The Ghurid Architecture of South Asia & Historiography at the Ends of the Islamic World

Alka Patel
Art History
UC Irvine

The work is an important contribution to two discourses, which I contend have been artificially separated: the architectural histories of India and the Islamic World (the latter encompassing primarily the Middle East and Turkey). Treating architectural patronage as state formation in praxis, the book analyzes the distinct Ghurid architectural corpora (late twelfth-early thirteenth centuries) east and west of the Indus River, challenging scholarly ideas of pre-modern dynasties as homogenizing historical forces. Further, the work proposes that Ghurid buildings were the result of both indigenous Indic temple architecture and non-local Islamic monumental architecture. They also had consequences for the built form in both early modern South Asia and the wider Islamic World, thereby necessitating analysis from the points of view of both these artificially divided scholarly specialties.