Architecture in India During the Sultanate Period

For more than three centuries, Delhi served as the seat of five successive Muslim regimes in a composite empire known as the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1556) and remained a reference point for its successor states across the Indian subcontinent (c. 1350–1550). Before the centralized rule of the Mughal Empire, architecture flourished at multiple centers of patronage in the sultanates of Bengal, Delhi, Deccan, Jaunpur, Kashmir, Khandesh, Gujarat, Malwa, and Sindh, as well as in the non-Muslim kingdoms of Gwalior, Mewar, and Vijayanagara. While stone was the privileged medium of durable construction in India, carved brick was widely used in the regional architecture of the Indus and Gangetic valleys from Sindh to Bengal, often with stucco and glazed tile ornament. Large congregational mosques (jamiʾ) with domes, arches, and epigraphic bands were erected as lasting monuments of sultanate rule, but the building of smaller trabeate halls of worship (masjid) was no less inventive in accommodating Islam to the charged urban landscape of temple Hinduism. Funerary monuments for rulers, nobles, and saints in the form of domed mausoleums (rawza, dargah) and graves with inscribed cenotaphs (qabr, taʾwidh) were built in increasing numbers as popular places of pilgrimage (ziyarat), enriching established networks of shrine visitation that continue to this day. Aside from religious monuments, royal palaces (qasr), castles (hisar), fortresses (qalʿa), towns (qasba), and cities (shahr) highlight the importance of fortification to the evolving forms of urbanism. Hydraulic architecture was particularly well developed in the monsoon climate of India, and patronage of monuments for water storage furnished with steps and pavilions on deep wells (baʾoli) and surface reservoirs (talab) continued as part of larger public and private complexes. Architectural practice was also engaged in the appropriation of building sites, the reuse and emulation of antique carving, and the restoration of past monuments, including temples. New building types, spaces, and ornamentation were adapted, absorbed, and reinvented within the repertoire of stonemasons trained in stereotomic traditions that continued to be theorized in Sanskrit architectural treatises (vāstuśāstra). Architecture of the Sultanate period thus displays a rich diversity of deeply rooted regional traditions that were combined in astonishing ways with those of Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia, and Turkey. Moving beyond narrow typologies, this bibliography highlights key themes in the architectural history of the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, and identifies essential readings on developments in the Delhi Sultanate and various regions of the Indian subcontinent. It excludes the period of the later Deccan Sultanates, namely Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Bidar, and Berar, which arose with the fall of the Bahmani kingdom (1347–1527) and alongside the Mughal Empire (1526–1857), bringing us into very different forms of architectural patronage.