No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Between Industry and Islam: Stonework and tomb construction in colonial-era India
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2021
Abstract
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.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
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.
References
1 On the colonial genealogy of ideals of technological ‘modernity’, see Arnold, David, Science, Technology, and Medicine in Colonial India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 90–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On adaptations of European discourses of modernity more broadly, see Bayly, Christopher, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2004), pp. 31–36, 142–143Google Scholar.
2 Zuberi, M. Amin, Asr-e jadid: The New Epoch in Bhopal, trans. Newman, C. F. (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1929)Google Scholar; Maulānā ‘Abbās, Bāgh-i chahār chamān, yʿanī tārīkh-i Dakkan (Lucknow: Jaʿfarī Press, 1881), p. 24; Z̤avābiṭ-i ṣafayī chādarghat, ‘alāqah bīrūn-i baldah (Hyderabad: Sārkārī Press, 1871), pp. 13, 30; and Ḥālāt-i vahī mūz̤aʿvār-i riyāsat-i Rāmpūr, 1311 faṣlī (Rampur: State Press, 1902), pp. 5, 19.
3 Devji, Faisal, ‘Apologetic modernity’, Modern Intellectual History, 4:1 (2007), pp. 70–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Asher, Catherine B., The Architecture of Mughal India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 292–330CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pramer, V. S., A Social History of Indian Architecture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 139–142Google Scholar.
5 Anthony Welch and Howard Crane, ‘The Tughluqs: Master builders of the Delhi Sultanate’, Muqarnas, 1 (1983), pp. 123–166; and Chanchal Dadlani, From Stone to Paper: Architecture as History in the Late Mughal Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), pp. 90–109.
6 Asher, Architecture of Mughal India, p. 310.
7 Ramusack, Barbara N., The Indian Princes and Their States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 52–65Google Scholar.
8 On the post-1857 consolidation of the Raj and systems of administration in native states, see Ramusack, Indian Princes, pp. 84–92.
9 Green, Nile, Indian Sufism since the Seventeenth Century: Saints, Books and Empires in the Muslim Deccan (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Ibid., pp. 124–125.
11 Khān, Muḥammad Najm al-Ghanī, Akhbār al-Ṣanādīd, jild-i duvum (Rampur: Raza Library Press, 1997), p. 173Google Scholar.
12 Ibid., p. 181.
13 Khan, Razak, ‘Local histories: Space, emotions and identities in vernacular histories of princely Rampur’, Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient, 58:5 (2015), p. 706CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 For an example from Jaipur, see Johnson-Roehr, Susan, ‘Centering the Chārbāgh: The Mughal garden as design module for the Jaipur city plan’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 72:1 (March 2013), pp. 38–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Mysore, see Nair, Janaki, Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Region under Princely Rule (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), pp. 153–159Google Scholar.
15 Khan, ‘Local histories’, pp. 693–731.
16 Ibid., p. 706.
17 Metcalf, Thomas, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 9–13Google Scholar.
18 Ibid., pp. 106–107.
19 Khān, Akhbār al-Ṣanādīd, p. 481.
20 Archambault, Hannah L., ‘Becoming Mughal in the nineteenth century: The case of the Bhopal princely state’, South Asia, 36:4 (2013), pp. 479–495CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Lambert-Hurley, Siobhan, Muslim Women, Reform, and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begum of Bhopal (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 5–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Ibid., p. 16.
23 Shāh Jahān Begum also officially ruled from 1844 to 1860, though with her mother as regent. Metcalf, Barbara, ‘Islam and power in colonial India: The making and unmaking of a colonial princess’, The American Historical Review, 116:1 (2001), p. 14Google Scholar.
24 Ibid., pp. 14–16.
25 Metcalf, Imperial Vision, p. 24.
26 National Archives of India (NAI), Central India Agency: Bhopal Political, ‘Architectural buildings in Bhopal agency’, 6 July 1911, p. 2.
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.
78 On styles and patrons of dargāh construction in Nampally and the surrounding neighbourhoods, see Campbell, A. Claude, Glimpses of the Nizam's Dominions (Bombay: CB Burrows, 1898), pp. 167–174Google Scholar; Ḥussain, Dilchasp maqāmāt, p. 53; and Ghulām Muḥammad Khān Gauhar, Tazk-i maḥbubiyah, jild-i dovum (Hyderabad, 1901), p. 67.
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.
85 Kumar, Nita, The Artisans of Banaras: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880–1986 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 234CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
86 On forms of artisan training, see ibid., p. 31; and Chambers, Thomas, Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans (London: UCL Press, 2020), pp. 37–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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.
92 For comparative examples from across India, see A. C. Chatterjee, Ripūrt-i ṣanʿat wa ḥarfat, Mumālik-i muttaḥidah (Benares: Government Press, 1909), p. 228; Wilberforce, S., Monograph on Stone-carving and Inlaying in the Punjab (Lahore: Government of Punjab Press, 1906), p. 4Google Scholar; and Tupper, J. H. E., Stone-carving and inlaying in the Bombay presidency (Bombay: Government Press, 1906), p. 8Google Scholar.
93 Crosthwaite, Monograph on Stone Carving, p. 9.
94 For the comparative pay of masons and carvers in Rampur, see NAI, Foreign: Internal A, ‘Report on the administration of the Rampur State for the year ending 31 March 1889’ (November 1889), nos 39–42.
95 Prakash, Another Reason, pp. 170–171.
96 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Rethinking Working-class History: Bengal, 1890–1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 115CrossRefGoogle Scholar
97 See, for example, Carla Bellamy, The Powerful Ephemeral: Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); and Asher, Catherine B., ‘Pilgrimage to the shrines in Ajmer’, in Islam in South Asia in Practice, ed. Metcalf, Barbara (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 77–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
98 Joshi, Chitra, Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and Its Forgotten Histories (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), p. 164Google Scholar.