The Pleasure Palaces of Mandu by Ashish Nangia

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Architecture of India
The Pleasure Palaces of Mandu

The province of Malwa, in modern Madhya Pradesh, had as its capital the ancient Hindu city of Dhar, about 24 miles north of Mandu, till it was conquered by the Delhi Sultanate – by Ala-ud-din Khilji in 1305 A.D. - and a governor installed in place. As with all conquests, among the first state buildings to come up were mosques, built with pillars taken from Hindu temples, very similar to the Qu’wwat-ul-Islam mosque at the Qutb, Delhi.

The decline of the ruling power at Delhi after the sack of the city by Timur prompted the Ghauri governor of Mandu to declare his independence in A.D. 1401, with Sultan Dilawar Khan declaring himself Shah. It was left to his son, Hoshang Shah, to shift the capital from Dhar to the plateau of Mandu. Bounded on three sides by a rift valley, and overlooking the Narmada to the south from a height of 300 metres, the fortress of Mandu was virtually impregnable.

The Plateau of Mandu

Chronology detailing main events
Sultan Dilawar Khan Ghauri A.D. 1401
Sultan Hoshang Shah A.D. 1405-1434
Mahmud Shah A.D. 1436
(Contemporary of Rana Kumbha of Chittor)
Malwa/Mandu annexed by Akbar A.D. 1569

The fortress enclosed an area of approximately 12 square miles within walls over 25 miles in circumference. The inspirational landscape of Mandu, jutting out from the Vindhyas range, became the site of some of the finest provincial Islamic architecture, with mosques, madrassas and pleasure-palaces dotting the landscape.

The Jami-Masjid at Mandu

The Jami-Masjid near the centre of the Mandu plateau was one of the finest achievements of the Ghauri dynasty. A mosque, with its necessarily vast scale to accommodate numerous worshipers, is monumental by its nature, and to endow it with elements of humanism can be counted as a very difficult exercise in design. This problem has been fairly successfully addressed. Of the elements that make up this mosque, the monumental entrance from the east is a fine exercise in elegance, with a main arched doorway flanked by two smaller openings. A squat yet well-proportioned dome crowns this entrance, with its profile being reflected in smaller domes over the cloisters surrounding the central court, their proportions being ‘not unlike in profile to the so-called shoulder shaped contours of the shikharas of Orissan temples.

The courtyard is surrounded on three sides by columned cloisters with galleries of majestic arches.

Entrance Pavilion

The whole building is faced with red sandstone, with little concession to decoration. Indeed, the only departure from sobriety is in the chattri inside the mosque, next to the mihrab, which shows influences from florid Gujarati architecture.

Chattri

Hoshang Shah’s Tomb

To the south-west of the Jami-masjid lies Hoshang Shah’s tomb, among the earliest Muslim buildings in India to be sheathed entirely in white marble, possibly exerting an influence on buildings to follow elsewhere, and documented fact says that Shah Jahan sent a team of surveyors here for case studies before commencing construction of the Taj Mahal.

Asharfi Mahal

Although little remains of the Asharfi Mahal, to the east of the Jami-masjid, it was an extraordinary achievement in its time, serving as a madrassa with open courts surrounded by cells for students on several levels. Here also are the remains of a seven-storey victory tower – which collapsed in the 17th century – echoing Ala-ud-din’s megalomaniac flights of fancy near the Qutb.

..... Continued Next Page

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