizam Shahs all sent their
mortal remains to Karbala in Iraq. Since the history of fortification and
military construction are disciplines in their own right, it would be
inappropriate to engage in a lengthy discourse on those matters here.
Yet, insofar as the military and other functions of architecture intersect,
some of the defensive buildings might be relevant to this discussion.
Many of the fort complexes were an important part of ordinary civilian
life in times of peace.
The fort of Ahmadnagar is one of the earliest forts to show
certain military innovations in planning. It is completely circular in its
plan and has only one point of access.79 The Nizam Shahs also
acquired many older forts built by other rulers and added to them. Their
forts and fortified hilltops have been appropriated and changed by later
dynasties and rulers, and it is very difficult to reconstruct them as they
might have been under the Nizam Shahs. A chronology of any one
military site is difficult to undertake in the absence of documents or
inscriptions, but the task is made easier with a study of construction
technology.
The Nizam Shahs controlled a variety of forts that can be classified
using the conventional division of land forts, hill forts, and sea forts. The
hill forts are largely clustered in the Western Ghats, the sea forts are
Janjira and Korlai along the Konkan coast, and the land forts are on the
Deccan plateau. These forts were essential to maintaining control over
the surrounding areas and also as frontier garrisons to mobilise troops.
However, the fort commanders were often semi-autonomous and
changed loyalties as required by the circumstances.80
The Nizam Shahs lived in the forts of Daulatabad, Ahmadnagar,

Shivneri, Parenda, and Kandahar, where they created their royal
architectural settings. Barring these few forts where the Nizam Shahs
actually resided, the rest can be classified as non-royal. Forts changed
hands frequently, and the actual connection between the court and the
fort commanders was not always stable or uniform and is not clearly
understood. For example, it can be inferred from written documents that
when an important landed family which had possession and control of a
fort was refused an extension of its revenue and administrative rights, the
nobles of that family at court would rebel. They would then petition and
obtain a firmān from one of the rival kingdoms, and the fort, with its
associated territory, would nominally become a part of that latter
kingdom.
As mentioned earlier, the Nizam Shahs controlled three types of forts,
all different. The hill forts along the Sahyadri ranges, which were
typically older fortified hilltops, were appropriated and enlarged by the
Nizam Shahs from earlier rulers. The forts on the Deccan plateau were
mostly built by the Bahmanis and acquired by the Nizam Shahs. The
coastal forts were the big innovation of the Nizam Shahs, in particular
the fort of Janjira. Till the end of the fifteenth century, the hill and sea
forts had been wrested (and improved) by the Bahmanis from local kings
and chiefs to secure the trade routes to the coast. Bahmani fort-building
was limited largely to the Deccan plateau. The Nizam Shahs acquired
many of these forts in the plateau, and barring the important exception
of the fort of Ahmadnagar, which was constructed entirely by them, they
modified or repaired earlier forts and fortified sites.
The study of fortifications is an important indexical tool in recovering
the military history of a region. As military technology changed,
military architecture responded. The development of new and improved
weapons was accompanied by corresponding changes in fortifications, to
both defend against and to deploy new arms. Architectural responses to
gunpowder usually took a deeper level of conceptualisation and greater
resources to construct. The adaptation and innovation in fortification
was therefore significant, and helps us recover the internalisation of
gunpowder technology in the imagination and warcraft of historic
polities.81 In the Deccan, architectural developments kept close pace
with the fast-changing war technologies till the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. By the end of the sixteenth century, for reasons outlined here,
war technology, particularly that of guns and gunpowder, raced ahead

while fortifications lagged behind. Urban settlements and the structure
of the state were eventually transformed by the evolving administrative
and military technologies of the Deccan. Military architecture did not
significantly evolve past the seventeenth century, but military
technology resulted in changed forms of urban settlements. There are
very few works on the fortifications of the Deccan and their changing
nature, barring work by Richard Eaton and Jean Deloche.82 The analysis
of the development of military architecture as a response to fast-
changing war technologies demonstrates that the Deccan kingdoms
changed their urban settlement patterns quite radically.83
The continuous occupation of many of the fortified settlements and
fortresses until at least the nineteenth century has meant that the
historical accretions and associations of later rulers (or sometimes very
early ones) are often erroneously and disproportionately misunder-
stood without any study of the phased construction of these sites.
Some of the changes in architecture and planning in the Deccan were
affected by the rapidly changing military technology during the
sixteenth century. The evidence suggests that as early as the
fifteenth century, the attitudes toward gunpowder technologies and
related architectural innovations were already quite divergent
between the Bahmani sultanate (and its successors states in the
sixteenth century) and the kingdom of Vijayanagara. The case of
Ahmadnagar city and fort, built early in the sixteenth century,
marks the early moment of the disaggregation of urban settlement
and fortified strongholds, a feature that was marked by the
foundation of Khadki (later Aurangabad) under Malik Ambar a
hundred years later.
Gunpowder and drilled, disciplined armies were seen as the key
factors for a sixteenth century European military revolution and its role
in defeating Asian armies.84 Such an argument was extended by
including fortification, particularly the artillery fortress and the trace
italienne in this discourse, stating that, while most of Asia was ‘unable to
adopt western military technology’, the Islamic gunpowder empires
were ‘unable to adapt it’.85 Yet, the fallacy of not recognising local and
specific conditions that shaped modes of warfare, as Jeremy Black
admits, makes it clear that the responses to changing gunpowder
technology were of a different nature, even if they did not conform to
military progress of the seventeenth century as understood by

European historians.86
For all the paradigms of European military technologies overcoming
Asian states in the early modern period, there has been little comparative
work on architecturally constructed responses to such technological
advances. The fundamental difference was not dictated by weaponry and
firepower (usually the diagnostic two indicators of military superiority
of European powers) but by attitudes toward warfare and combat, which
changed significantly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries. Perhaps it would be speculative to say that most battles in
South Asia were almost ritually enacted, with the minimum loss of lives
and large negotiated settlements.87 It is important to note that most
battles and sieges in the Deccan were eventually not settled through
military action alone but through negotiations, sometimes protracted
but often expedient, and changes in the loyalties of key military
commanders. All engagements were not of this nature, but historic
chronicles do seem to suggest it for most battles. The tropes of corrupt
generals and court nobles who defected, commanders whose loyalties
could readily be purchased, and easily demoralised and confused troops
all have a particular valency when assessed against two factors. First, the
militaries of the early modern period were largely made up of part-time
cultivators, who were enlisted to provide numbers and, if any combat
actually took place, almost as a reserve after the front-lines of
professional soldiers were exhausted. Second, the individual city
governors, fort commanders, and other local power-holders exercised
relative independence to ensure better prospects for themselves.
Gunpowder was not taken up as easily as might appear from literary
sources because it was thought to undermine soldierly values of courage
and valour, and its uptake and upkeep was dependent on immigrants
from the larger Islamic world. The Bahmanis and their successors did
well until they were able to attract a steady stream of skilled foreign
manpower, but by the seventeenth century, architectural innovation had
halted and kingdoms preferred to set up strongholds at geographically
impregnable places and set up towns near that, rather than fortify the
towns themselves and defend them.88
We can infer that the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
demonstrate the changing architectural responses of the Deccan to
gunpowder technology, a change that stagnated by the end of the
sixteenth century. The eventual settlement of frontier between the

various states in the sixteenth-century Deccan, as elaborated by Eaton
and Wagoner in their study of fortifications and shifting frontiers, is a
plausible model to explain the eventual settlement of boundaries.89 The
Mughals, with their large forces, supply line, and full-time soldiers (as
opposed to the part-time cultivators that made the bulk of the Deccan
armies) had the capacity to carry out long-duration sieges.90
Architectural innovation was replaced by strategies of fort location: on
hilltops, controlling passes and gorges. Fortified urban settlements
became redundant, and towns walled for defensive reasons disappeared
from the Deccan.91 They were disaggregated into two different
networks: military (administrative) and civilian (mercantile).
Through the sixteenth century, there was an increasing emphasis on
abandoning the city when confronted by superior firepower.92 The royal
court and the treasury, if in urban areas, were evacuated to fortified
strongholds in the countryside. That is also true of Safavid and post-
Safavid Iran, where the cities were largely undefendable and it was the
walled Chaharbaghs which provided refuge under siege. In the
seventeenth century, city enceintes became nominal and symbolic and
were no longer really used for military functions.
Many of the defensible urban settlements eventually only became
fortified garrisons and administrative centres by the establishment of
urban settlements at a short distance, as seen in the establishment of
Ahmadnagar Fort distinct from Ahmadnagar city (c. 1500 CE ), Hyderabad
from Golconda (1589 CE ), Nauraspur from Bijapur (c. 1599 CE ) and
Aurangabad (Khadki) from Daulatabad (1615 CE ). Burhanpur, though
founded earlier, became an important urban centre in the seventeenth
century, as its neighbouring fort of Asirgarh became the important
stronghold in Malwa along a controlling route between Hindustan and
the Deccan, serving only military and administrative functions. Sites such
as Mandu ceased to have large and vibrant communities and were instead
being superseded by urban mercantile and civilian settlements like Dhar
(in this case).
Already, by the end of the sixteenth century, the defence mechanisms
of adding more material and having thicker walls had become redundant
because of their ineffectiveness against improved siege artillery and
mining techniques. In the seventeenth century, the rebellious origins of
the Maratha state and the semi-permanent presence of Aurangzeb in the
Deccan caused significant changes in the location and functions of forts

and urban settlements. Eaton has argued that the hilly terrain of the
Deccan (as opposed to the flat plains of the north) required a heavy
reliance on gunpowder, not just cavalry charges. However, this could be
easily overcome by other means of warfare, such as the fast and light
cavalry charges combined with guerrilla tactics used by Malik Ambar
and the Marathas. Hill forts and their importance in the new state
formations and administration in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries have quite clearly been delineated by Stewart Gordon.93 Hill
plateaus were natural stages for rebellion, resistance, and proclamation of
regional sovereignty.94 But in many of the Deccan forts the advantage of
elevation was missing, particularly in those on the Deccan plateau
(as opposed to the Western Ghats). By the end of the sixteenth century
and in the seventeenth, with the rise of the Mughals and then the
Marathas, the trends in the Deccan are the separation of military forts
from urban settlements, and the rise of fortified strongholds to form a
network, distinct from the network of urban settlements. It is therefore
possible to posit that these kingdoms and polities chose not to adapt
newer gunpowder technologies. Instead of ‘adapting’ or ‘adopting’
newer ‘advances’ and ‘technologies,’ the kingdoms in the Deccan chose
instead to change urban settlement patterns, thus affecting the mode
of warfare.
In conclusion, the Deccan under the Bahmani and post-Bahmani
sultans embraced gunpowder technologies much better than most of
south India under the Vijayanagara kings, through most of the sixteenth
century. Certainly, the more vigorous cultural and mercantile
connections of the sultanates with the larger world of the Indian
Ocean, and the role of this sphere in the transmission of technology are
the key factors of this shift.
Under the Bahmanis, and later the post-Bahmani kingdoms,
architectural innovation was a key component of military strategy and
suggested a familiarity with changes in siege artillery and siege
techniques. By the end of the sixteenth century, architectural innovation
had halted. The logical conclusion to bigger and thicker walls had been
reached, and the response to newer and more powerful siege weapons was
to change settlement patterns. Fortified garrison and administrative
towns were depopulated and new mercantile urban centres founded,
usually a short distance away.
The strategy in the Deccan from the seventeenth century onwards

relied heavily on individual strongholds, mutually supporting and
controlling mercantile routes and supply lines. This was partly a result
of the nature of local landed feudal baron courts that were the building
blocks of kingdoms such as Ahmadnagar. Several attempts were made to
create new groups of aristocracy in the countryside; these usually
consisted of settling groups of émigrés with a fortress or castle as the
centre of the courtlet. As a result, the countryside was never clearly
unprotected but had a network of fortified strongholds. The urban
centres were not specially protected; they were only larger nodes in
this grid.
The Mughals defended the periphery of their expanding state. They
defended their empire in open battlefields, not typically at the walls of a
city.95 This was not true of the Deccan, where most of the protection was
at the internal nodes in the kingdom. Under the Mughals, city walls
were more emblems of urban identity and of revenue and traffic control.
There were implicit problems with stationing a garrison in a city.
Contested boundaries, Mughal expansionist policies, and multiple
revenue right-holders and taxation tenures, along with land alienation
policies, made networks of nodal forts the key to administrative control
and territorialisation. Since systems of governance, taxation, justice, and
monetisation were already in place, only the control of the defensive
node and the defection or replacement of the commander of the fort or
governor of the region was required to claim the territory.
The administrative and state apparatus was reduced to a series of
military islands, connected by various outposts and small garrisons.96
This model of specialised functions, operating out of different nodes and
forming discrete networks, was the norm in the Deccan, and most
certainly the late Nizam Shahi state and the independent Maratha
kingdom under Shivaji relied on this model. It allowed the state to
concentrate resources for fortifying only the administrative and military
centres, which were all located strategically along passes and controlled
important trade routes. This network that they created was the basis of
territorialisation. Under the Marathas, through the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, this strategy intensified. The early Maratha
state did not even pretend to protect the larger urban settlements under
its rule. Perhaps hierarchical market networks are a much better
explanation for the nature of urban settlements than models of
bureaucratic (and in this case military) authority. The two diverge and
do not map onto each other. This displacement of the state apparatus and
market networks into two separate patterns was arguably a response to
gunpowder technologies.
A number of capital cities were founded in the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries in an effort to depopulate the fortified townships,
which typically had a citadel and multiple concentric walls containing
large civilian populations. Architectural responses to war technologies in
the Deccan were considered redundant from 1600 to 1750 CE because of
changed administrative practices, warfare, and urban settlements.
CHAPTER 4
PALACES AND MANSIONS
This chapter looks at palaces and mansions as special architectural

programmes, critically different in commission and use. The levels of
patronage, from the royal court to the small feudatories, and the
resultant effect in projection of power is investigated and the imbricated
nature of the architectural and political systems of the Nizam Shahs is
explored. Palaces were the real loci of political power in the medieval
Deccan. The palaces of the Nizam Shahs were largely abandoned after the
seventeenth century, and some have been modified for different uses.
It was rare to see the same royal use of a palace building across different
dynasties because of the strong royal associations of the palaces with
earlier dynasties, as well as the changing requirements and fashions at
court. If a location was strategic or symbolically powerful, it was not
uncommon for successive regimes to build new palaces alongside the
older ones on the same site: for example, the different palaces built by
the Yadavas, the Bahmanis, the Nizam Shahs (including Malik Ambar),
and the Mughals in the fort of Daulatabad. The fort of Daulatabad had
many implications for royal control of the region, along with trade and
defence, and was integral to the strategy of every successful dynasty in
the region. Yet no incumbent king occupied the same palace buildings
built by earlier dynasties, unless significant modifications and changes
were carried out. The earlier palaces were either subsumed as part of
a new palace complex by the incumbent rulers or condemned to a
secondary use. Both these modes of appropriation can be seen at
Daulatabad. The Chini Mahal palace complex in Daulatabad, originally
built by the Nizam Shahs, was subsequently used as a prison for rival or
PALACES AND MANSIONS 99
rebellious personages under Mughal rule. The mythical invocation of the

palaces of past kings as ruined (kharābeh) and occupied only by owls and
birds of prey in Persian literature and illustration (as seen in the Khāmseh
of Nizami) was also seriously regarded and prevented the occupation of
these palace complexes. Many Persian epics, in dealing with old
abandoned palaces, use the same tropes of ruins being the haunt of jinns
and other undesirable mythical elements. This can also be seen in
illustrated manuscripts, where painted depictions of the palaces and
towns of earlier dynasties and kings are shown in a similar way, occupied
by owls and other birds of ill omen. Palaces were, then, largely frozen in
the era of one dynasty unless they were enlarged or modified for use as
prisons, garrisons, or other ancillary buildings. Malik Ambar’s lower
palace at Daulatabad formed a minor part of a large garden palace
complex under the Mughals.
Other than palaces, the centres of political power were forts. In times
of distress and duress, it was not uncommon for palaces and forts to be
concurrent and, as a result, forts such as Daulatabad, Parenda, and
Shivneri have palace buildings and royal quarters within them. Palaces
and hammams were common secular court-patronised architectural
programmes, often combined in one complex as a single unit, the
hammam often being an integral part of the palace. All these buildings
were all built in stone and timber in the Nizam Shahi kingdom, a
combination of materials that characterised their courtly architecture as
it did that of their predecessors, the Bahmanis. In contrast, the Mughals
preferred brick structures, as can be seen in their larger cities and
settlements in the Deccan. The technique of cladding buildings in stone
was perhaps the cause or the effect of this preference. For the Deccan
sultanates, on the other hand, lime mortar and plaster were used to
construct and finish the buildings. All the decoration was in cut and
moulded stucco. Carved stone ornament was very rarely used in secular
architecture, but is found occasionally. Mosques and tombs tend to have
more carved stone decorations than any of the palace buildings, which
favour stucco.
The influx of immigrants from the Middle East was responsible for
introducing into the northern Deccan styles and systems of construction
and engineering that had evolved elsewhere. This was possible because
the ports of Chaul and Danda Rajpuri, which the Nizam Shahs
controlled, were a gateway to the trade routes of the Arabian Sea. Despite
the imported technologies, the importance of pre-existent local building

techniques and crafts ensured that the resultant architecture was not just
imitative; it was distinguished by the fusion of various traditions in the
creation of a new regional idiom.
Mansions built for the elite were found in the cities and the
countryside, whereas the palaces for the sultans were either in the suburbs
of cities or in forts. The mansions that survive within the city of
Ahmadnagar can be attributed to important court officials. The mansions
of Qasim Khan, Niʾmat Khan Semnani, and Changiz Khan (the peshwa
[premier minister] of Murtaza Nizam Shah I and who was the owner of
Malik Ambar), all built sometime between 1560–80 CE , have been
transformed into offices and residences of local administrators since the
nineteenth century but retain some of their original features. Qasim
Khan’s palace is the District Collector’s residence and the Niʾmat Khan’s
palace houses municipal offices. The palace of Changiz Khan, now the
District Court, is slated for demolition! Mosques, hammams, and shops
were mentioned as a part of these estates, typically on the periphery.1 It is
possible to partially reconstruct the layout of a typical nobleman’s estate,
which then formed the basis of a municipal ward in the twentieth century.
The public institutions that were a part of this complex would have been
on the outer edges and, through a series of gardens and pavilions, the core,
which comprised the mansion and its gardens, could be accessed.
Unfortunately, the modern city retains very little of this planning and
some of the disparate elements survive without their original context.
It is only in the case of Niʾmat Khan’s estate that we can see multiple
traces of such planning. A large portal flanked by rows of shops survives
as an example of the public face of such a complex [Figure 4.1]. Inside
were the remains of a hammam, reported as late as the mid-twentieth
century.2 The nearby municipal office retains a part of Niʾmat Khan’s
mansion and, between this and the portal, is a gateway with inscriptions
detailing the revenue grants by Murtaza Nizam Shah I for the upkeep of
this estate.3 These grants include the revenues of Savedi village, which is
to the north of the city of Ahmadnagar and close to the palace of Hasht
Bihisht, a suggestion of the importance Niʾmat Khan had at court. Since
the mansions of the nobles and elite survive only in a fragmentary way, it
is very difficult to reconstruct the entire complexes within which they
were contained. The accretions and modifications to the architecture
therefore prove problematic in theorising the architecture.
Figure 4.1 The portal to the estate of Ni’mat Khan, Ahmadnagar city.
Some of the court nobles, such as the Jadhavs of Sindkhed Raja, had
their fiefs in the outlying areas of the kingdom. Their power was
concentrated in a village or a provincial town that usually had a fortified
mansion (locally called gadhi) along with a few public works, such as a
large step well or a masonry dam, a temple, or a mosque. These nobles in
the outlying areas of the kingdom comprised mostly the Maratha landed
gentry, the deshmukhs and the local chiefs, and made up the ethnic
divisions that eventually sided with the Deccani axis. The Afāqi Persian
nobility tended to be largely concentrated in the urban and the fortified
areas, as opposed to the local chiefs, who had power bases in rural areas in
addition to retaining their hold over some urban areas and forts.
In this chapter, we will consider only four palace sites in detail; the
criteria that set these sites apart is that all of them remained palaces as
long as they were inhabited or controlled by the Nizam Shahs, and no
significant changes have been made to them since. All these palaces were
commissioned by the Nizam Shahi dynasty and are located within a
radius of 15 kilometres around the city of Ahmadnagar. They were all
built within the sixteenth century, though only the Farah Bagh can be
conclusively dated by an inscription and supporting textual evidence.
The rest are all dated on stylistic and archaeological grounds, which, all
considered together, are compelling evidence. All the buildings at these
sites show traces of rich decoration in lime-based stucco plasters, which
were incised and cut. Unfortunately, only a few fragments of this art now
survive in these palaces, but enough survives to draw some broad
conclusions about it.
Besides these case studies, another set of palace buildings also stands
within the fort of Ahmadnagar. These remain in the possession of the
Indian Army and are not accessible to scholarship. Notably, there is one
octagonal garden pavilion in the fort.
Farah Bakhsh Bagh

The site is around a kilometre east of the walled city of Ahmadnagar,
south of the fort [Figure 4.2]. The site is now largely covered with acacia
scrub forest, but was once surrounded by mango and tamarind trees.4
The building and the surrounding garden in its present form were
rebuilt under the supervision of Salabat Khan by order of Murtaza
Nizam Shah I. The building is mentioned in Mughal, Maratha, and
British accounts, and served a variety of lesser functions until it was
granted status as a protected structure in the early twentieth century.
It has been suggested apocryphally that this building was a model for the
construction of the Taj Mahal.5 The walls are constructed of dressed
stone masonry with a rubble core and contain within them a framework
of timber. The arches and vaults are true and must have been constructed
Figure 4.2 Elevation of Farah Bakhsh Bagh.
with centring. The vaults are constructed of stone, only six inches thick
at the apex. Except for the main dome, all the other vaults have a double
roof. All surfaces were covered with decorative stucco. The building was
used as a garden palace for receiving and entertaining embassies from
other kingdoms, and was also the setting for poetry recitations.6 It was
never used as a permanent residence.
From inception to completion, it was the centre of court intrigues,
lavish banquets, and diplomatic overtures. The account of its design and
construction can be partially reconstructed from historical documents
and building measurements. This history provides critical insights into
the transmission of architectural design and also demonstrates the
potency of architecture to legitimise a dynasty. This case study has two
not entirely unrelated objectives: to locate the monument with respect to
‘memory’ and use, and to trace the origins of the design.
The building itself is octagonal and cross-axially symmetrical with
monumental pishtaq portals reminiscent of Central Asian and Persianate
examples [Figure 4.3]. The building is completely post-Timurid in design
with its cross-axial plan and groups of corner rooms flanking the iwans on
every fac ade. Yet no palatial structure of a similar scale survives in Iran or
Central Asia. In plan, scale, and monumentality, the Farah Bakhsh Bagh is
comparable to Humayun’s tomb in Nizamuddin and the Taj Mahal in
Figure 4.3 Plan of Farah Bakhsh Bagh.
Agra, preceding the latter by around 50 years. The building is set on a

raised platform which was surrounded by a large pool of water, a design
that seems to be more South Asian than any of the other sites. This feature
that is shared with the tomb of Sher Shah Sur (d. 1545 CE ) at Sasaram is
not to be seen anywhere in Central Asia or Iran. Currently there is a strip
of raised ground that makes the palace building accessible, but one
presumes that boats would have been required to traverse this large pool.
A series of fountains and connecting pipes carry water inside the building.
It is possible to trace glass strips inlaid in the floor that visually connect all
the small pools of water in various parts of the building through straight
lines.7 The water is brought to the site through the Bhingar and the
Bhandara aqueducts from a few kilometres away. The centre of the
building is a large triple-storied domed hall, with a central fountain
[Figure 4.4]. The wall construction comprises a rubble core with ashlar
masonry on the outer face. Large sections of timber are found in the wall at
regular intervals, tying the whole building together. All the openings are
framed by wood, including the lintels, which are wooden [Figure 4.5].
Vestigial traces of shutters are found on these frames in the form of post-
holes for hinges. The decorative elements on the ceilings and vaults
are beautifully finished in incised and moulded stucco [Figure 4.6].
Figure 4.4 Farah Bakhsh Bagh, section.
The description of the site in the Maasir-i Alamgiri, written for Aurangzeb
in the late seventeenth century, is:
The garden of the Farah Bakhsh is 2000 zirʿa in length and

breadth [alike] which makes the area 278 bighas. In the middle of
it is a reservoir 528 zirʿa [square], which makes the area 19 bighas.
An underground channel brings water to it from the foot of the
hill. In the centre of the reservoir is a lofty and wonderful building
in two stories, having 160 hujra [rooms] and a high cupola.
Archers practice shooting at its summit.8
The Farah Bakhsh Bagh was completed in 1774 – 75 CE , according to

the Tarikh-i Firishtah,9 but a chronogram from an inscription
translated by M. Nazim gives the date as 1576 – 77 CE [Inscription 4].
This inscription is fixed on Changiz Khan’s palace, currently the
District Court (sadly slated for demolition), but obviously belonged
to this garden palace.10 Soon after its construction, it was ordered
razed and Salabat Khan II, the accomplished prime minister of
Murtaza Nizam Shah I, was commissioned to rebuild it. It was finally
completed in its current form in 1583 – 84 CE ,11 which is confirmed
on the basis of chronogram in a verse noted in Tarikh-i Firishtah.12
The Burhān-i Maasir narrates the construction of the Farah Bakhsh
Bagh as follows:
At this time, Niʾmat Khan Semnani, who had been the ruler of
that country and had been raised from the corner of humility to
the summit of honour, being appointed to the post of chashnigar
with the title of Niʾmat Khan, and whose power and influence
Figure 4.5 Stucco plaster finishes in Farah Bakhsh Bagh.
with the king increased daily, was ordered to lay out a garden and
dig a watercourse. In a very short time he had laid out a splendid
garden and built in it a fine garden house, but those at court who
envied him represented to the king that the design of the garden
house consisted of a series of triangles. The king at once ordered it
Figure 4.6 Timber framing in the construction of Farah Bakhsh Bagh.
to be destroyed, and entrusted the construction of a new garden

house to Salabat Khan.13
We have no surviving remains of the demolished palace, and the new one
stands on the same site. It has been suggested that the earlier palace
was of much smaller dimensions, if the four pools around the palace
are thought of as being too close, though this claim cannot be
substantiated.14 It is thought that there might have been more buildings
around the pool, and some remnants have been recorded on the
northeastern side,15 but I could not locate them. These reported ruins
might well have been the outhouses constructed later under the British,
who used the lands for experimental factories and later military
exercises.16 This garden was used for entertaining diplomatic missions,
and the Burhān-i Maasir cites poetry composed on these occasions.17
Faizi, Akbar’s envoy to Ahmadnagar, mentioned Farah Bagh in his
correspondence.18 The Mughal scion Shah Jahan lived in Ahmadnagar
and saw the Farah Bagh when he rebelled against his father in the early
seventeenth century, leading to the speculation that the structure was
one of the inspirations for the design of the Taj Mahal.19 However, both
these buildings, along with Humayun’s tomb and others, are just
reflections of the common design patterns that were floating in the post-
Timurid Islamic world, as can be substantiated by the commonalities
between a range of buildings, from Humayun’s tomb to the Hasht
Bihisht palace in Isfahan. Then, there is only one mention of the Farah
Bagh in the correspondence of the later Marathas, in 1759 CE ,20 after
which it shows up in the administrative documents of the British, who
acquired Ahmadnagar from the Maratha Peshwa in 1820 CE .21
The Burhān-i Maasir, as mentioned earlier, has referred to the earlier
garden palace that was demolished because it was ‘triangular’
(musalsat). The term probably meant triangular in elevation, referring
to some form of gable or pyramidal construction. It cannot refer to the
planning, which could not have been perceived visually as such. The
mention of triangular structures immediately brings to mind
buildings from the Bahmani period as also within the kingdom of
Ahmadnagar: Buildings at Firuzabad, a tomb near the Saudagar
Gumbaz at Junnar, a tomb in the Bagh Rauza complex in Ahmadnagar,
and the Bahmani palace in the fort of Daulatabad. A garden pavilion
converted to a tomb in the Ambarkot at Daulatabad has a form similar
to this Bahmani palace.22 Some of the buildings at Bidar (Ashtur), such
as Kalimullah and Waliullah’s tomb, have similar forms, but the
pyramidal tops are eight-faceted. The only patronage of such
construction, barring the Bahmani and Nizam Shah dominions, is at
Mandu: pavilions on the roof of the Jahaz Mahal are similar in form.
The square pyramidal roofs were all built from the mid-fifteenth to the
mid-sixteenth century and are never seen before or after this period,
though they are in use in Ottoman provinces.23 I suggest that the
geometrical term ‘triangular’ (musalsat), used to describe the
demolished structure that was in Farah Bagh earlier, refers to this
form of roof construction. This shape became unacceptable – whether
for reasons of association with a specific sect or for more esoteric beliefs,
we are unable to say. It could also have been connected with a literary
‘memory’ that, after this period, would not allow this pyramidal form
to proclaim royalty. We cannot definitively conjecture what the
demolished ‘triangular’ palace building in the Farah Bagh looked like,
but it certainly failed to pass the test of popular memory regarding
what a garden pavilion befitting a king should be. A possible reason for
this failure could be the slippage between the local idiom of
construction and an imported architectural memory.
Hasht Bihisht Bagh

The Hasht Bihisht Bagh is a site that is five kilometres north of the fort
of Ahmadnagar, close to the village of Savedi. The complex is quite
large and now set in the midst of a fast-growing suburb of the city of
Ahmadnagar. This garden and palace complex was reportedly enlarged,
but may even have been built, under the patronage of Burhan Nizam
Shah I, on the site of an earlier garden palace called Faiz Bakhsh Bagh
[Figure 4.7].
The palace complex has two surviving components, aligned to a large
octagonal pool [Figure 4.8]. The first is an octagonal pavilion set in the
midst of this pool. There are remnants of fountains in every arched side
of this pavilion. The octagonal pool was supplied water by means of
underground pipes from the Pimpalgaon and Shendi aqueducts.
According to some accounts, the eight outer sides of the pool were
planted with flowerbeds of different flowers.24 The stepped platforms
that ring the pool are discernible even today. To reach the central
pavilion one would either have to wade or cross by boat. The only
Figure 4.7 Hasht Bihisht Bagh, Ahmadnagar.

Figure 4.8 Plan of Hasht Bihisht Bagh.
comparable building from this period in the Deccan is a palace at

Achalpur (Ellichpur) called Hauz Katora, most likely built under the
Imad Shahs, if not the Nizam Shahs themselves.
The other component of this complex is a large gateway and attached
palace, set on the banks of the octagonal pool [Figure 4.9]. This was
originally just a tripartite hall, containing a staircase leading to the
rooftop. Added on the eastern side was a set of private chambers; the
addition is obvious when one sees the abutment of the new structure
against the old tripartite hall. These chambers contain a large private
bath, most likely for royal use. According to historical accounts, Hasht
Bihisht Bagh is where Murtaza Nizam Shah I (also known as Murtaza
Divana or Mad Murtaza) retired for 12 years and these additional
chambers would have been constructed as his private quarters in that
period. We know of Murtaza Nizam Shah I retiring to this site because of
the following narratives:
In the year 984 (1576), the Emperor Akbur advancing to the

frontier of the Deccan to hunt, the King moved to the north,
with a few troops, but in a covered litter, to observe his
motions, and to be in readiness to defend his dominions, and
Figure 4.9 Plan of entrance pavilion and octagonal pavilion, Hasht

Bihisht Bagh.
would have marched to attack the Emperor, had he not been

prevented by the entreaties of his nobility . . . . In the rainy season
the King went to Dowlutabad; and on visiting the tombs of
the saints he was seized with religious enthusiasm. One day,
unknown even to Sahib Khan, he withdrew from his apartment,
and was going alone on foot towards the tomb of Imam
Ruza, when he was recognised by a countryman, who gave
information to the minister, and it was with much difficulty they
prevailed on him to return. After this, on coming back to
Ahmudnuggur, he took up his residence in the garden of Husht
Behist.25
Some days later the king returned from Daulatabad to Ahmadnagar,

where he took up his dwelling in the old garden of the watercourse and
there remained for 12 years in seclusion and retirement, in no way
concerning himself directly with the affairs of state.26 Around the
buildings was the the beautiful garden of the old kariz completed by
Malik Ahmad Tabrizi.27 The whole complex is briefly described in the
Maasir-i Alamgiri:
Bihisht Bagh is 210 zirʿa in length and breadth alike which makes
the area 100 bighas. In the middle is an octagonal reservoir, which
is also fed with canal water. In the centre is a building now in
ruins. On the bank of the reservoir are a charming building and a
neat Turkish bath [hammam], fit for the residence of elegant
people.28
Within the grounds of this palace is the only known large bādgir (wind
catcher) in the Deccan, which supplied air to the underground chambers.
It is attached to a subterranean structure now known as the Shahi
hammāmkhānah, which was most likely a sardāb or an āb anbār, a
subterranean structure designed for seasonal habitation in the summer
[Figure 4.10]. Unfortunately, this building is being used as a garbage
dump and is inaccessible, but one sketch of the interior of this building
survives from the mid-twentieth century.29 It is difficult to conjecture or
trace the relationship of this building to the palace.
Figure 4.10 Badgir close to the Hasht Bihisht Bagh.

The date of the Hasht Bihisht can be arrived at by corroborating these

textual sources with the archaeological data. If the additional rooms
attached to the palace were constructed late in Murtaza Nizam Shah I’s
period to provide for his royal residential arrangements, it is very likely
that Lakkad Mahal itself was built earlier. Given that Burhan Nizam
Shah, who is credited with building the palace, came of age only around
1520 CE and was succeeded in 1553 CE by Husain Nizam Shah I, who is
credited with improvements to the fort and its palaces within, the dates
for this site are sometime between 1525 and 1555 CE . We can deduce that
this palace in its current form was constructed sometime late in the reign
of Burhan Nizam Shah I or early in that of Husain Nizam Shah
I. Murtaza’s residence in this garden, when the additional rooms were
added, can be dated to the last third of the sixteenth century.
Contemporary histories mention that the garden was built by Burhan
Nizam Shah I,30 but it is likely that the whole site was reworked under
Murtaza Nizam Shah I when it was made his primary residence. The
construction technology employing the T-shaped tiles and joists with
struts, found at other sites, is also used here [Figure 4.11].
The Lakkad Mahal, another monumental structure is within half a
kilometre east of the Hasht Bihisht Bagh, a palatial building of
Figure 4.11 Construction detail of roof, Hasht Bihisht Bagh and

Manzarsumbah.
unknown provenance within the same campus (now heavily urbanised).

A grand structure with pishtaqs in three directions, and comprises a
large hall with several smaller chambers on the sides [Figure 4.12].
There are traces of gardens surrounding it but it is extremely
fragmentary, except for the wells which would have supplied them
water. Now in ruins, the structure recalls buildings like the Timurid
palaces, and carries some extant plaster decoration with common
Nizam Shahi motifs inside.
Manzarsumbah
Fifteen kilometres to the north of the city of Ahmadnagar (as the crow
flies), along the historic road to Daulatabad, is the site known locally as
Manzarsumbah.31 Here, the road descends from the high plateau of
Ahmadnagar to the lower plains toward Daulatabad. At this point, a hill
juts out from the main Garbhagiri range, almost independent with scarps
on all sides, but for a narrow connection with the Ahmadnagar plateau.
The singular access to this hill across the narrow isthmus is easy to guard,
Figure 4.12 Lakkad Mahal.

and the vantage is convenient for a watch on the Daulatabad plains,

guarding the pass from plateau to plains [Figure 4.13]. I suggest that the
name for this site was originally Manzar-i Subah (literally ‘vantage for the
province’) and that its function was not only as a strategic lookout and an
early warning system, but also as a pleasure resort. (There are two more
sites in the modern state of Maharashtra with the same name, thus
confirming that this is a generic functional name for the site, in keeping
with its role.)32 Strategically located on a hill just outside the capital of
Ahmadnagar, its primary system of water collection and storage is a series
of four large excavated water tanks located midway up the hillside. The
Nizam Shahs, however, integrated this storage system with a Persianate
idea. The remains of the palace complex include a large tank, a hammam,
and a system of fountains and pools that suggest the merger of water-
management technologies [Figure 4.14].
An ingenious system of hydraulic works conveys water from water
tanks excavated in the cliffs halfway up the hillside. This water is then
used to fill up a very large tank beside the palace. A system of fountains
and water channels is also seen around the hilltop area. The plan shows
Figure 4.13 View of the palace buildings at Manzarsumbah.

Figure 4.14 Plan of the Manzarsumbah site.

the spatial relationships between the various components of the palace
complex, including a hammam.
Very little is known about this site, but the scanty historical evidence
(it is mentioned in the Burhān-i Maasir and Aurangzeb’s Maasir-i
Alamgiri) points to royal usage. The description in the Burhān-i Maasir
can be corroborated from the surviving evidence:
From there on, he [Murtaza Nizam Shah I] went on to the village of

Manjaresna situated in a valley full of beautiful springs and covered
with verdure, with fountains springing from the green hill side.
Salabat Khan had artificial tanks formed both in the valley and on
the hill tops, and in them fountains played, and the tanks were
surrounded by beautiful buildings. Without exaggeration the
village is one of the best worth seeing [sic] in the world and there can
be few so pleasant in the world.33
The Maasir-i Alamgiri, which was written almost a century later, also
describes the site:
Five kos from the fort is a halting place [manzil], known as Manjar
Samba or Manzil Saba. It is said that a high building has been
constructed in the waist of the hill. The fountain of the garden leaps
up of itself incessantly to a height of 100 yards, through the force of
the water that comes from a spring in the hill.34
The hill is a typical Deccan trap formation, made of layers of basalt. This
formation consists of layers of compact and amygdaloidal basalt. The
porous and crumbling amygdaloidal basalt is sandwiched between layers
of compact basalt, and is therefore a very convenient stratum in which to
excavate living water tanks. This was common in the Buddhist monastic
settlements along trade routes in the first millennium CE , and most cave
complexes contain such water tanks. Many of the medieval forts in the
Western Ghats were also built along these trade routes, on the same hills
where such tanks had already been excavated for travellers and monks.
This circumstance ensured that water was already provided for, and
therefore only battlements and fortifications had to be constructed in
order to enable the fort to defend and support a garrison. Junnar
(Shivneri), Lohogad, Pali, are some of the examples of such medieval
forts built on pre-existent early medieval trade routes with excavated
water cisterns.
The architectural fragments at Manzarsumbah are not all from the
Nizam Shahi period. Some of the walls and bastions are identifiably
earlier in their construction. One of the main characteristics of walls from
that early period is their corbelled battering, along with the angular
cantoning. Both these features also are seen in a structure strategically
located at the chokehold to the site and also in some of the fortification
walls circumscribing the top of the hill, unless these features are
attributed to construction guilds with an antiquated architectural
vocabulary. It is possible that the hill was occupied even before the
Yadavas in the twelfth century, but there is yet no direct archaeological
evidence to prove it. However, in the pious Hindu geography of the
region, the area is connected with the lore of the Nath pantha.35 There
are also homologies drawn between some of the locations in the vicinity
and mythical place names from the Puranas. These connections suggest
that the location was possibly well positioned in the religious and
symbolic landscape, thus endowing it with a certain value that would
legitimise any king who built there and controlled the site. In this area,
the gullies that lead from the top of the plateau to the plains of
Daulatabad are fed by natural springs, a feature that made this area most
agreeable through many centuries.36 The site was therefore not limited to
being strategic and military; it would also have been a symbolic and
recreational venue.
Apart from the fortification walls circumscribing the top of the hill,
there are three extant building complexes atop this hill, and together
they make a coherent layout: the ‘water tower’, the ‘palace complex’ and
the ‘gatehouse’ buildings. These labels are not historic and are being
used only for convenience. All three buildings are built out of the same
Deccan trap that the hill is made from, and it is likely that the stone
excavated for the large pool in the palace complex was used in the
construction.
The entrance to the hilltop is guarded through the gatehouse.
The main gateway to the outside, which faces west, is flanked by two
porches that could be described as guardrooms. Once inside, on the
northern side, another grand doorway leads in the direction of the palace
complex on the hilltop plateau [Figure 4.15]. The eastern and
southern sides of the gatehouse have two subspaces that would have
housed the administrative apparatus verifying and inspecting the
Figure 4.15 Gatehouse at the site of Manzarsumbah.

people who were to be let in. The function of this building as a security
device is confirmed by the stone hinge-sockets for these two grand
doorways, which indicate that both doors opened to the inside, thus
allowing the people manning this post to control the flow of people in
both directions.
The main space in this building has a masterfully crafted stone
dome, the arch-nets demonstrating the high skill of the stonemasons
and the designers, both of whom understood the principles of the
vaulting [Figure 4.16]. The stone blocks in the ceiling are modular in
the way bricks would be used, thus confirming that the designers
were familiar with a Persianate building tradition and that the
masons were local and proficient in stone carving. There is an internal
flight of stairs leading to the flat rooftop from the southeast corner of
the building. The module of the staircase is comparable to sets of
stairs in two other palace buildings built by the Nizam Shahs –
Lakkad Mahal and Kalawantinicha Mahal. The tooling of the stone,
and the size of the stone blocks are also comparable to other buildings
with a verified Nizam Shahi provenance, e.g., the walls of the Mahakot
at Daulatabad or the Shahi Hammam in Savedi near Ahmadnagar.
The elevational composition of three small windows along the
external wall of the staircase is also peculiar to the architecture of the
Nizam Shahs.
Of particular interest are the arrangements for the thresholds into the
gatehouse. The ends are made of stone, with notches to receive the actual
horizontal element. It is possible that the actual threshold was
removable, perhaps for pragmatic or maybe for ceremonial reasons, and
that it would be replaced for different occasions [Figure 4.17]. The
construction of the arches leading into the building suggest that some of
the stone masons were extremely proficient at understanding the
principle of the arch, and could experiment with non-uniform voussoirs.
This method of arch construction is common throughout the kingdom,
and can also be seen in the Gates at Tisgaon. The choice of amygdaloidal
basalt for the actual voussoired stones, as opposed to the use of compact
basalt for the ordinary dressed blocks, also suggests an understanding of
the materials and the economy of carving them, indicating the
employment of local tradespeople. It is very likely that this building
would have been plastered on the outside, a feature that is lost today. The
internal spaces still retain some fragments of incised plaster.
Figure 4.16 Stone vaulting of the gatehouse, Manzarsumbah.
Figure 4.17 Threshold of the gatehouse, Manzarsumbah.

About 110 metres to the north of the gatehouse is the palace complex,
and part of the distance is traversed by a very wide flight of stairs. The
palace complex comprises a large pool (around 37 metres on every side
and two metres deep), a palace structure, a mosque, and a hammam, all
arranged on a large platform [Figure 4.18]. This set of structures is
modelled and planned as an integrated unit; the only jarring element is
the mosque, which I suggest was added, perhaps later in the century. The
enormous pool plays into a local trope that such pools were designed for
bathing elephants – an apocryphal story applied to all sites with large
pools! Narrow triangular steps at the four corners of the pool do not
support this narrative, and this pool was clearly intended as a storage
device for supplying the hammam with water for the better part of the
dry season, apart from being a recreational site and sight itself. This pool
was fed by rainwater and also by an elaborate mechanism of drawing
water from the cisterns halfway down the cliffs on the northern side of
the hill. The pool also uses two differently textured stones for the edging
of the paving around it, alternating them – an aesthetically driven
choice of material.
Figure 4.18 Buildings.

The palace is of a modest size, and the northern side has a patio
flanked by two rooms, octagonal on the inside and rectilinear outside.
The eastern room has a fireplace and the terracotta flue is diverted
through the walls and given vent on the second floor, a most unusual
feature for this part of India. On the southern side, corresponding with
these rooms and the patio, are three other spaces. The southwest corner is
a small patio open on two sides, and the rest has not survived well
enough to hazard a reconstruction. On the southeast corner is a staircase
leading to the upper story.
The redundantly thick floor slabs have large timber beams of cross-
section 20 by 20 centimetres placed across the shorter span. This size
seems to have been a common module in this region, and other buildings
also have beams of the same dimensions: e.g., the Farah Bagh, the Hasht
Bihisht Bagh, and the Bahmani palace in Daulatabad Fort. Between
these beams, which are anchored in the walls, is straight timber
strutting. The gap between these struts is filled with T-shaped bricks
and the whole assembly is then covered over with lime-based concrete.
Large square bricks cover the whole surface and more timber and
concrete complete the floor, over which the original finishes were
probably laid. The stone masonry is very fine and the whole building
must have been covered with incised and moulded lime plaster, of which
only traces survive.
The buildings on the northern escarpment of the hill are directly
above the excavated water tanks. The primary structure is a tower, which
was instrumental in lifting water to the hilltop. There are a series of
galleries where one can sit, protected from the elements, to enjoy the
panoramic views facing north.
Structurally, the Lakkad Mahal is very similar to the palace at
Manzarsumbah, thus dating the palace at Manzarsumbah to the same
period, using the same techniques of wood-framed ceilings with
T-shaped tiles. The gatehouse at Manzarsumbah is also similar to the
Lakkad Mahal in elevation, with the visual element of three small arched
windows at a higher level. It would therefore not be wrong to suggest
that the dates of the palace complex at Manzarsumbah would be the
same as those of Hasht Bihisht Bagh, somewhere from 1525 to 1555 CE .
This site is not noted in any of the archaeological surveys or maps
prepared by the government and is losing the battle to weather and
villagers, who try to salvage the dressed stone and timber.
Palace near Bhatavadi (Kalawantinicha Mahal)

This site is around 20 kilometres to the southeast of Ahmadnagar, on
the road to Bid, half a kilometre past the village of Bhatavadi.
Nothing is recorded about this building site, nor is it mentioned by
name in any historical texts. The site is not marked on the ‘inch maps’
of the Survey of India (called such because the scale is set at one
inch ¼ one mile) which usually make a note of ruins. This site may be
identified as the fort of Bhatavadi (also spelt Bhatodi or Bhatodee),
mention of which is made in the famous battle of the same name
fought by Malik Ambar in 1624 CE .37 The battle is described by
Fuzuni Astarabadi in the Futūhat-i-Ādilshāhi: ‘Ambar, seeing himself
surrounded by the tempest of calamity, left the road and with a few
soldiers entered the strong fort of Bhatavadi, and gave repose to his
soldiers. By [letting out] the water of the lake of Bhatavadi, he barred
the path before the Mughal army.’38 This battle is described in more
detail below.
There are no other fortifications around the village of Bhatavadi, and
this hill would have been the only strategic place to have a fortified
garrison, situated within the oxbow of the Keli River. The lake of
Bhatavadi and the masonry dam that was breached is well recorded by the
British officers who repaired it.39 Bhatavadi, with its neighbouring
villages of Pargaon and Daulat Wadgaon, is located approximately 16
kilometres southeast of Ahmadnagar city as the crow flies. Today a small
settlement of a few thousand people, it is notable for a dam that was
repaired by the British in the mid-nineteenth century.40 The dam can
store at least 4.22 million cubic metres of water.41 This dam was the key
element in the battle of Bhatavadi, as was a fortified palace complex,
which is currently just across the border from Ahmadnagar, in Bid
district. This is likely the ‘fort of Bhatavadi’ mentioned in the Futūhat-i-
Ādilshāhi, as surface surveys reveal no evidence of other fortifications or
large-scale construction in the vicinity of this area. Daulat Wadgaon,
which is further to the east, has a fortified mansion (locally known as a
gadhi in Marathi) but this is demonstrably a later construction,
dating from the eighteenth century if not later. The dale with the
palace complex would have been the only strategic place to have a fortified
garrison, situated close to the confluence of the Manjira and its tributary
Keli, where the Nizam Shahi forces could have sought refuge.42
The lake of Bhatavadi and the masonry dam that was breached can be
reconstructed on the basis of the reports by British irrigation officials
who repaired it.43 The dam was intended to provide water to the village
of Tisgaon, which was one of the estates of Salabat Khan (d. 1589),
the prime minister of the Nizam Shahs, who is credited with the
construction of the dam.44 The fort/palace at Bhatavadi is not unlike the
fortified military/royal encampments in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar,
perhaps partially along the lines of Firuzabad on the Bhima, built
by Firuz a couple of centuries earlier.45 At least two large rectangular
concentric walls enclose an open arena, which has four large pavilions/
palaces on its cardinal axes.
Its current name, Kalawantinicha Mahal (‘Courtesans’ Palace’ in
Marathi), is commonly applied to all such structures with unknown
patronage or ownership, including a caravanserai at Chaul. It is in a
ruinous state, but enough survives to conjecture its original scope and
some of its functions. This architectural complex has imposing pavilions
and would have been used as a palatial resort, in addition to being a place
for assembling a garrison, martial entertainment, and military reviews
[Figure 4.19]. It comprises a large field, bounded by a wall, with pavilions
on all four sides. The peculiar positioning of the northern pavilion, just
Figure 4.19 Plan of Kalawantinicha Mahal, near Bhatavadi.

outside the enclosure wall, with its lavish decoration, suggest that it was
used by the king or ranking personages. The rooftops of the pavilions
command views of the enclosed field. The roofs of two pavilions survive,
on the north and the south, and are accessible by stairways. On the
northern side of the northern pavilion is a porch, and it faces the site of a
large enclosed garden. The garden contains two pools of water on axis with
the building. The pools have pipes leading to them, but the origin of the
water-supply system cannot be traced. It is very likely that the water was
brought here from the old masonry dam of Bhatavadi, since this site is
downstream. Alternatively, there might have been a system of water
connected with the Keli River, which flows around the east and the south
of the complex. The layout suggests that the northern pavilion was the
most important one, set apart for royal use [Figure 4.20].
Stylistically and in construction technology, the buildings resemble
the gatehouse at Manzarsumbah, and portions of Hasht Bihisht Bagh.46
The fields around the buildings have a number of small water tanks, and
scattered around are large stones with holes in them [Figure 4.21]. The
former were probably troughs, and the latter were for tethering horses,
elephants, and other animals or to aid in setting up tents.47 Both uses are
associated with a large garrison. There are suggestions of larger
compound walls around the area, but they cannot be completely traced.
Fragmentary vestigial remnants of outer enclosure walls are not adequate
Figure 4.20 Plan of northern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal near Bhatavadi.

Figure 4.21 Large stones with tether-holes around Kalawantinicha Mahal.
to permit any conjectural reconstruction. The scale of the complex is

enormous, but there are no extant hammams or other structures that
suggest a primary residential use for the site.
The eastern and western pavilions are in very ruinous states, and little
can be discerned about their plans. However, the quality of masonry and
the plaster finishes in all these buildings, along with the scale of the
complex, suggest a royal patronage [Figure 4.22]. Stylistically and in
the construction technology, the buildings resemble the gatehouse at
Manzarsumbah and also portions of Hasht Bihisht Bagh.
It is possible to surmise that this site was the location battle of
Bhatavadi (1624 CE ), a pivotal event in the history of the Deccan.
A combined army of the Mughals and Bijapur suffered a large defeat, but
more importantly, at the centre of this encounter were two figures
responsible for changing the region. In this battle, Malik Ambar
(d. 1626 CE ) and Shahaji Bhonsale (d. 1664 CE ) displayed gallantry
which ostensibly ensured that their policies and successors would
reshape the western Deccan. Malik Ambar was then the de facto ruler of
the Nizam Shahi state. Shahaji Bhonsale championed the cause of the
Figure 4.22a Eastern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal.
Figure 4.22b Northern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal.

Figure 4.22c Southern pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal.
Figure 4.22d Western pavilion, Kalawantinicha Mahal.

sultanate for a decade after Malik Ambar’s death. He was eventually

forced into an uncomfortable situation because of a truce between
the Adil Shahs of Bijapur and the Mughals, circumstances that partially
led to the emergence of the Maratha state under his son, Shivaji (b. 1630,
d. 1680 CE ). The battle of Bhatavadi ensured a new lease of life for the
kingdom of the Nizam Shahs until the Mughals were able to completely
dismantle the remnants of the kingdom in 1636 CE .
The battle has been described in lesser or greater detail in many
Persian, Marathi, and Sanskrit chronicles, such as the Futūhat-i-Ādilshāhi
by Fuzuni Astarabadi (ca. 1640–43 CE ),48 the Iqbālnāmah-i-Jahāngı̄rı̄ of
Muʾtamad Khan,49 the Rādhāmādhavavilāsacampuh of Jayarama Pindye
(c. 1654 CE ),50 the Śivabhārata by Paramānanda (c. 1674 CE )51 and the
Jedhe Śakāvali (compiled through the seventeenth century).52 The physical
site of the battle and the architectural fragments in the area have never
been studied. Surprisingly enough, inch maps of the Survey of India,
which usually mark ruins and remains, do not record the architecture
around this site.53 Here I propose that the landscape of the battle can be
reconstructed using historical and archaeological sources, confirming both
the location and the narrative. The architectural remains, climatic details,
contemporary or near-contemporary accounts of the battle, later
recantations of the event, colonial accounts of the re-appropriation of
man-made features central to the battle, and the site as seen today are all
important data that provide a coherent approximation of the events as they
happened in the early seventeenth century.
In 1624 CE , Malik Ambar (representing the kingdom of the Nizam
Shahs) had to flee toward his own dominions after exacting tribute from
Golconda and then unsuccessfully attacking Bijapur. He was pursued
by an Adil Shahi army and followed by Mullah Muhammad Lari,
commanding a joint contingent of Adil Shahi and Mughal troops. The
Mughals were in possession of the fort and city of Ahmadnagar, while
Malik Ambar controlled large parts of the surrounding countryside to
the east. The Keli River was between the fort of Bhatavadi and the
combined army camp of the Adil Shahs and the Mughals.54 There was a
dam on the river a couple of kilometres upstream, built by Salabat Khan.
When Malik Ambar was being pursued, the narratives mention that he
retreated into the large fortified complex close to Bhatavadi. His strength
was the territory and the knowledge of the terrain, allowing him to pursue
guerrilla tactics against a superior enemy. Cutting off supply lines and
launching surprise attacks were his strategies, a legacy that became the
established warring modes of the Marathas. Malik Ambar’s masterful
stroke, however, was breaching the dam on the Manjira. This resulted in a
quagmire, and the supplies of the combined forces of the Mughals and the
Bijapur army were seriously hampered. Their cavalry could not be
mobilised to travel across the area toward where Malik Ambar and his
court were camping. Other incidental factors also assisted him, including
heavy rain, squabbles among the Adil Shahi and Mughal commanders,
and – consequently – a large number of demoralised defectors. Eventually
most of Malik Ambar’s adversaries retreated, and the event was considered
an important victory.
The Bhatavadi dam is upstream from this location, about two
kilometres to the northwest of the palace [Figure 4.23]. The battle was
fought in September 1624 CE ,55 which would have been late in the
monsoons, thus ensuring that the water levels in the dam were near
maximum and the ground was saturated with water, in concordance with
the descriptions in the Futūhat-i-Ādilshāhi.56 The material evidence on
Figure 4.23 Bhatavadi dam, built under the Nizam Shahs and repaired by
the British.
the ground suggests that the story of the battle of Bhatavadi, which was
won with the assistance of an artificial flood, holds water. We can be
reasonably sure that the fort of Bhatavadi is the palace complex of the
Nizam Shahs, currently referred to as the ‘Mahal’ and with no local
memory of its history. It would be useful if excavation archaeology is
undertaken at the site.
Architecture of Palaces for the Sultan

The remarkable thing about the palaces of the Nizam Shahs is their
variety in scale and design, unlike many of the palaces in Bijapur that bear
the imprint of a similar design, such as Gagan Mahal or Asar Mahal.
Stylistically, the Nizam Shahi palaces share a number of traits but have
significant differences in their use. Farah Bakhsh Bagh provided an
imposing setting for the entertainment for diplomatic guests, as is
suggested by the monumental scale of the building set in a huge pool of
water and confirmed by texts. The poetic contests that took place in Farah
Bakhsh and the poetry that was written in its praise stress the importance
of this building in the cultural and social environment of the Nizam
Shahs.57 Hasht Bihisht Bagh was a palace complex built to suit a more
personal, intimate scale. It was used primarily as a residence, at least for
Murtaza Nizam Shah I. Manzarsumbah occupied a strategic vantage point
from which one could observe the important route to Daulatabad. It was a
fortified military outpost with a large palace complex. The king would
enjoy the views of the plains toward Daulatabad, thus symbolically
commanding and appropriating the whole area under his domain. The
complex at Bhatavadi was an arena for military reviews and perhaps some
sporting activity (elephant fights, etc.). The four large pavilions around it
were meant for the king and his court to view the events inside the
courtyard.
An important feature that binds all these palaces as a cluster, apart
from dynastic pedigree and stylistic affinity, is the construction
technology that used timber in extensive quantities, though not always
for structural reasons. The method of timber construction is reminiscent
of seismic zones, and its large-scale adoption in this region from the
sixteenth century onwards is suggestive of two reasons: the imitation
of an imported construction technology that required a significant use of
wood, or the expediency of construction required by a regime that had to
raise grand architecture quickly. The latter was a requirement of the later
Marathas as well, ensuring the survival of this technique of quickly
raising buildings with wooden frames.
Two of the palaces show unique features in the construction of their
roofs. At Manzarsumbah and in the Lakkad Mahal, T-shaped tiles were
slotted on the struts between large timber beams. Large bricks was then
placed on top of this assembly and then overlaid with layers of lime
mortar and bricks. The top was then finished with a lime plaster to create
a flat roof. This suggests a local idiom of architecture, conveyed either by
gesture (in trade practices through guilds and teams of workmen) or by a
paper-based transfer of knowledge. We do not have any real evidence of
the latter in the sixteenth-century Deccan.58 The former is more likely,
given the absence of any documentary internalisation of architecture in
this region at the time. It is difficult to state that the Nizam Shahs were
executing a well-articulated proposal of regional harmony, thus
promoting a conscious melding of regional construction with their
imported ideals of kingship and royalty. Many of the building practices
were based on accident and convenience, but the success of this
architecture often encouraged the rulers to understand it as a formula for
good function and legitimisation of their regime.
All the palaces share a planning principle of the royal pavilion or the
primary areas facing north, a useful principle, as they never face directly
into the harsh sun. All the palaces and even other buildings associated
with the court are now bare and naked, because they have lost all their
furnishings and soft landscape. It can be quite difficult to imagine what
the palaces would have looked like furnished with rugs, tapestries, and
other fabrics that were used for utilitarian and aesthetic reasons.
Unfortunately, as noted earlier, none of the paintings produced in
Ahmadnagar has any details of the architecture or furnishings. The trees
and plants that were consciously planted around the palaces for
significant reasons have disappeared, and the replacements, if any, are not
usually historically congruous.
CHAPTER 5
MOSQUES:PIETY AND PRAYER
One of the commonest architectural programmes, mosques are

ubiquitous and dispersed throughout the kingdom of Ahmadnagar.
In the city of Ahmadnagar itself, there is no large congregational mosque
because of several factors, which include the Shiʾi faith of the Nizam
Shahs, the theological debates over Jamiʾ mosques, the close ties of the
Ahmadnagar sultans with the Safavids, and the peculiar mode of city
planning chosen by the rulers.1 Unusually different from the other
Deccan sultanates, the capital of the Nizam Shahs did not have a Jamiʾ
mosque, the large congregational space where proclamations of
sovereignty would be made every Friday. Apart from the mosques in
the forts of Daulatabad and Parenda, where larger mosques were built by
rulers other than the Nizam Shahs (Ala-ud-din Khilji and Malik Ambar,
respectively), there are no large mosques in the kingdom. However, all
city wards and even rural areas have smaller mosques, usually named
after a patron, a locality, or the community they served. The mosque has
been thought of as the centre of gravity for politics as well as religion,2
but in Ahmadnagar it seemed to have served a purely religious function.
Within the city of Ahmadnagar, the construction of mosques was
largely funded and carried out by court nobility. Even in the remote and
rural areas of the kingdom, mosques were commonly patronised by local
fief-holders and court nobility, as can be seen in Rohankheda, Fathkheda
(now known as Sakharkherda) and the mosque at Dharur. At very few
outlying sites, the king himself was the patron; the Kamani Mosque at
Shivneri is one such instance, but even that was an important royal site
and not really rural. Most of the mosques in this chapter have some form
of inscription and some retain the names of the patrons, in common

usage today.
All the mosques under the Nizam Shahs are of very modest
dimensions. Perhaps some of them had larger courtyards in front
enabling slightly larger congregations, where other structures have been
subsequently built. Even in such cases, the dimensions of the mosques
suggest that there was no public mosque serving as a focus of authority, a
location from where the king would have made public announcements
and held ceremonial shows of power. This is completely in conformity
with other details of the royal residential arrangements. The Nizam
Shahs did not engage with the city, but left for Junnar or Daulatabad
either for leisure or when Ahmadnagar was under attack.
The mosques of Agha Bihzad, Damdi, Kali, and Kamani in and
around Ahmadnagar are all of a similar plan, a single bay deep and three
bays wide. The three bays form an open fac ade. The Qasim Khani
mosque has a plan of the type shared by the two mosques built in the
provincial fiefs of Rohankheda and Fathkheda, respectively, and also in
the fort of Dharur, being two bays deep and three bays wide. Two of the
notable exceptions are the mosque at Chaul and the mosque in the Bara
Imam Kotla, which are both five bays wide and three bays deep. These
would have served larger populations.
The characteristic material of the mosques in the region is dressed
stone with lime mortar. The decoration is either stucco or carved stone.
Almost all the mosques are open to a courtyard on the eastern side,
though in some cases, such as Qasim Khan’s mosque, the courtyard has
later been constructed over. In all mosques, the eastern fac ades have a
projecting cornice. The brackets for these cornices are derived from a
tradition of woodwork, and it is possible to see the vestigial traces of
wood joinery translated to stone in some of them. All the bays have
vaulted ceilings, but the exterior roof may be flat or have only a single
large dome placed centrally. In elevation, these mosques have small
turrets (minarets) at the corners, and sometimes mark the ends of the
mihrāb niche. The central bay is often marked as small turrets connected
by a flying arch, a feature noted as a marker of the Nizam Shahs.3 In this
chapter are a small corpus of 12 mosques, to provide a sense of the
different types, locations, and patrons. This is not a comprehensive
catalogue of mosques built under the sultans of Ahmadnagar, but a
representative sample.
MOSQUES: PIETY AND PRAYER 135
Soneri Mosque in the Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar)

The Bara Imam Kotla was an educational institution just north of the
city of Ahmadnagar. The Soneri Mosque is the large mosque on the
western side of this complex. The Kotla comprised a large square walled
courtyard with a central fountain and cloistered cells around the
periphery [Figure 5.1]. All these vaulted rooms open inwards toward
the courtyard. The mosque itself is five bays wide and three bays deep,
the largest schema for a mosque built under the Nizam Shahs
[Figure 5.2]. The mosque is constructed in finely dressed stones held
together by lime mortar. The decorative details are all in carved stone,
unlike many other buildings, where they are done in stucco. This
mosque was the large congregational mosque for the compound of the
academy and seminary. There is no doubt that it was built as a mosque
and continues to function in that capacity, without the supporting
educational institutions that made it an academy [Figure 5.3]. It was
built in 1530– 31, as per inscriptions formerly lying loose in the
complex [Inscriptions 5, 6].4 The whole complex is dated to the same
period. On the basis of one of the inscriptions, the construction is
attributed to one Sayyad Asad Amir Jafar. The presence of Shah Tahir al
Husaini, the advisor of Burhan Nizam Shah I, seems to have been a
Figure 5.1 Plan of the Bara Imam Kotla complex.

Figure 5.2 Soneri mosque, Bara Imam Kotla, Ahmadnagar.
Figure 5.3 Interior of Soneri mosque, Bara Imam Kotla.

Figure 5.4 Entrance portal to the Bara Imam Kotla enclosure.
catalyst in the establishment and construction of this institution.

We know that the Kotla was an important academic site under Burhan
Nizam Shah I and his successors. It would have been used by all the
resident scholars and visitors and housed many important theologians,
doctors, and scholars. The former grandeur of the complex can be gauged
by the large eastern entrance portal, with multiple rooms flanking the
gateway [Figure 5.4]. The whole complex is occupied by squatters and is
now in the midst of a large slum.
Agha Bihzad or Kari Masjid (Ahmadnagar)

The mosque of Agha Bihzad, just outside the old walled city of
Ahmadnagar, is in an area around a city gate (Zenda gate), close to the
tomb of Bava Bangali. It is set in a large maidan, with its qibla wall
against the open space [Figure 5.5]. The mosque is one bay deep and
three bays wide [Figure 5.6]. The bays are not uniform. The central bay
is wider than the others. The large central inner bay is surmounted by a
very large dome. In plan and elevation, it is similar to the Husaini
Figure 5.5 Rear fac ade of the Agha Bihzad mosque, Ahmadnagar.
Figure 5.6 Plan of the Agha Bihzad mosque.

Figure 5.7 Husaini mosque, now the Kotwali Police Station.
Mosque (now the Kotwali main police station) [Figure 5.7]. The
structure has recently been repaired and refinished, but the original
building is built of dressed stone masonry. Now, concrete finishes have
been added on the internal walls and the shapes of the arches have been
modified [Figure 5.8]. This is one of the larger neighbourhood mosques
in Ahmadnagar, and it cannot be determined if the size was a function of
having a larger congregation than the others, or if it was just a statement
of the growing clout of this particular nobleman at court. It is possible
that the position of this mosque outside the city walls facilitated a larger
congregation. The date of this mosque is uncertain, but it would appear
that this is an early phase of Nizam Shahi mosque architecture, given the
dimensions and proportions of this mosque, which are similar to those of
Figure 5.8 Interior of the Agha Bihzad mosque.
the Husaini Mosque and Kotwali Mosque (1536), built by Sayyed

Husain Mashhadi in the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah I. The Husaini
mosque also has two smaller domes over the flanking rooms. Yet some of
the decorative features, such as the attached cantoning pilasters on the
exterior of the mihrāb, are of a later date. It is very likely that the
minarets were added in a later period. The word kari might be derived
from the local adaptation of the Persian word kariz, which means a
watercourse. Perhaps the mosque was situated in a garden complex. The
association of the name Agha Bihzad with this mosque is unclear.
Damdi Mosque (Bhingar)

The mosque is located close to the village of Bhingar, which is within a
couple of kilometres of Ahmadnagar fort [Figure 5.9]. It does not have
any urban context, unless the area around it was densely inhabited in the
period of its construction. It has an attached cemetery, but the graves are
all from a later period. The mosque has a typical Ahmadnagar plan,
being open-fronted, three bays wide, and two bays deep [Figure 5.10].
Figure 5.9 Damdi mosque, near Bhingar.
There is a small clearing in front of the mosque. The mosque has the
motif of a flying arch flanked by two small minarets on top of the fac ade.
The Damdi mosque is built with very finely carved basalt. The
craftsmanship and detail are superb, resulting in one of the most ornate
Figure 5.10 Plan of Damdi mosque.

Figure 5.11 The richly carved stone interior of the Damdi mosque.
mosques in the region [Figure 5.11]. Many of the ornamental details are
to be found nowhere else in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar. The mosque
advertises the qualities of the stone masons employed in the work. It is
unclear if the mosque was regularly used for prayers, but the richness of
the ornament would have made it an attraction even in the local
community. Historically, it is claimed that this mosque was built in
1565–67 by a noble named Sahir Khan. He charged all the workmen

who were building the fort in stone a levy of a damdi (a small copper
coin), and had this mosque constructed from that fund. The high level of
craftsmanship associated with the mosque could be attributed to the
patronage of stonemasons, if the story is not apocryphal. The Damdi
mosque was not a functioning mosque for a while, but the pressures of
urban development have now resulted in a small congregation and a
caretaker. The graves around the site are from later centuries.
Mosque of Sanjar Khan (Dharur)

This mosque is in the fort of Dharur, an important fort built in the mid-
sixteenth century. This mosque is among the many discrete buildings
within the fort and is located centrally [Figure 5.12].
The mosque follows the standard plan and is two bays deep and three
bays wide [Figure 5.13]. It had a timber ceiling supported by timber
columns, none of which survive anymore. However, it is possible to see
the stone foundation blocks on which these timber columns were
positioned [Figure 5.14].
Figure 5.12 Mosque of Sanjar Khan, Dharur.

Figure 5.13 Plan of the mosque of Sanjar Khan.
Figure 5.14 The ruinous interior of the mosque of Sanjar Khan with
remnant column bases.
The mosque is built of dressed stone blocks and decorated with lime
plaster stucco. The timber used in the construction can be observed because
of the negative spaces created in its absence. A flat roof could be conjectured
because of the timber columns and framing in the building and the
limitations of their load-bearing capacities, based on their size.
This mosque was most likely built for the fort commander or for an
important personage, given the small scale. It would have held only
about fifty people in congregation, assuming that the small courtyard
was also pressed into service. According to an inscription on the mosque,
it was built by Sanjar Khan in 1573– 74, during the reign of Murtaza
Nizam Shah I [Inscription 7].5 We know almost nothing about Sanjar
Khan. The fort of Dharur was the first conquest of the young king
Murtaza Nizam Shah I, and he stayed on in the fort for many months
after he conquered it, perhaps commissioning new buildings. This
mosque is very similar to many found in other forts, but the inscription
makes it possible to date and attribute it securely.
Mahdavi Mosque (Rohankheda)

The mosque is in the village of Rohankheda, which was an
important battlefield through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
[Figure 5.15]. This site is geographically in Khandesh, and controls access
to a pass that is on an important route from Malkapur to Buldhana. Today,
the village is of little or no importance in terms of trade. The mosque is
within an enclosure wall. The wall has vaulted spaces on the outside,
which would have served as shops [Figure 5.16]. The mosque itself is
the typical plan, two bays deep and threes bay wide [Figure 5.17]. The
enclosed courtyard in front of the mosque has an octagonal pool. The
gatehouse of the mosque is on the south and is very ornate, though in a
ruinous state [Figure 5.18]. The little kiosks at the corners of the mosque
are common with other mosques constructed late in the sixteenth century
under Nizam Shahi rule. A mosque at Imampur, about 12 kilometres
from Ahmadnagar on the Aurangabad highway, is very similar, except for
the lack of a walled courtyard [Figure 5.19]. The mosque is constructed of
stone and has beautifully carved decorative details. The inner walls are
covered with wonderful calligraphy, done in unusual ink which shows
only when the walls are daubed with a wet cloth. The roof is flat, except for
a tall central dome covering the bay in front of the mihrāb.
Figure 5.15 The mosque at Rohankheda.
Figure 5.16 Exterior of the enclosure walls of the mosque at Rohankheda.

Figure 5.17 Plan of the mosque at Rohankheda.
Figure 5.18 Gatehouse in the enclosure wall of the Rohankheda mosque.

Figure 5.19 Mosque at Imampur, 10 km east of Ahmadnagar.
This must have been the large congregational and ceremonial

mosque for the town, which was a garrison. There is also an eidgah just
outside the village, which would have been the place of prayer
for larger gatherings of troops [Figure 5.20]. It is very similar to the
eidgah at Ellichpur. The mosque is dated to 1582– 83 on the basis of an
inscription [Inscription 8],6 which attributes the construction of the
mosque to Khudavand Khan. This monument has been declared to be
of national importance and given protected status by the ASI. The
patron of the mosque, Khudavand Khan Mahdavi, was one of the
supporters of Jamal Khan Mahdavi (a Nizam Shahi noble) and
Ismail Nizam Shah I (reg. 1589– 91). In the last two decades of the
sixteenth century the Mahdavi sect had a large following in
Ahmadnagar, both in the court and among the people.
Mahdavi Mosque (Fathkheda/Sakharkheda)

The village of Sakharkherda was known earlier as Fathkheda. The
mosque is on the outskirts of this town today but within the medieval
Figure 5.20 ‘Idgah at Rohankheda.
walls of the town, which barely survive today [Figure 5.21]. A small lake
is to the west of the mosque, and a small postern allows access from the
mosque to the water. The layout of the mosque is very similar to that of
Rohankheda [Figure 5.22]. An enclosure wall contains the mosque.
Within the large courtyard, the mosque is situated to the west, and there
is a large tank of water just to the west of the enclosure. The mosque has
an external stairway to go to the roof, the main entrance to the mosque
enclosure is on the eastern side, and there are no rooms in the enclosure
wall. The mosque is constructed of dressed stone held together with lime
mortar. The ornate stone carving suggests that it did not have any other
finishes [Figure 5.23]. This mosque would have been a proclamation of
the power of the patron at the Ahmadnagar court, and would have been
used for large congregational prayers in his grant lands. Just like
Rohankheda, on the basis of an inscription [Inscription 9],7 this
mosque is also dated to 1582– 83 and attributed to Khudavand Khan.
This mosque has a history of construction very similar to the mosque at
Rohankheda and was most likely built by the same set of craftsmen. The
Mahdavi patronage, similar to Rohankheda, would have made this
Figure 5.21 Mosque at Fathkheda (Sakharkheda).
Figure 5.22 Plan of mosque at Fathkheda.

Figure 5.23 The front fac ade of the Fathkheda mosque.
mosque a rallying point for rebellious Mahdavi personages when the

Mahdavis were revolting against the Nizam Shahi sultan. It has also
been declared an archaeological site of national significance, ‘protected’
by the ASI.
Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar)

This mosque is in the old city of Ahmadnagar, in a densely urban area
called Burud Ali (Basket-weavers’ Lane). It is presently difficult to take
a good look around the building, because of the recent construction
around it. The mosque is a typical neighbourhood mosque from an urban
area within the kingdom of Ahmadnagar [Figure 5.24]. It is two bays
deep and three bays wide, and of very modest dimensions [Figure 5.25].
The materials are the same as most typical mosques: finely dressed blocks
of black Deccan basalt held together by lime mortar. There was probably
no plaster finish due to the high level of craftsmanship in the dressed
stone. This was most likely a neighbourhood mosque, perhaps reserved for
a particular community. The modest dimensions and small courtyard,
Figure 5.24 Interior of Kali mosque in Burud Ali, Ahmadnagar.
Figure 5.25 Plan of Kali mosque, Ahmadnagar.

along with a profusion of such smaller mosques in the city, suggest that it
was really meant for a small congregation. The mosque can be dated to
1585–86 on the basis of an inscription that is on the qibla wall of the
mosque [Inscriptions 10, 11].8 A large number of similar small mosques
exist in Ahmadnagar, and most of them have now been irreversibly
modified. The Kali mosque is relatively unchanged, but the
neighbourhood around it has been transformed.
Qasim Khan’s Mosque (Ahmadnagar)

Qasim Khan was an important noble in the reign of Murtaza Nizam Shah
I. This mosque would therefore have been constructed sometime in the
1570s or 1580s, a date corroborated by the flying arch over the entrance, a
stylistic feature from the latter half of the sixteenth century [Figure 5.26].
This mosque was part of Qasim Khan’s estate, one of the components of a
larger site, with a palace and other buildings set in a garden. It is now part
of the District Collector’s office. Qasim Khan’s mansion, now the District
Figure 5.26 Gateway to Qasim Khan’s mosque, Ahmadnagar.

Collector’s residence, was a part of the complex. The mosque is similar to

other mosques, such as the unnamed mosque on the way to Salabat Khan’s
tomb on the outskirts of Bhingar town. The central bay is wider than the
two that flank it, but the overall layout is still the common one found in
Ahmadnagar: two bays deep and three bays wide [Figure 5.27].
A courtyard which would have been in front is now lost to the new
administrative building constructed by the District Collector’s office. The
same materials used for other buildings in Ahmadnagar are used here:
stone ashlar masonry held in place by lime mortar but left exposed,
without any plaster decoration [Figure 5.28]. The mosque would have
been for the small congregation within the ward. Visitors, residents, and
others within the vicinity of the mosque at prayer times would have used
it. This mosque is now part of a litigation involving the District
Collector’s office, which owns all of Qasim Khan’s property. There is an
office of the Dar ul Uloom running out of the mosque.
Figure 5.27 Interior of Qasim Khan’s mosque, Ahmadnagar.

Figure 5.28 Plan of Qasim Khan’s mosque.
Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar)

This mosque is close to the Husaini mosque, set off from Manik Chowk.
It is now set in a dense urban environment, making it difficult to
understand its spatial relationship with the area around. The mosque has
the conventional design found in Ahmadnagar. The plan is standard,
similar to Qasim Khan’s mosque, with the late variation of having a large
central bay immediately in front of the mihrāb [Figure 5.29]. The materials
used are the commonest in Ahmadnagar, dressed stone blocks bound with
lime mortar. Stucco decoration cannot be confirmed because the mosque
has recently been repaired. [Figure 5.30] It is a neighbourhood mosque,
probably sponsored by an important noble of the court, who would have
lived in close proximity. Two buildings that were right behind the mosque
were demolished in 2007, and in them one could see traces of medieval
walls and basements, suggesting that this might have been a part of a larger
complex, much like Niʾmat Khan or Changiz Khan’s estates. This mosque
is probably from the later sixteenth century, when the motif of the flying
arch was standardised as a symbol for a mosque. It is called the Kamani
Mosque because of the flying arch flanked by minarets which appears on its
eastern fac ade. After the sixteenth century, the Mughals were in charge of
Figure 5.29 Plan of Kamani mosque, Ahmadnagar.
Figure 5.30 Interior of Kamani mosque, Ahmadanagar.

Ahmadnagar, and the buildings that were built in their reign are
recognisably different. It is a functioning community mosque today. There
are a couple of graves and tombstones in the complex, but they all date
from the seventeenth century, under Mughal rule.
Kamani Mosque (Shivneri)

The Kamani mosque is in the fort of Shivneri, on the way to the
northernmost tip of the fort. It is on the same level as the palace buildings
in the fort. This building has one of the simplest plans in terms of its
habitable space. The covered area is just one large room, open to the front
[Figure 5.31]. The flanking buttress walls, which provide the base for the
minarets, are very unusual in their thickness. Only certain elements of the
mosque are enlarged, almost in a caricatured way. It is above an ancient
excavated cistern, which serves as the ritual ablution pool for the mosque
[Figure 5.32]. The mosque is built in the regulation dressed stone with
lime mortars and stucco finishes. The fac ade of the mosque is very similar
to that of a gateway with flanking towers, which might have been the
result of fort-building craftsmen being employed to construct the mosque,
or a design module from military architecture being used as a template
Figure 5.31 Plan of Kamani mosque, Junnar fort (Shivneri).

Figure 5.32 The early historic cisterns above which the Kamani mosque
at Shivneri is constructed.
Figure 5.33 The Kamani mosque at Shivneri.

[Figure 5.33]. This mosque was very likely for use by the fort commander,
since it is located very close to the plinth of a large palace complex on the
eastern end of the fort. The presence of the large ablution pool suggests
a large congregation, but there is hardly any room for the faithful to pray in
front of the mosque. This mosque is a proclamation of power, advertising
itself as a mosque rather than being a real place of prayer for a large
congregation. The mosque is firmly dated by inscriptions to 1616–17
[Inscriptions 12, 13], and the patronage is attributed to Burhan Nizam
Shah III.9 This would be one of the last great buildings built by the Nizam
Shahs that is dated, and it does not bear any impression of a Mughal
architectural style. It is surprising that cusped arches and cypress columns
after the Mughals were not part of the architectural vocabulary.
Jamiʾ Mosque (Chaul)

This is located near the estuarine coast of the city of Chaul. The location
was such that all ships coming to the harbour of Chaul would have seen
the mosque, with its prominent dome [Figure 5.34]. It is large, five bays
Figure 5.34 Elevation of the mosque at Chaul.

Figure 5.35 Plan of the mosque at Chaul.
wide and three bays deep [Figure 5.35]. The prominent dome covers the
central bay, but not the innermost one. The mosque has an additional
structure of two bays on its eastern side. There is an inscription on one of
the front pillars of the mosque. In front of the mosque is a small tomb,
with a badly damaged inscription. The mosque is built of dressed stone
with stucco decoration. The dome is very similar to those built in
Bijapur, with a tall drum [Figure 5.36]. It is possible that the mosque
was significantly added to during a brief occupation of Chaul by the Adil
Shahs in the early seventeenth century. The presence of timber sections
in the columns and other parts of the mosque strongly suggests Nizam
Shahi technology. The arcuated construction is unusual because of the
presence of wooden dowels that tie the voussoirs together [Figure 5.37].
This would have been the primary congregational mosque in Chaul, and
is mentioned along with a general description of its location by
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European travellers.10 Though there
is no evidence to date the mosque conclusively, it was most likely built
in the late sixteenth century, when Malik Ambar was in charge of the
Konkan region. European sources often refer to him as the ‘Melique’. An
inscription on one of the columns of the mosque is still undeciphered,
as is the inscription on the small tomb [Inscriptions 14, 15]; the line
Figure 5.36 The large bulbous central dome of the mosque at Chaul.
Figure 5.37 Wooden dowels inside the stone voissoirs, mosque at Chaul.
Figure 5.38 Fac ade of revetted stone, mosque of Dilawar Khan, Khed
(Rajgurunagar).
which would have contained the date or a chronogram is obliterated.11 It

could be that the mosque is from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth
century, but the latter date seems unlikely, because of the decline of the
port of Chaul in that period.
Dilawar Khan’s Mosque (Rajgurunagar/Khed)

The mosque and the tomb in a single complex are built by Dilawar Khan,
a noble in the Nizam Shahi court in the early seventeenth century. The
mosque is located at Khed (now Rajgurunagar), which is at a distance of
11 kilometres to the north of Chakan Fort. The complex is bounded by a
wall, has a tomb in the centre and a mosque at its western end. The
ornamentation on the walls of the mosque is unique. There are slabs of
rusticated stone, almost resembling later European baroque wooden
panelling [Figure 5.38]. These are punctuated by bands of lotus rosettes.
The elements are not uncommon, but the composition is very unique,
working almost like academic eclecticism, where new combinations of
familiar elements were achieved. The mosque has three bays in elevation,
and the central bay is roofed with a dome on a very tall transition zone.
There are other stylistic features, like multifoil cusped arches, which
clearly show ideas from the Mughals. The tomb is built of stone and lime
mortar [Figure 5.39]. The ornament is all carved stone, suggesting a very
nominal use, if any, of a plaster finish. This would have been as a garden
with family tomb with an attached mosque, converted into a waqf
Figure 5.39 Mosque of Dilawar Khan, Rajgurunagar.

property in order to keep inheritance within the family. This building was
probably built around 1612–13 or earlier, and the tomb of Dilawar Khan
in the same complex has an inscription from that date, mentioning the
death of his son [Inscription 16].12 The mosque is not a typical mosque
from the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, but an attempt to visually collate
disparate architectural elements from various sources, suggesting a segue
towards Mughal architecture in the Deccan.
CHAPTER 6
TOMBS
Tombs in Ahmadnagar come in a large variety, but there are two reasons
for this. Buildings constructed for other purposes were occasionally
converted to tombs, if the patron died unexpectedly and there was no
time to construct a tomb. The basic requirements for a tomb were
simple: a single-storied structure (though sometimes of double height)
surmounted by a dome. Often set on a high pedestal, such as the tombs
of Ahmad Nizam Shah I and Malik Ambar, these had entrances or
openings on three sides, the western side being screened or walled to
serve as the mihrāb. Some of the tombs, such as Sarje Khan’s tomb
(known as Dō Bōti Chirā) or that of Salabat Khan, were most likely
constructed for other purposes and converted to tombs upon the death of
their patrons. This was a common strategy to retain control of lands held
by the family (either as hereditary or service fiefs) by turning the estate
into a waqf (pious foundation) with descendants and family members as
trustees. The inscription on the portal of Niʾmat Khan’s estate is an
example of the activities undertaken by such an entity and the resources
allotted for its maintenance:1
Verily . . . the great sultan, the most generous monarch, the king
of the kings of Arabia and non-Arab countries, the shadow of God,
the defender of the law of the chief of prophets [Muhammad],
the namesake of the prince of the faithful [Murtaza Ali] – may the
peace of God be upon both of them – the favoured one of God, the
servant of the family of the Prophet [Muhammad], the lord of
the kingdom and the caliphate, Murtaza Nizam Shah, may God
perpetuate his kingdom and his sovereignty and extend his bounty
and munificence to the people of the world, the founder of these
charitable institutions, attached to the tomb (of the founder),
situated at this pleasant site, known as . . . was Khwaja Husain,
entitled Niʾmat Khan, son of the deceased, taken into the mercy of
God, the Malik Mubin, Khwaja ʿalaʾuddin As-Semnani, in the
Shahur year 979 [1578 AD]. This beautiful place was dedicated
. . . with the stipulation that the people may avail themselves of its
water for drinking purposes, and they also avail themselves of such
other comforts as are the right of the servants of God, [but they are
enjoined] not to sell these two [works], nor to bestow them upon
any person, nor to mortgage them, nor to lease them, nor to lend
them, nor to settle therein . . . nor to cut . . . in them, nor to change
. . . I entrust the guardianship of this place to . . . and his
descendants. Whoever changes it after he hath heard it, the curse
of God and angels and men overtaketh him. To conclude, praise be
unto God, the Cherisher of all the worlds. Written by the humble
Muhammad Husain in the year 979 [1578 AD].
Many of the tombs that are of unusual design have such histories, even if
not recorded. Since the programmatic requirements for a tomb are fairly
simple, with no requirement other than a sheltered place under which the
cenotaph is placed and the body is buried, most pavilions, kiosks, and
outlying buildings on an estate could easily be converted into tombs. With
the passage of time, tombs of a double-storied fac ade with a single large
space inside became common, though this type had existed since the
Bahmanis. The Saudagar Gumbaz at Junnar is an example of such an early
post-Bahmani type. The tombs of Ahmad Nizam Shah I at Bagh Rauza;
Bava Bangali; and the unknown tomb at Chaul are examples of an early
phase when the height of tombs was modest and they were single-storied
on the outside, with a band of miniature blind niches above the doorways.
The tomb assumed to be of the Nizam Shahs at Daulatabad and the tombs
of Haji Hamid, Shah Sharif, Dilawar Khan, and Malik Ambar all stand tall
and appear to have two storeys on the outside. The tomb of Changiz Khan,
the Habashi minister of the Nizam Shahs, is unusually octagonal, but the
construction techniques and the placement of small windows between the
two storeys is completely reminiscent of the buildings from the reign of
Murtaza Nizam Shah I. The most unusual tomb is that of Salabat Khan.
TOMBS 167
It is situated on a hill just to the south of the city of Ahmadnagar, offering

fine views of the countryside. Perhaps a watchtower and pleasure garden
that was converted to his tomb, it has ambulatory passages on three storeys
surrounding an atrium that has the cenotaph. The vaulted ceiling cannot
be easily seen as a dome from the outside, and it appears to be unfinished on
the roof. Malik Ambar’s tomb, not strictly of the Nizam Shahi dynasty but
certainly of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, is one of the finest tombs in
terms of its rich decoration and carving. Around his tomb in Khuldabad
are several other tombs of the same period, including the three memorials
associated with the Bhonsale family at nearby Ellora, which was their fief.
The emplacement of these memorials around the temple of Ghrishneswara
is not unlike the arrangement of several tombs in Khuldabad around the
shrines of important Sufis. Malik Ambar and several members of his family
are buried around the shrine of Zar Zari Zar Bakhsh. The mode of
memorialising important nobility through such commemorative buildings
seems to have been prevalent in the court culture of the Nizam Shahs, not
limited to followers of Islam alone.
There are a large number of tombs from the period of the Nizam
Shahs strewn around the grounds of Daulatabad and Khuldabad, and
also in most other sites that were once controlled by the Nizam Shahs.
The tombs of the late Bahmanis and the early Nizam Shahs are so similar
that it is impossible to date or attribute these structures to any one
dynasty conclusively. This survey does not include tombs that we cannot
attribute to the Nizam Shahs and their nobility. Some, such as Dilawar
Khan’s and Haji Hamid’s tombs, have small mosques associated with
them. They are not reproduced here in the section on tombs. There are a
number of characteristic features shared by later tombs and mosques in
the reign of the Nizam Shahs, such as the kiosks on the corners, which
can assist in dating these buildings as from the later sixteenth or the
early seventeenth centuries.
The Nizam Shah kings themselves, barring Ahmad Nizam Shah I,
chose to have their bodies embalmed and sent to Karbala, thus making
the dynasty unique in the Deccan in terms of its sepulchral practices.
Bagh Rauza – Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I (Ahmadnagar)

This tomb complex is on the western side of the city of Ahmadnagar, on
the banks of the river Sena. The large walled enclosure has a central domed
tomb built for Ahmad Nizam Shah I [Figure 6.1]. Within these walls is
another tomb, said to have held the body of Shah Tahir al Husaini (mentor
of Burhan Nizam Shah I) until it was moved to Karbala. This would have
been the core of the royal necropolis. Unfortunately, this was never realised,
because after the conversion of the Nizam Shahs to Shiʾism under Burhan
Nizam Shah I, all the kings had their bodies embalmed and sent to
Karbala. Near this second tomb is a large well with steps to go down.
Around the area are a number of unknown tombs, now partly occupied by
people living in them. The whole complex is orthogonal in its layout. The
square enclosure has a domed gatehouse, on the axis on which is the tomb.
The enclosure wall has smaller doorways leading out in the other three
directions. The tomb itself is a simple triple-bayed square, with openings
on all four sides [Figure 6.2]. We do not know the functional use of the
well, which must have been constructed at quite an expense unless it pre-
existed the tomb complex. The tomb would have been surrounded by
gardens, hence the name Bagh Rauza. The tomb itself is built of carved and
dressed stone. It is finished with plaster above the walls. The domed roof is
partly built in brick and decorated with incised stucco plaster. The inside of
the ceiling is painted with medallions. The enclosure walls are all built of
Figure 6.1 Site plan of Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I),
Ahmadnagar.
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Figure 6.2 Elevation of the tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I and gatehouse.
stone. The gatehouse has a partial brick dome and is decorated with the use
of lime stucco. All the materials found in the construction of the Nizam
Shahs are used in this complex. Elements of Bahmani architecture are also
noticeable, such as the decorative motifs on the jambs around the main
entrance to the tomb. The building was meant as a royal tomb, meant to
express the sovereignty of the new dynasty [Figure 6.3]. All the symbolism
associated with the tombs of the Bahmanis was appropriated. The
ornamentation borrows from Bahmani ideals. Ahmad Nizam Shah I (died
1508–10) had this tomb constructed while he was alive, thus making this
building the oldest surviving structure built by the Nizam Shahs in the
kingdom of Ahmadnagar. It is from the first decade of the sixteenth
century and has undergone very few changes. There was confusion
(discussed below) because of the name, which is also the name for the
necropolis of Khuldabad. The site has an inscription within the walled
enclosure, on the tomb with the pyramidal roof [Inscription 17].
Saudagar Gumbaz (Junnar)

Very little is known about this tomb, which is a kilometre to the south
of Junnar town, in an area now called Hapus Bagh (mentioned as Afiz
Bagh in the District Gazetteer and allegedly derived from Habshi Bagh).
Figure 6.3 Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I at Bagh Rauza, Ahmadnagar.
This tomb is in the middle of agricultural lands [Figure 6.4]. It has a

square plan, and the squinches do not come all the way to the ground
[Figure 6.5]. Each elevation is tripartite, and this sets up a convenient set
of pilasters from which the squinches arise. The central recess, which is
the doorway to the tomb and is on the southern side, has some
ornamentation. The others are plain. The structure is capped by a large
dome. The materials are dressed stone blocks, held in place by lime
mortar. Lime plasters and stucco are used for the decoration around the
cornice and parapet. The construction of the arches is reminiscent of one
of the gateways at Firuzabad, where the arches cannot be called either
true or corbelled; they are something in between [Figure 6.6]. This tomb
must have been a site for popular visitation, and the scale and ornate
design suggests that it was meant to draw large crowds on the ʿurs and
other celebrations. This tomb must have been one of the earliest
structures of the Nizam Shahs. The workmanship of the ornamentation
inside the building is not quite mathematically precise, suggesting a
folk tradition. On the building is an inscription over the entrance which
does not yield the date, but refers to Shiʾi beliefs [Inscription 18]. There
are references in the Burhān-i Maasir and the Tarikh-i Firishtah to
Ahmad Nizam Shah summoning builders from Junnar to construct the
Figure 6.4 Saudagar Gumbaz, Junnar.
Figure 6.5 Plan of Saudagar Gumbaz, Junnar.

Figure 6.6 Elevation detail.
city of Ahmadnagar. This tomb is probably from the same period as the
founding of Junnar, because the details lack the principles that they
would have shown had it been built by expert builders in the employ or
patronage of the Bahmanis.
Sarje Khan’s Tomb – Dō Bōti Chirā (Ahmadnagar)

This building is located very close to Changiz Khan’s palace, but
currently stands as an isolated building next to its associated mosque.
The tomb is unusual because it is rectangular in plan; the longer sides are
arched and the shorter sides of the rectangular plan are walled off
[Figure 6.7]. The cenotaph is placed longitudinally in the building.
Beyond the tomb, on the western side, is a very modest associated
mosque. The building has a dome over the central bay and the flanking
two bays have flat vaults [Figure 6.8]. The tomb is built with very finely
Figure 6.7 Plan of the tomb of Sarje Khan, also known as Do Boti Chira.
Figure 6.8 Tomb of Sarje Khan, Ahmadnagar.

dressed stone blocks. All the decorative elements are carved in the stone.
The mortar joints are very fine and almost rendered invisible. There are
cartouches and roundels in relief on the inside, and they were probably
meant to receive inscriptions or decoration; this incompleteness cannot
be explained, unless the tomb was unfinished. The austerity of the
building is a contrast to the Damdi Mosque, which was built of the same
materials in the same decade. This tomb was built to mark an important
nobleman’s territory. There are no traces of a large ward in which it was
situated. The building is dated to 1562 by an inscription on a loose slab
in the premises [Inscription 19].2 In terms of construction, it is a very
unusual design for a tomb, more reminiscent of a portal to a large estate.
The name dō bōti chirā, which literally means ‘two-finger hole’, is a
common reference to two grooves on the eastern wall of the tomb where
it is possible to place the index and middle finger of one’s hand. There is
also a belief that lightweight materials such as paper adhere to the
ceiling of this building when thrown up in the air.
Tomb of Changiz Khan (Ahmadnagar)

The tomb of Changiz Khan is located north of the city of Ahmadnagar,
close to the village of Savedi. The tomb is set in the midst of fields today,
but it must have been an important suburban garden site. A gateway in
ruinous condition is about 200 metres to the east of the tomb,
suggesting the scale of the complex and its entrance. The tomb is
octagonal, which seems to have been the fashion in the late
sixteenth century in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar [Figure 6.9]. It is
double-storied in height but a unified space inside, again a common
feature of tombs in this period [Figure 6.10]. The tomb is built of
stone ashlar masonry and kept in place with lime mortar [Figure 6.11].
The decoration inside is all with lime plaster over stone masonry.
This was a functional tomb used as a ceremonial space. This is
corroborated by its use today as a terminus for many of the Muharram
processions. Changiz Khan was an important noble of Murtaza Nizam
Shah I and continued later. His mansion in the city is now the District
Court. He was the master of Malik Ambar and the peshwa (prime
minister) of the Nizam Shahs in the 1570s, and he was put to death
around 1579. The tomb is therefore most likely no earlier than the
1570s. There is a well right next to the tomb. It would have been set in
Figure 6.9 Plan of the tomb of Changiz Khan, near Savedi.
Figure 6.10 Double-storied interior of the tomb of Changiz Khan.

Figure 6.11 Tomb of Changiz Khan, near Savedi.
the midst of gardens or orchards, based on the extent of the property and
the lack of settlements around it to date.
Tomb of Bava Bangali

The tomb is close to the estate of Qasim Khan, near the Agha Bihzad
mosque, just outside the walled city of Ahmadnagar. The tomb is very
simple in plan, inside and outside [Figure 6.12]. It is a square
building with openings on all sides. It is double-storied and
divided into three bays on the lower story [Figure 6.13]. The central
bay on each side is a doorway. It is set on a high platform and is
accessible by stairs. Today the platform is surrounded by new
construction and cannot be studied. The materials are the same as
materials used for most other tombs in this period in this region.
Finely dressed stone is bound by lime mortar. There is carved stone
decoration in the niches, suggesting an absence of plasters, at least in
some parts of the building.
It is claimed that Bava Bangali was an ascetic who lived before the
foundation of the city. Yet the tomb is most certainly of a later date, on
the basis of the similarities it has with the tomb of Rumi Khan and
Figure 6.12 Plan of the tomb of Bava Bangali, Ahmadnagar.
Figure 6.13 Tomb of Bava Bangali, Ahmadnagar.

Dilawar Khan. This tomb might have been built by a later patron. It is
in use for venerating the saint. The fac ade is not as elaborated as these
tombs, but the overall elevation is the same, suggesting a date
approximately a decade earlier than the tomb of Rumi Khan. The
property is now legally disputed, and is still regarded as a Sufi shrine by
the residents of Ahmadnagar. It is raised high on a platform, which
might be a result of the changes in ground level around the site.
Tomb of Salabat Khan

The tomb is located on the hills, called the Shah Dongar, about 12
kilometres to the southeast of Ahmadnagar. It is a strategic vantage
point on the hilltop and controls the route to Salabat Khan’s grant lands
in the village of Tisgaon [Figure 6.14]. The tomb is surrounded by three
small masonry dams, which would have been used to supply water to
gardens around it. It is set on a very large octagonal platform built with
stone masonry.
The tomb is octagonal, and triple-storied in elevation [Figure 6.15].
It is capped by a central dome and has ambulatory sets of galleries on
each floor. These galleries also have vaulted ceilings. The subtle drainage
slopes in the galleries and other finer aspects of this building make it
unique. There is an underground crypt in which the grave of Salabat
Khan is located. It is a simple building that exudes elegance through its
craftsmanship and proportions. There is hardly any decoration. The
tomb is built with dressed stone blocks and held in place by lime mortar
beneath the seamless joints. There is no evidence of any lime plaster used
to finish the building. This tomb was built in Salabat Khan’s lifetime
and would have been a splendid spot for picnics from the city of
Ahmadnagar. After Salabat Khan’s death, the tomb would still have been
a convenient place for a day-long excursion. The galleries around the
central chamber have a wonderful display of light and shade as the day
passes through, as well as projecting balconies where one could sit and
enjoy the air and the view [Figure 6.16]. Salabat Khan died in 1589 and
his tomb was left unfinished. He was out of favour with the ruling king,
Miran Husain Nizam Shah (who only ruled for ten months in 1588), and
what we see of the tomb was probably built in the early 1580s, when he
was in control of the kingdom, as a regent for Murtaza Nizam Shah
I. The tomb was converted into a sanatorium under the British in the
Figure 6.14 Tomb of Salabat Khan, south of Ahmadnagar.
Figure 6.15 Plan of the tomb of Salabat Khan.
Figure 6.16 Ambulatory gallery on the upper floor, tomb of Salabat Khan.
TOMBS 181
nineteenth century. The lack of potable water in the area caused that
function to be abandoned, and it was declared a protected site in the
early twentieth century. The tomb is often mistakenly called Chand
Bibi’s palace and is associated with that dowager queen of Ahmadnagar.
Rumi Khan’s Tomb

Rumi Khan’s tomb is located at the northern edge of the city, close to the
Bara Imam Kotla. It is currently within the grounds for a hostel
managed by the Pitaliya Trust, and the tomb itself is sometimes used as a
residence by students. The building is double-storied on the outside.
It is a simple square plan with tripartite sides; the central bays were open
on all sides [Figure 6.17]. A large carved cenotaph lies outside, but it is
unclear if it was ever inside this structure. The interior space is also
square. The tomb is constructed of dressed stone and the ornamental
details are also in stone. Plaster finishes were not used on the outside.
On the inside, there are traces of the use of stucco decoration, but the
inside has been altered significantly. The roof comprises a dome with
four small kiosks at the four corners of building. This building was set in
a garden, which probably also contained a gun-casting foundry. It was
converted into a tomb only after the death of Rumi Khan and served as a
garden pavilion until then. This tomb is similar to those of Bava
Bangali, Shah Sharif, and Dilawar Khan. It was probably built in the
decade around 1590, given the articulation of the ornamentation and the
similarities in elevation with other later tombs. We know that Rumi
Khan died sometime in the late sixteenth century, well after the battle of
Talikota (1565), where he famously commanded his artillery. It is
claimed that Malik-i Maidan, the large gun now in Bijapur, was cast in
the grounds around the tomb. There is no inscriptional evidence to link
this tomb with Rumi Khan, but an inscription has been reported from a
gun in the grounds around the tomb [Inscription 20].
Tomb Attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah I (Khuldabad)

This building is a few hundred metres from the tomb of Malik Ambar,
on the ridge that separates Khuldabad from the lower village of
Ellora (Verul). The site has a commanding view of the Ellora caves.
The tomb is simple in its plan, built like a garden pavilion on a
Figure 6.17 Tomb of Rumi Khan, Ahmadnagar.
grand scale [Figure 6.18]. It has an enclosure wall with a few

cloistered spaces built in it. Internally, it is double-storied T, a trend
from the late sixteenth century, thus suggesting a later date for the
tomb than its popular attribution [Figure 6.19]. The building is built
of very finely dressed stone with lime mortar. The finely dressed
Figure 6.18 Plan of tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad.
Figure 6.19 Interior of tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad.

stone is ornamental in itself and was probably left without any other
surface finish. The building was most probably constructed as a
pavilion that would be converted into a tomb once the patron died.
For inexplicable reasons, it was never used as a tomb, and there is no
cenotaph even today (the crypt is also empty). The floor finishes
are all original, which confirms the hypothesis that no burial ever
took place. Though this tomb has been attributed to Ahmad Nizam
Shah I, it was most likely built in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth
century, on the basis of stylistic attributes such as the articulation of the
fac ade and the corner kiosks [Figure 6.20]. The confusion regarding the
date of the building stems from the ambiguity of the word rauza,
which was used to describe the final resting place of Ahmad Nizam Shah
I. Because of a reference in the District Gazetteer that mentioned that
Ahmad Nizam Shah I was buried in the garden of Rauza, it was assumed
that Rauza (the necropolis of Khuldabad) was the location of his tomb.
Hence, the largest unattributed tomb in good condition was assumed to
be his. His tomb is actually located in Bagh Rauza (translated as ‘the
garden of Rauza’), which is just outside of Ahmadnagar on the banks of
the river Sina.
Shah Sharif’s Tomb (Ahmadnagar)

The tomb is built in the precinct called Dargah Dairah and is located
very close to the Takht of Jamal Khan Mahdavi. The site is quite large
and contains a number of buildings, a comprehensive water supply
system, and a tomb. It also contains a mosque, a stepped well, and other
buildings that made this the centre of Mahdavi activity in the late
sixteenth century [Figure 6.21]. Today, a school for the local community
is run there. The building itself is not dissimilar to the tombs of Bava
Bangali or Rumi Khan: a simple square building with a similar plan
internally [Figure 6.22]. It has four entrances, and such large tombs were
commonly built in the late sixteenth century. The materials used are
dressed stone blocks and binding lime mortar. The decoration is all in
carved stone. The building was built as a tomb for Shah Sharif, who was
buried there before the tomb was built; it is still functioning as a tomb
and has recently received fresh attention because of its rediscovered
connection with the Bhonsale family. The construction of Shah Sharif’s
tomb in 1596–97 is attributed to Maloji Bhonsale (1552–1606), the
TOMBS 185
Figure 6.20 Tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah, Khuldabad.
father of Shahaji and grandfather of Shivaji. By that attribution, we can fix

the date of the tomb to the late sixteenth century. Stylistically, the tomb is
very similar to other tombs built in the late sixteenth century, with the
kiosks on the corners of the building, and cusped arches [Figure 6.23].
Active worship at the shrine of Shah Sharif is still ongoing, and the site’s
connection with the Mahdavi sect is not popularly known. For most
Figure 6.21 Site plan of Dargah Dairah, including the tomb of Shah
Sharif, Ahmadnagar.
Figure 6.22 Plan of the tomb of Shah Sharif.

TOMBS 187
Figure 6.23 Tomb of Shah Sharif, Ahmadnagar.
people, it is an old pious complex in a fast-growing suburb and offers a

relatively secular social space which also has a shrine. The water-supply
system is connected to the aqueducts in Ahmadnagar city, and residents
tell of a drought in the 1970s when the well was the source of water for
most of the residents in the area even when other wells in the larger area
had gone dry.
Tomb of Haji Hamid (Ahmadnagar)

The tomb of Haji Hamid is close to Savedi village, now a part of
Ahmadnagar city. This site has a mosque, a tomb, and a well with a
subterranean resting pavilion. The tomb has a very simple plan, square
on the inside and outside, with openings on all sides [Figure 6.24]. It is
quite large and shares ornamental details with Rumi Khan’s tomb. The
mosque is approximately the same size as the tomb and stands across a
courtyard from it. Both are constructed of the same material as most of
the buildings in Ahmadnagar: ashlar masonry with lime mortar. There is
some carved and some stucco decoration inside [Figure 6.25]. They were
built as a rauza, a tomb with a mosque as an integrated unit. The use of
the mosque continues, but the tomb does not have many visitors. On the
basis on an inscription, the tomb can be dated to the late sixteenth
century. Stylistically, it resembles the tomb of Shah Sharif.3
The inscription, which is bilingual, records the endowment of land
from Bisat Khan’s gardens [Inscription 21]. This type of bilingual
inscription is common in the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah II.4
The shrine and the mosque are controlled by a custodian family who
reside in the complex. There is also a well with underground galleries on
the same site, but it was difficult to access.
Figure 6.24 Plan of the tomb of Haji Hamid, Savedi.

TOMBS 189
Figure 6.25 Interior of the tomb of Haji Hamid.
Bhonsale Memorials (Verul)

There is an enigmatic set of three buildings, all within a few hundred
metres of the temple of Ghrishneshwara, which is one of the 12 important
sites of Shiva worship ( jyotirlingas) in India. All these tombs are square in
plan on the outside, though with various cantoning features around the
openings. The memorial T1 is right by the entrance of Ghrishneshwar

temple; T2 is to the north, and T3 is the furthest [Figures 6.26, 6.27,
6.28]. All three tombs share a number features in planning and elevation.
They are all square on the inside, and the transition from a square plan to a
domed ceiling is made using squinches.
These structures are all built with squared stone blocks, fitted
together with the help of lime mortar. The decoration is carved in the
stone and is very lavish. There are traces of lime plaster above the
cornice. These tombs are popularly attributed to the ancestors of Shahaji
Bhonsale. It is known that Babaji Bhonsale, the grandfather of Shahaji
was the hereditary patil (headman with certain revenue rights) for the
village of Verul (Ellora). It is not inconceivable that the family would
raise memorials in the prevalent fashion at a later date for Babaji and
Maloji Bhonsale. Yet the tomb we label T3 has a cenotaph inside. It is
unclear who is buried inside or is commemorated in these buildings. T3
has a very high plinth, and a crypt chamber is clearly discernible. The
lines between Hindu and Muslim practices and expressions were often
very blurred in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These
Figure 6.26 Memorial attributed to Maloji Bhonsale, Verul.

TOMBS 191
Figure 6.27 A tomb or a memorial just north of Ghrishneshwar temple,

Verul.
‘tombs’ were clearly important sepulchral or memorial markers for their

occupants and/or their descendants. Stylistically, these structures share a
lot of ornamental features and even proportions with the late Nizam
Shahi tombs at Khuldabad, and it would be fairly accurate to date them
to the early seventeenth century [Figure 6.29].
Figure 6.28 Tomb west of the Ghrishneshwar temple at Verul.
Dilawar Khan’s Tomb (Rajgurunagar/Khed)

The tomb and its associated mosque were built by Dilawar Khan, a noble
in the Nizam Shahi court in the early seventeenth century. The site is
located at Rajgurunagar, formerly called Khed, which is between the forts
of Chakan and Junnar, but closer to the former. The settlement is close to
TOMBS 193
Figure 6.29 Detail of the memorial T2 north of Ghrishneshwar temple.
the banks of an upper tributary of the Bhima River. The complex is

bounded by a wall, with a tomb in the centre and a mosque at its western
end. The mosque is remarkable for its decoration: it is unlike any other
mosque in the region (see Chapter 5). The tomb itself is very similar to the
tomb of Shah Sharif in elevation and built of stone and lime mortar. The
ornament is all carved stone, suggesting a very nominal use, if any, of a
plaster finish. The decoration on the mosque comprises horizontal bands of
lotus rosettes and rectangular stone blocks with rusticated faces. The tomb
has some cusped arches and is double-storied in height with corner kiosks.
This would have been a garden with a family tomb and an attached
mosque, converted into a waqf property in order to keep the inheritance
within the family. Today, as a protected monument, the mosque is not in
active use, and the tomb is occasionally opened for visitors. This building
was probably built in or around 1612–13, and the tomb has an inscription
from that date, mentioning the death of Dilawar Khan’s son [Inscription
16].5 It is likely that the tomb is that of his son. The mosque would have
been built around the same time, and the two buildings would have been
set in a garden. The mosque, described earlier, is unique in its decorative
programme, suggesting exposure to the larger Mughal world – not
unusual in this late period.
Lakhuji Jadhav’s Tomb (Sindkhed Raja)

The most interesting site at Sindkhed Raja is the memorial to
Lakhuji Jadhav, a large masonry structure 40 by 40 feet with a brick
dome on top [Figure 6.30]. In the centre of the building under the
dome is a sivalinga. Inside, there are two staircases that lead to the
roof.
Close by, to the south, is a temple known as Rameśvara, which is
attributed to Lakhuji Jadhav.6 Lakhuji Jadhav was in the service of the
Nizam Shahs, as several generations of the family had been, and was an
important general. Under Malik Ambar’s regency, Lakhuji joined
Mughal service, where he was promptly received with a zat/sawar rank
of 2,400/1,500.7 He later defected back to the Nizam Shahi court after
the death of Malik Ambar, but he started undermining the authority
of the Nizam Shahs from his seat at Sindkhed.8 In 1629, Burhan
Nizam Shah III invited the entire Jadhav clan to court and had them
attacked, and Lakhuji Jadhav was killed.9 The rest of his family were
variously injured and fled back to their base in Sindkhed, from where
Figure 6.30 Memorial to Lakhuji Jadhav, Sindkhed Raja.

TOMBS 195
they firmly defected to the Mughals, receiving such high positions as

zat/sawar rank 4,000/3,000.
Malik Ambar’s Tomb (Khuldabad)

Malik Ambar’s family is buried near Khuldabad, outside the walled
town. At this site is the tomb of a famous Chishti Sufi saint, Muntajib
al-Din (Zar Zari Zar Baksh). Very close to Malik Ambar’s tomb is the
alleged tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah I. All the tombs are on the ridge
above the Ellora caves. An enclosure wall contains a large court, within
which the tomb is placed in the centre. The tomb itself is on a high
plinth and has a square plan [Figure 6.31]. The chamber is square on the
inside. The entrance to the tomb is on the south side. Inside is a large
dome that covers the building, set on squinches that spring high above
the ground [Figure 6.32]. The tomb has four kiosks on the four corners
of the building. On the eastern side of the enclosure is a gate, with guard
Figure 6.31 Tomb of Malik Ambar, Khuldabad.

Figure 6.32 Plan of the tomb of Malik Ambar, Khuldabad.
Figure 6.33 The carved stone jalis on the tomb of Malik Ambar.
Figure 6.34 Unattributed tomb next to the tomb of Malik Ambar,
around Khuldabad.
chambers and stables flanking it. There are a number of unknown tombs
in the area, which all date from the early seventeenth century. The
materials used are basaltic stone from the Deccan plateau, well-dressed
and held together by lime mortar. The magnificent jalis (grills) carved in
stone are all of red basalt, a rarer material than the common basalt
[Figure 6.33]. All the decoration is in stone relief; the tomb probably
was never plastered with lime plaster and did not have ornamentation
and decoration in stucco. Malik Ambar was the functioning regent of the
kingdom of the Nizam Shahs and this tomb was meant to evoke a royal
presence, as is evident from all the royal Nizam Shahi motifs on it. It is
also close to the tomb of an important Sufi in Khuldabad, which was a
spiritually and symbolically potent necropolis. Malik Ambar ruled from
Daulatabad for most of his career as a regent, and the site is only 27
kilometres northwest of Aurangabad. The tomb is attributed and dated
on the basis of an Arabic inscription on a grave very close to Malik
Ambar’s tomb [Inscription 22].10 This inscription records that the
deceased was a resident of Hadramaut born in 1585, and was buried in
the garden of the tomb of Malik Ambar. Around this tomb are a number
of well-constructed tombs which cannot be attributed or dated because
of a lack of inscriptional evidence. They are innovative and structurally
challenging, leading one to believe that they are from the mid-
seventeenth century, when a new kind of experimentation in architecture
was taking place, in part because of the new styles that the Mughals
introduced to the Deccan [Figure 6.34]. There is an associated palace
building that is on the southern side of the enclosure wall.
CHAPTER 7
MISCELLANEOUS BUILDINGS
The palaces of the Nizam Shahs at Manzarsumbah, Hasht Bihisht Bagh,

and Shivneri have hammams attached to them, but there is also a set of
free-standing hammams which might have been a part of other urban
conglomerations. For example, the hammam in the port city of Chaul
and the Nizam Shahi hammam at Daulatabad both have arcades that
would serve as shops, not unlike those seen in eighteenth-century
complexes in Iran, such as the hammam of Ganj Ali Bakhsh in the bazaar
of Kirman. Both these hammams are large enough to serve the public
and have similarities in their planning. An outer room (to change and
get ready) led to the inner chamber, where an octagonal platform
dominated the space. Such a platform was used for various activities
within the hammam, and several pools and cisterns of hot and cold water
surrounded the room. The hammams attached to palaces were of a
modest size in comparison.
A caravanserai outside the city of Chaul would have served the
mercantile traffic, being located at crossroads leading to different
destinations in the region. A direction-stone recovered close to the site
suggests this primary use for the architecture. A second caravanserai at
the village of Sarai Nizampur, five kilometres southwest of Daulatabad,
cannot be definitely attributed to the Nizam Shahs, and several elements
of its construction are Mughal. But it could have been constructed in the
reign of Malik Ambar, when Mughal architecture was in the process of
becoming naturalised in the region.
An interesting and unusual set of gateways survives at the village of
Tisgaon, which was the fief of Salabat Khan. Two of them are vaulted by
domes, and three are just fac ades. These gateways do not connect any set
of walls, and it is likely that they were ceremonial portals for entering or
leaving the village in different directions. The two larger gateways could
easily have been converted to tombs, and it is such a potential secondary
use of various kinds of ancillary buildings by which the many of the
tombs lack a uniform character.
As chapter 3 describes in detail, the systems of water management
used by the Nizam Shahs were the most advanced in the region in the
early and middle sixteenth century. The number of extant hammams is
surprising: I have been able to document no less than three free-standing
hammams and at least three hammams attached to palace buildings.
Since hammams were exposed to steam and water for longer periods of
time, the mortars and plasters in them tend to be extremely well cured.
This might explain the disproportionate survival of baths as compared to
the mansions and palaces themselves. One of the most impressive of the
hammams built in the Nizam Shahi period is one at Daulatabad, which
is dateable to 1582 by an inscription.
If the Nizam Shahs were indeed conscious of their Brahminical roots,1
it is not surprising to see the ritual and symbolic significance of physical
cleansing with water as part of their daily regimen. But such
explanations are only speculative. The large-scale migration of émigrés
from the Middle East, who had access and expertise to water systems of
many kinds not common in India, was the real reason for the
proliferation of water-management technologies. It was now possible
to found cities away from perennial rivers or sources of water, a
development with implications for defence.
The Water System of Ahmadnagar

The city of Ahmadnagar has water pipes and conduits traversing it, as
seen in a map of the city prepared by British surveyors. These typically
terminate in cisterns (wells) and pools. There are hardly any surviving
siphon towers around the city anymore, but until the 1960s they existed
to some extent, as documented by Pramod Gadre.2 Other similar
structures and systems are seen in Junnar, Daulatabad, and the fort of
Dharur. In Junnar, the existing water-supply systems are found in the
Gulshan-i Shahanshah-i Junnar Mosque, where a large water tower
regulates the flow into an ablution tank. The water-distribution system
MISCELLANEOUS BUILDINGS 201
in Junnar has not been mapped, and the sources for the water are
unknown. The water-distribution systems of Ahmadnagar are among
the earliest that use earthen pipes and siphon towers on this scale in the
Deccan.
The Waterworks at Manzarsumbah

The hilltop palace complex of Manzarsumbah has been described in
some detail in chapter 4. The system of waterworks is described in a
plan. The water-supply system comprises a number of freshwater tanks
carved halfway up the hillside. A spectacular pavilion and water-raising
tower is right above these tanks and forms the bulk of constructed
waterworks at Manzarsumbah.
The pavilion tower would have been a quiet resting place in the hot
months, when temperatures can easily reach 40 degrees Celsius.
It affords views of the plains toward Daulatabad and faces north, so as not
to receive any direct sunlight. It is approached by a flight of stairs on the
southern side and leads to a stairway that goes down to the source water
tanks. It is superbly crafted in stone masonry, and does not carry any
traces of plaster finishes. The rooftop of this structure has a water-
drawing mechanism and the remnants of a set of conduits that would
distribute the water.
There is evidence to prove the existence of a water-distribution
chamber closer to the large pool of water by the palace. This would have
been an elevated square chamber set on four arches (accessible by stairs)
where all the lifted water would have been distributed. This structure is
confirmed as a water-distribution tower by the presence of troughs right
next to it, as is typical of such structures in the period.
The hammam at Manzarsumbah is a small, private one for use by the
family of the king and his immediate associates. It is intimate in scale
and comprises only two rooms. An outer room leads to an inner chamber
equipped with hot and cold water. It is on the same platform as the rest
of the palace buildings, and the water-supply system is connected with
that of the large tank. There are arrangements to heat the water on
the southern side of the hammam. There are motifs and shapes in the
internal stucco plaster that are similar to the hammam at Shivneri, and
the palace at Bhatavdi (Kalawantinicha Mahal). The hammam opens
onto a set of terraced beds, which would have been planted with
ornamental trees and shrubs, a suggestion that can only be confirmed

with archaeo-botany.
Āb Anbār and Bādgir at Savedi

This building in the vicinity of the Hasht Bihisht Bagh is not accessible
today because it is full of sewage from the fast-growing suburb around it.
There are encroachments upon this subterranean structure, and abutting
the bādgir, a unique structure that is the only above-ground component
of the building. The current squatters on the site are hostile to any
documentation now. Pramod Gadre published a crude plan and section
of this structure in The Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar. The
subterranean structure had a central pool open to the sky, surrounded by
vaulted spaces on three sides. Piped water was brought in from the
southern side, where the staircase was located. A series of nurgirs
(skylights) was located in the centre of all the domed bays. The bādgir,
which is the only known one of its kind in the Deccan, is about 20 feet
tall. The ‘wind-catching’ feature is the set of windows at the top, which
have baffle walls in them to channel the air upwards and downwards. The
tower is capped by a small dome.
Hammam at Chaul
The Chaul hammam is not unlike the one at Daulatabad in scale and
style. It has a large outer chamber which could be accessed through the
bazaar or through another back entrance [Figure 7.1]. This large
chamber has chamfered corners, and four low platforms on the four sides
[Figure 7.2]. It leads to the warm-water room, through which one could
get to the hot-water room. A row of shops fronted what would have been
a main street with a bazaar. The southern side of the structure has a
number of tanks and cisterns, which would have regulated the hot and
cold water supply.
It is not uncommon to have large public hammams on the periphery
of the town, or between the town and the governor’s palace. Such an
arrangement is seen in the ‘funerary bath’ in the royal necropolis at
Golconda. Visitors to the latter and to the fort of Golconda could have
availed themselves of physical cleansing activities and rituals before their
appointments with living or dead kings. Similarly, it is possible that the
Figure 7.1 Plan of the hammam at Chaul.
hammam was used by seafarers and traders who sought an audience with
officials and the governor in the town.
The construction of the hammam employed large timber sections
(now missing) which were non-structurally built into the masonry, a
technology used in most Nizam Shahi buildings.
Shahi Hammam at Daulatabad

The hammam at Daulatabad is a magnificent structure. It has an
inscription that dates it to 1582–83 [Inscription 23]. It has an outer
room with a set of vaulted spaces running peripherally to the lower
central portion with a fountain. The inner rooms are separated from
this with a long corridor that has bathrooms and toilets at both ends
[Figure 7.3].
The inner chamber is a large room with four rooms set off in the
four corners. The four sides of the room have large, low platforms
where masseuses, barbers, and other hygiene professionals would have
assisted the customers. The four corner rooms contain large tanks sunk
in the floor, which could be filled with water of different temperatures.
All the rooms have pipes for hot and cold water. The furnace was at the
Figure 7.2 Interior of the hammam at Chaul.
back, where the water cisterns are located. On the eastern side was
a row of shops, where various vendors would have set up
shop. The stucco plasters inside the building survive well and
accentuate the intersecting arches that form the squinches in the
corners [Figure 7.4].
Figure 7.3 Plan of the Shahi hammam at Daulatabad.
Figure 7.4 Interior of the Shahi hammam at Daulatabad.

An inscription lists the name of one Muhibullah Khan, who was

involved in the creation of this inscription.3 The hammam was a public
building, judging by the scale. It would have hosted male and female
patrons at different times of the day, a practice not uncommon in
twentieth-century Afghanistan and Iran. The water supply for the
hammam, along with the drainage, was integrated with the larger
systems for the whole settlement of Daulatabad.
The Dam near Daulatabad

This dam and water pavilion are located two kilometres north of
Daulatabad. This is part of an elaborate system of water management to
supply the city. This complex comprises a large catchment dam, with a
pavilion set to one side [Figure 7.5]. The pavilion is very much part of
the waterworks, as it would have enabled a point of control for the dam,
perhaps even regulating the flow of water in some way.
The pavilion is very similar to a palace building close to Junnar. It has a
simple tripartite plan, and the central pavilion has a balcony projection.
Figure 7.5 Dam north of Daulatabad, close to old Kagazipura on the

Khuldabad plain.
Figure 7.6 Balcony projection on the building near the dam north of
Daulatabad.
This type of balcony was derived from Bahmani defensive works, but by
the end of the sixteenth century it was a standard feature for most pavilions
and palaces. There is a staircase that leads to the roof [Figure 7.6].
The building has a later eighteenth-century addition in the form of a
second storey. This site is relatively inaccessible today. Structurally and
stylistically, there is little doubt that it is from the early seventeenth
century, when Malik Ambar expanded the settlement and made
sophisticated arrangements for water supply and drainage.
Khufiya Bavdi
This enigmatic structure is a well which is in immediate danger of being
appropriated as a mosque.4 This was a subterranean pavilion built to
escape the heat of the summers and is not dissimilar to the well in the
Parenda Fort in that respect.
The building itself is a rectangular well, which is accessed by a
doglegged staircase [Figure 7.7]. There is a set of vaulted passages
around the actual well that serve as cool pavilions. A mihrāb marks the
Figure 7.7 Plan of Khufiya Bavdi, west of Daulatabad fort.
western wall of such a passage, but is nothing more than a decorated arch
that indicates the direction of Mecca, in case the devout wished to pray
in this space. This suggests that the users of this space were here for long
periods which would have spanned over several Islamic prayer calls.
The quality of the space is ideal for a summer retreat, and there is a
steady shaft of natural light as the well itself is open to the sky, while the
water provides cooling [Figure 7.8]. There are a number of smaller
structures and surviving portions of buildings from the domains of the
Nizam Shahs which do not add value to the catalogue, either because of
their fragmented and modified nature or because there is no distinction
in their construction and design. Sometimes buildings are in this
category because they cannot be definitively attributed the Nizam Shahs.
These include the Chini Mahal at Daulatabad, the eidgah and tomb on
Shivneri fort, and a large number of battlements and fortifications.
The Caravanserai at Chaul

The caravanserai in Chaul is on the old road travelling inland from the
town. This ancient road would have been the only significant route
connecting Chaul with the hinterland of the Deccan, and had been used
Figure 7.8 Khufiya Bavdi.
since early Buddhist times.5 This is borne out by geographical surveys,

which indicate that the larger river basin and associated marshes would
have made this the easiest path to travel inland to the east (where the
larger commercial and production centres of the northern Deccan, such
as Junnar, Daulatabad, Paithan, etc., were located.) This road passes
through a natural barrier of hills separating the town from the
caravanserai. This was an ideal location for a building complex that

housed itinerant merchants and travellers, as it was isolated from the
town. The caravanserai was also provided its own source of water in the
form of a small natural pond behind.
The hamlet located a few hundred metres from this site is called Sarai,
corroborating the early function of this site as a caravanserai.
A direction-stone, with the names and directions to neighbouring
towns (not an uncommon feature under the later Nizam Shahs, especially
Burhan Nizam Shah II)6 was found close to the site7 and is in
conformance with the role of this structure as a caravanserai.
The caravanserai is fairly large (the enclosure wall contains an area of
approximately 60 by 45 metres), with two major extant structures:
a block of rooms at the front (east) and a similar but smaller set of
vaulted spaces along the rear (west) wall. The enclosure wall survives,
and the arcaded spaces that ran along its inside are obvious from the
ruins [Figure 7.9].
The central room on the western side has a prayer niche, but this
alone is not adequate to accord this building the primary function of a
mosque; it does not have any of the other details required of a mosque in
this period and region. The east bloc of rooms forms the entrance to the
complex.
Figure 7.9 Plan of the Caravansarai at Chaul.

Although the architectural programme of a travellers’ station is

universal, the form of a caravanserai is itself an ideal from the Middle
Eastern world. The relevance of the town as a large trading port in the
sixteenth century would have necessitated a caravanserai of these
dimensions for itinerant traders. The patterns and scale of the vaulting
are characteristic of the Nizam Shahs, as are also the planning modules
for the staircase. Similar construction is found at sites around
Ahmadnagar, such as Manzarsumbah and the Lakkad Mahal in the
Hasht Bihisht complex. An inscription which was reported close by
confirms the location of this site on an important trade route and its
interest to travellers and merchants [Inscription 24].
Chini Mahal
The Chini Mahal is attributed to the Nizam Shahs, though it is unclear
who built it. Its name derives from the decorated faience tiles on its
fac ade. This palace survives in a fragmentary state of preservation, and
must have been part of a larger complex [Figure 7.10] encompassing an
earlier Bahmani palace. This site is within the Kalakot enclosure of
Daulatabad and was later abandoned and destroyed by the Mughals, who
converted the Chini Mahal into a prison. The structure itself survives
only as a long hall with a portal on one side. There is the characteristic
use of timber, but the network of now subterranean galleries and rooms
that connect it with the ‘Nizam Shahi Palace’ nearby are not completely
open to exploration.8 The ‘Nizam Shahi Palace’ itself is a very enigmatic
structure, and some parts of it have been recorded before the
Archaeological Survey of India has carried out its ambitious plans of
‘restoring’ it. Stylistically, it bears a striking resemblance to
Bahmani palaces, particularly in terms of its decorative scheme. Yet,
in terms of construction, it is very likely from the very early period of the
Nizam Shahs, perhaps built by Ahmad Nizam Shah I. The large complex
of palaces suggests that the Nizam Shahs built their most important
palaces in the Kalakot around the same area that had Bahmani
buildings. A large pavilion behind the ‘Nizam Shahi Palace’ can be
attributed to the Nizam Shahs on the basis of its stylistic traits and
construction technology. The whole area needs a systematic survey
and excavations; unfortunately, those endeavours have not been
facilitated.
Figure 7.10 Chini Mahal in the Kala Kot enclosure, Daulatabad.
Chitakhana
This building, which now functions as an exhibition space, was built
by Malik Ambar around 1610 CE [Figure 7.11].9 It was converted into
a town hall for the city of Aurangabad by the British and is known by
that name. It is a large octagonal pavilion with a pool in the central
Figure 7.11 Chitakhana, Aurangabad.
courtyard [Figure 7.12]. This pool was fed by the Ambari Nahar, an
underground conduit constructed by Malik Ambar. The British put
up a Gothic roof over the courtyard, making it difficult to assess if this
courtyard was originally roofed over. On four sides are four large halls,
all facing the inner court. There are a large number of accessory and
Figure 7.12 Plan of the Chitakhana, Aurangabad.

ancillary spaces off these halls and also the courtyard. It is noted that
the hall was once called Pandit khana or Chintan khana, and was used
to foster dialogue between theologians and priests of various religions
and sects. It is more likely that this was a large garden pavilion which
was later converted into a jail under the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
CHAPTER 8
CONCLUSION:END OF AN
OLD WORLD
The Nizam Shahs belonged to an older world of architectural and court

practices, which were then superseded as the Mughals expanded into the
Deccan, ushering in the ‘early modern’ period. The Nizam Shahs, like
most of the Deccan sultans, were trying to establish a local kingdom
where they patronised local forms of material expression, yet without
losing sight of the Timurid ideal of all Islamic kingship in South Asia
after the fourteenth century.
Ironically, the lack of direct dynastic and centralised administrative
control in commissioning some of the architecture in the kingdom did
not result in a great diversity of architectural styles. On the contrary,
most of the buildings look as if they were built by the same guilds but
for different people, suggesting that the local idiom was stronger than
ideological affinities. The architectural details often betray the ‘regional
idiom’, even if the exercise in planning seems different. Sources for the
architectural forms, whether real or idealised, are very similar in the
sixteenth-century Deccan sultanates (for Ahmadnagar, Golconda, and
Bijapur), but the construction of these designs is often affected by
regional idioms of construction. What are sometimes claimed as stylistic
differences are the effects of local crafts and trades.
The system of power at the court was based on interpersonal
relationships or layers of sovereignty and authority; it was a system that
relied on individuals, not institutions. Therefore the architecture built
was most often an extension of personalities, not of ideologies of the
state. Architecture was as important as ceremony, robes of honour,

titles, jewellery, and other personal effects as the markers of identity
and power.1
The architecture of the Nizam Shahs provides important data to
reconstruct the social history of the period. For the study of architecture
itself, it fills large gaps in knowledge of stylistic aspirations as well as the
construction realities. The tension between these two processes is
manifest in many ways. Our understanding of social and political
history can be informed by the architectural and planning patterns that
we see used in the kingdom. Physical planning indicates a shift to a
fort-dominated mode of administration, a legacy that ultimately found
expression with the Maratha state founded by Shivaji Bhonsale. Mobility
of the administrative apparatus was a typical feature: the capital could
move at ease with such an arrangement.2 The capital ‘city’ was where the
king was, where the administrative apparatus was centralised.
Processions, as they constituted an ideal of legitimacy3 – an important
political practice in India – seem to be absent based on the surveys of
settlements, since there are no large avenues or streets where they could
take place. None of the settlements seem to have any processional vistas
or notable buildings that would flank such displays. Mughal kings were
often on public display and on tour, but for the Nizam Shahs, the person
of the king was mystified; he did not give public appearances or
darśana.4 The presence of the king in the fort of Ahmadnagar,
where he granted a regular audience to the members of the court
(who had to be reassured that he was alive and well), is well recorded, but
there is absolutely no reference to public appearances. The nature of the
architecture and planning did not provide for this spectacle either.
Central waterworks were crucial to settling towns. As a result,
settlements were not necessarily close to rivers anymore, suggesting a
paradigm shift for the region.
This research dismisses the notion of a uniformity across the
kingdom in terms of power structure, on the basis of the lack of
uniformity in architectural patronage. It demonstrates the use of
construction technology as a tool equally important to stylistic studies.
The use of urban planning patterns uncovered archaeologically, in the
absence of a complete physical fabric for any settlement, allows a more
comprehensive look at the land use and political systems in the kingdom
than other conventional means. The catalogue will allow a further
CONCLUSION: END OF AN OLD WORLD 217
analysis of the material record of the Nizam Shahs, overturning earlier

dates for many of the buildings.
There is a clear directional change in the architecture, an argument
that can be demonstrated visually. Early buildings tend to have
hemispherical domes with no drum. The domes become taller over time
and the trefoil merlons on the parapet wall also become more ornate.
Arches change from the initial stilted forms to the cusped shape, which
becomes common by the end of the sixteenth century. Corner kiosks
with arched openings start appearing in the late sixteenth century,
replacing the finials of the early period. However, it is difficult to map
that evolution onto the political changes in the kingdom. It seems that
the global designs of the Nizam Shahs were always in tension with the
local idioms, and any clear resolution was precluded by the decline of the
kingdom. This study locates the Nizam Shahs as a critical component of
the architectural and political history of the sixteenth-century Deccan,
and hopefully can restore to them some of the status that they once
commanded in their own time.
The Nizam Shahs were one of the last medieval kingdoms the
Mughals encountered as they swept across the Deccan. Being vanquished
more than half a century before the Adil Shahs of Bijapur and the Qutb
Shahs of Golconda meant that they did not have time to adjust to the
early modern world, though Malik Ambar made some efforts in that
direction. Taking a cue from Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
that the Mughals were an early modern state by virtue of their self-
definition and their investment in representations of themselves, in both
visual and literary terms the Nizam Shahs seem to lag behind, as did
other sultanates of the Deccan. Particularly in the economic arena of
portfolio bankers who could finance wars and of officials and courtiers
who could be easily transferred and their lands confiscated, the Nizam
Shahs were invested in traditional models of ʿiqta across their kingdom.
This meant the rise of entrenched semi-feudal lords who were easily
amenable to defecting for better prospects and quick to declare rebellion
or independence. Such a scenario ensured a quick Mughal takeover,
which would have also been the case with the other Deccan sultanates
had Aurangzeb not been vested in his internecine struggles and had to
move back to Delhi. From the early seventeenth century onwards,
Mughal court fashions and protocol already affected the Deccan courts
but, architecturally, Golconda and Bijapur kept up the local
architectural idiom until it was completely vanquished by the Mughals

in the late seventeenth century. In the northern Deccan, the strongest
architectural continuity with the Deccan sultanates was maintained by
the new Maratha state under Shivaji Bhonsale. While Aurangzeb was
casting Aurangabad in a Mughal architectural cloak, Shivaji, like his
ancestors, was still employing an architectural style that was distinctly
not Mughal. Perhaps the Jagdisvara temple at his capital of Raigad, built
around the time of his investiture in 1674 CE , is an example of
architectural continuity before the complete Mughal takeover of the
Deccan. The sultanate Deccan was a cosmopolitan space, with different
ethnic and social groups who had enormous mobility between various
states.5 Religious affiliations were not primary, as also in the case of the
Marathas who served in all the sultanates and also joined the Mughal
service in substantial numbers, just as Muslims and others served in the
Maratha court.6 Iranian émigrés, who had made up a significant coterie
at the Deccan courts, were in declining numbers in the seventeenth
century; this was a result of the Safavid and Mughal empires
absorbing these men of letters, and also because of Portuguese control of
the sea routes.7
The Deccani–Maratha– Habashi axis vis-à-vis the Persian nobility
had been a feature of the Deccan since the sixteenth century. The
Bahmani and post-Bahmani sultanates cultivated Maratha families to
balance the various ethnic factions at court: these included Afāqis, the
Deccanis, and later the Habshis and Marathas. The Nimbalkars, Shirkes,
Jadhavs, Jedhes, Bhonsales, Khandagales, Ghorpades, etc. were
important families in the service of the Adil Shahs, the Nizam Shahs,
and the Qutb Shahs, and they formed a loose kinship group with lots of
fickle alliances and bickering.8 But as with the other identity groups,
they were firmly part of the court culture of the Deccan sultanates and
their limited material expression cannot be distinguished. The paucity of
architectural evidence of the Marathas in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries is similarly mirrored by the lack of evidence in painting.
After 1700 CE , as the Maratha empire reconsolidated its position, the
architectural character of the Deccan completely changed. The sultanates
of the Deccan had become Mughal provinces under Aurangzeb, and
long-lasting architectural changes were in place. The Marathas, too,
under their peshwa Balaji Vishvanath, would negotiate the vassalage
of the Mughals, and within 40 years most of the provinces of the
CONCLUSION: END OF AN OLD WORLD 219
Mughals would be virtually independent, despite their nominal

acceptance of the Mughal overlords in Delhi. The architecture of power,
that of the Mughals, was evident, and even though the Maratha and Asaf
Jahi (eventually known as the Nizams of Hyderabad) courts would
eventually evolve their own versions of Mughal architecture, it would be
a while before regional idioms of Mughal architecture were created.
The Nizam Shahs displayed the first post-Bahmani flourish of an
architecture that would be called Deccan sultanate architecture, and
were also the first Deccan kingdom to succumb to the Mughals. The
Marathas would carry their political fight until much later, but the
architectural and cultural landscape of the sultanate Deccan was lost after
the mid-seventeenth century.
The Marathas were firmly embedded in the political and social milieu
of the Deccan from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. The
Maratha sardars shifted alliances between the various sultans and had
differences between themselves.9 It is possible to conclude that there was
no nationhood or polity based on an ethnic identity, and that their ethnic
identity was a marker of a social rise through military service. The
cultural forms of the greater Islamicate world, as expressed in the Deccan
by the Bahmanis, the Vijayanagar kings, and the later sultanates, were
also adopted by the Maratha courts. In conception, execution, and
ornament, the architecture of the early Marathas was exactly the same as
that of their sultanate overlords and peers. The structural forms,
decorative details, and planning logic all conform to the Islamicate
architecture of the Deccan sultanates.
In conclusion, early Maratha history and architecture was not distinct
from that of the sultanate Deccan sultanates, as a result of which it
remains invisible. The early Marathas, resistant to Mughal expansion,
were actually one of the last champions of the sultanate legacy in their
architecture. The brief architectural record of the early Marathas is a
testimonial to their integrated nature within the context of the Deccan
sultanates. It is unfortunate that the historiography of the region has
thus far been unable to accommodate the early Marathas within that
cultural complex.
APPENDIX:INSCRIPTIONS
Inscription 1
Findspot: Gate of Niʾmat Khan’s palace.
Date: 979 H (& words) ¼ 1571 AD
Language and script: Arabic, Thuluth
Remarks: States that through the efforts of Khwaja Husain, entitled Niʾmat
Khan, son of the deceased Khwaja Jalal-ud-din Simnani (i.e., of Simnan), a
desert was transformed into a garden which was called Naʾimiyya, and a
water channel was excavated and the whole was endowed by him to the
general public and their animals for drinking purposes (only). It further
prohibits its sale or bestowal as present or mortgage or hire or loan or use as
residence, or its fragmentation or alteration. Further says that the trusteeship
of the two will vest in his offspring. Written by Muhammad Husain.
Published: EIM 1933–34, pp. 10–11, Plate V (a); ARIE 1972–73, D 68.
Transcription:
APPENDIX 221
Translation:
During the period of the king of the dignity of Jamshid and glory of
Alexander,
Whose best quality is being the namesake of the Lion of God [Ali],
Murtaza, king of the nation and of the faith, shadow of Allah,
Through whom the government of the whole of the Deccan is
evident.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . kings, Niʾmat Khan,
Whose action on account of its veracity are all devoid of hypocrisy and
dissimulation,
He was favoured as he constructed a house of charity,
Like unto what his brilliant mind desired.
In that house he constructed cisterns, full of running water,
And in it he constructed a mosque; and what he did is justifiable.
For the date of its construction, the old man of wisdom wrote,
This blissful place; this sport has good water and air.
The chronogram yielded is 971 H [1564 AD].
Inscription 2
Findspot: Slab below the above [Gate of Niʾmat Khan’s palace].
Date: Shuhur 971 (chronogram) ¼ 978 H; 25 May 1570 to 24 May
1571 CE
Language and script: Persian, Nasta’liq
Remarks: States that Niʾmat Khan constructed a pleasant place called
Naʾimiyya with reservoirs of flowing water and also a mosque.
Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 10, Plate V (b); ARIE 1972– 73, D 69.
Transcription:
Translation:
Khwaja Husain Shah, entitled Nʾimat Khan, may his end be
laudable!, in order to get nearness to Allah, the Worshipped, made this
endowment consisting of all the confectionary shops and caravanserai
and hammam situated in the Bazar Panjshambah [i.e., Thursday] in
Ahmadnagar, the seat of Ahmadnagar, the seat of government, and all
the cultivated portions of Naʾim Bagh situated in the village Savar, for
the Naʾimiyyah Masjid and the running conduits in the endowed
mosque in the said bazaar, so that the income of these may be utilised for
the essential repairs, for the carpets and lightning of the mosque, and for
the conduits. And the trusteeship and the work of keeping the accounts
of the mosque and the said villages will rest with his children, and the
children of his children, generation after generation. After completely
defraying the expenses connected with the mosque and its repairs, the
balance of the income of said villages should belong to them. He who
changes it after hearing it, may the curse of Allah, the angels, and the
men be on him. This happened in the year 980 H (1572– 73 CE).
Inscription 3
Findspot: Carved in four lines on the Mangalwar Gate, Ahmadnagar.
Date: Shuhur 979 ¼ 1578 CE
Language and script: Arabic, Thuluth.
Remarks: Similar to the Persian inscription carved on the same gate. Most
likely the same craftsman.
Published: EIM 1935– 36, pp. 37 – 38, Plate XXV (a).
Transcription:
APPENDIX 223
Translation:
Verily . . . the great sultan, the most generous monarch, the king of
the kings of Arabia and non-Arab countries, the shadow of God, the
defender of the law of the chief of prophets [Muhammad], the
namesake of the prince of the faithful [Murtaza Ali] – may the peace
of God be upon both of them – the favoured one of God, the servant of
the family of the Prophet [Muhammad], the lord of the kingdom
and the caliphate, Murtaza Nizam Shah, may God perpetuate his
kingdom and his sovereignty and extend his bounty and munificence
to the people of the world, the founder of these charitable
institutions, attached to the tomb (of the founder), situated at this
pleasant site, known as . . . was Khwaja Husain, entitled Niʾmat
Khan, son of the deceased, taken into the mercy of God, the Malik
Mubin, Khwaja Jalal-ud-din Simnani, in the Shahur year 979 [1578
CE]. This beautiful place was dedicated . . . with the stipulation that
the people may avail themselves of its water for drinking purposes,
and they also avail themselves of such other comforts as are the right of
the servants of God, [but they are enjoined] not to sell these two
[works], nor to bestow them upon any person, nor to mortgage
them, nor to lease them, nor to lend them, nor to settle therein . . . nor
to cut . . . in them, nor to change . . . I entrust the guardianship of this
place to . . . and his descendants. Whoever changes it after he hath
heard it, the curse of God and angels and men overtaketh him.
To conclude, praise be unto God, the Cherisher of all the
worlds. Written by the humble Muhammad Husain in the year 979
[1578 CE].
Inscription 4
Findspot: Now on the District Judge’s Court (Changiz Khan’s palace)
Date: 984 H (chronogram) ¼ 1576– 77 CE
Language and script: Persian, Nasta’liq.
Remarks: Refers to the laying out of a garden called Farah Bakhsh by
Niʾmat Khan.
Published: EIM 1933 – 34, p. 11, Plate VI (a); ARIE 1972 – 73, D 67.
Transcription:
Translation:
Its name, on account of the pleasantness of its water and air,
Became Farah Bakhsh, may it be known thus!
As Niʾmat Khan made efforts for the foundation of this garden,
May his efforts be commended!
I sought its date from wisdom,
O God, Keep it inhabited till eternity!
The last line provides the date 984 H [1574– 75 CE].
Inscription 5
Findspot: Enclosure known as Bara Imam Kotla. Loose slab kept inside
the entrance gate of the east.
Language and script: Persian, Naskh.
Remarks: Fragmentary and damaged. States that Sayyid Jala, a
descendant of the Prophet and a saintly person, built a
mosque and also set apart a place near it (for his burial). Portion
containing the chronogram lost. In characters of about the sixteenth
century.
Published: EIM 1935–36, pp. 39 – 40, Plate XXVI (b); ARIE 1972 –73,
D 47.
APPENDIX 225
Transcription:
Translation:
It is in the Sayings of the Prophet, ‘Whoever talks of worldly affairs in
a mosque loses (the recompense) of his good actions of forty years.’
The builder of the sacred, Sunhairi Masjid is the servant of the
‘faithful’ from his heart and soul. He is the humble slave of the court of
the God Almighty, and his name is Sayyid Asad Amir Ja’far. Written by
the humble, Ibrahim Nasr, dated 937 H [1531 CE].
Inscription 6
Findspot: Another loose slab in the same place [Bara Imam Kotla].
Date: 937 H (& words) ¼ 1530– 31 CE
Language and script: Arabic prose, Thuluth.
Remarks: Records the construction of a mosque called Sumehri-Masjid
[sic] by Sayyid Asad (son of) Amir Jaʾ’far. Written by Ibrahim (son of)
Nasr.
Published: EIM 1935–36, p. 39, Plate XXVI (a); ARIE 1972– 73, D 48.
Transcription:
Translation:
1. Sayyid Jalal is a descendant of the Prophet . . . in both the worlds he
is honoured.
2. . . . the thirsty . . . are replenished like the ocean by water as on his

face God has written the solution of the difficulties of the people.
3. Protect him . . . for innumerable years!
4. He has built a mosque for the believers, and on one side has set a
place for himself.
5. And from his age . . .
Inscription 7
Findspot: Ruined mosque in [Dharur] Fort.
Language and script: Persian verse, Nasta’liq.
Remarks: Assigns the construction of the mosque to Sanjar Khan.
Published: ARIE 1965– 66, D192; Indian Archaeology: A Review 1964 –65
(New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India), Arabic and Persian
inscriptions no. 18.
Transcription:
Loose Translation:
In the reign of Nizam Shah, king of the world comparable to
Khorshid,
This was constructed by Sanjar Khan, for convenience and comfort,
The date of construction . . . (hemistich ¼ 981), for the pious.
Inscription 8
Findspot: Rohankheda Jamiʾ mosque. Over the entrance.
Remarks: Assigns the construction of the mosque to Khudavand Khan.
Published: EIM 1907– 08, p. 20; ARIE, 1965–66, D 200.
APPENDIX 227
Transcription:
Translation:
Because of the damaged nature of the inscription, the facts that can be gleaned
from this inscription are translated, not the whole inscription.
The mosque was built by Khudavand Khan in the year 990H
[1582 CE].
Inscription 9
Findspot: Fatehkheda Jamiʾ mosque. Over the entrance.
Remarks: Refers to the construction of the mosque by Khudavand
(Khan).
Published: EIM 1907– 08, p. 20; ARIE 1965 –66, D 202.
Transcription:
Translation:
By the grace of the Lord of the world,
This mosque was built like the eternal abode
I inquired of my mind the date of its completion
And [I] replied ‘May the house of God endure’.
The last hemistich yields 990 H [1582 CE].
Inscription 10
Findspot: Kali Masjid in Burud Gate. Slabs in the west wall, flanking the
central mihrāb.
Date: 994 H (& words) ¼ 1585– 86 CE
Language and script: Persian verse, Thuluth.

Remarks: Records construction by Sayyid Muntajib.
Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 13, Plate VI (e); ARIE 1972–73, D 49.
Transcription:
Translation:
1. The most distinguished noble from the descent of the illustrious
kings, may the abode of bliss be his resting place in the everlasting
world!
2. He has always endeavoured to obey the Lord of Creation and
always glorified Him and sought His good-will.
3. The chronogram ‘Adn Tayyib’ was composed by Miyan
Makhdum, but if it is incomplete, add the numerical value of the
phrase—‘these are the words’.
Inscription 11
Findspot: In the central mihrāb of Kali Masjid in Burud Gate.
Date: 994 H (& words) ¼ 1585– 86 CE
Language and script: Arabic, Naskh.
Remarks: Contains religious text (Basmallah, Allah, Muhammad, Ali).
In characters of about the sixteenth century.
Published: EIM 1933 – 34, p. 13, Plate VI (e); ARIE 1972 – 73, D 50.
Transcription:
APPENDIX 229
Translation:
The mosque resplendent with the light of the Worshipped,
Was constructed by the effort and exertion of Sayyid Muntajib
[chosen Sayyid]
For the date of its completion, Wisdom Found,
Its construction was due to Sayyid Muntajib [994 H ¼ 1586 CE].
Inscription 12
Findspot: On a minaret of the Kamani mosque, Shivneri.
Date: Circa 1625 CE because it is paired with another inscription that
mentions the date. This inscription mentions Burhan Nizam Shah III
who was ruling at the time.
Remarks: This is one of the last inscriptions of the Nizam Shah kings on a
monumental building. Burhan Nizam Shah III was the third last of the
Nizam Shahs.
Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 22.
Transcription:
Translation:
. . . . . . . . . .The foundation of this mosque was laid on the twenty-
second of the month of Shawwal, year one thousand and twenty-four, and
it was completed on the ninth day of the month of Zu’l Hijja, year one
thousand and twenty-five, during the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah and
administration of the officer of the state, the support of government,
Miyan Barbud.
Inscription 13
Findspot: On a minaret of the Kamani mosque, Shivneri.
Date: Shuhur San 1025 ¼ 1625 CE

Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 22.
Transcription:
Translation:
That the mosques are Allah’s, therefore call not upon anyone with
Allah. [Quran]
. . . . . . . . . . .The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless and assoil him!
And his family!
. . . . . . . . . . . During the reign of Burhan Nizam Shah, son of Murtaza
Nizam Shah, Shahur year 1025. . . . . . . . . . . Secure in the favour of the
Beneficient, Ambar Adil of Changiz Khan. Miyan Barbud,. . . . . .
Inscription 14
Findspot: On a column of the mosque at Chaul.
Date: Late sixteenth to early seventeenth century.
Language and script: Persian, Nasta’liq.
Remarks: A very crude hand, probably untrained in carving the Arabic
script.
Published: ARIE 1959 –60, D 150; untranslated.
Transcription:
Translation:
This inscription is very poorly carved and has weathered extensively.
Words can be identified but not entire sentences. There is a reference to a
mosque, but not a date that can be deciphered.
APPENDIX 231
Inscription 15
Findspot: On the wall of a tomb next to the mosque at Chaul.
Date: Late sixteenth to early seventeenth century.
Remarks: Mentions a mosque, but nothing more can be inferred.
Transcription:
Inscription 16
Findspot: Dilawar Khan’s tomb. Over the main entrance.
Date: 1022 H ¼ 1613– 14 CE
Remarks: Records the death of Raihan, son of Dilawar Khan.
Inscription 17
Findspot: Slab in the east wall of a small building in the compound of the
Tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah.
Date: 947 H (& words) ¼ 1540– 41 CE
Language and script: Arabic and Persian, Naskh.
Remarks: Indifferently executed. Records the construction of a mosque
by (name illegible) for Bibi Halima.
Published: EIM 1935– 36, p. 43, Plate XXX (c); ARIE 1972–73, D 58.
Transcription:
Translation:
O God, pardon the sins. . . . . .built the mosque. . . . . . . .dated, 947
years after the Prophet [1540 CE], the intercessor . . . .
Inscription 18
Findspot: On the entrance to the tomb of Saudagar Gumbaz.
Date: First half of the sixteenth century.
Language and script: Persian; Naskh.
Remarks: Unpublished. A verse of three baits using metaphors of death
and the impermanence of the human body, invoking Shiʾi beliefs.
Transcription:
Inscription 19
Findspot: Dō Bōti Chirā tomb. Loose slab.
Date: 969 H ¼ 1562 CE
Language and script: Arabic, Naskh
Remarks: Damaged. Contains religious text. In characters of about the
sixteenth century.
Published: EIM 1933– 34, p. 7; ARIE 1972– 73, D 66.
Transcription:
Translation:
Invoke ʿAli, the displayer of miracles,
(And) thou wilt find him a help to thee in calamities.
APPENDIX 233
Every care and grief will vanish,

By thy aid, Muhammad! By thy aid O ʿAli! O ʿAli!
The chief of the Sayyids, Sayyid Muhammad, son of Sayyid Jaʾfar,
Muqarrab Khani was received into the mercy of God in the month of
Rajab 969 (March 1562 CE).
Inscription 20
Findspot: Gun in the garden of the tomb of Rumi Khan. Currently
missing.
Date: Second half of sixteenth century.
Language and script: Unknown.
Remarks: Muhammad ibn Hasan Rumi is mentioned in the inscription.
Reference: Tarikh-i Ahmadnagar, p. 397; Z.A. Desai, Arabic, Persian and
Urdu Inscriptions of West India, p. 18, no. 171; not reproduced in
translation.
Inscription 21
Findspot: Tomb of Haji Hamid.
Remarks: The inscription is bilingual and has a quatrain in Marathi,
written in Devanagari script. The rest of the text comprises Shiʾi
invocatory verses.
Published: EIM 1939– 40, p. 30, Plate XIII (b).
Transcription:
Inscription 22
Findspot: Tomb of Malik Ambar. The whereabouts of this inscription are
unknown.
Date: First half of the seventeenth century.
Language and script: Unknown
Remarks: According to Desai, the inscription mentions the death of a man
from Hadramaut in 1041 H (1631 CE) in ‘the garden of the Tomb of
Malik Ambar at Rauda’. The man was born in 993 H (1585 CE).
Reference: Z.A. Desai, Arabic, Persian and Urdu Inscriptions of West
India, no. 1328, p. 140; unpublished in translation.
Inscription 23
Findspot: Over the doorway to the Shahi Hammam at Daulatabad
Date: 992 H ¼ 1582– 83 CE
Language and script: Arabic, Naskh.
Remarks: The inscription is unpublished in translation.
Reference: ARIE 1958– 59, D 56.
APPENDIX 235
Transcription:
Loose Translation:
God only intended to take dirt away from you, and purify you well,
with the [Prophet’s] family (Ahl al Bait)
The lover of the Ahl al Bait, Muhib Khan Abdul Qadir al Husaini,
the scribe.
990 H.
Inscription 24
Findspot: Chaul: Loose slab in Vishnu Joshi’s field
Language and script: Bilingual, Persian and Marathi; Naskh and Modi.
Remarks: Location presently unknown. Direction-stone that provided
orientation to travellers by indicating the directions of nearby towns.
Published: ARIE 1959 –60, D 149; EIAPS 1970, p. 48, Plate X (b).
NOTES
Praface
1. Scott Cameron Levi, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and Its Trade,
1550 – 1900 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2002); Scott Cameron Levi (ed.),
India and Central Asia, 1500 – 1800 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2007).
2. Panduranga Pissurlencar, ‘The Extinction of the Nizam Shahi’, in Sardesai
Commemoration Volume (Bombay: Keshav Bhikaji Dhavale, 1938), pp. 27 – 46.
3. John Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India (Calcutta: Editions Indian,
1966) v. 3, p. 190; a slightly different story is translated by Lt. Col. Sir
Wolseley Haig, History of the Nizam Shahi Kings of Ahmadnagar (Bombay:
British India Press, Mazgaon, 1923), pp. 2 – 3: ‘The story of the origins of the
Nizam Shahi dynasty in the Burhan e Maasir is more intriguing, and suggests
that Ahmad Shah Bahri, the founder prince of the Nizam Shahs, was actually
an illegitimate son of the Bahmani sultan, Muhammad Shah, and was only
raised by Malik Naib Nizam-ul-Mulk. If this was indeed the case, then Ahmad
Nizam Shah I would have gladly used the name Bahmani as opposed to Bahri,
which is suggested as a corrupt version of the name Bhairav (written as Bhairo
in Persian).’
4. Lt. Col. Sir Wolseley Haig, Indian Antiquary, v. XLIX (May 1920), pp. 85 – 6.
5. Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astrabadi Ferishtah, Tarikh-i Firishtah
musammā bi Gulshan-i Ibrāhı̄mı̄ (Lucknow: Nawal Kishore, 1943 –45) p. 97;
Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power, p. 121; however, it must be mentioned
that none of the coins allegedly struck under the rule of Ahmad Nizam Shah I
have ever been recovered, and there are good reasons to believe that those coins,
if they existed, were only ceremonial and not circulatory.
6. Haig, Indian Antiquary (April 1920), pp. 72 – 4.
7. Haig, Indian Antiquary (June 1920), p. 108.
8. Ibid., p. 108.
NOTES TO PAGES xxii – xxvi 237
9. Farhad Daftary, The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2007), pp. 451– 5 passim.
10. S. Mujahid Husain Zaidi (ed.), Tarikh-i Qutbi (also called the Tarikh-i Ilchi-yi
Nizam Shah) of Khurshah bin Qubad Al-Husaini (New Delhi: Jamia Millia
Islamia, 1965), pp. 12 – 26.
11. Akbar’s envoy Faizi was in Ahmadnagar in the late sixteenth century, and he
mentions these massacres. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘A Place in the Sun: Travels
with Faizi in the Deccan’, Les Sources et le Temps: Sources and Time, Francois
Grimal, ed. (Pondicherry: Institut Francais d’Indologie; Ecole Francais
d’Extreme-Orient, 2001), pp. 265–307; the massacres are also referred to by
Pramod Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, pp. 33 – 36.
12. P.M. Joshi, ‘The Portuguese on the Deccan (Konkan) Coast’, Journal of Indian
History, v. XLVI (1968): pp. 65 – 88; Stewart Gordon, The Marathas:
1600– 1818 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 50.
13. For a detailed account of the Mughal pressures, both military and diplomatic, on
the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, see M. Siraj Anwar, Mughals and the Deccan:
Political Relations with the Ahmadnagar Kingdom (Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 2007).
14. T.N. Devare, A Short History of Persian Literature at the Bahmani, the Ādilshāhi
and the Qutbshahi Courts (Poona: Nowrosjee Wadia College, 1961), pp. 66 – 7.
Both the historians Firishtah and Tabatabai were originally at the court of
the Nizam Shahs but later sought employment at the Adil Shahi and Qutb
Shahi courts, respectively. Similarly, the poets Zuhuri and ʿUrfi also fled
Ahmadnagar in this period.
15. Phillip B. Wagoner. ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings: Dress, Titles, and the
Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol.
55, no. 4 (Nov 1996): pp. 851– 80; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Courtly Encounters:
Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2012).
16. A.H. Siddiqui, ‘A Copper Coin of Murtaza Nizam Shah II of Punanagar Mint’,
Journal of the Numismatics Society of India, v. 36 (1974): pp. 140–1; Pissurlencar,
‘Extinction of the Nizam Shahi Dynasty’, p. 28.
17. Richard M. Eaton, A Social History of the Deccan, 1300– 1761 (New Delhi:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 113.
18. The water systems built to supply the Peshwa capital in Pune in the
eighteenth century were the last of their kind to be built in the western
Deccan. The only explanation for the survival of this technology is that it had
become indispensable for settling large urban areas that would not be
dependent on just natural sources of water in their proximity.
19. K.A. Kadiri, ‘Some More Direction-Stones of the Nizam Shahi Dynasty’, in
Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica 1970 (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India,
1975), pp. 48 – 9.
20. Sumit Guha, ‘Transitions and Translations: Regional Power and Vernacular
Identity in the Dekhan 1500– 1800’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa
and the Middle East, vol. 24, no. 20 (2004): p. 23.
238 NOTES TO PAGES xxvii – 9
21. Deborah Hutton, The Elixir of Mirth and Pleasure: The Development of Bijapuri
Art, 1565– 1635, PhD diss. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2000),
p. 20.
22. Pushkar Sohoni, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds:
Responses to Gunpowder in the Early Modern Deccan’, South Asian Studies,
vol. 31, no. 1 (Jan. 2015): pp. 111 – 126.
Chapter 1 Locating Architecture: Social History and

Historiography of the Deccan
1. Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India (New York:

Barnes and Noble, 1986), p. 11.
2. E.J. Chinnock (tr.), Anabasis of Alexander, Together with the Indica (London:
Bohn, 1893); Tarif Khalidi, Islamic Historiography: The Histories of Mas’udi
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1975); Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya, The Periplus of
the Erythraean Sea & Ptolemy on Ancient Geography of India (Calcutta: Prajñā,
1980); Gerhard Fussman, ‘Le Periple et l’histoire politique del’Inde’, Journal
Asiatique, vol. 279 (1991): pp. 31 – 8; Martin Hammond and John Atkinson,
Alexander the Great: The Anabasis and the Indica (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
3. D.C. Sircar, Inscriptions of Aśoka (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry
of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1967); Kanai Lal Hazra,
Aśoka as Depicted in His Edicts (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers,
2007).
4. Anwar, Mughals and the Deccan, p. 41.
5. Ibid., pp. 40 – 5 passim.
6. Stewart Gordon, ‘Burhanpur: Entrepot and Hinterland, 1650– 1750’, Indian
Economic Social History Review, vol. 25 (1988): pp. 425– 42; B.G. Gokhale,
‘Burhanpur: Notes on the History of an Indian City in the XVIIth Century’,
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 15 (1972),
pp. 316 –23.
7. George Michell and Mark Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan
Sultanates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 7: ‘Allauddin
(reg. 1347 –58) gave his name to a new line of rulers, henceforth known as the
Bahmanis after the legendary hero Bahman of the Persian epic, the Shahnameh’.
8. Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture: An Outline of Its History and Development
(1526 – 1858) (Munich; New York: Prestel; distributed by Neues, 1991);
Ebba Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology (New Delhi: New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001).
9. Richard M. Eaton and Phillip B. Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture:
Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300– 1600 (New Delhi: Oxford
10. Briggs, Rise of the Mohamedan Power, vol. 3, p. 123.
NOTES TO PAGES 9 –17 239
11. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1972).
12. Yasser Tabbaa, ‘Geometry and Memory in Architectural Transmission’,
Theories and Principles of Design in the Architecture of Islamic Societies (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1988),
pp. 23 – 34.
13. Hermann Goetz, ‘The Fall of Vijayanagara and the Nationalization of Muslim
Art in the Dakhan’, Journal of Indian History, vol. 19 (1940): pp. 249– 55.
14. Deborah Hutton, Art at the Court of Bijapur (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2006).
15. Eaton and Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture.
16. Elizabeth Schotten Merklinger, Indian Islamic Architecture: The Deccan 1347–
1686 (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1981); Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture
and Art of the Deccan Sultanates.
17. Hutton, Art of the Court of Bijapur, p. 129.
18. Sayyid Ali bin Aziz ʿullah at-Tabatabai was an émigré who came to
Ahmadnagar via Iraq and Golconda. His work was published as Burhān-i
Maasir (Delhi: Matba’at Jami’ah Dihli, 1936); Firishtah’s real name was
Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astrabadi and, as a young boy, he arrived in in
the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, where his father Ghulam Ali was a courtier –
his history was first published in Persian as Tarikh-i Firishtah (Bombay: Mirza
Hasan Shirazi, 1832) and later famously translated by John Briggs as History of
the Rise of Mohammedan Power in India in four volumes.
19. M.S. Mate, ‘Road to Islamic Archaeology in India’, World Archaeology, vol. 14,
no. 3 (February 1983): p. 336.
20. Pika Ghosh, ‘Problems of Reconstructing Bengali Architecture of the
14th – 16th Centuries’, in The Architecture of the Indian Sultanates, Abha Narain
Lambah and Alka Patel, eds. (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2006), p. 95.
21. Avinash Sovani, Maratha Town and City Planning with Reference to the Systems of
Village Development during 17th and 18th Centuries, unpublished dissertation
(Pune: Tilak Maharastra Vidyapeeth, 2011).
22. The only obvious exception to the large-scale use of wood inside masonry walls
is at the site of Bhongir, close to Warangal, which was in the kingdom of
Golconda.
23. Alka Patel, Building Communities in Gujarāt: Architecture and Society during the
Twelfth through Fourteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Abha Narian Lambah
and Alka Patel, The Architecture of the Indian Sultanates (Mumbai: Marg
Publications, 2006).
24. Patel, Building Communities in Gujarat; Khoundkar Alamgir, Sultanate
Architecture of Bengal: An Analysis of Architectural and Decorative Elements (New
Delhi: Kaveri Books, 2011).
25. George Kozlowski points out the common reasons awqāf were readily created by
gentry and nobility: ‘Awqāf were sometimes connected with an attempt to
secure or preserve wealth and power . . . endowments were not always dedicated
240 NOTES TO PAGES 17 –22
to the service of the public or for religious purposes . . . . Individuals made use of
them for a variety of more personal objectives . . . endowments became favored
instruments for dealing with property, especially land, because they offered the
promise of stability’. George Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society in British
India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 16–17.
26. Status as a national monument does not translate into any real protective
mechanism against vandalism and looting, and very often the protected
status applies only to the central structure, not the complete site. The
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is the custodian of the sites of ‘national
importance’ and may depute people to guard them. The sites protected are
listed by the ASI as: ‘Damdi Masjid, Gate near Niyamat Khan’s Place, Kotla
of Twelve Imams, Old Tomb near Changiz Khan’s Palace, Tomb of Nizam
Ahmedshah, Building known as Farah Bagh, Five Stone Gates at Tisgaon,
Tomb of Malik Ambar.’ All these monuments are listed under the
Aurangabad Circle of the ASI. Only one Nizam Shahi site – the Shahi
Hammam at Daulatabad – is under the jurisdiction of the Maharashtra State
Archaeological Department.
27. Many of these conversions are well documented in the Bombay State Gazetteer:
Ahmednagar District, vol. XVII (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1884),
pp. 694 –706.
Chapter 2 Multiple Pasts: The Nizam Shahs

of Ahmadnagar
1. Even in the study of literature, the Nizam Shahs are not treated as an
independent entity whose patronage of literati is worthy of study. For example:
‘The Nizamshahs of Ahmadnagar had a chequered political career. And though
this dynasty nominally stretched its political existence till AH 1043, its
political prestige had suffered a setback. [Ahmadnagar was a] . . . rendezvous of
Shia Scholars and Divines. History and Poetry followed Religion, and ports
like Malik e Qummi, Mawlana Zuhuri, Fani, and Hayati and historians like
Sayyid Ali Tabatabai, Khurshah Husayni, and Firishta enjoyed the
Nizamshahi patronage in the heyday of its glory. [After 1588], . . . most of
these poets and historians left Ahmadnagar and enlisted themselves in the
services of either Bijapur or the Golconda courts, and hence have been
classified here for the sake of convenience as the Ādilshāhi and the
Qutbshahi poets and historians’ (Devare, Short History of Persian Literature,
pp. 66 – 7).
2. P.M. Joshi and H.K. Sherwani, eds, History of Medieval Deccan, vol. II
(Hyderabad: Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1974), p. 107.
3. T.N. Devare, ‘Tabatabai and His Burhan e Maasir’, in A Short History of Persian
Literature: At the Bahmani, the Adilshahi and the Qutbshahi Courts (Poona:
Nowrosjee Wadia College, 1961), pp. 282– 96.
4. Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan, p. 103.

5. Rafiʾuddin Shirazi, ‘Tadhkirat ul Mulk,’ manuscript at the Salar Jung
Museum, Hyderabad, acc. no. History 142.
6. For example, Ibrahim Zubairi’s Basatin us-Salatin (Hāydarābād, Dakkan:
Matbaʿ-i Sayyidı̄, [19 – ]), written in 1824– 25.
˙
7. Jonathan Scott, Firishtah’s History of Dekkan, vols I – II (London: John Pickdale,
1794).
8. Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power.
9. Haig, History of the Nizam Shahi Kings.
10. S.P. Sen, Indian History Congresses (1935 – 1963) (Calcutta: Indian History
Congress, 1963). Some of the papers from the conferences are as follow:
‘Salabat Khan II of Ahmadnagar’ by C.H. Shaikh (1942); ‘History of the City
of Aurangabad’ by Ghulam Ahmed Khan (1942); ‘Early Life of Malik Ambar’
by Banarasi Prasad Saksena (1942); ‘Interstate Relations in the Deccan (1529 –
1707)’ by Pratapgiri Ramamurti (1945); ‘Gujarat and Malwa in the First Half
of the Sixteenth Century’ by S.C. Mishra (1953); ‘Adilshahi Administration’
by P.M. Joshi (1940); ‘The Archives of the Deshmukh Family of Sholapur’ by
G.H. Khare (1953); ‘Identification of Dalpat Rai Mentioned in Burhan e
Maasir . . . ’ by P.K. Gode (1938); ‘The Bijapur Court Culture’ by K.K. Basu
(1943).
11. The phenomenon and the reasons for the rise of regional history and historians
in the region of the modern state of Maharashtra in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries are detailed by B.G. Gokhale, The Fiery Quill: Nationalism
and Literature in Maharashtra (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1998).
12. Radhey Shyam, The Kingdom of Ahmadnagar (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1966).
13. Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan.
14. Percy Brown, Indian Architecture: Buddhist and Hindu Period and Indian
Architecture: Islamic Period (Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., 1942 –43).
15. ‘Shatter zone’ was a term used by Phillip Wagoner and Richard Eaton to
describe the region around Kalyani (now called Basavakalyan) in the central
Deccan in ‘Architecture and Contested Terrain in the Medieval Deccan’ (New
York: Barbara Stoler Miller lecture at Columbia University, 28 April 2006).
16. S.M. Alam, ‘The Historic Deccan – A Geographical Appraisal’ in Aspects of
Deccan History, V.K. Bawa, ed. (Hyderabad: Institute of Asian Studies, 1975).
17. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, was based on a doctoral dissertation
completed at the University of Poona in 1969 but published only posthumously,
17 years later.
18. Ibid., p. 128.
19. Gordon, Marathas.
20. Anwar, Mughals and the Deccan.
21. Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates.
22. Emma J. Flatt and Daud Ali (eds), Garden and Landscape Practices in Precolonial
India: Histories from the Deccan (New Delhi: Routledge, 2010); Navina Najat
Haidar and Marika Sardar (eds), Sultans of the South: arts of India’s Deccan Courts,
1323– 1687 (New Haven, CT, and New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art
and Yale University Press, 2011); Laura E. Parodi (ed.), The Visual World of
Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era
(London: I.B.Tauris, 2014); Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar, Sultans of
Deccan India, 1500– 1700: Opulence and Fantasy (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 2015).
23. Henry Cousens, Revised Lists of Antiquarian Remains in the Bombay Presidency,
vol. VIII, (Bombay: Archaeological Survey of India, 1897), has only a small
paragraph on the city of Ahmadnagar, which might explain this
attitude toward the antiquities and monuments of Ahmadnagar.
Under ‘III—Ahmadnagar Zilla / I – Ahmadnagar Taluka’s he writes: ‘A
few only of its old Muhammedan buildings remain, among which, perhaps,
the little Damri Masjid is the most interesting, though the great octagonal
tomb of Salabat Khan is best known. Besides these two buildings, there are
the Faria-bagh, the tomb of Ahmad Nizam Shah, the Bihisti Bagh,
Alamgir’s Dargah, and a few other buildings of lesser note, together with
the fort.’
24. Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of
India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1924).
25. For example, Phillip B. Wagoner, ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings: Dress, Titles,
and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara’, Journal of Asian
Studies, vol. 55, no. 40 (Nov. 1996), pp. 851– 80; Richard M. Eaton, Sufis of
Bijapur, 1300– 1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1978); Michael W. Meister, ‘Indian Islam’s Lotus
Throne’ and ‘The Two-and-a-Half-Day Mosque,’ in Piety and Politics in the
Early Indian Mosque, Finbarr B. Flood, ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2008); Eaton, Social History of the Deccan; Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of
Translation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
26. There are various problematic issues involved in the translations of Persian
chronicles and their interpretation, particularly in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Some of these are highlighted by G.T. Kulkarni, ‘Persian
Texts, Documents, Epigraphs and Deccan History’ in Medieval India: Problems
and Possibilities, Radhika Seshan, ed. (Jaipur: Rawat, 2006), pp. 34 – 66.
27. An eminent historical research institution, the Bharat Itihas Samshodhak
Mandal, Pune, has been embroiled in multiple lawsuits for a couple of
decades. The shameful incident in which the property and collections of the
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune were destroyed by
ideologically motivated vandals in 2004 is an example of right-wing
activism.
28. Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, p. 10:
‘Burhan I (1510 – 53), the second sultan of Ahmadnagar, adopted Shi’ism as
the state religion, . . . bringing the Nizam Shahi kingdom into sympathetic
relations with Iran’.
29. V. Gogte et al., ‘The Ancient Port of Chaul’, Journal of Indian Ocean Archaeology,
vol. 3 (2006); Benjamin Rowlandson, trans., Tuhfat ul Mujahideen, by
Zeinuddin Sheikh (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1833), pp. 92 – 3;
Joseph G. da Cunha, Notes on the History and Antiquities of Chaul and Bassein
(Bombay: Thacker, Vining and Co., 1876), p. 7.
30. Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Patterns of Faith: Mosque Typologies and Sectarian
Affiliation in the Kingdom of Ahmadnagar,’ in David Roxburgh (ed.), Seeing
the Past – Envisioning Islamic Art and Architecture: Essays in Honour of Renata
Holod (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 110– 27.
31. Pramod Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, p. 30; Ashin Das Gupta,
‘Indian Merchants and the Western Indian Ocean: The Early Seventeenth
Century’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 19, no. 30 (April 1984), pp. 481 –549.
32. Maria Eva Subtelny, ‘Socioeconomic Bases of Cultural Patronage under the
Late Timurids’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 20, no. 40
(1988), pp. 479 – 505.
33. Devare, Short History of Persian Literature, p. 17.
34. For details on the social dynamics, see Emma Jane Flatt, ‘Courtly Culture
in the Indo-Persian States of the Medieval Deccan: 1450– 1600’, PhD
dissertation (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, 2009), pp. 17– 18.
35. P.M. Joshi, ‘Adilshahi Administration’, Proceedings of the Indian History
Congress, Lahore; Fourth Session (1940), p. 235.
36. The Mahdavi sect was finally banned under Burhan Nizam Shah II. For more
information on the Mahdavi movement of the sixteenth century, see Ahmad
Qamar Qamaruddin, The Mahdawi Movement in India (Delhi: Idarah-i-
Adabiyat-i-Delhi, 1985).
37. Gordon, Marathas, pp. 25– 8. Nested rights is a term used to describe the
revenue rights of various kinds being awarded to the same person. The areas of
collection, and the duties and obligations related to each concession, often
overlapped.
38. This was a local version of the iqtaʾ system prevalent in post-Timurid Iran and
Central Asia.
39. Grove Dictionary of Art Online, s.v. ‘Ahmadnagar’, by Mark Zebrowski, accessed
12 April 2004, http://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html?
section¼ art.040113.6.5.6.1#art.040113.6.5.6.1: ‘Ahmadnagar painting
undoubtedly represents the earliest and most original flowering of the art of
painting in the Deccan.’
40. Twelve paintings are from the manuscript Tārif-i Husain Shah at the Bharat
Itihasa Samshodhana Mandal, Pune; the other paintings are dispersed among
various collections: the State Library, Rampur (Album 4); Bibliotheque
National, Paris (Supp. Pers. 1572 fol. 26); Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
(1978.129); India Office Library, British Library (401); Cincinnati Art
Museum (1983.311); Salar Jang Museum, Hyderabad; San Diego Museum
(Edward Binney 3rd Collection); Cincinnati Museum of Art (Cincinnati John
244 NOTES TO PAGES 33 – 40
J. Emery Endowment 1983.311). At least two of the paintings are in private

collections and have been published a few times, the last such publication
being Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates
(1999): Plate 3 and Figure 111.
41. Stuart C. Welsh, ‘Portfolio’, Marg, vol. 16, no. 2 (1962 – 63), p. 7.
42. The whole manuscript has been published in facsimile form: M.S. Mate and
G.T. Kulkarni, eds, Tārif-i Husain Shah Badshah-i Dakan (Pune: Bharat Itihas
Samshodhan Mandal, 1987).
43. Welsh, ‘Portfolio’, p. 7: ‘Often, Deccani miniatures are “lost” in galleries
and boxes labeled as “Persian” “Mughal” or “Rajasthani” or worse, the
all-important but elusive differences having been overlooked’.
44. Karl Khandalavala. ‘Reflections on Deccani Painting’, Marg, vol. 16, no. 2
(1962 – 63), p. 23.
45. Mark Zebrowski, Deccani Painting (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983), p. 26: ‘The way certain details of costume and anatomy have been
isolated and transformed into beautiful shapes, resembling the full, natural
forms of plants and flowers, is also Indian, quite unlike the abstract tendencies
of Persian art.’
46. Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 26: ‘The plumed cap in the Freer picture and
the speckling on the clothes and shields of both warriors are typical of later
Ahmadnagar conventions.’
47. Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 10.
48. Eleanor Sims, Peerless Images (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2002), p. xi:
‘I thought I might develop an approach that was not historical. Instead
I would shape the book by means of the themes displayed by the themes of its
illustrations.’
49. Barbara Brend, Perspectives on Persian Painting: Illustrations to Amir Khusrau
Dehlavi’s Khāmsah (London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. xxi.
50. Brend, Perspectives on Persian Painting, p. xxii.
51. Brend, Perspectives on Persian Painting, pp. xxi–xxii: ‘In the Matla-i-Anwar
Khusrau’s story of the Hindu pilgrim going to Somnath may be seen as topical
in the year of the Gujarat campaign, though it is not much in the spirit of the
leaders of the expedition, . . . Some contemporary reference may also be seen in
Ainah-i-Iskandari. It is possible that this topic, which is fifth in Nizami’s
Khāmseh is fourth in Khusrau’s because Ala-al-din had begun to see himself as a
second world conquering Alexander. The title “Iskander-al-Sani” is attested on
some of his coinage. . . It seems probable that in laying out his work before the
sultan, Khusrau intended to flatter him and, in the guise of entertainment, to
offer him advise on the proper conduct of an Alexander. The long battle
sequence between the armies of Iskander and the Khaqan of Chin at the
beginning of the romance may be seen as reference to the Mongol threat.’
52. For practices of collecting images in such albums, see David Roxburgh,
The Persian Album, 1400– 1600: from Dispersal to Collection (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2005).
NOTES TO PAGES 41 – 48 245
53. Grove Dictionary of Art Online, s.v. ‘The Style of Shiraz, c. 1500–c. 1600’, by
Eleanor Sims, accessed 12 April 2004: ‘Within the image, the ratio 3:5 is
repeatedly used; for example, the horizon line rests at three-fifths the height of
the image. These features were first noticed in a dispersed copy of Sharaf al-Din
ʿAli Yazdi’s Zafarnāma (“Book of Victory”), copied by the noted Shiraz scribe
Murshid in 1546.’
54. Stella Kramrisch, A Survey of Painting in the Deccan (London: India Society,
1937), p.142: ‘Miniature painting in the Deccan of the sixteenth century
similar to that of the Mughals seems to start with book illustrations. The
bound book, of Persian origin with its nearness of script and painting on the
page, is followed closely in the Bijapur manuscripts, whereas the Tārif-i-
Hussein Shahi paintings occupy the major part of the page and are less
intimately connected with the written work’; David Roxburgh, Our Works
Point to Us, unpublished PhD dissertation (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania, 1996), p. 11.
55. Kramrisch, Survey of Painting in the Deccan, p. 141: ‘Neither the illustrations of
the Tārif-i Husain Shah nor of the two Bijapur manuscripts have the features
of court art. [They] . . . are painted with spontaneity and with little care as to
details of execution or of ostentation.’
56. Mate and Kulkarni, Tārif, p. 25.
57. Mate and Kulkarni, Tārif, p. 30.
58. Khandalavala, ‘Reflections on Deccani Painting’, p. 25: ‘The general handling
of the miniatures shows that the substratum of the technique of fresco painting
in the Vijayanagar empire has come through here as a base, because the large
area of blue background and the golden yellow on top are treated almost as an
alcove on a wall.’
59. Mate and Kulkarni, Tārif, p. 12; Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 18.
60. Kramrisch, Survey of Painting in the Deccan, p. 137: ‘The palace scenes lay out
the architecture in clumsy panels in which Timurid tradition is encumbered
partly by attempts along western avenues of shading some of the frames and by
making walls appear substantial.’
61. Kramrisch, Survey of Painting in the Deccan, p. 141.
62. Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 19: ‘The man so closely resembles Sultan
Hussein in the Tārif that we can assume he is the same king, painted by the
same artist. There is however a new attempt at Persian refinement. A leafy
arabesque fills the background and there are rippling contours everywhere.’
64. Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ‘Style of Shiraz’: ‘Painters had to look
elsewhere for their livelihood. Some went to. . . . the independent Deccan
states.’
65. Brend, Perspectives on Persian Painting, p. 74.
66. Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, p. 23: ‘Portraits at Ahmadnagar show a close
relationship to earlier Mughal works, especially to those by the Iranian artists
Mir Sayyid Ali, Abd us Samad, and Dost Muhammad, whom the emperor
Humayun had brought with him to India. It is possible that the sultans of
Ahmadnagar employed Persian painters of the same caliber and that a
synthesis of Indian and Iranian elements occurred in the Deccan.’
69. Kramrisch, Survey of Painting in the Deccan, p. 144: ‘A peculiar mannerism of
showing the pupil as a vertical line is possibly a misunderstood way of making
a small dot in the Mughal manner of the late sixteenth century.’
70. A large part of this section is reproduced from Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Non-Issue of
Coinage: The Monetary Policies of the Post-Bahamani Sultanates’, Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society (in press).
71. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Sikka’, by C.E. Bosworth (Leiden: Brill, 1997),
vol. IX, p. 592: ‘The right of issuing gold and silver coinage was a royal
prerogative. Hence in the caliphate, the operation of sikkā, the right of
the ruler to place his name on the coinage, eventually became one of the
insignia of royal power, linked with that of the khutbā [q.v. ], the placing of
the ruler’s name in the bidding prayer during the Friday congregational
worship.’
72. This was not only a medieval or early modern phenomenon, but existed in the
subcontinent as early as the first millennium BCE. It has been noted by early
historians of India, such as Vincent Smith, in Imperial Gazetteer of India,
Oxford, 1909, vol. 2, p. 287, ‘After the time of Apollodotus, the Indian
provinces were governed by sundry Greek kings, known only from their coins,
and whose history is in consequence extremely obscure.’
73. P.L. Gupta, ‘Coinage’, in Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan, vol. 2,
p. 438: ‘The Bahmani coins are equally important for the verification of the
dates given in the chronicles. Sikkā or the right to coin money, was regarded as
one of the royal privileges; and in any dynasty, each claimant to throne and
every one who tried to carve out a kingdom for himself, lost no time in issuing
at least a few coins after he came to power.’ See also H.K. Sherwani, ‘Bahmani
Coinage as a Source of Deccan History’, in Mahamahopadhyaya Prof. D.V.
Potdar Sixty-First Birthday Commemoration Volume (Poona, 1950), pp. 204– 18.
74. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Sikka’, p. 592: ‘The new holders of power within the
conquered lands finally placed their own names on newly-minted coins or
counterstamped them on older coins, this was not a sign of a prerogative
reserved to the caliphs. . . . It can thus be said with some certainty that the idea
of sikkā as a prerogative of caliphal sovereignty had not yet developed in the
early years of the Islamic community.’
75. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Sikka’, p. 595: ‘While in theory the right of sikkā
flowed downward from God, through the Prophet, to his vicegerent the caliph,
and from him to his vassal/ ally, and ultimately perhaps to the latter’s heir or an
important governor, in practice it now moved in the opposite direction.
The local strong man who controlled the mint defined his political and even
religious position by acknowledging only those overlords who were valuable
to his status, or by choosing Kur’anic and other legends that defined his
allegiance in the Sunni-Shi‘i divide.’
76. Dilip P. Balsekar and Sarjerao J. Bhamre, Khandesh Faruqi Gharane Itihas va
Nani (Anjaneri: Nasik, 2008).
77. John S. Deyell and Robert E. Frykenberg, ‘Sovereignty and the Sikka under
the Raj: Minting Prerogative and Imperial Legitimacy in India’, Indian
Economic and Social History Review, vol. XIX, no. 1 (Jan.– Mar. 1982), p. 9.
78. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Sikka’, p. 592.
79. This date of death for Kalimullah Shah, the last Bahmani sultan, is itself based
on numismatic evidence, creating a slightly circular argument. The actual date
of his death at Ahmadnagar, where he was in exile, is unknown.
80. The exceptions are the singular coin issues of the Golconda kings, Jamshid
Qutb Shah and Subhan Quli Qutb Shah. These are extremely rare and the coin
attributed to the latter is based on the uncertain reading of a single coin. Only
one type of rare issue can be attributed to the next king, Ibrahim Qutb Shah,
even though he ruled for 30 years, suggesting that these coins were not meant
for circulation but were novelty issues.
81. John S. Deyell, Living without Silver: The Monetary History of Early Medieval
North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1990), p. 5.
82. There are also secondary historic references to the common availability of
copper coins in the middle of the sixteenth century; for example, a description
of the battle of Talikota by Philip Meadows Taylor, A Student’s Manual of the
History of India (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1871), p. 299: ‘As [the
Vijayanagara army] approached it was met by a withering fire from the large
guns, of shot, and copper money enclosed in strong canvas bags.’
83. Mohammad Abdul Wali Khan, Copper Coins of the Adil Shahi Dynasty of Bijapur
(Hyderabad: Birla Archaeological and Cultural Research Institute, 1980).
84. Aravind S. Athavale, ‘Coins of the Nizam Shahi Sultanate of Ahmednagar’, in
K.K. Maheshwari and Biswajeet Rath (eds), Numismatic Panorama: Essays in the
Memory of Late Shri S.M. Shukla (New Delhi: Harman Publishing House,
1996), pp. 291– 320.
85. For a discussion of Islamic coins as a historical source, see Stefan Heidemann,
‘Numismatics’, in A New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1, Chase Robinson,
ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 648– 53.
86. Hasmukh Shah, ‘A Pedigree 12 Tanka of Gujarat Sultan Ahmad Shah I and
a Silver Coin of Murtiza Nizam Shah I’, Nidhi, vol. II (Nagpur, 2008),
pp. 113 –14.
87. Gupta, ‘Coinage’, p. 443: ‘From a farman issued by him [Adil Shah], it appears
that the bankers, merchants, and village people were reluctant to accept his
huns.’
88. The Adil Shahi silver currency unit called a larin (or lari), which was a hairpin-
shaped silver ingot, was minted and circulated largely in the port town of
Dabhol. This currency was of an imported pattern and is only found around
the ports of the Adil Shahs, with no real circulation inland. The larin is named
after a region in Iran and was an established mode of payment in Gujarat and
the western seaboard of India, as part of the more extensive Indian Ocean trade.
For more information about the larin, see Howland Wood, The Gampola Larin
Hoard (New York: American Numismatic Society, 1934); there is information
about this kind of currency specific to the Deccan in Joshi and Sherwani,
History of Medieval Deccan, vol. 2, p. 443; also see Najaf Haider, ‘Precious Metal
Flows and Currency Circulation in the Mughal Empire’, Journal of the Economic
and Social History of the Orient, vol. 39, no. 3 (1996), pp. 298– 364.
89. Mir Fazaluddin Ali Khan, ‘Qutb Shahi Coins’, in Studies in Archaeology and
History: Commemoration Volume of Prof. S. Nurul Hasan (Rampur: Rampur Raza
Library, 2003) pp. 227– 30.
90. This prevalence of copper coins was also true of the Bahmanis and can be
observed in museum collections; also see Joshi and Sherwani, History of
Medieval Deccan, p. 432: ‘While gold coins are scarce, copper coins are available
in large numbers.’
91. The issues and problems in the treatment of coins in South Asia are expounded
by Deyell in Living without Silver, pp. 272– 91.
92. Stan Goron and J.P. Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates (New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 2001), p. 314: ‘Readers should note that it was
Ibrahim Adil Shah I who first seems to have called himself shah rather than
khan.’ According to H.K. Sherwani, ‘Independence of Bahmani Governors’,
Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Ninth Session, Annamalai
University), 1945, p. 161, ‘Ibrahim Adil Shah called himself Shah in
1539, and the date therefore may be taken as the death of Waliullah Shah
Bahmani.’
93. Shamsuddin Muzaffar III ruled from 1561 till 1573 nominally, and issued a
scarce ceremonial silver coin in his second brief reign in 1583, but ten years of
Mughal rule had already had an impact on the monetary system. Within
certain mercantile circuits within Gujarat, such as Surat, Baroda, and Broach,
non-standard coinage such as the Mahmudi was common in circulation, and
even the Mughals had to capitulate to this system of local coinage; for more
details on such money, see Om Prakash, ‘Co-existence of Standardized and
Humble Money: The Case of Mughal India’, paper for session 61 of the XIV
International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, Finland, 21 – 25 August
2006.
94. Joshi, ‘Adilshahi Administration’, p. 235: ‘The Deccan Sultanates copied these
Bahmani institutions when they became independent. But, except the Sultan
of Golconda, none of them – during the sixteenth century – arrogated to
themselves the right of issuing gold coins or of striking the naubat five times a
day.’ However, Ahmad Nizam Shah I is mentioned as striking coins in his own
name by later authors, such as quoted in Michell and Zebrowski, Architecture
and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, p. 10.
95. Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 326: ‘The coins of this
ruler [Murtaza Nizam Shah I (1565 –88 CE)], the first of the Nizam Shahi
rulers to issue coins in his own name, are known dated from 989 H. [1581 CE]
to 996 H. [1587 CE].’
96. Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 326: ‘A number of the
Nagar copper coins are known overstruck on the coins of the Bahmanis and the
sultans of Gujarat’; a couple of the Gujarat (Nasiruddin Mahumad III and
Muzaffar Shah II) and and Bahmani copper coins counterstruck by the Nizam
Shahs can be seen in Sanjay Godbole, ‘Coins of Sultan of Gujarat Restruck by
Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar’ and ‘Copper Coin of Kalimullah Shah
Bahmani Restruck by Murtaza Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar’, Journal of the
Numismatic Society of India (Varanasi, 2011).
97. Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 332: ‘Qutb ul Mulk
declared independence in 1518, upon the death of Mahmud Bahman Shah . . . .
Jamshid Qutb Shah (1543– 50) is the first ruler to have coins minted.
There are two types, both rare in their occurrence. Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah
(1550 – 80) has only one coin type.’
98. Gupta, History of Medieval Deccan, p. 444n: ‘It is doubtful whether the coins
attributed to Jamshid and Subhan are genuine.’ However, the coins of Jamshid
Qutb Shah and Subhan Quli Qutb Shah have been catalogued as such in
Mohammad Abdul Wali Khan, Qutub Shahi Coins in the Andhra Pradesh
Government Museum (Hyderabad: Birla Archaeological and Cultural Research
Institute, 1961), pp. 17 – 18.
99. Goron and Goenka, Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 335: ‘Despite his thirty-
year rule, very few coins of this ruler have been found or attributed. . . .
Otherwise the only other coin published for this ruler is a smallish falus of
unstated weight published in NCirc May 1955, again with a reading which is
by no means certain from the illustration.’
100. Mohammad Abdul Wali Khan and Parmeshwari Lal Gupta, Copper Coins of
Barid Shahs of Bidar and the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar (Hyderabad: Birla
Archaeological and Cultural Research Institute, 1982), pp. 3 – 4: ‘It is only
the fourth ruler of the dynasty, . . . who may, with certainty, be said to have
issued coins in the latter part of his reign in the name of his own dynasty.
In the earlier coins, he retained the name of the Bahmani ruler Kalimullah on
the obverse; it is only on the reverse that he placed a new legend Bi-amr-i-
Sultan Barid Shah.’ The mules are also mentioned in Goron and Goenka,
Coins of the Indian Sultanates, p. 321: ‘The first dated coins in the Bidar series
were struck during the reign of this ruler [Ibrahim Barid Shah]. Four
different types are known so far. One of them has the name of Kalimullah,
the last Bahmani ruler, on the reverse.’ However, the coin itself is dated
993 H. [1585 CE].
101. Sherwani, ‘Independence of Bahmani Governors’, p. 161.
102. With the later Bahmanis, the attribution of coins becomes difficult in light of
the lack of uniformity in dies and metrology. This is discussed in some detail
while describing the coins of Mahmud Shah in Goron and Goenka, Coins of the
Indian Sultanates, p. 305: ‘The copper is copious and struck in a large number
of varieties. . . . The style of engraving varies considerably suggesting that the

coins were struck at a number of different mints. No mint-name, however, is
found on the coins. The weight of the coins varies a great deal and it becomes
more difficult to assign them to specific denominations. . . . It is noticeable
that a greater number of coins with garbled legends occur during the
reign. As few of the copper coins have legible dates, it is not possible to
determine any sequence in the issue of the coins.’ The catalogue lists 29 types,
with a note that ‘other copper types of this ruler probably exist’. See p. 309:
‘Some of the gani coins are quite heavy, weighing around 17 g. The dates on
the coins appear to be mainly fixed, from the previous reign or posthumous.
Some are dated 930 (like the coins of Waliullah), and some even appear to have
893! While others have dates between 950 and 952. By that time, the
Bahmani sultanate had ceased to exist but the successor rulers were not yet
bold enough to strike coins in their own names.’ The posthumous issues are
also discussed in Joshi and Sherwani, History of Medieval Deccan, p. 439:
‘According to Firishtah, Kalimullah left his capital in 934 AH and took
asylum at Ahmadnagar, where he died soon after. But coins dated 942, 950,
951, and 952 AH are known to have been issued in his name . . . the fact
remains that some coins were issued posthumously in his name. They
undoubtedly indicate that the Bahmanis held their prestige even after their
total extinction.’
103. The numbers of late Bahmani coins found in excellent condition across a very
large area of the Deccan confirms this trend. As Sherwani suggests in
‘Independence of Bahmani Governors’, p. 162, the independent post-Bahmani
kingdoms ‘issued coins in the name of the sovereign without any fear of
interference from the centre’.
104. Some of the statistical data for hoards can be found in P.L. Gupta, Coin Hoards
from Maharashtra (Varanasi: Numismatic Society of India, 1970), and Coin
Hoards from Gujarat State (Varanasi: Numismatic Society of India, 1969).
105. Athavale, ‘Coins of the Nizam Shahi Sultanate’, p. 298.
106. There is some research on monetary flows and trade, mostly centred around
intermediary ports like Hormuz, such as Haidar, ‘Precious Metal Flows’,
and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Money and the Market in India: 1100– 1700
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1998).
107. J.F. Richards, ‘Mughal State Finance and the Premodern World Economy’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 23, no. 2 (April 1981), p. 297;
also see P.M. Joshi, ‘Coins Current in the Kingdom of Golkonda’, Studies in the
History of the Deccan: Medieval and Modern—Prof. A.R. Kulkarni Felicitation
Volume (Delhi: Pragati Publications, 2002), pp. 146– 55: ‘By the treaty of
1636 Golconda was reduced more or less to the position of a vassal state of the
Mughal empire and one of the conditions of the treaty was that gold and silver
coins issued from Golconda were to bear the Mughal coins legends. Moreover
the dies of the first issues were engraved at the Imperial Court and sent to
Golconda by the order of Shah Jahan.’
108. Jaroslav Strnad, Monetary History of Mughal India as Reflected in Silver Coin
Hoards (New Delhi: Harman Publishing, 2001), pp. 71– 3.
109. M.H. Martin, ‘The Reforms of the Sixteenth Century and Akbar’s
Administration: Metrological and Monetary Considerations’ in The Imperial
Monetary System of Mughal India, 1556 –1707, J.F. Richards, ed. (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press India, 1987), pp. 68 – 99.
110. Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India, 1200– 1800 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 124– 8.
111. Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Deccan Frontier and Mughal
Expansion, ca. 1600: Contemporary Perspectives’, Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient, vol. 47, no. 3 (2004), pp. 367–8: ‘For while the
Mughal claim by the 1580s was that the whole of the Deccan fell under their
suzerainty, the rulers of neither Bijapur nor Golkonda could countenance such a
claim. . . . Besides, from the early sixteenth century, there was the Safavid
connection, and the fact that both Bijapur and Golkonda had periodically
recognised in the Safavids a form of “ritual suzerainty”, often inserting the
names of the rulers of Iran for example into the Friday prayers in their capital
cities. The flow of Iranian migrants into the Deccan in the last quarter of the
sixteenth century, and the fact that these migrants constituted a significant part
of the elite in both Bijapur and Golkonda, only served to strengthen these ties.’
112. David Shea and Anthony Troyer, trans., Dabistan, or School of Manners (Paris,
1843), p. cxlvii: ‘At last, in the month of December, A.D. 1579, twenty-six years
before his death, he substituted for the common profession of the Muhammedans
the new: “There is no God but God, and Akbar his khalif (or deputy)”.’
113. Subrahmanyam and Alam, ‘Deccan Frontier and Mughal Expansion’, p. 362:
‘The point to be made then is that while there is a certain retrospective
inevitability about Mughal expansion, contemporaries did not wholly share
this sense until the late sixteenth century.’
114. H.K. Sherwani, The Bahmanis of the Deccan (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1985), p. 87.
115. This would also explain the attitude of deference that all the post-Bahmani
sultanates had toward the Bahmani royal family and presence. Sherwani,
‘Independence of Bahmani Governors’, p. 160: ‘It is remarkable that every
time a powerful governor like the ruler of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar gets the
better of the royal forces against a Barid resulting in the defeat of the
[Bahmani] king, he invariably treats him in a right royal manner as befits a
suzereign, and never acts as an independent monarch.’
116. S.A. Hussain, ‘Zakhira e Nizam Shah’, Bulletin of the Indian Institute of History
of Medicine, vol. XXIII, no. 1 (1993): pp. 58 – 65.
117. ‘Kitāb-i hashāʼish’ (manuscript LJS 278), Kislak Special Collections Centre,
˙
University of Pennsylvania Libraries.
118. S. Mujahid Husain Zaidi (ed.), Tarikh-i Qutbi (also called the Tarikh-i Ilchi-yi
Nizam Shah) of Khurshah bin Qubad Al-Husaini (New Delhi: Jamia Millia
Islamia, 1965).
252 NOTES TO PAGES 61 – 67
119. Sunil Sharma, ‘The City of Beauties in Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape’,

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 24, no. 2
(2004): pp. 73 – 81.
120. P.K. Gode, ‘Sabajiprataparaja, a Protégé of Burhan Nizam Shah of
Ahmadnagar and His Works – between A.D. 1500 and 1560’, Annals of the
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 24, no. 3/4 (1943): pp. 156 – 64;
P.K. Gode, ‘Identification of Dalpat Rai Mentioned in Burhān-i-Masir
with Dalapatiraja the Author of the Dharmasastra work called the
Nrsimhaprasad’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 2 (1938):
pp. 313 – 18.
121. Sheldon Pollock (trans.), ‘Bouquest of Rasa’ and ‘River of Rasa’ by Bhanudatta
(New York: New York University Press, 2009), pp. xxii– xxiii.
122. Christopher Minkowski, ‘On Suryadasa and the Invention of Bidirectional
Poetry (Vilomakavya)’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 124, no. 2
(2004): pp. 325– 33.
123. Jamil Jalibi (trans.), Divān-i Hasan Shauqi (Karachi: Anjuman-i Tariqqi-i
Urdu Pakistan, 1971).
124. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in
Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012),
pp. 82 – 4.
125. Subrahmanyam, Courtly Encounters, pp. 84 – 5.
126. Dušan Deák, ‘Maharashtra Saints and the Sufi Tradition: Eknath, Chand
Bodhale and the Datta Sampradaya’, Journal of Deccan Studies, vol. 3, no. 2
(Jul. – Dec. 2005): pp. 22 – 47.
127. Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Vernacular as a Space: Writing in the Deccan’, South Asian
History and Culture, vol. 7, no. 3 (2016): pp. 258– 70.
128. S.G. Tulpule, Classical Marāthı̄ Literature: From the Beginning to A.D. 1818
˙
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1979), p. 377.
Chapter 3 Urban Patterns, Water Supply Systems,

and Fortification
1. Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Medieval Chaul under the Nizam Shahs: An Historic and
Archaeological Investigation’, in Laura E. Parodi (ed.), The Visual World of
Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era
(London: IB Tauris, 2014), pp. 53 – 75.
2. G. Yazdani, ‘Parenda: An Historical Fort’, Annual Report of the Archaeological
Department of His Exalted Highness The Nizam’s Dominions (1921 – 24),
Appendix A, pp. 17 – 26.
3. André Wink, Al Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 3 (Leiden:
Brill, 1990), p. 76: ‘The city had little or no autonomy in the historical Indian
ocean region’; pp. 77 – 8: ‘The Indo-Islamic cities were the sites of political and
military power, apart from being commercial centres. But even so, they were
essentially not recognized as legal entities in any way, and the inhabitants of
cities and towns enjoyed no special privileges.’
4. Marc Gaborieau, ‘Indian Cities’ in The City in the Islamic World, vol. 1, Salma
K., Jayyusi Renata Holod, Attilio Petruccioli and André Raymond, eds
(Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 200: ‘Almost everything remains to be done’ in the
study of medieval and Islamic urban planning in India.
5. Salma K. Jayyusi, Renata Holod, Attilio Petruccioli and André Raymond,
eds, The City in the Islamic World (Leiden: Brill, 2008), vols 1 and 2; a
functional definition for an Islamic city has been provided by Heinz Gaube in
Iranian Cities (New York: NYU Press, 1979), pp. 18 – 19. He proposed that an
Iranian (or, as in our case, Iranicate) Islamic city would contain the following
functions: 1. Seat of government; 2. Centre of intellectual and religious life; 3.
The place of non-agrarian economic activities; 4. The dwelling place of a
population which is not employed in the primary sector. These four functions
are not adequately fulfilled in any single settlement of the Nizam Shahs,
barring Daulatabad; see Mehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie Shokoohy,
Tughluqabad, a Paradigm for Indo-Islamic Urban Planning and Its Architectural
Component (London: Araxus, 2006).
6. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency vol. XVIII. pt. 3 (Bombay: Govt. Central
Press, 1885), p. 144.
7. Vasant Shinde et al., ‘A Report on the Recent Archaeological Investigations at
Junnar, Maharashtra (2005– 07)’, Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute,
vol. 66 – 67 (2006– 07): pp. 113– 59.
8. Suresh Vasant Jadhav, Rock Cut Cave Temples at Junnar: An Integrated Study,
unpublished thesis (Pune: Deccan College Post Graduate Research Institute,
1980).
9. M.S. Mate, ‘Islamic Architecture of the Deccan’, Bulletin of the Deccan College
Research Institute, vol. 22 (1962 – 63): pp. 1 – 91.
10. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency vol. XVIII, pt. 3 (Bombay: Govt. Central
Press, 1885), p. 153.
11. Sohoni, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds’, pp. 111–26.
12. Klaus Rötzer, ‘The Architectural Legacy of Malik Ambar, Malik Sandal and
Yaqut Dabuli Habshi’, in African Elites in India – Habshi Amarat, Kenneth
X. Robbins and John McCleod, eds (Ocean, NJ: Mapin, Amalgamated Book
Services, 2006), p. 79: ‘In the Deccan at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, military architecture and artillery were still not standardized. They
were the work of craftsmen who remained faithful to techniques handed down
in a restricted circle, often a single family. To this must be added the
geographical diversity of the region . . . each team was as accustomed to
working in a particular stone as in a particular style.’
13. George Michell, ‘Daulatabad and Aurangabad under the Mughals (1660 –
1707)’, in Helen Philon (ed.), Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan, 14th– 19th
Centuries (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010), pp. 88 – 97.
14. Rötzer, ‘Architectural Legacy’, pp. 69 – 105.
15. Rötzer, ‘Architectural Legacy’, pp. 69 – 105.

16. M.S. Mate and T.V. Pathy, Daulatabad: A Report on the Archaeological
Investigation (Poona, Aurangabad: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research
Institute, Marathawada University, 1992).
17. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmadnagar District, vol. XVII (Mumbai:
Government Central Press, 2003 [1884]), pp. 356– 7.
18. The foundation of the city has associated with it a variant of the usual ‘hare and
hound’ story: the site is deemed auspicious because a predator is scared away by
the prey, an epiphany to suggest that the underdog will be protected against
larger empires. A similar story is told in the ‘Chronicles of Fernando Nuniz’ in
Robert Sewell, Vijayanagara: A Forgotten Empire, p. 299.
19. George Michell and Richard Eaton, Firuzabad: Palace City of the Deccan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
20. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar.
21. Lt. Col. Sir Wolseley Haig, Indian Antiquary (June 1920), p. 108.
22. Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, vol. 3, p. 201.
23. Subrahmanymam, ‘A Place in the Sun’, p. 285: ‘[The Nizam Shah] had built a
stone fort at four or five bowshots’ distance from the city, and this fort was the
seat of the hakim. Around the fort was a maidan and open fields. The city was
rectangular, and there were no city walls.’
24. A royal palace is mentioned once by Gadre and was a gift to Shah Tahir and
later called Shah Tahir’s palace: Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar,
p. 49; Briggs also refers to a royal palace in the city and mentions the Baghdad
palace in fortified Ahmadnagar, which possibly refers to the fort and not the
city: Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, vol. 2, p. 159.
25. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, p. 52.
26. Haig, ‘The History of the Nizam Shahi Kings of Ahmadnagar’, Indian
Antiquary (December 1922), p. 236.
27. Lt. Col. Sir Wolseley Haig, ‘The History of the Nizam Shahi Kings of
Ahmadnagar’, Indian Antiquary (December 1922), p. 236.
28. Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica 1933 –34, Supp. 10 (henceforth EIM); Annual
Report on Indian Epigraphy 1972–72, D69 (henceforth ARIE); EIM 1935– 36,
pp. 37 – 8; ARIE 1972– 73, D68.
29. EIM 1933– 34, pp. 10 – 11.
30. EIM 1935– 36, pp. 37 – 8
31. Stewart Gordon, ‘Forts and Social Control in the Maratha State’, Modern Asian
Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (1979): pp. 1– 17.
32. Dominic Brookshaw, ‘Palaces, Pavilions and Pleasure-gardens’, Middle Eastern
Literatures, vol. 6, no. 2 (July 2003): pp. 199– 223.
33. Michell and Eaton, Firuzabad, p. 83.
34. Sohoni, ‘Patterns of Faith’, pp. 110– 27.
35. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, plates V– VIII.
36. Shokoohy and Shokoohy, Tughluqabad.
37. Government Zincographic Press, Map Plan of Ahmadnagar City (Poona: 1879).
38. Some portion of this section is reproduced from Sohoni, ‘Medieval Chaul
under the Nizam Shahs’.
39. In the Mirat-i Ahmadi by Ali Muhammad Khan, translated by Sir E.C.
Bayley as The Local Muhammedan Dynasties: Gujarat (London: W.H. Allen
and Co., 1886), Danda Rajpuri, south of Chaul, is mentioned as a
sarkar of the Gujarat subah. The sultans of Gujarat mentioned this port
as their tributary, though those claims can be regarded largely as
rhetorical. S.C. Misra and M.L. Rahman, (eds), Mirat i Sikandari
(Baroda: Department of History, Maharaja Sayajirao University, 1961),
pp. 147 – 8, mentions incursions into Mahim and Jeul (sic) by the sultans
of Gujarat.
40. V. Gogte et al., ‘The Ancient Port of Chaul’, Journal of Indian Ocean Archaeology,
no. 30 (2006): pp. 62 – 80; V. Gogte, ‘Discovery of the Ancient Port of Chaul’,
Man and Environment, vol. 28, no. 1 (2001): pp. 67 – 74.
41. Da Cunha, Notes, p. 4.
42. Maharashtra State Gazetteer: Kolaba District (revised edition) [vol. XI of Gazetteer
of Bombay Presidency] (Bombay: Directorate of Printing and Stationary,
Maharashtra State, 1964), p. 728. The pirates were allegedly so great in
number that even Portuguese battleships were afraid of any potential
confrontation.
43. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 732.
45. Gogte et al., ‘Ancient Port of Chaul’.
46. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, pp. 727.
47. Benjamin Rowlandson, trans., Tuhfat ul Mujahideen [by Zeinuddin Sheikh]
(London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1833), pp. 92 – 3; Ibid., Gazetteer
pp. 24 – 9.
49. Ibid., da Cunha, pp. 34 – 6; P.M. Joshi, ‘The Portuguese on the Deccan coast:
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Journal of Indian History, vol. XLVI pt. 1
(April 1968), p. 83.
50. Subrahmanyam, ‘Place in the Sun’, p. 287: ‘The firangis have a rule that
ships with horses are taken first to Goa, where they pick out the ones that they
want. Thereafter, the ships went on to Chaul, which was in the jagir of Nizam-
ul-Mulk.’
55. Gogte et al., ‘Ancient Port of Chaul’, p. 62; Da Cunha, Notes, pp. 7 – 11.
56. Rowlandson, Tuhfat ul Mujahideen, p. 92; Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 718;
Da Cunha, Notes, p. 7.
57. Afanasy Nikitich Nikitin, Afanasy Nitikin’s Voyage Beyond Three Seas,
1466– 1472 (Moscow: Raduga, 1985).
58. John Winter Jones, trans., The Travels of Ludovico Varthema (London: Hakluyt
Society, 1863), p. 114.
59. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, pp. 78 – 9.
60. Letter IX from Muscat dated 19 January 1625, in The Travels of Sig. Pietro della
Valle, a Noble Roman, into East-India and Arabia Desert (London: Printed by
J Macock for John Place, 1665), pp. 224– 5.
61. Maharashtra State Gazetteer, p. 750. This mound is also noted as being a mile
south of Bhagvati Devi’s temple, close to a pond called Pokharn.
62. This direction-stone has not been located, but based on local inquiries, I could
only speculate that it would have been in the vicinity of the caravansarai.
64. Henry E.J. Stanley, trans., A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and
Malabar by Duarte Barbosa (London: Hakluyt Society, 1866). pp. 69 – 71:
‘This place is one of great commerce in merchandise, and in the months of
December, January, February and March there are many ships from the
Malabar country and all other parts, which arrive with cargoes. . . . In this
port, there are few inhabitants, except during three or four months of the
year, the time for putting in cargo, when there arrive merchants from all the
neighborhood, and they make their bargains during this period, and
despatch their goods, and after that return to their homes till the next
season, so that this place is like a fair in those months’; Maharashtra State
Gazetteer, p. 735.
65. Nikitin, Barbosa, and Della Valle are all struck by the frugal lifestyles of the
native people, unless they are soldiers or administrators.
66. F.C. Danvers. The Portuguese in India, vol. 1 (London: W.H. Allen & Co, 1894),
p. 291.
67. Wink, Al-Hind, vol. 3, p. 73. Wink refers to several instances of the ephemeral
nature of Indian settlements in this period, which he says were a result of
natural and man-made factors. He argues that most settlements could not be
thought of as real cities in a European sense because they faced ‘sharp seasonal
fluctuations of the number of their inhabitants, the general mobility of large
numbers of people, the long tradition of internal migration caused by military
invasions and raids, famines, epidemics and droughts, as well as the general
volatility of Indian political and military life’; p. 76: ‘The city had little or no
autonomy in the historical Indian ocean region . . . the Indian city as such was
certainly not the privileged locus of sustained and cumulative social change’;
pp. 77 – 8: ‘The Indo-Islamic cities were the sites of political and military
power, apart from being commercial centres. But even so, they were essentially
not recognized as legal entities in any way, and the inhabitants of cities and
towns enjoyed no special privileges.’
68. Wink, Al-Hind, vol. 3, p. 1: ‘The instability of Indian cities, while primarily
due to geophysical and hydrological factors, was enhanced by demographic
volatility associated with the monsoon climate and the generally very high
mobility of the Indo-Islamic ruling elites.’
69. Yazdani, ‘Parenda’, pp. 17 – 26; sketch plans of some of the structures are in a
report produced by the Directorate of Archaeology (Govt. of Maharashtra):
‘Detailed Strategy for Preservation and Restoration of Historical Monuments
in Latur and Osmanabad Districts.’ This report was part of the Maharashtra
Emergency Earthquake Rehabilitation Programme (assisted by World Bank
Credit # 2594), and was prepared in April 1996 by JPS Associates. However,
the drawings in the report are inaccurate and not scaled accurately.
70. The fort of Ahmadnagar is unique in that respect, where it did not undergo
such a transformation.
71. The JPS Associates report uses the name ‘Chor Well’.
72. M.S. Mate, A History of Water Management and Hydraulic Technology in India,
1500 B.C. to 1800 A.D. (Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1998), pp. 99 –122.
73. R.C. Agrawal, Archaeological Remains in Western Deccan (Delhi: Agam Kala
Prakashan, 1989), pp. 38 – 9.
74. Personal correspondence with Dr. Klaus Rötzer.
75. M.S. Mate, History of Water Management, pp. 127– 30.
76. Haig, ‘History of the Nizam Shahi Kings’, p. 236: ‘The king had never seen
the beautiful garden known as the watercourse of Niʾmat Khan, since its
completion, and he therefore turned to it, to inspect it.’
77. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, pp. 64 – 78; Kalyan Kumar
Chakravarty, Gyani Lal Badam, Vijay Paranjpye (eds), Traditional water
management systems of India (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2006).
78. Some portion of this section is reproduced from Pushkar Sohoni, ‘From
Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds’.
79. The other egress at the back is a small emergency doorway, which could not
have been used for large movements of troops.
80. Gordon, Marathas, p. 35: ‘Families shifted loyalty much more on the basis of
factional politics than they did on the basis of proximity to something later
historians call a “frontier” with a neighboring polity’; p. 38: ‘“Conquest’” of
this area meant that the invading kings sent messages to these local powers and
local officials to attend his camp with a payment and their and their sanad of
authority in hand. Those who came received robes of honour, and had their
authority confirmed by fresh sanads in the name of the invading king.’
81. Sohoni, ‘From Defended Settlements to Fortified Strongholds’.
82. Jean Deloche, Studies on Fortification in India (Pondicherry: Institut Franc ais de
Pondichéry; Paris: École Franc aise D’Extrême-Orient, 2007), and Four Forts of
the Deccan (Pondicherry: Institut Franc ais de Pondichéry; Paris: École Franc aise
d’Extrême Orient, 2009); see Klaus Rötzer, ‘Fortifications and Gunpowder in
the Deccan, 1368–1687’ in Sultans of the South: Arts of India’s Deccan Courts,
1323–1687, Navina Haidar and Marika Sardar, eds (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 2011). Books such as Sidney Toy, The Fortified Cities of India
(London: Heinemann, 1965) and The Strongholds of India (Melbourne:
W. Heinemann, 1957) were written in the mid-twentieth century, but are
not critical studies of fortification and are mostly without any historical context.

84. Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560 –1660: An Inaugural Lecture
Delivered before the Queen’s University of Belfast (Belfast: M. Boyd, 1956).
85. Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the
West, 1500– 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
86. Jeremy Black, War in the Early Modern World (London: Routledge, 2004),
p. 17: ‘The widespread availability of gunpowder technology underlines the
need to contextualize “technology” in order to understand why “advances”
were made in particular societies and what factors affected patterns and
practices of military diffusion.’
87. Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire,
1500– 1700 (New York: Routledge, 2002).
89. Eaton and Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture.
90. Gordon, Marathas, pp. 40 – 1, 178.
91. There were no large walled settlements under the Marathas or their later
Peshwa rulers. Mughals continued to wall cities, but the effectiveness of these
walls under artillery and mining attack is debatable.
92. This reaction to superior invading armies armed with good artillery can be
gleaned on multiple occasions throughout the history of the sixteenth century
written by Firishtah, from Briggs’s Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India.
93. Richard Gordon, ‘Forts and Social Control in the Maratha State’, Modern Asian
Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (February 1979): pp. 1 – 17.
94. Richard Eaton, ‘India’s Military Revolution: The View from the Early 16th
Century Deccan’, in Raziuddin Aquil and Kaushik Roy (eds), Warfare, Religion,
and Society in Indian History (New Delhi: Manohar, 2012), pp. 85–108.
95. For a lengthy exposition of this idea, see Catherine Asher, ‘Delhi Walled’, in
James Tracy, City Walls: The Urban Enciente in Global Perspective (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 279.
96. M.S. Mate, ‘Urban Culture of Medieval Deccan (1300 AD to 1650 AD)’,
Bulletin of the Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, vol. 56– 57
(1996 – 97), pp. 161– 217. From p. 181: ‘It is equally interesting to note that
nobility treated precaution as a better part of valor and ensconsed themselves
in their own Jagirs, although they had their mansions in the fortified areas of
the rtown but outside the citadel. Numerous instances have been cited by
Firishtah especially in the late Bahmani period, when the noblemen preferred
to camp outseid ethe fortified area of the town of Bidar.’
Chapter 4 Palaces and Mansions
1. Ghulam Yazdani, ‘Inscriptions from Ahmadnagar’ and ‘Some Unpublished

Inscriptions from the Bombay Presidency’, EIM 1935– 36 (1939), pp. 37 – 8;
M. Nazim in EIM 1933– 34, pp. 10 – 12.
2. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology, p. 138.
3. Lower taxation rates, prevention of subdivision of the estate, and the provision
to make the revenues of the property available to the descendants of the patron,
are some of the common reasons. In addition, as in this case, not only did the
king contribute to the waqf by providing additional revenue endowments,
but was also then prevented from having the land and grants revert back to
crown property. The reasons for the common practice of establishing pious
trusts for administering the properties of court members and nobility are
outlined by Maria E. Subtelny, Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and
Acculturation in Medieval Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
4. Firishtah, Tarikh e Ferishta, p. 279; Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmadnagar
district, p. 704.
5. H.I.S. Kanwar, ‘Foreign Impact on the Architecture of the Taj Mahal’, in
Studies in Foreign Relations of India (from the Earliest Times to 1947), P.M. Joshi
and M.A. Nayeem, eds (Hyderabad: State Archives, Government of Andhra
Pradesh, 1975).
6. Sayyid Ali Tabatabai, Burhan-i Maasir, Sayyid Hashimi, ed. (Hyderabad:
Majlis-i Makhtutat-i Farsiya, 1936), pp. 538– 9; and in Firishtah, Tarikh e
Ferishta, p. 143. A translation of the original is by Chand Husain Shaikh,
‘Literary Personages of Ahmadnagar’, Bulletin of the Deccan College Oriental
Research Institute, vol. 3 (1940 – 44): 212–18. Also see Nurussaid Akhtar,
‘Ahmadnagar ka Bagh-i Farah Bakhsh’,’ Qawmi Zahan (June 2006),
pp. 14 – 15, citing his source as an unspecified article by Chand Husain Shaikh.
7. This feature can be easily missed on account of the heavy-handed repairs
carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India, but was kindly pointed out
by George Michell.
8. Sir Jadunath Sarkar, trans., Masir-i Alamgiri: A History of the Emperor Aurangzeb
Alamgir by Saqi Mustad Khan (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1990), p. 157.
9. Firishtah, Tarikh e Firishtah, vol. 2, p. 279.
10. This inscription is published by M. Nazim, EIM 1933– 34, p. 12.
11. Firishtah, Tarikh e Firishtah, vol. 2, p. 280.
12. The inscription itself is published by M. Nazim, EIM 1933– 34, p. 12.
13. Haig, ‘History of the Nizam Shahi Kings’, p. 328.
14. Gadre, ‘Cultural Archaeology of Ahmednagar’, PhD dissertation, University
of Poona (1969), p. 268: ‘The dimensions of the palace which is referred to as
“angular” by Sayyid Ali Tabatabai in Burhan-i Ma’asir were definitely smaller
than the present dimensions, because the square ponds on four sides of the
present superstructure are so near that they must have been constructed by
Nei’mat Khan.’
15. Gadre, ‘Cultural Archaeology of Ahmednagar’, p. 268.
16. ‘On Sugar Mills’ (Bombay miscellaneous public documents), British Library
793.m.17.2 [793.m.17.28].
17. This poetry is mostly panegyric, using the usual tropes. See Omar Khalidi,
‘From Deccan to Hindustan? Gardens in the Deccan and Beyond’, Deccan
Studies, vol. V, no. 2 (July– December 2007).
18. Subrahmanyam, ‘Place in the Sun’, p. 285: ‘At the time that Murtaza Nizam
Shah had become mad, Salabat Khan had built a garden for him with tall
cypress trees outside the town. In the middle of it was a covered hauz, but Faizi
had not yet seen it.’
19. Kanwar, ‘Foreign Impact’; Subrahmanyam, ‘Place in the Sun’.
20. A letter in Marathi written by Sadashivraobhau to Nanasaheb Peshwa, dated
16 December 1759, made a passing mention of Farah Bagh as a fine place to
live. A copy of the letter is on display in the City Museum, Ahmadnagar.
21. British Library, London, India Office Records, IOR/F/4/1410/55639 [Note:
Bombay revenue department no. 8 of 1832]; British Library, London, India
Office Records, IOR/F/4/1410/55639 [Note: Bombay revenue department no.
29]; ‘On Sugar Mills’ (Bombay miscellaneous public documents), India Office
Records, 793.m.17.2 [793.m.17.28].
22. This structure is close to the Nizam Shahi hammam across the road opposite
the tourists’ entrance to the fort of Daulatabad. It is popularly understood as
the tomb of Chand Bodhale, an important personality in the spiritual history
of Daulatabad and Khuldabad, among Hindus and Sufis.
23. Maurice Cerasi, ‘Late-Ottoman Architects and Master Builders’, Muqarnas,
vol. 5 (1988), pp. 87 – 102.
24. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology, p. 66. Burhan Nizam Shah is credited with having
commissioned the garden of Hasht Bihisht.
25. Briggs, Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, vol. 3, p. 159.
27. Haig, ‘History of the Nizam Shahi Kings’, p. 29. A footnote states that the
garden was later called Bagh-i Hasht Bihisht.
28. Sarkar, Masir-i Alamgiri, p. 157.
29. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, plate XXXV.
30. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, p. 66.
31. Mentioned as Manjareshna in Burhan-i Ma’asir and as Manzar e Sabah in
Masir-i Alamgiri.
32. Villages called Manzarsumbah exist in Raigad and Latur districts as well,
suggesting the generic toponym, probably derived from a function of the site.
Unfortunately, I have not visited either of these sites to record the physical
terrain.
34. Sarkar, Masir-i Alamgiri, pp. 157– 8.
35. The sarpanch (village headman) of Dongargan village nearby narrated Puranic
stories alluding to the region, though he could not specify the sources for this
mythological geography.
36. A temple was built at one of these sites, and the British officers from the
Ahmadnagar cantonment mentioned it as a picnic spot that they called ‘Happy
Valley’, a name that persists to some measure even today. For a description of
this place, see Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmednagar District, vol. XVII
(Bombay: Government Central Press, 1884), p. 716.
37. James Laine, The Epic of Shivaji (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2001),
pp. 78 – 84.
38. Sir Jadunath Sarkar, ‘Malik Ambar: A New Life’, Indian Historical Quarterly,
vol. IX, no. 30 (September 1933), p. 641.
39. Project for the Completion of an Ancient Unfinished Work known as Bhatodee Tank in
the Ahmednuggur Collectorate of the Bombay Presidency (Bombay: Printed for the
Government at the Education Society’s Press, Byculla, 1867).
40. Project for the Completion of an Ancient Unfinished Work. For another proposal to
repair the dam, see ‘The Bhatodee Tank (Paper no. CLXXXIV)’ in Professional
Papers on Indian Engineering vol. V (Roorkee: Thomason College Press, 1868),
pp. 142 –51.
41. These figures are approximated from the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency
vol. XVII, p. 713, which estimates the capacity at ‘149 million cubic feet of
water’.
42. For another account of the battle, see Laine, Epic of Shivaji, pp. 78– 84.
43. Project for the Completion of an Ancient Unfinished Work. Figure 11 shows the
breach in the old dam that is repaired in the nineteenth century.
44. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, vol. XVII, p. 610: ‘According to local
tradition it was intended by its constructor to supply watr to the Shevgaon
town of Tisgaon. About sixteen miles north-east of Ahmadnagar, which was a
favorite residence of Salabat Khan and where he planted the groves of mangoes
and tamarinds’.
45. For details on Firuzabad, see Michell and Eaton, Firuzabad.
46. For details on these sites, see Pushkar Sohoni, ‘Architecture of the Nizam
Shahs’, in Helen Philon (ed.), Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan, 14th– 19th
Centuries (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010).
47. P.A. Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions (London: Melisende, 1999) vol. II,
pp. 1034 –5.
48. British Museum, Persian Mss. Add. 27, 251 and Or. 1390; a translation of the
first manuscript was published by Sarkar, ‘Malik Ambar’, and reproduced as
chapter II in Jadunath Sarkar, House of Shivaji (Calcutta: S.N. Sarkar, 1940,
1948, 1955). For the dates of this work, see K.K. Basu, ‘History of Ibrahim
Adil Shah of Bijapur’, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, vol. XXIV
(1938): pp. 189– 204.
49. See Henry Miers Elliot and John Dowson, trans., The History of India
as Told by Its Own Historians, vol. VI (Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1964),
pp. 414 –17.
50. For a critical edition, see V.K. Rajwade (ed.), Rādhāmādhavavilāsacampuh
Jayarama Pindyekrta, 2nd ed. (Pune: Varada Books, 1989).
51. Laine, Epic of Shivaji, pp. 76 – 84.
52. A.R. Kulkarni, Jedhe Shakavali-Karina (Pune: Manasanaman Publishers,
1999), p. 43, gives a transcription of the passage that relates to the battle of
Bhatavadi.
53. Survey of India Map Catalogue, Index no. 47, I– 16 (SE).
54. B.G. Tamaskar, The Life and Work of Malik Ambar (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i
Delli, 1978), p. 133; Sarkar, House of Shivaji, p. 21; for details of the inscription,
see T. Sambamurti Row, The Marathi Historical Inscription at the Sri
Brihadeeswaraswami Temple at Tanjore (Tanjore: Sri Krishna Vilasa Press, 1907).
55. The date of the battle is mentioned in the Jedhe Sakavali as October 1624,
but the Basatin ul Salatin declares it to be 1033 H and 1034 H in the same
manuscript (the change of the Hijri year happened on 6/7 October in
1624); Tamaskar, Life and Work of Malik Ambar, p. 136, on the basis of
circumstantial evidence, has quite convincingly argued a date of September
1624 CE.
56. Sarkar, House of Shivaji, p. 20, translated the Futuhat-i Adil Shahi (folio 289b,
British Museum Add. 27, 251) thus: ‘The rainy season invested the ground
with the mantle of water; the excess of mud and rain weakened both the
armies.’
57. For details of the poems, see Khalidi, ‘From Deccan to Hindustan?’
58. It was not uncommon in the sixteenth century to find plans, patterns, and
templates being transmitted on paper, either in albums or as scrolls, across the
Islamic world of Asia connected by the Indian Ocean; Renata Holod, ‘Text,
Plan and Building: On the Transmission of Architectural Knowledge’ in
Theories and Principles of Design in the Architecture of Islamic Societies, Margaret
Bentley Ševčenko, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program for Islamic
Architecture, 1988), pp. 1 –12; Gulrü Necipoğlu, ‘Chapter I: Architectural
Drawings and Scrolls in the Islamic World’ in The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and
Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica: Getty Centre for the History of
Arts and the Humanities, 1995), pp. 3 – 27.
Chapter 5 Mosques: Piety and Prayer
1. Sohoni, ‘Patterns of Faith’.

2. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Masjid’, by Johann Pedersen.
3. Z.A. Desai, ‘Architecture of the Post-Bahmani States’, in History of Medieval
Deccan, vol. 2, pp. 253–304, esp. p. 263: ‘But what came to be associated at a
later date with a Nizam Shahi mosque was the flying arch resting on small
minars in the middle, or springing from two flanking minarets of the fac ade.
This typical feature had perhaps its origin in the early Idgah at Ahmadnagar,
whereon account of lack of space for it in the wall, the central dome had to be
replaced by a suitable medium in the form of an arch for breaking the long
stretch of the skyline’; M.S. Mate, ‘Islamic Architecture of the Deccan’.
4. The two inscriptions relating to the mosque are published in G. Yazdani,
‘Some Unpublished Inscriptions from the Bombay Presidency’, EIM
(1935 – 36): pp. 39– 40.
5. ARIE 1965 –66, D 192.
6. EIM 1907– 08, p. 20.
7. EIM 1907– 08, p. 20.
8. This inscription also attributes the mosque to one Sayyid Muntajib. The
inscriptions are published in EIM, 1935 –36, p. 38, plate XXV (b); and in
EIM, 1972– 73, supp. 13, plate VI (c).
9. The inscriptions have been published in EIM 1933– 34 supp. 22, plates XII
(c) and XIII (a).
10. Afanasy Nikitin, Duarte Barbosa, Ludovico Varthema, Franc ois Pyrard,
Keeling (captain of the third voyage of the British East India Co.), Pietro della
Valle, and Cesar Frederici all left accounts of Chaul, from the late fifteenth to
the early seventeenth centuries. The two important chronicles are Nikitin,
Voyage beyond Three Seas, and Varthema, Jones (trans.), Travels of Ludovico
Varthema.
11. ARIE 1959 –60, D 150/151, claims that the inscriptions on the mosque and
the tomb are dated to 1624– 25, and that one of them refers to repairs carried
out.
12. ARIE 1961 –62, D 212.
Chapter 6 Tombs
1. EIM 1935– 36, pp. 37 – 8, plate XXV (a).

2. EIM 1933– 34, supp. 7.
3. EIM 1939– 40, p. 30, plate XIII (b).
4. Epigraphia Indica (Arabic and Persian Supplement) 1970, p. 48, plate X (b).
5. ARIE 1961 –62, D212.
6. Maharashtra State Gazetteers: Buldhana District (revised edition), p. 797.
7. This refers to the system of assigning two numbers to every Mughal official in
order to fix rank, status, revenue, and other privileges.
8. Shyam, Kingdom of Ahmadnagar, p. 303.
9. Elliot and Dowson, History of India, vol. VII, pp. 10 – 11 (citing the
Badshahnamah of Abdul Hamid Lahori, text, vol. 1, p. 308).
10. Z.A. Desai, Arabic, Persian and Urdu Inscriptions of West India: A Topographical
List (New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 1999), p. 140.
Chapter 7 Miscellaneous Buildings
1. C.A. Kincaid and Rao Bahadur D.B. Parasnis, A History of the Maratha People,
vol. 1 (Delhi: S. Chand, 1968), p. 92: ‘Ali Adil Shah renewed the treaty with
Ramraj. The two allies induced the king of Golconda to join them, and
invading Ahmadnagar, laid siege to the capital. At last Hussein Nizam Shah
was reduced to such straits that he was forced to order the execution of his best
general, Jehangir Khan, to cede the fortress of Kalyani to Bijapur and to
receive pan as an inferior from the hand of Ramraj. Hussein Nizam Shah’s
pride especially resented this last clause. After Ramraj had touched his hand,
Hussein Nizam Shah called out in a loud voice for a basin of water. He then
washed his hands in the most offensive manner possible.’
2. Gadre, Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar, pp. 64– 79.

3. ARIE 1958 –59, D56.
4. The author’s last visit in January 2009 resulted in heated arguments with
youngsters from neighbouring villages, who claimed that this well was
historically a mosque.
5. Gogte et al., ‘Ancient Port of Chaul’.
6. Kadiri, ‘Some More Direction-Stones’, pp. 48 – 9.
7. This direction-stone has not been located, but based on local inquiries, the
authors did track it down to that location.
8. The palace has been identified as a Bahmani palace by Helen Philon, but
guidebooks continue to attribute it to the Nizam Shahs; see Helen Philon,
‘Daulatabad, Gulbarga, Firuzabad, and Sagar under the Early Bahmanis
(1347 – 1422)’ in Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan, 14th to 19th centuries,
Helen Philon, ed. (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010), pp. 34 – 43.
9. A damaged inscription, part of which is with the Epigraphical Division of the
ASI at Nagpur, is set in the interior of the building.
Conclusion End of an Old World
1. See Stewart Gordon (ed.), Robes of Honour: Khil’at in Pre-Colonial and Colonial
India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), for a discussion of some of
the operative mechanisms of ceremony, gift-giving, and materials exchanged
for diverse materials such as paan and garments.
2. Joshi, ‘Adilshahi Administration’, p. 237: ‘The office of the Peshva does not
seem to have been a permanent institution at the Adilshahi court. During the
Bahmani dynasty, the Peshva was one of the ministers of the kingdom. Under
the Nizamshahs of Ahmadnagar he became the chief minister and appears to
have enjoyed the same status as the vakil us Sultanat did in Bijapur. In fact, the
Nizamshahi influence can be traced in this office, because a minister called the
Peshwa was appointed at the Adilshahi court first at the instance of Chand
Bibi, a Nizamshahi princess. . . . This seems to be the only instance when the
office of Peshva existed at Bijapur.’ The administrative apparatus of the Nizam
Shahs survived in Maratha administrative systems. The office of the Peshwa
was found only at the court of the Nizam Shahs and, later, at the court of the
Marathas.
3. Ronald Inden, ‘Embodying God: From Imperial Progresses to National
Progress in India’, in Text and Practice: Essays on South Asian History (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 241– 311.
4. For more on Mughal public appearances and darśana, see R. Nath, ‘A Curious
Inscription of Shah Jehan’s Jharokhā, Shah Burj, Red Fort, Delhi (1639-48
AD)’ in Indica (Heras Institute of Indian History and Culture), vol. 40, no. 2
(2003): pp. 153 –62, esp. p. 160: ‘But jharoka-darshana was so integrally
institutionalized within the Mughal Kingship and State, and had become so
necessary a function of the Mughal Emperor that he could not avoid it.’
5. See Phillip B. Wagoner, ‘Fortuitous Convergences and Essential Ambiguities:

Transcultural Political Elites in the Medieval Deccan’, International Journal of
Hindu Studies, vol. 3, no. 3 (December 1999): pp. 241– 64.
6. Y.N. Deodhar, ‘Secularism as Reflected in Shivaji’s Policy’, in Chhatrapati
Shivaji: Coronation Tercentenary Commemoration Volume (Bombay: University of
Bombay, 1975), pp. 67 – 78.
7. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State
Formation’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 51, no. 2 (May 1992): pp. 340– 63;
also see Michael N. Pearson, Coastal Western India: Studies from the Portuguese
Records (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1981).
8. For details of the Maratha chiefs in the service of the Qutb Shahs, see Vā. Sı̄.
Bendre (ed.), ‘Hadiqat-ul-‘Alam or History of the Qutbshahi Rulers of
Golcondah’, in Satarāvyā śatakātı̄la Govalakondyācı̄ Kutbaśāhı̄ (Pune: Bhārat
_ ˙ ˙
Itihāsa Samśodhaka Mandala, 1956).
˙˙ ˙
9. Shyam, Kingdom of Ahmadnagar, p. 274.
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INDEX
āb anbār at Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 260n29 Qasim Khan’s Mosque

Aftabi (Ahmadnagar); Soneri Mosque,
Kitāb-i Tārif-i Husain Shāh Pādshāh-i Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar)
Dakan, 44 –45 nobility as city wardens, 75 – 6, 133
see also Tārif paintings paintings
verse for paintings, 34, 41 characteristics of, 38, 42, 46 – 8,
Agha Bihzad (Kari Masjid), 243n39
Ahmadnagar, 137 –40 as cultural combinations, 45 – 6,
Ahamadanagara saharācā itihāsa (History 49 – 50, 244n45
of the City of Ahmadnagar), Deccan breeze in, 46, 47, 48
(Mirikar), 23 Persian influences on, 38, 41 –2,
Ahmadnagar 45, 245n66
as administrative centre, 90 schools of, 33, 37, 41, 44 – 6,
capital city of the Nizam Shahs, 32, 73 49 – 50
creation of, xxii, xxviii, 1, 2, 73, 74 themes for, 39, 42, 44 –5
different from other cities, 68, 73, with verse, 34, 41 –2
76, 77, 78 see also Tārif paintings
as emigrant hub, 29 – 30, 31 palaces
estates of nobility in, 75, 76, 78, 100 discrete from urban settlements,
fort of, xxiii, 75, 90 67, 75, 92
gardens and palaces, 74, 75, 77 see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh; Hasht
see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh; Hasht Bihisht Bagh
Bihisht Bagh; leisure architecture as planned urban settlements, 65,
importance of, 23, 24, 74, 78 73 – 5, 92
location of, xxviii, 1, 2 scholarship on, 23, 24
mosques. See Agha Bihzad (Kari similarities with Persian cities, 73 –4
Masjid), Ahmadnagar; Kali tombs. See Bagh Rauza (tomb of
Mosque (Ahmadnagar); Ahmad Nizam Shah I,
Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar); Ahmadnagar)
INDEX 279
water systems in, 76, 78, 87 – 9, 200 Bhatavadi

Ambar, Malik dam, 123– 4, 130
mosque by, 85 see also Tisgaon gates
stewardship of, xxiv – xxvi, 32, 72, fort, 123– 5
95, 198 see also Kalawantinicha Mahal
see also Bhatavadi (Bhatavadi)
tomb (Khuldabad), 195–8 Bhatodi (Bhatodee) fort. See Bhatavadi
architectural remains as method of Bhonsale, Shivaji, 11, 27, 68, 86, 218
study, 12 – 20 Bhonsale memorials (Verul), xxvi,
Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates 189–92
(Michell and Zebrowski), 25 Briggs, John, Rise of the Mohammedan
Power in India, 23, 73
bādgir at Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 112, 202 Burhān-i Maasir
Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad Nizam historic descriptions of
Shah I, Ahmadnagar), 167– 9 Ahmadnagar, xxii, 12, 74, 170
see also tombs: Ahmad Nizam Shah I Farah Bakhsh Bagh, 107– 8
Bahmani kingdom Manzarsumbah, 116– 17
currency, 29, 54 – 5, 56 –57, 59 see also Tabatabai, Sayyid Ali bin
dynasty of, 4, 7, 8, 13, 58 Aziz’ullah at-
emergence of sultanates from, 10, Burhanpur
28 –29 as important trade route, 7, 71, 94
ethnic factions in, 65 as gateway to Deccan, 6
as influence on Deccan, 8, 29
military architecture and technology caravanserai
in, 94 – 95 Chaul
Persian connections of, 7– 8 architecture, 199, 208– 11
role of nobles in, 30 – 31 Inscription 24, 211, 235
tombs from, 167 Daulatabad, 199
visual culture of, 8 Chandani Talab, 87
Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmadnagar) Changiz Khan
as academy, xxii– xxiii estates of, 100
architecture, 135– 7 tomb of, 174– 6
see also Husaini, Shah Tahir al- Chaul
battles battle of, 80
attitudes to warfare in, 92, 93, 95 caravanserai
Bhatavadi, 123– 4, 129– 30 Inscription 24, 211, 235
Chaul, 80 location and architecture, 199,
conquests without, 93 208– 11
military architecture for, 89 –93 hammam, 202– 3
other forms of conquest, 218 historic descriptions of, 81 – 2, 83
paintings of, 34, 44 – 5 Jami’ Mosque
Talikota, xxiii, 10, 63 architecture, 158– 62
technology for, 92 –3, 95 – 6 Inscription 14, 160, 230
Bava Bangali tomb, 176–8 Inscription 15, 160, 231
as port, 29, 78 – 80, 82 – 3, 255n40, palace complexes, 71 – 2, 73

255n42, 256n64 see also Chini Mahal (Daulatabad)
Portuguese trade in, 56 – 7, 78, Shahi hammam, 203–6
80 –1, 255n50 water systems at, 73, 206– 8
public buildings in, 79, 81 – 2 see also Khufiya Bavdi
as travellers’ station, 203, 210, 211 (Daulatabad)
see also Revadanda (Portuguese Deccan
Chaul) ancient kingdoms of, xx, 3 – 4, 8, 24
Chini Mahal (Daulatabad), 98 –9, 208, architectural remains
211– 12 conservation of, 12 – 13, 20 – 2,
Chitakhana (Aurangabad), 212– 14 26 – 8, 242n27, 259n7
coinage inadequate studies of, 23, 24,
as acceptance of authority, 51, 60 26 – 7, 28
Bahamani currency, 29, 54, 56, as social history, 12 – 14, 18 – 20,
249n100 26, 100, 216
as control of power, 51 – 2, 59, 60 urgency to study, research and
as currency, 56, 57 recover, 19 – 21, 26 – 7,
in Deccan sultanates, 92, 100
52 –3, 58– 9, 249n102, 250n103 architecture
by different rulers in India, 54 –7 building typologies, 17
Gujarat silver as, 55, 56 – 7, 58 communal vision of, xxvi, 9
for khutbā and sikkā, 50 – 2, 55, construction materials in, 15, 99,
58, 60 103, 122, 131, 143, 145, 207
mints in the Deccan, 53 construction process in, 14, 18, 19
of Mughals, 57 – 8, 59 – 60 current uses of buildings from, 20
by Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, design process in, 18, 19
29, 50 guilds and craftspeople in, 13 – 14,
as sovereign rights, 50 – 2, 246n71 15, 19, 131, 262n58
see also khutbā and sikkā as hybrid styles of, xxvi, 10
for special occasions, 53– 4, 55, influences on, xxvi, 6, 8, 9, 10, 16
236n5, 247n80 local and imported knowledge in.
in trade, 56 – 7 see guilds and craftspeople
Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar military fortification and
(Gadre), 25, 74, 202 technology in, 91 – 2, 95 – 96
multipurpose designs in, 17,
Dakkan (Dekhan). See Deccan 124– 5
Damdi Mosque (Bhingar), 140– 3 new programmes in, 16
Daulatabad as political power, 9, 13
as capital, 5, 7, 26, 31, 66, 73 slippages in, 15, 18 – 19, 108– 9
caravanserai, 199 social relationships in, 12, 13, 14,
dam near, 206– 7 15, 18 – 19
as fortified city, 66, 71, 72, 90 see also Architecture and Art of the
historic importance of, 71, 73 Deccan Sultanates (Michell and
Khufiya Bavdi, 207– 8 Zebrowski)
INDEX 281
coinage, 51, 52 – 53, 57, 58 – 59, mistaken attribution of, 34

236n5 ragamala series, 33, 45, 49
see also khutbā and sikkā reflect the period, 49
consolidation with Hindustan, schools of, 33 –4, 41, 49 –50
4 –5, 11 themes for, 34, 35, 38, 42, 44
court practices in, 29, 31 – 2 see also Architecture and Art of the
cultural practices in, xxiv, 10 Deccan Sultanates (Michell and
as a distinct region, xix – xx, 5 – 6, 25 Zebrowski); Tārif paintings
emerging sultanates of, 10, 28, 29 politics of, 4– 7
ethnic factions in, 31 – 2, 64, 218 ports, 29 – 30, 78 – 83
geography of, xxix, 1 – 2, 4, 6 –7 records of events. See Aftabi; din
historiography of, 10 – 11, 22, 26 –7, Shirazi, Rafi’i al-; Firishtah
31, 73 (Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah
Deccan (continued) Astarabadi); Tabatabai, Sayyid Ali
as hub bin Aziz’ullah at-
cosmopolitan, xxiii, 3, 218 role of nobles in, 31 –2, 66, 75 – 6,
for migrants, xix, 29 –30, 31 133, 215, 243n37
for religion, xxii, 4, 30, 218 Safavid alliance for, 10
see also Bara Imam Kotla in ‘shatter zone,’ 24 – 5, 241n15
(Ahmadnagar); Safavids sultanates
for trade and culture, 3, 5, 6– 7, architectural variations in, 10,
29, 31 16, 100
languages of, 4, 24 – 5 meaning of the term, 16
literature as migrant hubs, 31
books and translations, 23 –4, as successors of Bahmani kingdom,
25, 26 xxi, 10, 28, 29
genres of text, 22 –3, 40, 60 –1, Timurid ideals and influences in, xx,
62, 63 5, 29 – 30, 215
languages, 9, 10, 60 – 1, 63 visual culture of, xx, 7, 8, 10, 218
Persian influences on, xix, 29, water systems of, xxv, 73, 87 – 8, 117,
30, 31 237n18
major settlements in, 2 map, 2, 67 Dehlavi, Amir Khusro, Khamseh, 40
migrant scholars of, xxiv, 1, 22, Dilawar Khan (Rajgurunagar/Khed)
31, 61 mosque, 163– 4
narratives of, xix, 9, 11, 26, 27, 28 tomb, 192– 3
paintings din Shirazi, Rafi’i al- (Tadhkirat
characteristics of, 38, 48, 243n39, ul-Mulk), 22 – 3
245n54 dō bōti chirā, 165, 172
colour schemes in, 45
comparisons between, 45 Farah Bakhsh Bagh
cultural combinations in, architecture and location, 102–4
34, 38 – 42, 45 – 6, 48, 244n45 building and rebuilding of, 104– 7,
Indian influences on, 40 – 2, 47 – 8 108, 259n14, 260n18
limitations of, 34, 38 court intrigues around, 103, 107
historic descriptions of, 105, 107–8 Farah Bakhsh Bagh, 102, 107
Inscription 4, 105, 224 Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 109, 111– 12
as inspiration, xxvi, 102, 103, 108, Kalawantinicha Mahal, 124
260n19 at Manzarsumbah, 117
as royal venue, 103, 131 gardens (continued)
water systems at, 104, 106 at mosques, 163
Firishtah (Muhammad Qasim Hindu in palaces at forts, 99, 102
Shah Astarabadi) as settings for paintings, 34, 38, 39
records of events by, 12, 22 – 4, 61 in suburban palaces and mansions,
Tarikh-i Firishtah (Gulshan-i 75, 76, 77
Ibrāhı̄mı̄), 23, 24 at tombs, 174, 180, 181
translations of work by, 23 – 4 as urban planning, 73, 74, 100
Firishtah’s History of Dekkan (Scott), 23 see also leisure architecture
forts gateways
as administrative centres, 70, 94, 216 to Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad
architectural combinations at, 120–1 Nizam Shah I, Ahmadnagar), 168
Bhatavadi, 123– 4 at city wards, 78
as centres of political power, 66, 83, to the Deccan, 6, 25
90 –1, 94, 97 Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 110
Daulatabad, 66, 71, 72, 90 Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 155
Dharur, 143 Kamani Mosque (Shivneri), 69
discrete from urban settlements, 78, Mahdavi Mosque (Rohankheda), 147
85 –6, 92, 94 –5, 97 at Malik Ambar’s tomb, 195
Manzarsumbah, 114– 15, 117– 20 Manzarsumbah, 118, 120
military architecture and technology Ni’mat Khan Semnani estate, 75
in, 89 – 90, 91 – 3, 95 – 6, 238n22, Tisgaon, 199– 200
253n12, 258n86, 258n92 to trade routes, 99, 243n31
military strategy at, 78, 92, 93, 94, Zenda Gate (Ahmadnagar), 137
95, 96 Gordon, Stewart, The Marathas, 25
mosques in, 143, 145, 157 guilds and craftspeople, 10, 13 – 15,
of Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar, 131, 215, 262n58
xxiii, 90
Parenda, 83 –86 Haig, Lt. Col. Wolseley, Indian
pleasure resorts in, 115, 116– 17, Antiquary, 23
124 Haji Hamid tomb (Ahmadnagar)
royal residences in forts, 91, 99 description, 188– 9
on trade routes, 94, 96, 117 Inscription 21, 188, 233– 4
types and functions of, 78, 90 – 1 hammams
at Chaul, 202– 3
gardens of the Deccan, 89, 99, 199, 200
Bagh Rauza (tomb of Ahmad Nizam at Manzarsumbah, 201
Shah I, Ahmadnagar), 168 as part of nobleman’s estates, 100
Chitakhana, 214 Shahi hammam (Daulatabad),
as commemoration of victory, 73 – 4 203– 6, 208
INDEX 283
Shahi hammam (Daulatabad), mosques, 70

Inscription 23, 203, 234– 235 see also Kamani Mosque (Shivneri)
Hasan Shauqi, 60 –1, 63 Shivneri fort in, 69 –70
Hasht Bihisht Bagh tombs in, 70, 167, 169
bādgir (wind catcher) at, 112, 202 as urban settlement, 68 – 70
location and architecture, 109– 14
Maasir-i Alamgiri description of, Kalawantinicha Mahal (Bhatavadi)
111– 12, 260n27 battle of Bhatavadi, 124, 129 –30
nurgirs (skylights) at, 202 Bhatavadi dam, 123– 4, 130
octagonal pavilion at, 109 fort, 124– 5
palace complexes of, 110– 11, as generic name, 124
112– 13 location and description, 123, 124–8
water systems at, 109, 112, 202 similarities with other buildings,
see also Lakkad Mahal 125, 129, 261n46
History of Medieval Deccan (Joshi and water systems at, 123, 124, 125
Sherwani), 24 – 5 Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 151 –3
Husaini, Shah Tahir al-, xxii– xxiii, 168 Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 155–7
see also Bara Imam Kotla Kamani Mosque (Shivneri)
(Ahmadnagar) architecture, xxiv, 69 – 70, 157– 8
Husaini Mosque, 137, 139– 40 Inscription 12, 158, 229
Inscription 13, 158, 229– 30
Indian Antiquary, (Haig), 23 Khufiya Bavdi (Daulatabad), 207– 8
Inscription 13, 229– 30 Khuldabad
inscriptions list, 220–35 miscellaneous tombs, 197, 198
Islamicate influences necropolis for Nizam Shahs of
on architecture, 13, 15, 18, 86, 208, Ahmadnagar, 168, 169, 185,
210– 11 94, 198
on coinage, 50, 60 tomb of Malik Amber, 195– 8
on the Deccan, 5, 6 khutbā and sikkā, xxi, 50, 55, 56,
on literary works, 9, 99 58, 60
from migrants, 29 – 31, 99 Kingdom of Ahmadnagar, The (Shyam), 24
on Mughal sultanates, 5, 6 kingship
on sovereignty, 9, 29, 30, 58, 90, 167 khutbā and sikkā as, xxi, 50 – 2,
on urban settlements, 67, 74 55 – 6, 58, 60
symbols of, 88, 89
Jadhav, Lakhuji (Sindkhed Raja) Kitāb-i Tārif-i Husain Shāh Pādshāh-i
building complex of, 86 – 87 Dakan
memorial, 194– 5 see also Aftabi
as nobleman, 66, 194– 5
patron of craftsmen, 30 Lakkad Mahal, 110– 13
Jami’ Mosque (Chaul), 159– 62 leisure architecture
Junnar garden pavilions, 74, 77, 124, 201–2
capital of Nizam Shahs, xxii, 27, 74 pleasure pavilions, 16, 86, 87,
importance of, 68 –9 89, 109
pleasure resorts, 115, 116– 17, Michell, George and Zebrowski, Mark,
124, 201 Architecture and Art of the Deccan
summer retreats, 112, 122, 201, 202 Sultanates, 25
see also Khufiya Bavdi Mirikar, Sardar N.Y., Ahamadanagara
(Daulatabad) saharācā itihāsa (History of the City
of Ahmadnagar), 23
Mahdavi Mosque (Fathkheda/ miscellaneous buildings from the
Sakharkheda), 148– 51 kingdom of Nizam Shahs, 199–212
mansions mosque of Sanjar Khan (Dharur)
current uses of, 20, 100 architecture, 143– 5
in noblemen’s estates, 75, 100, 101 Inscription 7, 145, 226
see also Ni’mat Khan Semnani mosques
in urban settlements, 98, 100 Agha Bihzad (Kari Masjid) Ahmad-
see also Chandani Talab; Jadhav, nagar, 137– 40
Lakhuji (Sindkhed Raja) Damdi Mosque (Bhingar), 140–143
Manzarsumbah Daulatabad, 72
as fort, 114, 115, 116– 18, 131 Dilawar Khan (Rajgurunagar/Khed),
gatehouse, 113, 117, 118, 119– 21, 163– 4
122 in forts, 72, 143, 145, 157
hammam, 201 in garrison towns, 145– 8
palace complex, 115– 17, 121– 2 Imampur, 148
as pleasure resort, 115, 116– 17, Jami’ Mosque (Chaul)
201 description of, 158– 62
similarities with other buildings, Inscription 14, 160, 230
120, 122, 123– 4 Inscription 15, 160, 231
T-shaped tiles at, 113, 117, 122 Kali Mosque (Ahmadnagar)
water systems, 87, 115– 16, 117, Inscription 10, 153, 227– 8
121, 122, 201 Inscription 11, 153, 228– 9
Marathas location and architecture, 151– 3
at Ahmadnagar court, 31, 32 Kamani Mosque (Ahmadnagar), 155–7
architectural continuity by, 218, 219 Kamani Mosque (Shivneri)
as champions of sultanates, 219 architecture, 69, 157– 8
changing loyalties of, 93, 218, Inscription 12, 229
257n80 Mahdavi Mosque (Fathkheda/Sakhar-
kingdom, 4, 6, 27, 218 kheda)
network, 96 – 7 description, 148– 51
similarities with Nizam Shahs, Inscription 9, 149, 227
11, 96 Mahdavi Mosque (Rohankheda)
see also Bhonsale, Shivaji; Bhonsale description of, 145– 8
memorials (Verul); Jadhav, Lakhuji Inscription 8, 148, 226–7
(Sindkhed Raja) as modest places, 77, 133– 4, 262n1
Marathas, The (Gordon), 25 Mosque of Sanjar Khan (Dharur)
masjid. See mosques architecture, 143– 5
Melique. See Ambar, Malik Inscription 7, 145, 226
INDEX 285
Parenda, 85 construction techniques in, 131

patrons of, 133 design process in, 14, 19, 216
at port city, 158– 62 development of, 26, 217–19
Qasim Khan’s Mosque guilds and craftspeople, 14 – 15,
(Ahmadnagar), 153– 5 16, 19, 71– 2
Soneri Mosque (Bara Imam Kotla) influences of nobility on, 215– 16
architecture, 135– 6 Islamicate influences on, xxvi,
Inscription 5, 224– 5 9 – 10, 17, 18, 49, 215 –16
Inscription 6, 225– 6 similarities in, 13, 121, 122– 123
at tomb complex, 163, 167 slippages in, 12, 13, 15, 18 – 19,
Mughals 108– 9, 216
architecture, 8, 199– 200, 218 social relationships in, 13, 14 – 15,
coinage in Deccan, 57 – 8, 59 18 – 19
construction techniques, 85, 99 visual culture in, xxv, 5, 8 – 10, 18,
Emperor Aurangzeb, 33, 58, 95, 49, 215– 16, 218
217, 218 see also Architecture and Art of the
expansion policies, 96 Deccan Sultanates (Michell and
geographical regions of Hindustan Zebrowski);
for, 5, 7 leisure architecture
relations with Deccan, 5– 6 capital city of, 73, 216
trading routes of, 70 see also Ahmadnagar; Junnar
Mughals and the Deccan (Anwar), characteristics of mosques by, 133–4
241n20 coinage
Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astar- Bahmani currency, 29, 52, 59, 60
abadi. See Firishtah (Muhammad copper, 53
Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi) gold, 54
issued by, 50, 52, 53, 58
Ni’mat Khan Semnani silver, 55
estates see also khutbā and sikkā
description, 75 – 6, 100, 101 comparison with other kingdoms,
Inscription 1, 76, 101, 220– 1 11, 28, 96, 217
Inscription 2, 76, 101, 221– 2 factions in kingdom of, xxiii, 31,
Inscription 3, 76, 222– 3 32, 102
tomb, 165– 166 forts controlled by, xxiii, 90 – 91
see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh hammams, 89, 99, 199, 201– 6, 208
Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar historiography of, 1, 22
architecture influences from Persia on. See Persian
arches, 14 – 15, 69, 120– 1, 217 influences
combination of cultures in, xxiii, miscellaneous buildings, 199– 200
xxvi –xxvii miscellaneous tombs, 168, 198, 234
construction materials used in, 15, mosques. see mosques
72, 99, 102, 106– 7, 131– 2 Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar
construction process in, 14, 19, (continued)
216 origins of the dynasty, xxi – xxiii
paintings patterns, 73 – 4, 216

codex of, 34, 41 see also Ahmadnagar; Chaul;
combination of cultures in, 33 –4, Daulatabad; Junnar
35 – 7, 38, 39, 42 urgency to study architectural
patrons of, 33, 243n39 remains of, 100
scholarship on, 33 – 4 see also Deccan: architectural
schools of, 33, 38, 41 remains
themes for, 34 – 8 visual culture of. See Cultural
with verse, 34 Archaeology of Ahmadnagar (Gadre);
see also Aftabi leisure architecture
palaces water display
architectural style of, 102, 131– 2 pools, 88, 121, 201, 202
see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh; Hasht pools and fountains, 104, 109,
Bihisht Bagh; Kalawantinicha 116– 17, 212– 13
Mahal (Bhatavadi); water course and garden, 107
Manzarsumbah water supply systems, 73, 87 – 9,
as patrons of literature, 60 – 1, 63, 64 115– 116, 200– 1
see also Deccan: literature; Hasan see also Bhatavadi
Shauqi literary works
ports controlled by, 78, 82, 83 palaces
see also Chaul as associations of the past, 98 – 9,
records of events of, 22 – 4 131– 2
see also din Shirazi, Rafi’i al-; Chini Mahal (Daulatabad), 98, 208,
Firishtah (Muhammad Qasim 211– 12
Hindu Shah Astarabadi); combinations of architecture
Tabatabai, Sayyid Ali bin in, 100
Aziz’ullah at- construction techniques for, 106– 7,
relations with the Mughals, 25 131
see also Mughals and the Deccan Daulatabad complex of, 71 – 2, 73
(Anwar) see also Chini Mahal (Daulatabad)
religious influences on, xxii, 29 – 30, Farah Bakhsh Bagh, 102– 4, 106
90, 167 in forts, 91, 99
see also Husaini, Shah Tahir al-; hammams at, 99, 199, 200, 201,
Safavids 202, 203– 5
role of nobles in kingdom of, 31 – 2, Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 109– 12
66, 215, 217, 243n37 Kalawantinicha Mahal (Bhatavadi),
royal residences of, 67, 75, 85 – 6 123, 124– 6
as rulers, 215– 16 Manzarsumbah complex, 116, 118,
sepulchral practices of, 90, 167 120
sultanate period, xx–xxii, 26, 32, 217 Nizam Shahi palace (Daulatabad),
Timurid ideals of, 215 211– 12
urban settlements of purposes of, 130– 1
characteristics, 65, 67 – 8, as symbols of power, 98 – 9, 131
69 – 70, 87 as urban settlements, 99, 100
INDEX 287
Palaces, Pavilions and Pleasure-Gardens Safavids

(Brookshaw), 254n32 as allies of Deccan sultanates, 57 –8,
Parenda 251n111
Chor Well, 85 influence on Deccan
fort, 83 – 5 literature, 61
mosque, 85 religion, 28, 29 – 30, 133
Persian influences urban design, 73
in architecture, 10, 16 war strategies, 94
see also Deccan: architecture migrants to Deccan, xxiii, 7, 29, 30
as communal memory, 9 Salabat Khan
on courtly customs, 8 dam by, 124, 130
on kingship, xx, xxii, xxiv, 5, 29– 30, estates of, 124, 178, 199
215 see also Tisgaon gates
on literature, 22 –3, 40, 50 tomb, 178– 181
see also Deccan: literature water tanks by, 117
from migrants, xxiii, xxiv, 7, 30, 99 see also Farah Bakhsh Bagh
on paintings, 39– 42, 43 – 5, 50 Sarje Khan’s tomb (Dō Bōti Chirā,
see also Deccan: paintings; Tārif Ahmadnagar)
paintings dō bōti chirā, 172– 4
on religion, xxii, 4, 30, 218 Inscription 19, 174, 232– 3
see also Bara Imam Kotla (Ahmad- Saudagar Gumbaz tomb (Junnar)
nagar); Safavids Inscription 18, 170, 232
on water management technologies, location and architecture, 169–72
87, 89, 199, 200 Shah Sharif’s tomb (Ahmadnagar),
ports 184–7
Chaul, 78 – 83 Shivneri fort (Junnar), 69 – 70
Deccan, 78 Sindkhed Raja
as migrant gateways, 30 dams at, 86, 87
as networks for trade, 29, 30, 66, 99, emulation of architecture at, 86 –7
243n31 fiefdom of the Jadhavs, 86, 101
Revadanda (Portuguese Chaul), 81–82 Lakhuji Jadhav memorial, 86
pleasure pavilion, 87
Qasim Khan’s Mosque (Ahmadnagar), see also Bhonsale, Shivaji
153– 5 Soneri Mosque, Bara Imam Kotla
(Ahmadnagar)
Revadanda (Portuguese Chaul), 79– 80, architecture, 135– 6
81, 82 Inscription 5, 135, 224–5
Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, Inscription 6, 135, 225–6
(Briggs), 23, 73 study and conservation of architec-
Rumi Khan tural remains, 12 – 13, 20, 21,
tomb of 26 – 8, 91, 92, 259n7
Inscription 20, 181, 233 subterranean rooms
location and architecture, at Chini Mahal (Daulatabad),
xxiii, 181 211– 12
at Chor Well (Parenda), 85 as congregational space, 170

at Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 112, 202 Dilawar Khan (Rajgurunagar/Khed)
at Khufiya Bavdi (Daulatabad), 72, Inscription 16, 164, 193, 231
207– 8 location and architecture, 194– 5
at Manzarsumbah, 122, 201 essential requirements of, 165– 167,
at Nizam Shahi palace (Daulatabad), 169
211– 12 Haji Hamid (Ahmadnagar), 188– 9
at tomb of Haji Hamid Lakhuji Jadhav (Sindkhed Raja), 194
(Ahmadnagar), 188 Malik Ambar (Khuldabad), 195– 8
as memorials, 190
Tabatabai, Sayyid Ali bin Aziz’ ullah at- see also Bhonsale memorials (Verul)
records of events in Burhān-i Maasir, miscellaneous (Bagh Rauza,
22, 24 Ahmadnagar), 168
translations of work by, 23 – 24, 61 miscellaneous (Khuldabad),
see also Kingdom of Ahmadnagar, Inscription 22, 198, 234
The (Shyam) as mosques, 184, 188
Tadhkirat ul-Mulk, (din Shirazi), retaining estates with, 17, 165– 6,
Rafi’i al-, 23 239n25, 259n3
Tārif paintings Rumi Khan, xxiii, 181
of battles, 34, 44 – 5 Salabat Khan, 181
dohada, 36 Sarje Khan (dō bōti chirā,
of king and queen, 37 – 8 Ahmadnagar), 172– 4
of military scenes, 35 Saudagar Gumbaz (Junnar)
of ragamala series, 49, 50 Inscription 18, 170, 232
traditions of, 44 – 5, 49 location and architecture, 170– 2
verse by Aftabi, 34, 41 as secondary use of structures, 165,
work similar to, 41 178, 193, 260n22
Tarikh-i Firishtah (Gulshan-i Ibrahimi) sepulchral practices of Nizam Shahs
descriptions, 12, 22 – 24, 74 of Ahmadnagar, 90, 167, 168
Timurid empire, 30 – 31 tombs (continued)
Timurid ideals in Deccan sultanates, Shah Sharif (Ahmadnagar), 184– 7
xx, 5, 29 –30, 215 varied styles of, 166– 7
Tisgaon gates, 119, 124, 199– 200
tombs urban settlements
Ahmad Nizam Shah I administration of, 65
Bagh Rauza (Ahmadnagar) archi- as commercial networks, 96 – 7
tecture, 167– 9 components of, 67, 68, 69, 70
Bagh Rauza (Ahmadnagar) effects of military technology on, 92
Inscription 17, 169, 231– 2 forts as, 70
confusion about, 169, 184 see also Daulatabad; Manzarsumbah
Khuldabad architecture, 181– 4 Indo-Islamic cities as, 67, 252n3
Bava Bangali, 176– 178 nobleman’s estates in, 100
Changiz Khan (Ahmadnagar), patterns of, 65 – 6, 73 –4, 85,
174– 6 87, 216
INDEX 289
seasonal fluctuations in, expertise, 200

256nn67– 68 Inscription 3, 222– 3
social hierarchy in, 66, 67 natural systems in Deccan for, 73, 87,
types of, 65 –6, 68 117, 118
waterworks at, 67, 70, 87–9, 237n18 as part of kingship, 88, 89
see also Ahmadnagar; Chaul; Junnar as part of nobleman’s estates, 76, 124,
261n44
water management systems of the Deccan, 87 – 8, 89
at Farah Bakhsh Bagh, 104 at tomb complex, 184, 187
in hammams, 199, 201, 202, 203– 4 types of, 87 – 8
at Hasht Bihisht Bagh, 109 in urban settlements of Nizam Shahs
at Manzarsumbah, 115 –116, 117 of Ahmadnagar, 200, 201, 202,
systems of pipes as, 87 – 8, 89, 200– 1 203, 206
see also Bhatavadi use of technology for, xxv, 87, 89,
water supply 200– 2, 237n18
in Ahmadnagar, 200– 1 wells
as battle strategy, 123, 130, 261n38, Chor Well (Parenda), 85
261n41 Khufiya Bavdi, 207– 8
dams as Shah Sharif’s tomb (Ahmadnagar),
near Bhatavadi, 124, 130– 1 184
near Daulatabad, 89, 206– 7 see also Manzarsumbah

The Architecture of A Deccan Sultanate - Pushkar Sohoni

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The Architecture of A Deccan Sultanate - Pushkar Sohoni

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Pushkar Sohoni is an assistant professor in Humanities and Social

Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune,

‘This book deals with a period of Indian Islamic architectural history

Copyright q 2018 Pushkar Sohoni

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

ISBN: 978 1 78453 794 4

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India

List of Illustrations xii

1. Locating Architecture: Social History and

2. Multiple Pasts: The Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar 22

Coins of the Nizam Shahs 50

3. Urban Patterns, Water Supply Systems, and

4. Palaces and Mansions 98

5. Mosques: Piety and Prayer 133

7. Miscellaneous Buildings 199

All maps, photographs and plans were made by the author.

Figure 6.19 Interior of tomb attributed to Ahmad Nizam Shah,

replaced by a hegemonic Mughal form. The delightfully quaint

Ahmad Nizam Bahri (reg. 1496– 1510 CE ), the governor of a

significantly to Daulatabad and settled the new city of Khadki nearby.

suggests a deliberate idea of state architecture. Architecture as an

The Deccan: A Brief History

Map 2 The major settlements of the Deccan Plateau in the sixteenth

have been centred on North India (known as Hindustan since

south have therefore always had a distinct cultural development vis-à-vis

modern linguistic states of Republic of India, Karnataka, Maharashtra,

princely states, the Deccan ceased to be a single cultural region. Only

Hindustan and the Deccan as Diverse and

Marathas, saw themselves as regional resistance against Hindustani

by B.G. Gokhale and Stewart Gordon, Burhanpur therefore became an

The Visual Culture of the Deccan Sultanates

Continuities and Ruptures: The Purity and Hybridity

It would be erroneous to attribute the development of architectural

and town-planning legacy of the Nizam Shahs, comprise a corpus of

Methods to Study Architectural Remains

This very abundance of written records perhaps led scholars to

In this book, art-historical methods of visual inspection and formal

Guilds and Movements of Craftspeople Recovered

the classification of architecture by dynasties, . . . inevitably

Yet, even with dynastic and court-related architecture, it is possible to

Sultanate Architecture and Regional Variations

already highlighted regional exigencies and variations in the various

Extra-regional Architectural Programmes and

the convention has consciously triumphed over innovation, and a

Global Architecture and Local Construction

processes and relationships between them are harder to unravel. In the

of conventional architectural history is easy to address in the kingdom of

The Urgency to Study, Research, and Recover

Ministry of Defence, Maharashtra Forest Service, Land Revenue

MULTIPLE PASTS:THE NIZAM

Drawing Boundaries: Historiography of the Nizam Shahs

the work Gulshan-i Ibrahimi (better known as the Tarikh-i Firishtah) in

published sources in English and Urdu along with snippets of local

respective regimes, were the Western Chalukyas (973–1200) and the

kingdom. Recently, three conference publications and a major exhibition

The Nizam Shahs

The Bahmanis had imagined their own status as a post-Timurid

religious hegemony they accepted, partly as a foil to the expansionist

of power in the sultanate Deccan contributed to the instability

insistent, occasionally making us wish that Aurangzeb had been

It is now suspected that the Marathas, not the Mughals under

wife, Khanzade Humayun, on a takht set on a stone platform in a