25 – Regional continuities and Composite Connections: the sultanate complex of western India

The comprehensive workings of Indo-Islamic cultural expression have been customarily studied by positing them as emergent from self-contained regional domains. This panel seeks to reexamine and redress this approach through a core argument that such regional domains/ sultanates have to be assessed in light of their contemporary geographical relationships. For instance, despite being in distinct geographic and geopolitical zones, the contiguous regions of western India from Sindh to Malwa constitute a cultural continuum when seen through the prism of architectural production. During the 15th and 16th centuries, following the rapid weakening of the Delhi Sultanate after its sacking in 1398, the regional sultanates of Sindh, Gujarat, Khandesh and Malwa were witness to considerable artistic exchanges registered in their architecture – mosques, funerary structures, stepwells, stone-carved cenotaphs and so on. Consequently, the architectural repertoire of these four sultanates, in the frame of their geopolitical and cultural continuum, has the potential of yielding rich insights into the nature of its regional continuities as well as the composite connections that are mirrored in its formation. The nominally related papers in this proposed panel, thus, will engage with the artistic and architectural expressions of the four connected regions – Malwa, Khandesh, Gujarat, and Sindh – to explore their regional, historical, and cultural formations through the lens of the deep-rooted connections between them. To that end, the four papers of the panel shall aim to suggest fresh ways of making scholarly forays into the dynamic of Indo-Islamic cultural expression to understand a regional formation.

Convenor

Sohoni Pushkar -