Abstract
Jaunpur is a city of ruin and monumentality that designated it, for a range of observers during the colonial period, both a Muslim city and a city in decline.1 Founded in 1359 by Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq, the city stands on the banks of the river Gomti, approximately 40 miles northwest of Banaras, and is home to a range of unique medieval Indo-Islamic architectural achievements—including the Atala Masjid, built ca. 1408, and the Bridge of Mun’im Khan, which dates to the late 1560s. Jaunpur was the capital city of the Sharqi dynasty founded by Malik-as-Sharq (“peer of the East”), who rose from the position of governor within the ailing Tughluq Sultanate to forge, in the aftermath of Timur’s 1398 sacking of Delhi, an independent state that ruled over much of the Gangetic plain until its disintegration in approximately 1480. The Sharqi state’s relative stability and prosperity during a time of political uncertainty at Delhi attracted to Jaunpur a large number of Islamic scholars and noblemen, transforming the city into a center of Islamic arts, literature, and religious activity. The generous patronage of the Sharqi dynasty played a key role in this regional cultural upsurge, supporting a range of scholars and Sufis, as well as underwriting the cost of mosque construction and endowment.2
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Notes
See, for example, R. Nath, Studies in Medieval Indian Architecture (Delhi: M. D. Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1995), 33–34; The Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. 14, new ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 74–75.
Also see Anna J. Sloan, “The Atala Mosque: Between Polity and Culture in Medieval Jaunpur” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2001).
James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London: John Murray, 1876), 491.
George N. Curzon, “Ancient Buildings at Jaunpur,” BL (British Library), IOR (India Office Records), Archaeology Proceedings, P/6600, Feb. 1903, No. 28, File 11 of 1903. Fergusson also mentions the link to Egypt.
On this point, see Sudeshna Guha, “Material Truths and Religious Identities: The Archaeological and Photographic Making of Banaras,” in Banaras: Urban History, Architecture, Identity ed. Michael S. Dodson (New Delhi: Routledge, forthcoming 2011).
On Hodges, see Natasha Eaton, “Hodges’s Visual Genealogy for Colonial India, 1780–95,” in William Hodges, 1744–1797: The Art of Exploration, ed. Geoff Quilley and John Bonehill (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
William Hodges, Select Views in India, Drawn on the Spot in the Years 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783 (London: 1786). BL online gallery, shelf mark X307(13) and X307(33). Note the incorrect identification of plate 13 as the Atala Masjid (see note 14).
See Davis’s watercolor “The Fort of Juvinpore, India,” reproduced in the Spink catalog A Journey Through India: Pictures of India by British Artists (London: Spink and Son Ltd., 1996), 17.
Mildred Archer, Early Views of India: The Picturesque Journeys of Thomas and William Daniell, 1786–1794 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), 226.
Thomas and William Daniell, Oriental Scenery: Twenty-four Views in Hindoostan, Part 3 (London:1801). BL online gallery, shelf mark X432/3(9). The Daniells identify this structure only as “a mosque in Jaunpur.” Archer has labeled it the Atala Masjid, but this is incorrect. See Archer, Early Views of India, 98–99, note to plate 73. The aquatint is clearly of the courtyard and western propylon of the Jami Masjid, distinguished from other large mosques in the city by its double-story flanks and barrel-vaulted roof. On the basis of this error, Archer and the BL have also identified Hodges’s painting (see note 11) as depicting the Atala, rather than the Jami Masjid.
Giles H. R. Tillotson, The Artificial Empire: The Indian Landscapes of William Hodges (London: Routledge, 2000), especially chapter 1.
Alison Byerly, “The Uses of Landscape: The Picturesque Aesthetic and the National Park System,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 1996).
Dabney Townsend, “The Picturesque,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55, no. 4 (Autumn 1997): 365–376.
See Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 5th ed. (London: printed for J. Dodsley, 1767), 213–214.
See “Essay 1” in William Gilpin, Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscape (London: printed for R. Blamire, 1792).
I’ve found useful in this thinking about ruins in European painting the following: Didier Maleuvre, Museum Memories: History Technology Art (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 82–87.
Daniel Brewer, The Enlightenment Past: Reconstructing Eighteenth-Century French Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 188–195.
David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 163–173.
and Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 240–252.
William Hodges, Travels in India, during the years 1780, 1781, 1782,& 1783 (London: 1793), 147–149.
Jaunpur was ceded to the Company along with the entire estate of the Raja of Banaras in 1775 from Awadh’s nominal control. Jaunpur remained administered by Banaras until the rebellion of Chet Singh in 1781, at which time the Company took direct control of all criminal administration, though leaving civil matters in the hands of the Raja. See Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, vol. 2 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1908), 126–127.
William S. Caine, Picturesque India (London: George Routledge& Sons Ltd., 1891), 296–298.
Of course, the British government of India was itself responsible for a good deal of the ruination of Jaunpur, having, for example, destroyed much of the fort and its contents in the aftermath of 1857. See Alexander Cunningham, Report of Tours in the Gangetic Provinces, from Badaon to Bihar, in 1875–76 and 1877–78, vol. 11 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1880), 120.
George N. Curzon, “Speech to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Feb 7 1900,” in Lord Curzon in India, Being a Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy& Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (London: Macmillan& Co., 1906), 182.
Curzon, “Ancient Monuments Bill” (speech given to the Legislative Council March 18, 1904), in Lord Curzon in India, 202.
See Mildred Archer and Ronald Lightbown, India Observed: India as Viewed by British Artists, 1760–1860 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1982), 92, 131. Also, BL Online Gallery, shelf mark WD310.
Markham Kittoe, Illustrations of Indian Architecture from the Muhammadan Conquest Downwards (Calcutta: Thacker, 1838).
Anton Fuhrer, The Sharqi Architecture of Jaunpur, illus. E. W. Smith, ed. James Burgess (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1889).
See Bernard S. Cohn, “The Initial British Impact on India: A Case Study of the Banaras Region,” Journal of Asian Studies 19, no. 4 (August 1960): 421.
N. Hadi, Dictionary of Indo-Persian Literature (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1995), 301.
Khair-ud-din Muhammad Illahabadi, Tazkirat ul Ulama, or A Memoir of the Learned Men (of Jaunpur) (Calcutta: Abul Faiz& Co., 1934), 31–32.
Khair-ud-din Muhammad Illahabadi, A Translation of the History of Jaunpoor; from the Persian of Fuqeer Khyr ood deen Moohummud, by an Officer of the Bengal Army (Calcutta: Scott& Co., 1814), 53–54. This was translated into English by W. R. Pogson.
First Report of the Curator, 12–13. The standard work on conservation and archaeological work in India remains T. Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
See Francis Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 409.
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© 2011 Indra Sengupta and Daud Ali
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Dodson, M.S. (2011). Jaunpur, Ruination, and Conservation during the Colonial Era. In: Sengupta, I., Ali, D. (eds) Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119000_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119000_7
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