Page:A Handbook of Indian Art.djvu/218

 CHAPTER X

MUHAMMADAN ARCHITECTURE AT MANDU, JAUNPUR, AHMADĀBĀD, AND GAUR

other remarkable monuments of the Afghan rule in India are found at Mandu, the former capital of the Sultanate of Mālwā founded by Dīlāwar Shah in the beginning of the fifteenth century, when Timūr's bloody raid into India gave him an opportunity of renouncing his allegiance to the Sultans of Delhi.

Mandu, built upon a grand plateau overlooking the valley of the Narbadā river, was in its time one of the most formidable of the hill fortresses of India. It played a conspicuous part in the history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and its imposing palaces, mosques, and tombs, reservoirs and dharmasālas, or rest-houses for travellers, designed with the stern simplicity of the Sunni sect to which most of the Afghan Sultans belonged, still testify to the architectural magnificence of an Indian royal city in those days.

The fine mosques of Jaunpur represent another local development of the same school, most likely based upon the pre-Muhammadan craft traditions of Benares, which had been a great building centre from the dawn of Indian history right down to modern times. Jaunpur was founded by the Delhi Sultan 118