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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2021
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, monumental Muslim tombs in India served as spaces for refashioning local religious and social identities. Elite patrons, technical overseers, and stoneworkers engaged with new technologies of construction at sites meant to reflect claims on the Muslim past. This article interrogates divergent class understandings of monumental Muslim tombs in colonial-era India. It compares the construction of monumental Islamic tombs in the states of Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Rampur—three Muslim-led ‘native states’, quasi-autonomous polities under colonial oversight. By the late nineteenth century, many native state patrons employed a new middle class of technical intermediary to oversee tomb construction. The rise of this class created new hierarchies within construction, with apprenticeship-trained master craftsmen increasingly marginalized from state narratives and aligned with stoneworkers and other labourers. While patrons and middle-class intermediaries argued that new technologies and materials should be used to ‘modernize’ construction, they portrayed technical change as divorced from the religious symbolism of tombs. In contrast, workers integrated the religious and the technical, positioning technologies of construction within narratives of Muslim practice. The article uses native state tombs to analyse how labourers adapted to technical demands, without necessarily adopting state ideologies.
I am grateful to Michael Dodson, Paul Losensky, Ron Sela, Kaya Sahin, and Mircea Raianu as well as participants in the Indiana University ‘Authority in Islam in South Asia’ workshop held in January 2019 for feedback on earlier versions of this article. I am also indebted to the editors and reviewers of Modern Asian Studies for their insightful comments and critiques. Research for this article was conducted with financial support from the American Institute of Indian Studies and Fulbright-Hays.
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27 Personal visit to the tomb of Nawab Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Bhopal, 2018.
28 Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, ‘Urf al-Jādī (Bhopal: Siddiqi Press, 1883), pp. 60–61. This was a relatively small portion of Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān's immense body of work. The intensity of his opposition to monumental-tomb construction should not be overstated, as he seems to have noted it only in passing, as in this Persian-language treatise. On his more prominent work, see Seema Alavi, ‘Siddiq Hasan Khan and the creation of a Muslim cosmopolitanism in the 19th century’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 54:1 (2011), pp. 1–38.
29 For background on these debates in the context of Hyderabad and the pushback from some Sufis in Hyderabad state, see Nile Green, ‘Defending the Sufis in nineteenth century Hyderabad’, Islamic Studies, 47:3 (2008), p. 347.
30 Mīr Dilāwar ‘Alī Dānish, Riyāẓ-i mukhtāriyah sulṭanat-i Āsafiyah (Hyderabad: Azim Steam Press, 1910), p. 318.
31 Ibid., pp. 318–320.
32 Although the nineteenth-century origins of this practice were largely confined to Hyderabad city and its immediate environs, by the early twentieth century, the Āṣaf Jāhī court had also funded the reconstruction of Shīʿa tombs of previous Deccani dynasties elsewhere in the state. On the restoration at Bahmanī tombs, for example, see Muḥammad ‘Abdul Wahāb, Ḥālāt-i bīdar (Hyderabad: Muḥammad ʿAbdul ʿAẓīm Qalander), pp. 63–65.
33 Munis D. Faruqui, ‘At empire's end: The Nizam, Hyderabad, and eighteenth century India’, Modern Asian Studies, 43:1 (2009), pp. 9–11.
34 On the broader persistence of Deccani–‘foreigner’ divisions in Hyderabad among both Muslims and Hindus, see Karen Leonard, ‘The Mulki-non-Mulki conflict in Hyderabad state’, in People, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States, ed. Robin Jeffrey (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 65–108.
35 For an example from British writing on the ruins of Jaunpur in North India, see Michael S. Dodson, ‘Jaunpur, ruination, and conservation in the colonial period’, in Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India, ed. Indra Sengupta and Daud Ali (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 123–146.
36 See, for example, H. S. Crosthwaite, Monograph on Stone Carving in the United Provinces (Allahabad: Government Press, 1906), p. 8; and G. Sanderson, ‘Types of modern Indian buildings at Delhi, Agra, Allahabad, Lucknow, Ajmer, Bhopal, Bikaner, Gwalior, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur’, in Report on Modern Indian Architecture, ed. G. Sanderson and J. Begg (Allahabad: Government Press, 1913), p. 21.
37 Dodson, ‘Jaunpur, ruination’, pp. 139–140.
38 Dānish, Riyāẓ-i mukhtāriyah, p. 318.
39 Aga Khan Development Network, ‘Qutb Shahi heritage park, Annual Report 2015’ (AKTC, 2016), pp. 53–56.
40 Dānish, Riyāẓ-i mukhtāriyah, p. 319; and Aṣghar Ḥussain, Dilchasp maqāmāt (Hyderabad: Aẓam Istim Press, 1938), p. 17.
41 Christopher A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 193.
42 On the rise of engineering colleges in British India and their relationship with state construction, see Aparajith Ramnath, The Birth of an Indian Profession: Engineers, Industry and the State (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 109–112.
43 NAI, ‘Architectural buildings in Bhopal Agency’, p. 2.
44 Ibid., p. 3.
45 Ibid., p. 6.
46 Sayyid Muḥab ‘Alī Khān, Dastūr al-Banā’ (Shahabad: Munshi Shant Prashad, Publisher, 1869), pp. 9–10.
47 Ibid., pp. 4–5.
48 Ibid., pp. 4–6, 42–44, 69–72.
49 Indian Arkitīkt, 11:6 (Lahore, June 1895), pp. 76–77.
50 Indian Arkitīkt, 7:5 (Lahore, May 1891), pp. 59–60.
51 Ibid., cover page.
52 Farina Mir, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), pp. 49–56.
53 Gail Minault, ‘Women's magazines in Urdu as sources for Muslim social history’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 5:2 (1998), p. 201.
54 These new texts were used contemporaneously and in conjunction with many full translations. For a translation, see Lāla Biharī Laʿal (trans.), Taʿamīr-i ʿimārat (Roorkee: Thomason Civil Engineering College Press, 1877).
55 Kālī Prasāna Mukherjī and Sayyid ‘Alī, Notes on Engineering in Urdu: Building Materials (Patna: Bhignapaharee Lithographic Press, 1873), p. 2. These sections seem to be directly translated from John Millington, Elements of Civil Engineering (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839), p. 249.
56 Ibid., pp. 4, 9.
57 Leonard, ‘Mulki-non-Mulki conflict’, pp. 67–79.
58 These were apparently modelled on restrictions in British India. NAI, Home: Education, ‘Rules regulating the appointment of passed students of the Indian colleges to the engineer establishment of the Public Works Department’ (September 1897), p. 6.
59 On the latter, see John Bosco Lourdusamy, ‘College of Engineering, Guindy, 1794–1947’, in History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, Part 1, ed. Uma Das Gupta (Delhi: Pearson Education India, 1999), pp. 429–437.
60 Ripūrt-i naẓm-o-nasq, Hyderābād Dekkan, 1309 Faṣlī (Hyderabad, 1900), pp. 416–420.
61 Taṣdiq Ḥussain, Injinīring buk (Shahjahanpur: Nami Press, 1913), p. 1.
62 Ibid., cover page. The Muraqqaʿ was advertised on the final page of the Engineering Book, a common practice among publishers of the era. For examples of religious arguments in the Muraqqaʿ, see Munshī Walī Ḥasan, Muraqqaʿ, vol. 1 (Shahjahanabad: Nāmī Press), pp. 3–5.
63 Ibid., p. 16.
64 Ibid., p. 71.
65 C. E. Luard and Munshi Kudrat Ali, Bhopal State Gazetteer, vol. 3 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1909), pp. 70–71; and Abūl Faz̤al Muḥammad ‘Abbās, Khulasāt al-ḥāl: Tārīkh-i Bhūpāl (Agra: Mufīd-i ʿAām Press, 1885), pp. 47–48.
66 Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 170.
67 Ibid., pp. 170–171.
68 For workshops commissioned in Hyderabad, see Ripūrt-i naẓm-o-nasq, Hyderābād Dekkan, 1304–1307 Faṣlī (Hyderabad, 1900), pp. 376–380; for those in Rampur, see Muḥammad Hussaīn Amīn, Iṣlāḥ-i waṭan (Rampur: Murtaz̤á Barqī Press, 1939), pp. 40–41. For examples from Bhopal, see Sival list, riyāsat-i Bhūpāl, 1914 (Bhopal: Sulṭānī Press, 1914), pp. 67–70, 98–99.
69 For neighbourhood and professional demographics in Hyderabad, see Ripūrt-i mardum shumārī mamālik-i maḥrusah-yi sarkār ‘ālī (Noor-i Deccan Press: Secunderabad, 1891), pp. 112–117, 145–147. For Rampur, see Ripūrt-i intiẓāmiyah riyāsat-i Rāmpūr, 1890–91 (Rampur: Dabdabah-yi Sikandarī Press, 1891), pp. 83–86.
70 Ibn Ḥassan Khūrshīd, Taẕkira-yi hunarmandān-i Rāmpūr (Rampur: Raza Library Press, 2001), p. 18; and Sival list, riyāsat-i Rāmpūr, 1916 (Rampur: State Press, 1916), p. 20.
71 Khūrshīd, Taẕkira-yi hunarmandān, p. 19.
72 Ibid., p. 16.
73 Ibid., pp. 16–17.
74 Muḥammad Asadullah, Ashīā-yi taʿmīrāt (Hyderabad: Osmania University Press, 1941), pp. 15–17.
75 On the relationship between profits and local stone quarrying in the context of the United Provinces, see A. C. Chatterjee, Notes on the Industries of the United Provinces (Allahabad: Government Press, 1909), p. 135.
76 Ḥamīd Aḥmad, Taḥrīk-i taraqqī-yi mamlikat-i Āṣafiya (Hyderabad: Afarīn Barqī Press, 1932), p. 37.
77 For Hyderabadi narratives of the development of Shahabad limestone, see ibid., pp. 42–43; Ripūrt-i naẓm-o-nasq, Hyderābād Dekkan, 1303 Faṣlī (Hyderabad, 1894), pp. 421–422; and Ḥussain, Sayyid Ibrāhīm, Jīaghrāfiyah nulk-i Dekkan (Hyderabad: Ahmadi Press, 1896?), p. 15Google Scholar.
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79 Campbell, Glimpses of the Nizam's Dominions, pp. 167–174.
80 Epigraph, viewed during personal visit to the Shāh Khāmūsh dargāh in Hyderabad, 2018.
81 Maulānā Bakhsh, Zād al-ākhirah (Lucknow: Naval Kishore Press, 1869). Reflecting its popularity across India, this text was reprinted in Lucknow multiple times, and was also published in Calcutta in 1903 and Kanpur in 1913. See also Risālah-yi tajhīz-o-takfīn (Lahore: Haji Chirag al-Din Siraj al-Din, 1920); and Maulvī ‘Alī Kabīr, Awzād al-ākhirah (Kanpur: Hajji Muhammad Hussain Press, 1881).
82 Maulānā Bakhsh, Zād al-ākhirah, pp. 161–163; and Kabīr, Awzād al-ākhirah, pp. 10–14.
83 On Bhopali cemetery boards, see Luard and Ali, Bhopal State Gazetteer, p. 99. These proscriptions on European-influenced tombstones were also addressed in the aforementioned funeral manuals, including Risālah-yi tajhīz-o-takfīn, p. 7.
84 On Mughal preferences for these materials, see Asher, Architecture of Mughal India, pp. 142–146.
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87 Riyāsat ʿAlī Sarshār, Taẕkirah al-Aīwān (Fatehgarh: Dilkushā Press, 1875), pp. cover page, 2–4.
88 Ibid., p. 2.
89 Ibid., p. 5.
90 Ibid., pp. 6–9.
91 Epigraph of the maqbarah janāb-i ‘āliyah, viewed by the author in Rampur, 2018 and Khūrshīd, Taẕkira-yi hunarmandān, p. vii.
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