The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (56 page)

The last of the Dravidian languages to break free from Tamil was Malayalam, the language of Kerala. This separation began around the sixth century, and in the following centuries the language in its literary form became heavily Sanskritised, and came to have a very large number of its words drawn from Sanskrit. Its script however remained a variant of the Tamil Grantha script. It is believed that Malayalam began to evolve a distinct literature of its own by around the eleventh century, but the oldest extant literary works in the language are only of the fourteenth century, the best known among them being
Unnuneeli-sandesam
, an anonymous work modelled on Kalidasa’s
Megha-sandesam
, and uses a rich mixture of Sanskrit and Malayalam called Manipravalam: ruby-coral.

Music was an integral part of the social and religious life of Indians from very early times, but it is hard to trace its early history, as very little data is available on it. In early medieval times Indian classical music split into two distinct streams: Carnatic music of South India, and Hindustani music of North India. This was because North Indian music had at this time come under the influence of Perso-Arabic musical tradition, while South Indian music remained virtually unaffected by it. Further, Hindustani music at this time became primarily court music (because its main patronage now, consequent of the collapse of the Hindu political power in North India, came from sultans and Muslim nobles) while Carnatic music (which flourished mainly in peninsular India, in regions outside Muslim rule) largely retained its old character as devotional music. Besides, Carnatic music remained essentially a vocal music, as most of its compositions were written to be sung, and even when this music was played on instruments, it usually mimicked singing. In contrast, musical instruments came to play a much larger role in Hindustani music, and it used far more instruments than Carnatic music. But despite all these differences, the two schools of music share the same basic compositional and improvisational elements: sruti (pitch), swara (note), raga (melody) and tala (rhythmic pattern).
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Carnatic music took its final form in the early sixteenth century. Its systematisation at this time was largely due to the efforts of Purandara-dasa, a musicologist-composer-performer of Karnataka, who laid down definitive guidelines for the composition and performance of Carnatic music, and is therefore generally regarded as the
pitamaha
(grandfather) of Carnatic music.

Around this time Hindustani music too was greatly enriched by the contributions of two seminal, marvellously creative musicians: Amir Khusrav of the thirteenth-fourteenth century, and Tansen of the sixteenth century. Khusrav is also generally credited with the invention of tabla (the popular Indian percussion instrument consisting of a pair of hand drums of different sizes and timbres) and the long-necked lute. Further, he is said to have written several treatises on music, and to have devised several melodic forms, such as khyal (a meditative form of music which allows considerable improvisation), qawl (the precursor of qawwali, the Sufi devotional music), tarana (which uses meaningless syllables to turn voice into a musical instrument), and so on. Khusrav is in fact credited with the invention of as many as nineteen melodic forms.

There is no way of verifying these claims. But it is quite probable that Khusrav played a major role in the evolution of Hindustani music by blending Hindu and Muslim musical modes. Khusrav was an admirer of Hindu music, which he considered to be more soul-stirring than any other music. He is said to have studied Carnatic music and to have fused some of its elements into his own music. The blending of Hindu and Muslim musical systems was further facilitated by the conversion of a number of Hindu musicians to Islam at this time, as they sought to secure the patronage of the new rulers. The affinity of Sufis for Indian music also played an important role in the fusion of the two musical traditions.

Many of the Delhi sultans were keen patrons of music, even though hyper-orthodox Muslims frowned on music as a frivolous diversion, and strictly forbade the playing of music in mosques. Even Firuz Tughluq, despite his general compliance with orthodox religious prescriptions, was avid about music. Holding musical soirees at the court was a common practice of several Delhi sultans. Though some sultans—Iltutmish and Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq, for instance—banned this practice, it was restored by their successors. Several rulers of the other Muslim kingdoms in India were also keen patrons of music. Notable among them was Ibrahim Adil Shah II, the late sixteenth-early seventeenth century sultan of Bijapur, who was an ardent patron of art and music, and was himself a poet and musician, as well as the author of a book on music.

There were troupes of professional musicians in most of the major cities of medieval India, and in some cities there were regular public performances by them. ‘In Daulatabad there is a very fine and spacious bazaar for singers and singing girls, containing numerous shops, each of which has a door leading to the house of its proprietor,’ reports Battuta. ‘The shop is beautified with carpets and in the centre of it there is a sort of large cradle on which the singing girl sits or reclines. She is adorned with all kinds of ornaments, and her
attendants swing her cradle. In the centre of the bazaar there is a large carpeted and decorated pavilion in which the chief musician sits every Thursday after the afternoon prayer, with his servants and slaves in front of him. The singing girls come in relays and sing and dance before him till the sunset prayers, when they withdraw … One of the infidel rulers in India, on passing through this bazaar, used to alight at the pavilion, and the singing girls used to sing before him. Once the Muhammadan sultans too used to do the same.’

Hindu rajas were traditionally ardent patrons of music, but their role in this declined sharply in medieval times, particularly in North India, because of their loss of power and the consequent loss of the material means to patronise cultural activities. The most prominent of the Hindu royal patrons of music during the Sultanate period was Raja Man Singh of Gwalior, who was himself a gifted musician, under whose patronage his court musicians compiled a book titled
Man Kautuhal
(Curiosities of Man), describing the rules governing various ragas, including those of the new musical modes introduced under Perso-Arabic influence. Perso-Arabic influence in music was present even in the Carnatic music patronised by the rajas of Vijayanagar, and this is acknowledged in such texts as Kallina’s
Sangita-ratnakara
of the mind-fifteenth century, and
Svaramela-kalanidhi
of Vijayanagar king Ramaraya of the mid-sixteenth century.

AS IN MUSIC, so also in art and architecture, there was some amount of mutual influence between Hindu and Muslim traditions. But a harmonious blending of the two architectural styles was difficult, for they were entirely unlike each other in nearly every respect. While the structure of the Hindu temple was complex, dark and mysterious, the structure of the mosque was bright and open, its lines smooth and simple and elegant. Their very construction methods were different. As Marshall describes it, ‘The Hindu system of construction was trabeate, based on column and architrave; the Muslim [system] was arcuate, based on arch and vault.’ And while temples were richly adorned with the paintings and sculptures of life-forms, mosques used only floral, calligraphic, arabesque and geometric designs for decoration, as Islam considered figurative art as sinful imitations of god’s work. Because of these differences, when Hindu and Muslim architectural styles were combined, the two did not usually blend smoothly. This was evident particularly in the mosque that Aibak built in Delhi, which, as Percy Brown describes it, is ‘mainly a patchwork of older materials, beautiful in detail … but as a whole a confused and somewhat incongruous improvisation.’

The incorporation of Muslim architectural forms into Hindu structures was more harmonious than the incorporation of Hindu architectural forms into Muslim structures, just as the adoption of Muslim cultural modes into Hindu
culture was smoother than their reverse adoption. This was because Hindu culture had a great amount of diversity within itself, so that new elements introduced into it seldom seemed incongruous.

The structure of the early mosques everywhere in the Muslim world was very simple, just a square or rectangular courtyard bordered with cloisters on three sides, and an alcove on the fourth side, from which the imam led prayers. In India the alcove was on the west side of the courtyard, in the direction of Mecca, facing which the devotees knelt in prayer. On the side of the alcove there was usually a pulpit for delivering sermons. Initially, the alcove had only a flat roof, but later a dome was commonly built over it. An essential feature of the mosque architecture is the tall minaret built at a corner of its courtyard, from which the muezzin announced the time for the five daily prayers, and summoned the faithful for the Friday congregational prayers. In many mosques additional minarets were built at the other three corners of mosque, for visual harmony.

Arch and dome are the defining characteristics of Muslim architecture. India had no tradition of dome building, and arches were built in India by the method of corbelled horizontal courses, unlike the superior Muslim practice of building them with voussoirs. It was only in the late thirteenth century, on the tomb of Balban, that the true arch appeared in India for the first time.

THE ARCHITECTURAL SCENE in India, particularly in North India, changed radically during the Sultanate period, when a large number of forts, palaces, mosques and tombs built by Muslims dotted the land. Even though a number of mosques had been built in India even before the establishment of the Muslim rule there, these were mostly in port cities, built by Arab traders and their local converts. Later, in the eighth century, the Arab rulers of Sind built mosques in their kingdom, and still later the sultans of Ghazni and Ghuri built mosques in Sind and Punjab. But there were as yet no mosques in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the heartland of India. The first mosque there, the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi, was built by Qutb-ud-din Aibak in the early thirteenth century, on the site of a tenth century Hindu temple.

This mosque was built mainly with the construction materials collected from a number of demolished Hindu and Jain temples—twenty-seven of them, according to an inscription at the entrance of the mosque. But it was necessity rather than choice that made Aibak use those materials, because the mosque was urgently needed for the Friday congregational prayers of Muslims, and it was easier and quicker to build it with the pillars and stones collected from the demolished temples, than to quarry fresh building materials for it. The use of the demolished temple materials to build the mosque was also symbolically appropriate, as a display of the triumph of Islam over Hinduism.

This method of construction, and the fact that the masons and artisans who were employed in planning and building the mosque were predominantly Hindus, gave this mosque a distinctive Indian appearance. The practice of Muslim rulers building mosques with the materials of demolished temples continued in India for a while under the successors of Aibak, but in time the practice declined, partly because not so many temples were demolished in later times—as Hindus, being then treated as zimmis, received government protection for their institutions and way of life—and partly because Muslims preferred to retain the purity of their architectural style, and Indian craftsmen and builders had by then learned to build in the Muslim style. The migration of a number of Muslim architects and artisans from the Middle East and Central Asia into India at this time also facilitated this transformation. However, some elements of the local architectural style continued to be evident in the structures built by Muslim rulers in provincial towns for quite a while.

The mosque that Qutb-ud-din built in Delhi was enlarged to more than double its size by Iltutmish, and was further expanded by later sultans, as the Muslim population in the city grew, and they had to be provided space for their congregational prayers. ‘The cathedral mosque occupies a large area; its walls, roof, and paving are all constructed of white stones, admirably squared and firmly cemented with lead,’ writes Battuta in his vivid but factually imprecise account of what he saw in Delhi in the mid-fourteenth century. ‘There is no wood in it at all. It has thirteen domes of stone; its pulpit is also made of stone, and it has four courts. In the centre of the mosque is an awe-inspiring column
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, and nobody knows of what metal it is made. One of their learned men told me that it is called Haft Jush, which means “seven metals”, and that it is constructed from these seven. A part of this column, of a finger’s breadth, has been polished, and gives out a brilliant gleam. Iron makes no impression on it. It is thirty cubits high; we rolled a turban round it, and the portion which encircled it measured eight cubits. At the eastern gate [of the mosque] there are two enormous idols of brass prostrate on the ground and held [in place there] by stones, and everyone entering or leaving the mosque treads on them.
The site was formerly occupied by an idol temple, and was converted into a mosque on the conquest of the city.’

Aibak’s mosque complex in Delhi is dominated by its towering minaret, known as Qutb Minar. Its construction was begun by Aibak, but he could build only its bottom storey. The structure was completed by Iltutmish, Aibak’s successor, by adding three storeys to it, each of diminishing girth and height. In 1370, during the reign of Firuz Tughluq, the fourth storey of the minaret was struck by lightning and severely damaged. Firuz then dismantled the storey and in its place built two new storeys of plain circular design, raising the total height of the minaret to about 73 metres, nearly as tall as a twenty-four storey building. The minaret was repaired again by Sikandar Lodi, towards the end of the history of the Delhi Sultanate. Qutb Minar was not just a minaret for the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer, but was also a victory tower proclaiming the establishment of the Turkish empire in India. According to some authorities it is ‘the most perfect example of a tower known to exist anywhere’ in the world.

Battuta saw the Minar before it was damaged by lightning. ‘In the northern court [of the mosque] is the minaret, which has no parallel in the lands of Islam …,’ he reports. ‘Its passage is so wide that elephants could go up by it. A person in whom I have confidence told me that when it was built he saw an elephant climbing with stones to the top …’ Despite its immense size, Qutb Minar is an elegant structure, its soaring upward thrust emphasised by vertical flutings—alternately round and angular—which in turn are decorated with horizontal bands of inscriptions and foliated designs. The starkness of the building is also relieved by its richly decorated balconies at the base of each storey. The bottom three storeys of the tower are built of grey quartzite faced with red sandstone, but its top two storeys, built by Firuz Tughluq, are of red sandstone faced with marble.