Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/266

 222 INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. BOOK VII. CHAPTER IV. JAUNPUR. CONTENTS. Jami' Masjid and Lai Darwaza. CHRONOLOGY. Khwaja-i-Jahan assumes inde- pendence at Jaunpur. A,D. 1394 Mubarak, his adopted son. 1 399 Shamsu-d-Din Ibrahim Shah Sharqi .... 1401 Mahmud Shall Sharqi. A.D. 1440 Husain Shah. . . 1452 deposed and seeks refuge at Gaur .... 1479 IT was just two centuries after the conquest of India by the Moslims that Khwaja-i-Jahan, the Subahdar or governor of the province in which Jaunpur 1 is situated, assumed independence, and established a dynasty which maintained itself for nearly a century, from A.D. 1394 to about 1479, and though then reconquered by the sovereign of Delhi, still retained a sort of semi-independence till finally incorporated in the Mughal empire by the great Akbar. During this period Jaunpur was adorned by several large mosques, three of which still remain tolerably entire, and a considerable number of tombs, palaces and other buildings, besides a fort and bridge, all of which are as remark- able specimens of their class of architecture as are to be found anywhere in India. Although so long after the time when, under J Alau-d-Din and Tughlaq Shah, the architecture of the capital had assumed something like completeness, it is curious to observe how imperfect the amalgamation was in the provinces at the time when the principal buildings at Jaunpur were erected. The principal parts of the mosque, such as the gateways, the great halls, and the western parts generally, are in a complete arcuate style. Wherever, indeed, wide openings and large internal plates from the drawings of the late Edmund W. Smith, of the Archaeological Survey. 1 Jaunpur is about 40 miles north-west from Benares. Its architecture is treated in 'The Sharqi Architecture (1889) illustrated by 74 in detail of Jaunpur'