<div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always"><div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always"><div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always"><div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always">The readers of Domus don&rsquo;t quite need to be told about architecture as a means of articulation of power and identity in our times, but how did this work in the past? To find out, we step back into a span of time in the eighteenth century (a period of about 150 years, extending into the nineteenth century), with Chanchal B. Dadlani&rsquo;s acclaimed From Stone to Paper: Architecture as History in the Late Mughal Empire, published by Yale University Press last year.<div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always"><img src="https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/827/572866/5ff30835546c3/1609762779524.jpg" owidth=508 oheight=633" style="width: 508px; height: 633px;" /><div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always">Even as the Mughal Empire crumbled and its influence stretched only from Dilli to Palam, the Mughal style of architecture, according to Dadlani, was forged in the long eighteenth century as architecture moved past amalgamating influences from Persian and Timurid sources, and referenced monuments patronised by the Mughal dynasty to communicate authority. Her argument is bolstered by the architecture of newly formed Rajput states in central and western India, which draw on Mughal precedents in their capital cities. Dadlani also engages with the representation of buildings, the theorising of architecture, and evolving new methodologies to understand the transition from the early modern to the modern, as well as the shift from Mughal imperialism to the British colonialism. Going further, she places architecture collectively with literary and visual traditions at the centre, examining the building traditions, urban planning and the theoretical preoccupations of the later Mughals. Accessing a wide range of visual and textual material, from colonial archives and records of travellers and visitors to texts in Persian, Urdu, Bhasha, English and French, From Stone to Paper is a multi-layered narrative scaffolding a close reading of monuments &mdash; many well-known, and some forgotten, like the Zafar Mahal in New Delhi.<img src="https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/827/572866/5ff30835546c3/1609762779729.jpg" owidth=1042 oheight=691" style="width: 700px; height: 464px;" /><div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always">Dadlani explores structural and decorative elements of Aurangzeb&rsquo;s architecture and the legacy of Shah Jahan&rsquo;s building programme. At the core of this chapter is the concept of istiqbal or active reception (Laura Parodi&rsquo;s succinct translation), which carries traditions of absorption and exchange within itself, and the intention of refining pre-existing masterpieces. This leads to a new language of architecture using elements like cornices, chhatri (kiosk), chajja (bracket), the jali (lattice) and so on. These Indo-Persian elements were to become iconic of early modern Indian architecture, constantly reproduced and referenced as they responded to political and social conventions of the period. Dadlani illustrates her argument by placing buildings in conversation, alongside a father-and-son and master-pupil relationship: Taj Mahal and the Bibi ka Maqbara, Shah Jahan to Aurangzeb, extending to the architects Ustad Ahmad Lahori (Taj Mahal) and Ata Allah Khan (Bibi ka Maqbara). She analyses proscription and its logic at Aurangzeb&rsquo;s court which restricted opulence in traditions, clothing, construction and decoration. The chapter analyses regulation and law, and the responses of architects to the new demands of imperial patronage.<img src="https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/827/572866/5ff30835546c3/1609762800849.jpg" owidth=506 oheight=656" style="width: 506px; height: 656px;" />&lsquo;Urban Culture of Mughal Delhi&rsquo; posits the shift between a city built around the person of the ruler (Shah Jahan), and the changes that occur later, when sub-imperial patronage of architecture is more commonplace. Here, she compares the building programme and differences between the dargahs of Bakhtiyar Kaki and Nizam al&rsquo;Din Auliya, and the changes in imperial burial practices as the decades go by. This chapter maps the assimilation of the dargahs from being peripheral, into the capital. Various aspects of Delhi &mdash; its social hierarchies, private, public, religious, and imperial spaces, and the social fabric of the capital &mdash; are under examination through the Muraqqa&rsquo;-yi Dihli, an account Dargah Quli Khan, a companion of the Nizam al-Mulk Asaf Jah I of Hyderabad, who visited in late 1730. Dargah Quli Khan also comments on architecture, and describes the city with respect to the Red Fort, making a map for the contemporary reader. Dadlani weaves together an image of Delhi through various accounts and offers sharp insights.<div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always">The grand tomb of Abu al-Mansur Safdar Jang of Awadh, built in 1753-54 is central to the third chapter. Once described as &lsquo;The Last Flicker in the Lamp of Mughal Architecture&rsquo;, Dadlani unpacks the highly charged symbolism of the tomb, its negotiations of Shi&rsquo;i iconography and belief, the implementation of the hasht-bihisht (eight paradises) in architecture. The Awadh rulers, also high-ranking Mughal courtiers, legitimised their kingship and closeness to the imperial court through architectural forms and design in funerary architecture, gardens and mosques and palaces in Delhi as well as in Lucknow, their capital. The chapter touches upon the rise of independent kingdoms with allegiance to the Mughals, the setting up of new ateliers and patronage patterns. Dadlani analyses the tomb of Safdar Jang and compares the plan with older Mughal funerary structures, with a keen eye for detail and insight, elucidating how the Mughal style became codified into the definitive template for new rulers and those seeking administrative and political legitimacy.<img src="https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/827/572866/5ff30835546c3/1609762800703.jpg" owidth=504 oheight=639" style="width: 504px; height: 639px;" />The penultimate chapter &lsquo;Codifying Mughal Architecture on Paper&rsquo; begins with Palais Indiens acquired by the French Jean-Baptiste Gentil in 1778. The paintings were made in the large scroll format, bringing together Indian and European methods of depicting architecture, and documented structures aiding the creation of a distinctive visual archive of buildings and contained plans and elevations of palaces, mosques, funerary monuments, forts, and garden complexes in Delhi, Agra and Faizabad. These paintings are very different from the depiction of architecture in earlier Mughal traditions. Dadlani discusses the interventions and development of architectural depiction, with possible influences in Mughal art. Going over the traditions of mapmaking, hand-drawing graph paper in Central Asia with respect to the subcontinent, she talks about the contribution of Indian artists in the Mughal court and the Rajput States. She considers accuracy of the Palais Indiens as a documentation project, reiterating that the artists focused on effect more than being true to detail, especially when it came to groups of monuments. However, these paintings were important to map the use of motifs and decoration, borrowed symbols and development of architecture in Delhi and beyond. She discusses Gentils&rsquo; own collection strategies and places these images in context to a colonial enterprise of curiosity and authority, as well as his relationship with Shuja al-Daula, the Nawab of Awadh and a vizier at the Mughal court. The chapter goes on to place the Palais Indiens in context of other depictions of architecture by Indian painters, including the Company School (where she contests the term and elaborates on its problems and scope), as well the European Picturesque traditions. She also talks about other collections and patronage, new research on various artists and the significance of the depiction of eighteenth-century architecture on an international scale, with enough references and further readings for those interested. She points to the shift in the receivers of these manuscripts &mdash; mostly non-Persian reading European&mdash;hence the need to rework iconography.<img src="https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/827/572866/5ff30835546c3/1609762842384.jpg" owidth=679 oheight=491" style="width: 679px; height: 491px;" />The final chapter, &lsquo;Mughal Architecture Between Manuscript and Print Culture&rsquo;, brings the reader into the nineteenth century, and the addition of architectural renderings into the repertoire of paintings, with Akbar II&rsquo;s commission of the &lsquo;Amal-i Salih, a retelling of Shah Jahan&rsquo;s reign. Dadlani uses manuscript paintings to understand the links that later Mughals were making to their more glorious past and the ways in which symbolism developed at the now-weak imperial court. She juxtaposes the commissions of the Mughal court with colonial writings, to glean details of history and make clear the haze of colonial snobbery. Mughals had engaged with historiography since the beginning but architectural drawings and physical architectural references were added to genealogical portraits to remind the viewer/visitor of their legacy. Dadlani examines subject and stylistic choices, which turned buildings into icons, and compares depictions of architecture in older manuscripts to those commissioned in the long eighteenth century, pointing to new innovations with older narrative conventions. She places the &lsquo;Amal-i Salih at the transition point between constructed histories in architecture and later nineteenth-century textual geographies written in Persian, English and Urdu, all of whom had Delhi at the centre. With an analysis of texts and artistic output, Dadlani turns to the modern writing of archaeology and architectural history under colonial rule, and the construction of a Mughal past. She successfully refutes a simplistic reading of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century depictions as only souvenir shopping or ethnographic projects. She deconstructs the claims of a recalling glorious past and the role of artists, writers, patrons and collectors in the interlinked &lsquo;project of architectural representation&rsquo;.<img src="https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/827/572866/5ff30835546c3/1609762842637.jpg" owidth=506 oheight=648" style="width: 506px; height: 648px;" /><div style="page-break-before:always; page-break-after:always">A nifty conclusion wraps up this conceptual exploration of Mughal architecture in the Indian subcontinent and its impact on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century building traditions, the reception and proliferation of the &ldquo;Indian&rdquo; style in the West. While it is a thorough investigation, the prose is lucid and the book is sumptuously illustrated, making it visually and intellectually engaging. From Stone to Paper pushes the dialogue across disciplinary thresholds, merging literary, political and art historical research. Although not an exhaustive survey of monuments in the eighteenth century, Dadlani makes connections between famous and lesser-known monuments and manuscripts, tempting the reader to revisit these jewels.From Stone to Paper: Architecture as History in the Late Mughal Empire by Chanchal Dadlani is published by Yale University Press (2019).

From Stone to Paper 

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