The Syncretic Traditions of Islamic Religious Architecture of Kashmir (Early 14th –18th Century)

Hakim Sameer Hamdani

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000365252
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book traces the historical identity of Kashmir within the context of Islamic religious architecture between early fourteenth and mid-eighteenth century. It presents a framework of syncretism within which the understanding of this architectural tradition acquires new dimensions and possibilities in the region. In a first, the volume provides a detailed overview of the origin and development of Islamic sacred architecture while contextualizing it within the history of Islam in Kashmir. Covering the entirety of Muslim rule in the region, the book throws light on Islamic religious architecture introduced with the establishment of the Muslim Sultanate in the early fourteenth century, and focuses on both monumental and vernacular architecture. It examines the establishment of new styles in architecture, including ideas, materials and crafts introduced by non-Kashmiri missionaries in the late-fourteenth to fifteenth century. Further, it discusses how the Mughals viewed Kashmir and embellished the land with their architectural undertakings, coupled with encounters between Kashmir's native culture, with its identity and influences introduced by Sufis arriving from the medieval Persianate world. The book also highlights the transition of the traditional architecture to a pan-Islamic image in the post-Independence period.

With its rich illustrations, photographs and drawings, this book will interest students, researchers, and professionals in architecture studies, cultural and heritage studies, visual and art history, religion, Islamic studies and South Asian studies. It will also be useful to professional architecture institutes, public libraries, museums, cultural and heritage bodies as well as the general reader interested in the architectural and cultural history of South Asia.

1

INTRODUCTION

Kashmir: Imagining a place and its historical memory

Within the wide swathe of land that has been associated with Islam, Kashmir assumes a marginal and remote association. Located in the northernmost part of South Asia, the region has traditionally been seen as a provincial part of the wider Indian empire, with its claim to fame based mostly on its geographical location: the abundance of bountiful water, snow-clad mountains and a pleasant climate. Within the Indian context, Kashmir is also renowned for its crafts, some of which, like pashminā shawls, have been famed in the court of emperors and kings – Asian as well as European. Nestled in the lofty and virtually impenetrable folds of the Himalayas, the valley has carved a distinct identity for itself, politically as well as culturally, of which its architecture is visually the most dominant expression.

Historically, Kashmir for its inhabitants has been the epitome of a heavenly paradise on earth – a tradition that has carried itself well into our own times too. Writing earlier, in the eighteenth-century CE, Khawjā Azam Dedhmāri weaves the narrative of this heavenly imagery in his introduction to his general history of Kashmir, Tārīkh-iʿUżmā in, these word:

This book has been written about that wonder of the Creator's creation which is commonly referred to as the unrivalled paradise – the land of Kashmir […]¹.

Similarly, for Pīr Hasan Shāh Khuihāmī, a nineteenth-century CE historian, Kashmir because of its natural beauty has always been perceived as a paradise – not to be seen anywhere else, by learned men, divines and nature lovers from time immemorial². Whereas for most the imagery of paradise can be seen as a lyrical expression of the surrounding physical environment, some have even attempted to quantify it. Khuihāmī elaborates on fifteen distinct traits that for him are to be found in Kashmir alone, characteristics which for him assume a quality uniquely Kashmiri, quintessentially heavenly³. To a large extent, Khuihāmī's list reads like an echo of the Hindu scripture, Nīlamata Purāṇa (ca. sixth-eighth century CE), in which the blessings of Kashmir are recounted as:

[…] Filled with rows of rice-fields […], inhabited by the people who perform sacrifices and are engaged in self-study and contemplation – virtuous ascetics […] it is bedecked with the temples of the gods and all the holy places, and is auspicious […] all the sacred places, which are on the earth, are there. Thronged with the hermitages of the sages (it is) pleasant in heat and cold […] Unconquerable by the enemy […] it is devoid of the fear of famines […] enjoyable, holy, beneficial for living beings, endowed with the qualities (of producing) all grains […] Full of gardens and pleasure-grove […] Laden with various types of flowers, fruits, trees […] possessed of all the sacred places⁴.

This image of an earthly heaven is not, however, confined to native Kashmiri writers alone [Plate 1]. For over the centuries, visitors to this isolated mountainous valley ranging from emperors, wandering poets, dervishes to European visitors, have echoed the words of the inhabitants and celebrated the land for its beauty⁵.Yet, for Kashmiris, the land is not only the recipient of nature's graces but was also seen in the distant past as the abode of gods⁶. It is a land which ‘since early times has been pre-eminently a country of holy sites and places of pilgrimage of all kinds’. As the oldest surviving text on Kashmir, Nīlamata Purāṇa brings to fore the sacredness of the land, through legends celebrating the very evolution of life in this area as a divine favor – intervention leaving a mark of holiness all over the land⁷. It is to Nīlamata Purāṇa that we owe the legend not only of origin of life in Kashmir but the vary name ‘Kashmir’ itself.

Along with the image of a paradise and sacredness is the associated impression of a homeland; Kashmir as a defined physical entity enclosed within its mountainous surroundings which sets it apart from the rest: the others⁸. The mountains not only contained the land but, more importantly, formed a visual boundary; easily recognizable for what Kashmiris down through the history saw as their homeland. For Kashmir, the mountains not only ‘isolated its population from the rest of India’ but also bestowed on the land ‘a historical existence of marked individuality’⁹. This sense of what made Kashmir unique was captured both in textual writings and in the architectural manifestation of the region in pre-Muslim medieval Kashmir. Representing a shared awareness of the land, it, to borrow the words of Diana Eck¹⁰, can also be said to symbolize a whole for the inhabitants of the land. An all-encompassing whole in its formation of linkages between myths, legends, sacredness and the place – a wholeness that assumes a character far more distinct and concrete then that of a regional variation of larger idea that may be constructed as the greater Indic civilization. An important element in establishing this sense of Kashmiri-ness was that of the frontiers: of those insurmountable natural barriers that acted as safeguards and harbingers of the land and its culture. Frontiers, which have acted not only as physical barriers but also as enablers of Kashmiri identity.

And, when fate would separate the people of Kashmir from this homeland, they would still reminisce about the land, as the eleventh century CE poet Bīlhanā does in these verses:

Where the beauty of the women's breasts

Warmed through a gentle application of saffron,

Raṇku deer blankets, releasing the fragrance of musk,

And boat-bourne bath houses at the Vitastā's shore

Each in their abundance during the winter months

Point to the pleasure of heaven¹¹.

Historically, Kashmir would remain the valley of the river Jhelum (Vitastā) and its tributaries. The Pīr Panjal mountain range forms its cultural as well as geographical extent along the south and the central Himalayan range separating the Jhelum and Indus drainage system its northerly extent. Even though the destiny of the surrounding hill states of Poonch, Rajouri, Badarwah, Kishtwar, Padar and Jammu would keep on being intertwined with that of Kashmir, fostering close cultural linkages, yet these areas were never seen as being distinctly Kashmiri. Similarly, in spite of intermittent cry for aid or even occasional adventures of conquest launched by the kings of Kashmir into the Indian plains or the high mountains of Ladakh and Tibet, these lands remained always the ‘outside’ for the inhabitants of the land¹².

Yet, the land located as it was on one of the branches of the Silk route¹³ leading into the Indian sub-continent was never totally devoid of external influences. Kashmir was not only a recipient of traditions from the east, of China and Tibet, but at various points of its history also formed a part of wider empires originating from mainland India, like that of the Mauryas under Ashoka, the Kushans under Kanīshkā, the White Huns¹⁴ or the Mughal in the medieval period. This resulted not only in the introduction of foreign elements (and races) in the overall cultural and social life of the inhabitants of the region but also a certain cross fertilization of ideas¹⁵. Nevertheless, such a fusion, synthesis always reflected a sense of continuity with the past, culturally as well as politically, reinforcing the Kashmiri self-image of being unique and distinct.

Justifiably, in this self-image that the inhabitants of the land created for themselves, one does not find the distinctiveness as associated with a modern concept of a nation, yet a sense of exclusiveness, a sense of a shared identity, an understanding of us and them is always present as is the notion of a homeland. This can also be seen the work of the twelfth century CE poet Maṇkha, who conveys a sense of Kashmiri distinctness by contrasting it with the other: the lands that are different from Kashmir. This difference is again articulated in terms of the physical landscape, the climate as well as social customs of the people of Kashmir, all contributing to a sense of Kashmiri identity¹⁶. To a large extent, it is the geography much more than descent or language that defines the image of Kashmir during the medieval period. In this image, different political epochs, change of dynasties, kings, all form a collective narrative of the land; a shared memory of the past. That this identity is not articulated in specific political terms, that there may be other multiple identities based on communal, sectarian and social level present throughout the course of history does not negate its very existence.

Islam and (its) architecture: Narrative and interpretations

Islam is a religion; it is also a cultural force and is seen as a distinct civilization too. Historically, since its birth in the year 610 CE, Islam, after an initial stage of persecution and hostility, would within years after the passing of its founder advance into territory away from the deserts of Arabia, areas culturally rich and part of older civilizations and empires. And, over the centuries, Islam in turn gave rise to new empires and kingdoms as it travelled to geographical territories as vast and diverse as Spain in the west and Indonesia in the east.

The revelation, or what can be seen as the propagation of faith of Islam, had resulted during the Prophet's own lifetime in the creation of a distinct Muslim society, forming an Islamic state based on certain principles¹⁷; principles that were introduced socially and politically in all areas that came under the sway of the religion. For the Muslims themselves, Islam identifies not only with an act of faith but also in being a part of a community of believers (umma), ruled and governed by a series of universal values, the articles of faith, the economy of worship and a law of governance¹⁸.

Combined with a shared value system, there has also been a predisposition to see within the vast geographical expanse that has been a part of the Islamic world, the region of Middle East as ‘both the homeland and the heartland of Dār-al Islam (Abode of Islam)’¹⁹. Historically, this notion holds true for the Arabian Peninsula – the land of the Prophet of Islam, of the revelations (Quran) and the house of God (Kaaba). In so far as the land contains the historic memory of not only the Prophet of Islam, but all major events marking his life and acts: sunnah (the Prophetic practices)²⁰, this relationship is deeply entrenched in the collective Muslim consciousness, reinforced by the mandatory annual pilgrimage: hajj. In its early formative post-prophetic years, this notion of sacredness also came to include various locations in the east, mostly in Iraq connected with the Shiʿa thought, and in the west with Jerusalem, which came to be referred to, in traditional Muslim accounts, as Bait-ul-Muqaddas (The Holy House).

In so far as the ‘principle of purpose’ – niʿyah – forms one of the key theological themes of Islam in regards to human acts and their reckoning²¹, one can use the argument that it also forms a key component of any collective community expression in a specific geographical setting. This would hold true not only for areas where a functional Muslim polity existed at a point of time in their past or even today, but also in settings which were culturally predominantly Muslim. Such an argument would imply specific cultural meanings which have translated into motifs of expressions in the field of arts, languages and architecture. As the inherent meaning behind such an expression was to be derived, deliberated and accepted by a collective community; therefore, it lends to the entire process of arriving at an expression a certain dynamism linked to the geographical and temporal frame of reference within which that decision was made. In so far as this study is concerned with the examination of religious architectural expression, it would also involve our understanding of Islam as a cultural force with an architectural image and its manifestation in a geographical area which was derived from the local experience of the community, thus making each experience unique to its setting and period of occurrence. This does negate a more t...