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A Study of Fortification in the Indian Subcontinent from the Thirteenth to the Eighteenth Century A.D.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

J. Burton-Page
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Extract

The study of fortification in the Indian subcontinent is a discipline not only of intrinsic merit but also of considerable extrinsic value, for the material it may be expected to yield is of relevance to the archæologist, antiquarian, and historian, taking these terms in the broadest sense; indeed, it is these, in somewhat narrower terms perhaps, who have helped to amass the not inconsiderable body of material which is at present available on the fortified sites in the subcontinent, most of which have long been known to archæologists and art-historians. The old series of Archæological Survey of India Reports (1862–84), largely reports of tours by Cunningham and his associates, contain much material on the major fortified sites of the subcontinent, although some of this is merely incidental to the main purposes of the reports; the New Imperial Series of the Archæological Survey, including the regional surveys, presents more precise and detailed description of individual sites, and this is supplemented by the Archæological Survey of India Annual Reports, from 1902 onwards, and the reports of various states with autonomous departments of archæology, most notably the Nizām's Dominions whose sometime Director, Dr. Ghulam Yazdani, has in addition to considerable work on the Deccan sites published in those reports produced two valuable monographs. These works have supplemented the evidence of the sites themselves with the available historical material, documentary and epigraphic, and further epigraphic material is available in the volumes of Epigraphia indica and Epigraphia indo-moslemica, as well as in some of the Memoirs of the A.S.I. Less reliable technically, but always useful and often suggestive, is the information available in the gazetteers of the various provincial governments and states. The journals of learned societies with an Indian interest add more to this material, as do the catalogues and journals of Indian museums.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , October 1960 , pp. 508 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1960

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References

1 Cresswell, K. A. C. produced ‘A provisional bibliography of the Muhammadan architecture of India’ in IA, Li, 1922, 81–108, 165–79Google Scholar; this, which was only partly concerned with the fortified works of the Muslims in India, contains no entry later than 1915, and was incomplete at the time. Much significant work in the Indo-Islamic field has since appeared. A new bibliography on this subject by myself is in preparation as a part-time project, and is not yet available for consultation; this may be expected to cover such fortified works (not only forts, for many buildings such as mosque enclosures and īdgāh walls, tombs and dargāhs, show fortified enclosures) as are known to have Islamic origins or additions, but not those merely with Islamic associations, for few Indian fortresses have escaped occupation by Islamic forces at some period. Cockle, M. J. D., A catalogue of books relating to the military history of India, Simla, 1901Google Scholar, has unfortunately few entries relevant to fortification.

2 Toy, Sidney: The strongholds of India. xvi, 136 pp., 106 photographs. London, etc.: William Heinemann Ltd., 1957. 30s.Google Scholar

1 ASIR, I, 1862, 152 ff.Google Scholar; also ASIR, iv, 1871–1872Google Scholar, Part I, passim.

1 This presumes that in some cases excavation may have to be undertaken. Valuable information may, however, be forthcoming without excavation; for example, a spoil heap at Golkoṇḍā has revealed some fine specimens of Celadon and Swatow ware, presumably imported from China by the Qub āhī rulers, as well as ceramic fragments thought to come from South East Asia; some of these have recently been acquired by the Percival David Foundation. The same spoil heap has produced a few fragments of a lightly fired encaustic tile work, briefly described in my article on ‘Plaster in Indian Islamic building’, to appear in the Encyclopædia of Islam, new edition, s.v. ‘Dji’.

1 It is uncertain whether the date 918, preceded in the inscription by ahūr san but followed by hijrīya, is to be interpreted as belonging to the ahūr year, which was at one time in common use at Bījāpur, or to the Hijrī year; cf. Nazim, M., Bijapur inscriptions (MASI, 49), Delhi, 1936.Google Scholar

2 e.g. the mīnārs at aznī. The tower has pre-Islamic antecedents of long standing in Persia in the Sassanian towers of Jur and Fīrūzābād, themselves generally agreed to be derived ultimately from the Babylonian zikkurat. There are many instances of single free-standing towers in other Islamic countries, such as those in the mosque of Ibn Tūlūn in Cairo and that of Sāmarrā. In Persia there are, furthermore, the remarkable ‘tomb-towers’, such as the Gumbad-i Qavūs. Other Indo-Muslim towers include the Fērōz Mīnār at Gawṛ in Bengal, and there are many smaller structures, such as the water-towers at Bījāpur and the kos mīnārs in north India, which can surely be considered as ‘municipal towers’. Most of these are of dual function—as maẕīna and tower of victory, maẕīna and watch-tower, etc.—and thus it must be considered likely that the ćawbārā has had another function besides that of watch-tower.

1 Illustrations in ARASI, xxi, plates III (c) and (d).

1 cf. Elliot, 's note ‘On the early use of gunpowder in India’ in Elliot, H. M. and Dowson, J., The history of India as told by its own historians, vi, London, 1875, 455–82.Google Scholar On arms and armour, see Rawson, P., Catalogue raisonné of the Indian bladed weapons in the Victoria and Albert Museum, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of London (1952).Google Scholar

2 Yazdani, G., Bidar: its history and monuments, O.U.P., 1947.Google Scholar

3 Thus, ‘Bidar, by G. Yazdani’ should be as cited in n. 2, above; ‘Bijapur, by Henry Cousens’ should be Henry Cousens, Bījāpūr and its architectural remains with an historical outline, of the ‘Ādil āhī dynasty (ASI (NIS), xxxvii), Bombay, 1916; and the extraordinary ‘History of Industani by Robert Orme’ would seem to be Orme, 's A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan …, Madras, 1861!Google Scholar

1 op. cit., p. 34; Nazim, op. cit., agrees with Cousens's view.

2 op. cit., plate III.

3 See, for example, Edwards, W. N. and Mann, H. H., ‘An ancient Assamese fortification and the legends relating thereto’, J A S B, LXXIII, 3, 1904, 254–61.Google Scholar

1 Haig, T. W., Historic landmarks of the, Deccan, 1919, 12Google Scholar; this is claimed to be based on original sources entirely, but I have not located the ‘original source’ of this assertion.

1 cf. Yazdani, , op. cit., p. 70 and plate XXXVII.Google Scholar

2 In ‘The monuments of Muslim India’, ch. xxiii of The, Cambridge history of India, III, Cambridge, 1928, 630–1.Google Scholar

3 The relevant passage runs as follows (Bād āh nāmah (Bibl. Ind.), I, 529):Google Scholar

Here the word lit. warmer, heater', usu. ‘frying-pan, skillet’, is admittedly not a precise technical term, and could refer to anything from an iron plate to a brazier. The passage, however, makes it clear that it was a device by which the way could be obstructed and that it was the heat (not the smoke) which made the passage impassable. In view of this I have assumed that somewhere in this were holes or slits which would provide the necessary draught for the fire, and have translated it ‘grating’ above.

1 cf. Yazdani, , op. cit., 77–8, including a plan.Google Scholar

2 Barnī, Ziyā al-Dīn, Ta'rī -i Fērōz āhī (Bibl. Ind.), p. 449.Google Scholar

3 Briggs, 's Ferishta, II, 305–6.Google Scholar

1 A general study of the development of the bastion in my article ‘The tower in Islamic architecture in India’, s.v. ‘Bur, III’, in the Encyclopædia of Islam, new edition, collects the material at present available and attempts a chronology, but in the present state of our knowledge must not be considered definitive.

1 Mir'āt-i Aḥmadī, ātima (GOS, Vol. L), Persian text, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

2 Briggs, 's Ferishta, IV, 70.Google Scholar

1 Bernier, F., Travels in the Mogul empire, ed. Constable, A., London, 1901.Google Scholar

2 Storia do Mogor, Irvine's trans., II, 463.Google Scholar

3 ARASI, xx, 4Google Scholar and plate II (b).