Ghurid monuments and Muslim identities

The eastward expansion of the Shansabanid sultanate of Ghur in the late twelfth century has usually been depicted as a confrontation between a unitary Muslim self and its Hindu ‘other’. The reification of heterogeneous and protean categories of belief implicit in this paradigm is particularly ill suited to represent the dynamic religious life of mediaeval Ghur. This was characterised by shifting patterns of royal patronage that reflect intense competition between the Karramiya, a popular pietistic sect, and the orthodox Sunni madhhabs. Drawing on Ghurid architectural and numismatic inscriptions, this article examines the ways in which contem–porary doctrinal disputes inflected elite cultural production during the period. Based on the content and context of Qur'anic citations, it suggests that a rhetorical emphasis on idolatry and unbelief in Ghurid epigraphy was part of a contemporary intra–Sunni polemic, and not primarily an address to those who were literally outside the fold of Islam. The deployment of scripture in the service of sectarian rivalry has significant implications for the inter–pretation of Qur'anic epigraphy in Indo–Ghurid mosques such as the Quwwat al–Islam Mosque in Delhi.