Muslim Architecture of South India

The Sultanate of Ma'bar and the Traditions of Maritime Settlers on the Malabar and Coromandel Coasts (Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Goa)

Mehrdad Shokoohy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136499845
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

This book reinterprets the Muslim architecture and urban planning of South India, looking beyond the Deccan to the regions of Tamil Nadu and Kerala - the historic coasts of Coromandel and Malabar. For the first time a detailed survey of the Muslim monuments of the historic ports and towns demonstrates a rich and diverse architectural tradition entirely independent from the better known architecture of North India and the Deccan sultanates. The book, extensively illustrated with photographs and architectural drawings, widens the horizons of our understanding of Muslim India and will no doubt pave new paths for future studies in the field.

PART ONE

THE COROMANDEL COAST

(TAMIL NADU)

MADURA AND THE SULTANATE OF MA‘BAR

During the 14th century on the Coromandel (Travancore) coast an independent Muslim sultanate was established which lasted for less than half a century and was eventually terminated by the newly established neighbouring kingdom of Vijayanagar. The short, brutal and enigmatic period of this sultanate has attracted the attention of a number of modern scholars¹ who have tried to put together its history through study of the coins, a few inscriptions and the brief, often dismissive remarks found in the North Indian histories, as well as, most informative of all, the travel account of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa,² who visited the region when the power of the sultanate was at its peak. However, none of these studies agree even in the number and chronology of the sultans, let alone the details of the events: a confusion which is a result of the lack of adequate information at the present time. Under the circumstances it may appear presumptuous to embark on a description of the architectural monuments of this sultanate. However, not only in Madura are the tombs of two of the sultans preserved, there are also other mosques and Islamic shrines which altogether represent a distinct architectural style — an architecture, which, as we shall see, has little similarity with that of Islamic North India or even the Deccan, but takes its roots from a much earlier building tradition, perhaps that of the Muslim merchants settled in South India.

Ma‘bar is the name given by the Muslims to the Coromandel coast and the region of Madura, from at least the 12th century (fig. 2.1). The 10th and 11th century Muslim geographers³ do not mention the name, nor do they record any community of Muslim merchants settled in the region. Their accounts of Muslim settlements on the Indian coasts are limited to Khanbāya and Naharwāla in Gujarat, and the ports of Saimūr, Sindān and Ṣūbāra, all on the route to Sarandīb (Ceylon) and apparently on the west coast. As we have already noted, the location of the last three ports has not yet been established. Al-Idrīsī⁴ adds to the list Khābīrūn and Asāwul. The location of Khābīrūn is not certain, but Asāwul later became part of Ahmadabad, the capital of Gujarat built by Ahmad Shāh⁵ between 813/1410-11 and 820/1417-18. In South India on the Malabar coast Buzurg b. Shahriyār al-Rāmhermuzī,⁶ a Persian shipmaster and merchant who was himself taking the Arabian Sea route to India, notes the ports of Kaulam and Sindapura but makes no mention of Ma‘bar.

MA‘BAR IN THE MUSLIM RECORDS

It seems that Muslims must have settled in the ports of the Travancore coast during the 11th and 12th centuries and the name Ma‘bar begins to appear in Muslim chronicles from the beginning of the 13th century. In 600/1203-4 ‘Abd al-Laṭīf⁷ notes the name in association with the Arab trade with South India and ‘by the end of the century the region was also known to the Chinese as Ma-pa-’rh, one of the foreign kingdoms whose “sultans” sent tribute to Kublai Khān.⁸ At this time most of the commerce of the region was already in the hands of Muslim settlers. According to Rashīd al-dīn,⁹ Chinese merchandise brought by junk to the ports of Ma‘bar was exchanged with goods mainly from the Persian Gulf, as well as other places such as “‘Irāq, Khurāsān, Rūm, Shām and Farang”. The local products, particularly fine red silk (lālās), aromatic roots (‘aqāqīr) and pearls were also traded, but the main import to the region was horses, with a yearly quota of 1,400 horses assigned to Malik Jamāl al-dīn Ibrāhīm of the island of Kīsh and another 10,000 from the other islands of the Persian Gulf. The influence of the horse traders on the government was apparently so great that a Muslim, Jamāl al-dīn’s brother, Malik Taqī al-dīn (or Taqī’ullāh)¹⁰ b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Ṭayyibī, was made minister of the country and governor of three ports, Patau, Malīfatan and Qā’il. Taqī al-dīn was later succeeded by his son and grandson, who were all of the al-Ṭayyibī family, the rulers of the southern Iranian province of Fārs and the region of the Persian Gulf.¹¹ Rashīd al-dīn mentions that Ma‘bar was the key to India:

Fig. 2.1 Map of Madura region.

and in Persian:

and that from Kaulam (modern Quilon or Kollam) to the “region of Nīlāwar was a distance of 300 parasangs (1,800 km), but he notes that he did not know the size of the region

However, the boundaries of Ma‘bar were better known to his contemporary geographer Abu’l-fidā’¹² who records:

India has three regions (iqlīm). The first is the western region which adjoins the lands of Sind and Kirmān, and is called Juzrāt (Gujarat). The next region is Manībār (Malabar), to the east of Juzrāt. Manībār is the same as the land of pepper… The third is the Ma‘bar region, the frontier of which lies at a distance of four days from the east of Kaulam, in other words east of Manībār.

He continues to identify the Ma‘bar region with the area to the east of Cape Comorin (kumhurī) and records: “From the Manībār direction Ma‘bar begins at Kumhurī, where there is a mountain and town both of this name.” Abu’l-fidā’ also mentions that the region was known for its excellent silk and furnishes us with the names of some of the towns in Ma‘bar, including Manīfatan and Biyardāwal (probably modern Virdachellam), its capital, also noting that horses were imported to the town from other regions.¹³

THE SULTANATE OF MA‘BAR

Since the 13th century the area also appears to have been known to the sultans of Delhi and with the expansion of the sultanate towards the south at the time of ‘Alā al-dīn Khaljī the first campaign against the region was made, apparently under the pretext of helping Sundar Paedya,¹⁴ the ruler of Madura who had been overthrown by his brother Vira. At first Ulugh Khān, the governor of Bayana and one of the most trusted army commanders of ‘Alā al-dīn, was put in charge of the campaign,¹⁵ but he died before he had time to prepare the army and ‘Alā al-dīn appointed his vice regent (malik nā’ib), Kāfūr Hizār Dīnārī, in his place.¹⁶ The campaign started on Tuesday 24th of Jumādā II, 710/18 November 1310,¹⁷ and altogether lasted for a year, during which time Ma‘bar was overrun by the Muslims, the temples were demolished and the towns looted. Amīr Khusrau,¹⁸ who recorded the campaign in detail, sums up the conquest:

At every corner conquest opened a door to them…, and in all that devastated land wherever treasure remained hidden in the earth it was sifted, searched through, and carted away so that nothing remained to the infidels (gabrān) of their gold but an echo, and of their gems, a flaming fire. When all that incalculable weight of gold and priceless gems was surrendered to his Majesty’s trusted agents, the victorious army, weighed down by immeasurable treasure, and taking mighty elephants, returned swiftly to the court.

In this campaign the Muslim army penetrated south as far as Madura and Fatan,¹⁹ but the establishment of Muslim control of the region is not stated clearly and Kāfūr usually retained the local rulers in their place when they nominally accepted the supremacy of Delhi.²⁰ However, the extraordinary wealth brought by Kāfūr, which according to one of the more moderate records exceeded 312 elephants, 20,000 horses and 96 man of red gold (equal to 10 crore of coins),²¹ was enough to encourage ‘Alā al-dīn’s successor Mubārak Shah to send his malik nā’ib, Khusrau Khān, on a similar campaign. The intention behind the second campaign may be illustrated by an incident concerning the Muslim settlers of Ma‘bar. On one occasion, Khusrau, who was neither as popular nor as good a tactician as Kāfūr, found that the Hindus had fled, taking their gold, but that a certain Muslim merchant known as Khwāja Taqī, thinking he would be safe under the protection of the army of Islam, remained behind. Khusrau took his wealth as booty.²² Whatever the real reason for the second campaign may have been, the Muslim historians imply that from this time Delhi had limited control over the region and Muslim governors were appointed for Ma‘bar.

At the time of Muhammad b. Tughluq the governorship of Ma‘bar was given to Sayyid Jalāl al-dīn Aḥsan, who had been Ghiyāth al-dīn Tughluq’s governor of Baṭīhāgaṛh, where an inscription of his time dated 725/1324-5 has been found.²³ Jalāl al-dīn was the father of the governor of Hansi and Sirsatī (modern Sirsa), Sharīf Ibrāhīm Kharīṭadār (the chief scribe of the court),²⁴ and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa records that when he was in North India he married one of Jalāl al-dīn’s daughters, Ḥūr Nasab.²⁵ The date of Jalāl al-dīn’s appointment as the governor of Ma‘bar is not known, but he minted coins²⁶ there with the name of Muḥammad b. Tughluq until 734/1333-4 just before his rebellion against the sultan, probably in the same year or soon afterwards.²⁷ He proclaimed himself as Sulṭān Aḥsan Shāh and, according to Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, minted gold coins,²⁸ although only his silver and copper coins have so far been discovered.²⁹ Muḥammad b. Tughleq’s campaign against him was aborted in Tilang when the sultan fell ill and the rumour of his death led to many other rebellions which kept him preoccupied for the rest of his reign.

Ahsan Shāh ruled independently for about five years and founded the Sultanate of Ma‘bar. He was apparently slain in battle and was succeeded by ‘Alā al-dīn Udaujī³⁰ who was in his turn killed in another battle only a year later. The third sultan, Quṭb al-dīn Fīrūz Shāh, was even less fortunate, as only about forty days after his enthronement he was put to death by his own nobles, who disagreed with his style of rule. Our only descriptive source on the first three sultans is Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s brief account from the time he was in Ma‘bar during the reign of the fourth and fifth sultans, Ghiyāth al-dīn Muḥammad Dāmghān Shāh (c.740/1339-40 to 745/1344-5) and Sulṭān Nāṣir al-dīn Maḥmūd Dāmghān Shāh (c. 745/1344-5 to 757/1356). Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, however, describes in detail many of the events of the time of these sultans, quoted in most modern studies of the sultanate. From his account it appears that the Muslims, who by rebelling against Muḥammad b. Tugh-leq had cut themselves off fro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: The Coromandel Coast (Tamil Nadu)
• Part Two: Malabar (Kerala and Goa)
• Part Three: Appendices, Lists, Bibliography and Index
• List of Figures
• Bibliography
• Index