History of Civilizations of Central Asia

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Volume IV - The age of achievement A.D. 750 to the end of the fifteenth century

icon4.gif (76 octets) Part Two:
The achievements

Editor
C.E. Bosworth

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Chapter 18 Urban development and architecture
G. A. Pugachenkova, A. H. Dani and Liu Yingsheng

Part One
TRANSOXANIA AND KHURASAN
(G. A. Pugachenkova)

Part Two
SOUTHERN CENTRAL ASIA
(A. H. Dani)

Part Three
EASTERN CENTRAL ASIA
(Liu Yingsheng)

The Ghaznavids in Afghanistan and north-western India

There are several monuments in eastern and southern Afghanistan and in what is now Pakistan from the time of the Ghaznavid sultans (see Volume IV, Part One, Chapter 5). Among the cities, the most important were Bust or Qalca-i Bist in the Helmand valley, the old city of Ghazna and the new city of Lahore. During the Arab period, Bust was one of the two main cities in the province of Sistan. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Ghaznavids made it their winter capital and also used it as a hunting resort. The ancient city is marked by a high citadel (arg), what is now known as Qalca-i Bist. On its top there was a stepped well (like an Indian bol) with a spiral staircase going down to the water level 40 in deep. Three tiers of four circular chambers were provided for shade and shelter. At the foot of the citadel mound, ruined walls reveal the existence of what were bazaars, palaces, baths, mosques, etc. The approach to the citadel is through a magnificently decorated arch built in the eleventh century.

Outside the citadel and the commercial city, the nobles’ palaces and villas spread out to the north along the banks of the Helmand river from Bust to Girishk. Here also were the royal court and military barracks and cantonments. Hence this area carne to be known as Lashkar Gah (Army Camp), but more popularly as Lashkar-i Bazar. Three important palaces were built here on a bluff overlooking the Helmand river, the southern one being the largest and most elegant. In plan, the palace has a central court with four aiwns. The northern one leads into a spacious rectangular audience hall, spanned by columns and decorated with frescoes and sculptured stuccoes. In the centre of the hall there is a rose-petalled water basin, fed by a canal. At the south-east corner, a small mosque stands opposite the audience hall. Towards the east lay a large garden with a central pavilion. The design of Lashkar-i Bazar introduces many architectural features that are borrowed from the Persian tradition.

The city of Ghazna presents a second example of the Ghaznavid metropolitan city, replanned to meet the empire’s needs on the foundations of an earlier Saffarid town, which in turn had been rebuilt on an earlier, pre-Islamic site. The old city was marked by a prominent citadel, which was reconstructed several times, with mud-brick walls and semicircular bastions. At the foot of the citadel there extended the commercial and industrial quarters. Far to the south stand the two minarets, one built by Mascd III (1099–1115) and the other by Sultan Bahrm Shh (1117–? 1157). The minarets follow the style of the one at Yarkurgan, in so far as their face is varied with fluting and further decorated in brick design intermixed with epigraphic friezes and floral and geometric patterns. Although the minarets now have three zones and are crowned by a cupola, they do not have balconies and, whatever ruins lie around them, they appear to be associated with mosques which have not so far been traced.

The most important remains are those of a palace, probably built by Mascd III. It consists of a large open rectangular court paved with marble, with aiwns on four sides. On the northern side is the entrance vestibule and on the south is a throne room, which must have been decorated with paintings, stucco and terracotta motifs. On the east and west, there are smaller rooms on either side of the aiwns, and at the north-west corner there is a hypostyle mosque. The lavish ornamentation, with frescoes and marble flooring, immediately distinguishes the palace from others of its kind and reflects the royal taste and metropolitan nature of the city. In general design, the Persian tradition is apparent, although the decorative motifs reflect Central Asian taste as known in Transoxania. Similar influences may be noted in the overall pattern of city planning, which is comparable with other cities in Central Asia which show the tripartite division of arg, shabristn and rabad.

The Ghaznavids carried the Central Asian architectural style to the eastern part of their empire. In Bukhara, Merv and other places on the left bank of the Oxus, from Charjuy to Sarakhs, there are single-domed square tombs of brick with cut-brick ornamentation on them. In the same fashion, four brick-built tombs survive at Mahra Sharif in the Dera Ismacil Khan district of the North-West Frontier Province, also of single-domed square type. Two of them have round towers at the four corners. Of the two without towers, one shows a high drum below the dome, and its interior has a series of arched panels at the level of the transition zone, while the second has two of its three entrances blocked up to floor level. All of them show the same type of brick-design ornamentation as in Central Asia, and, in addition, they are decorated with glazed tiles, probably the earliest used in South Asia. Such tiles, however, have been found in the excavations at Ghazna. The tombs are anonymous, but their dates fall within the Ghaznavid period.

A newly excavated mosque of the Ghaznavid period from the vicinity of the hill fortress at Udegram in Swat illustrates the rectangular type of mosque which became common in this region. A marble slab inscription attributes the mosque to Anshtegin Nawbati, a governor of the Ghaznavid sultan cAbd al-Rashd (? 1049–52). It is a hypostyle mosque of rectangular plan, built of schist slabs and blocks, and consists of three parts: the oblong prayer hall, a verandah on the east with a square ablution basin in the middle and an additional structure, possibly hujrs (cells) on the north. The flat roof rested on square columns, with five running north to south and eight running east to west. Only one square mihrb is placed in the western wall that faces the main entrance on the east. There is, however, another entrance in the corner of the western wall. The inscription slab shows the lotus motif on the other face.

Several tombs from this period, and from the transition stage to that of the Ghurids, are still in existence in Baluchistan and Panjab. One of them is attributed to Muhammad b. Hrn al-Numayri, a governor reportedly appointed by the Umayyad caliph al-Wald b. cAbd al-Malik. Standing at Bela in the midst of a vast graveyard, it is a single-domed square tomb with an arched entrance on the east and south and a mihrb on the west, built of fine red bricks laid with mud mortar. Externally, the walls have a series of rectangular panels in the lower half, and the upper one shows cut-and-moulded brick ornamentation. Internally, the square room is turned into an octagon by simple squinches, which carry the dome.

The second is the so-called tomb of Khlid b. al-Wald at Kabirwala, 120 km south-east of Multan. Near it is a huge mound known as the saray. The square tomb was built on the orders of cAli Karmakh, governor of Multan in the later twelfth century under Shihb al-Din Muhammad Ghr. It stands in the centre of a rectangular fortress, the brick walls of which are strengthened by semicircular bastions. The perimeter wall has a plain brick surface, except for a frieze of dentil at a height of 24 m. On the west is a mihrb in the thickness of this wall, presenting an elaborate arched recess, which is faced with cut-brick panels. A double frame also running on the sides has Qur’anic verses in floriated Kufic. The half-dome of the highly ornate mihrb also shows different cut-brick designs and verses. The main square chamber of the tomb has an opening on all four sides, leading into vaulted galleries and two rectangular halls on east and west. A staircase in the south-east corner leads to the roof of the tomb, which is covered by a dome. The transition phase inside the tomb shows corner corbelled pendentives, above which is a series of arched panels. The interior of the tomb also shows cut-brick ornamentation.

The third tomb stands in the middle of a graveyard in the village of Jalaran, about 30 km from Muzaffargarh (Fig. 10). It is attributed to Shaykh Sadan Shahd, and a recent inscription dates it to 1275, but the single-domed square tomb is similar to the one described above and has trefoil, arched openings on all four sides. The outer face is decorated with panels. The square of the interior is converted into an octagon at the zone of transition by means of arched squinches with projecting brick pendentives. The exterior of the tomb is superbly decorated with cut brick.

The fourth tomb, at Adam Wahan near Bahawalpur, is attributed to Shh Gardiz, a saint of unknown origin. It is also square in plan but has one entrance by the side of which is a staircase leading to the roof. It is entirely built of mud-brick, with outer and inner facings of burnt brick. The elevation shows three stages of construction. The top of the interior square hall, which has three arched niches on three sides, is sealed with a wooden course which takes the squinches and turns the upper story into an octagon. A second wooden beam course on the top bears a second series of squinches that convert the room into sixteen sides, on which sits the high dome. The base of the dome is decorated with glazed tiles in blue and white within an arched frame. Externally, the tomb presents a three-tier elevation and thus becomes a precursor of staged tomb constructions in the Multani style of architecture.

Of secular Ghaznavid buildings, nothing survives at their north-west Indian provincial capital of Lahore, but there is little doubt that they continued to use the older high citadel area that is buried beneath the later Mughal fortress-palace. Below the citadel extended the commercial and industrial sector of the shahristn. To the north of the citadel, along the left bank of the Ravi river, lay the old rabad, identified by the ruins of an old cidgh (open prayer ground). It is in the shahristn that the tomb of Qutb al-Din Aybak was later built, and not far from this stands the khnaqh of cAli Hujwiri, popularly called Dt Shib.

One great change in the urban setting of the Ghaznavid period from that of the pre-Muslim location of hill forts and fortifications was the new layout of the cities in the plains, and the new military and trade routes connecting them with Ghazna and other urban centres of Afghanistan and Central Asia a new land-route connection established by the conquests of the sultans and the penetration into the steppe interior by Central Asian Sufi saints. Both these activities influenced the nature of urban development and the type of architectural forms, such as the tombs, which we find in the period.