Architectural Histories Entwined: The Rudra-Mahalaya/Congregational Mosque of Siddhpur, Gujarat

Abstract

The Rudra-mahalaya of Siddhpur, north Gujarat (India), was founded in the midtwelfth century ce to be the principal temple complex of the city. It was dedicated to an aspect of Siva, the dynastic deity of the Chaulukyas (ca. 950-1303/04), whose seventh ruler, Jayasimha Siddharaja (r. 1094-1144), commissioned the complex in ca. 1140. In about 1414, the complex was dismantled and reconfigured as the congregational mosque of the city by Ahmad Shah I (r. ca. 1410-44), the second sultan of the Muslim dynasty of the Muzaffarids. Due to its dual ritual function, the Rudra-mahalaya/congregational mosque has been divided into two separate scholarly discourses, namely those of the Islamic and temple architectures of South Asia. This work proposes certain methodological shifts surrounding the well documented phenomenon of architectural reuse in pre-Mughal India. The Rudra-mahalaya serves as an example of how the separate discourses of Islamic and temple architectures have privileged historical and historiographical ruptures, to the neglect of prominent continuities. Historiographically, the separation of these areas of study does not allow for the examination of the formal continuities between temples and Islamic buildings. Historically, the study of Indic and Islamic architectures as divergent cultural processes in South Asia does not bring out the modified but still palpable continuities in the social fabrics within which the buildings were embedded. By examining a complex such as the Rudramahalaya from both perspectives simultaneously, I hope to restore the historical importance of these continuities.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.