Ingenuity of Indian craftsmen

Ahmedabad’s Sidi Saiyyed Mosque has gained worldwide recognition for its architectural beauty. The fact that most are unaware of is, the Indian craftsmen who worked on it introduced the design of a plant on the jalli screen windows

During the reign of Mahmud Shah (1459-1511) who is the son of Ahmed Shah, the building art in the province of Gujarat attained its final and most sumptuous form due to the ruler’s fashion of monumental architecture.

Mahmud Shah’s love of buildings is witnessed by planning and developing of the towns Mustafabad and Mahmudabad at Junagadh and Champaner repectively. One more town, Mahmudabad near Kheda, which contains the mausoleum of minister Mubarak Sayyad, is one of the most beautiful monuments in India.

Following the taste of Mahmud Shah, his nobles built numerous and elaborate additions to Ahmedabad, and its environs.

Sidi Saiyyed Mosque
Sidi Saiyyed was a slave of Ahmed Shah, who like many of his race rose to wealth and power. Sidi Sayyid’s Mosque was built between 1510 and 1515, and the structure was peculiar in arrangement and departs from the style of the earlier and larger mosques in Ahmedabad.

It measures 68 feet in length and about 36 feet in depth. It is open in the front with four piers forming five arches. Eight pillars inside give support to the longitudinal and transverse arches on which the roof rests. Out of the fifteen areas formed, six are square and others are somewhat oblong. Different methods are employed to cover these spaces.

Some are constructed in the usual Hindu method of cutting of corners by three courses of lintels, reducing the square to a 32 sided polygon. In others, pendentive arches are thrown across the corners in the style so common in northern India at that time, and in still others, a Hindu system of brackets supporting the covering domes has been used. These domes are flat and covered by a layer of concrete.
In the sanctuary of this mosque, the walls are composed of arched windows, about 4 feet wide with projecting sills on the brackets in the north and south ends. Over these windows and also above two of the mihrabs and the intertwining spaces, there are ten semicircular arches, 10 to 11 feet wide and 6 feet 6 inches to 7 feet height covered with stone screens, cut in the sand stone available in Gujarat.

The patterns of the stone screens, 8 out of 10 are usually relatively small, square in shape with geometrical designs in general. And in the remaining two, the Indian craftsmen have displayed expertise in stone work by induced a dynamic vegetation form as an ornament.

In one of the screens, the plant was encircling a palm tree and in another there are four palm trees and five plants in which two of them encircle the palm trees. In creating this conception, an artist was forthcoming with exceptional vision by putting aside all conventions.

The author of Indian Architecture by Percy Brown described it as, “One of the subjects thus presented may be designated the ‘palm and parasite’ motif, a common and natural phenomenon in oriental plant life, but here treated with such aesthetics sensitiveness and technical skill as to compare favourably, with the applied art of any other country.”

It is very clear that Percy Brown observed that they perhaps did not think to explore the motive and inspiration behind the art work.These stone screens not only provided light and air, but also provided enrichment to this architectural edifice.

Because of these perforated stones screens of distinct character, this small mosque in Gujarat got worldwide reputation. Owing to its historicity and dexterity, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, a reputed national institute in management studies, has adopted it as a logo.

We were fascinated by the dancing plant adopted as a basic concept for stone screens (jallis). Few months ago, I accidentally came across such a plant, Jatropha Integerrima, which had a similar structure.

On verification, the leaves and flowers of the stone jalli coincided with the plant structure along with some variations, such as trifoliate leaves and flowers of Jatropha Gossypifolia. This is natural for a sculptor to exaggerate things to fill up the space and achieve the proportionate synthesis of solids and voids.

Indian Craftsmen
The ingenuity of the Indian craftsmen, particularly in the art of working with stone was unequalled. This perfection had been achieved through centuries of experience in manipulation of stone in the temple construction in all parts of the country.

They played magnificently with this material to express their creativity as the plastic genius rather than merely building construction. They preferred the final outcome as more of a sculpture than architecture.It seems the Indian craftsmen of the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque, with their ingenuity were successful in convincing the builder of the mosque with the abstract form of a plant, much against the established variety of geometrical patterns fixed in small square frames.

They must have shown some reason in producing a unique art form. By critical observation of the Jatropha Integerrima, it is found that its stem and branch form is dynamic, similar to the sculptured tree of the screen. Its flowers, which consist of five petals, also got preference because five is an auspicious number for Muslims. It is an ever-flowering plant, which attracts butterflies and birds throughout the year.

The underlying secret behind the selection of a vegetation form as a medium for stone screen is not deciphered by anybody to the best of my knowledge. To find out the creative inspiration beyond this effort, it is required to know something about Nataraja, the god of Hindus.

Nataraja
Nataraja is one of the names of the Hindu god, Shiva, the most revered god in this ancient religion, also known as the dancing Shiva. Nataraja is sometimes referred to as “the dancer of creation, lord of joy and sorrow.”

The dancing image captured in popular statues is meant to symbolise life’s ebb and flow. It also reminds us of the balance between form and void. The statue of Nataraja is framed by a circle representing cosmic energy. If it is observed closely, you will see that Nataraja stands upon a demon, which symbolises triumph over spiritual ignorance.

At that period, the Hindu craftsmen were under cultural and mental stress because of the plunder of ancient India with the sole objective of establishing their religion and they found the art form to vent their determined aspirations to protect the benevolence of Indian heritage.

They were successful in inducing the Nataraja of Hindu temple into a mosque in the form of abstract in vegetation medium. The dynamic plant created by the craftsmen is in softscape, in contrast to the dancing Nataraja in hardscape.

Some more symbolic embellishments of Hindu religion are also incorporated in the configuration of the arch. The keystone of this arch consists of a peepal leaf and Om. This confirms the motive of the sculptors in developing the concept of the jalli to a tree having curvilinear forms of branches, symbolising the thandava character and small flowers symbolising the laasya, the principle character of Shiva thandavam.

Fergusson J, a famous architectural historian of the British era paid rich homage to the Indian stone craftsman by observing, “It is probably more like a work of nature than any other architectural detail that has yet been designed, even by the best architects of Greece, or of the Middle Ages.” (History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, 1910)

Jatropha Integerrima

The dancing plant previously grown in Sidi Saiyyed is similar to the Jatropha Integerrima. Jatropha, a large soft-weeded deciduous shrub, is known by many names such as Ratanjyot, Jamalgota, Chandrajyot, etc.

It is a wildly growing hardy plant, in arid and semi-arid regions of the country on degraded soils having low fertility and moisture but cannot withstand heavy frost. It can be cultivated successfully in the regions having scanty to heavy rainfall with annual rainfall ranges from 500-1200mm.

The bushy plant (3-4 metres high) of Jatropha bears numerous side branches arising from its main stem. The flowers are pinkish in colour with five petals ever blooming with loose panicles that attract butterflies. The ripe fruits are about 2-5 cm large and ripe fruits are green in colour.

The genus Jatropha belonging to the Euphorbiaceae family of the plant kingdom is a diploid, which has about 175 species in the world. In India, there are 18 species found scattered in various states of the country, in which Jatropha Intergerrima is one.

Among the various alternative sources, Jatropha is one of the best alternatives for bio-diesel production. Various parts of the plant have medicinal value. Its bark contains tannin. As the flowers are attracted by bees and the plant has honey production potential.

References :
1.Percy Brown, Indian Architecture (Islamic period), D.B. Taraporvala Sons & Co. Pvt. Ltd., 1975.
2.Jas. Burgess, Archaeological Survey of India, Vol-VIII, Muhammadan Architecture of Ahmedabad, (Part-I), 1900
3.P.K. Acharya, An Encyclopaedia of Hindu Architecture, J.K. Publishing House, Bhopal-462001, 1978. (Page No. 217)