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 CHAPTER XI

THE BIJĀPŪR AND MOGUL SCHOOLS—MODERN INDIAN BUILDING

the Muhammadan building schools described above belonged to Hindustan, the ancient Aryāvarta. South of the Vindhya mountains, in the Dekhan and farther south, there were several other Muhammadan schools, marked by a strong individuality, which, like those of the north, were derived from the pre-existing Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Kulbarga, Bidar, Golkonda, Ahmadnagar, and Aurangabad—the capitals of different Muhammadan kingdoms of the Dekhan from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries—were laid out by the Indian craftsmen in the service of Muhammadan Sultans as magnificently as the ancient cities of India which the armies of Islam destroyed or used as Gaur was used. But the most distinguished of the southern schools under Musalman rule was that of Bijāpūr, the capital of the State of the same name which became independent in 1490, when Yusuf 'Adil Shah, its Turkish governor, threw off allegiance to the Bāhmani Sultans and founded a dynasty which lasted until the latter part of the seventeenth century. But the great building projects of the Bijāpūr Sultans only began with the reign of 'Ali 'Adil Shah I in the middle of the sixteenth century, after the victory of the united Musalman forces of the Dekhan over Rām Rāj, the Rājā of Vijayanagar, and head of the Hindu 125