305. Plans of Tombs of Kutub-ul-Alum and his Son, Butwa. Scale about 50 ft. to 1 in.
Besides the buildings of the classes above enumerated, there are several smaller objects of art at Ahmedabad which are of extraordinary beauty. Among these are several bowlees, or deep wells, with broad flights of steps leading down to them, and ornamented with pillars and galleries to as great an extent as some of the largest buildings above ground. It requires a personal experience of the grateful coolness of a subterranean apartment in a hot climate to appreciate such a class of buildings, and in the rainy West we hardly know how valuable water may become.
Another object of architectural beauty is found in the inflow and outflow sluices of the great tanks which abound everywhere around the city. Nowhere did the inhabitants of Ahmedabad show how essentially they were an architectural people, as in these utilitarian works. It was a necessity of their nature that every object should be made ornamental, and their success was as great in these as in their mosques or palaces.
Buildings in the Provinces.
In addition to the numerous edifices that adorn the capital, there are, as hinted above, several in the provincial capitals that are well worthy of notice. Among these the Jumma Musjid at Cambay is perhaps the most splendid. It was erected in A.D. 1325, in the time of Mohammed Shah Gori, and is only inferior to that of the capital in size. It measures over all 200 ft. by 210 ft., and its internal court 120 ft. by 135 ft. Except being somewhat smaller in scale, its plan and arrangements are almost identical with those of the Altumsh Mosque ([Woodcut No. 283]) at Ajmir: but, when it is looked into, it would be difficult to conceive two buildings more essentially different than these two are. The screen of arches at Cambay, only three in number, are plain even to baldness, and low, in order to fit the dimensions of the Jaina pillars of the interior. These latter are all borrowed from desecrated temples, and in this instance certainly rearranged without much attention to congruity or architectural effect. Still the effect is picturesque, and the parts being employed for the purposes for which they were designed, there is no offensive incongruity anywhere.
One of the most remarkable features in this mosque is the tomb, which its founder, Imrar ben Ahmed Kajerani erected for himself. It is wholly composed of Hindu remains, and is two storeys in height, and was crowned with a dome 28 ft. in diameter. The parts, however—borrowed, apparently, from different buildings—were so badly fitted together that, after standing some three centuries, it fell in, and has since remained a ruin, singularly picturesque in form and exquisite in detail, but a monument of the folly of employing building materials for any purpose but that for which they were designed.[518]
There is another mosque at Baroach, not unlike this one in design but smaller, being only 135 ft. over all north and south, and it has—now, at least—no courtyard; but some of its details, borrowed from Hindu temples, are very beautiful.
There are also two very beautiful mosques at Dolka, a city twenty-two miles south-west from Ahmedabad, almost identical in size and plan, being each of them squares of about 150 ft., and the mosque-front covered with five domes and the screen-wall with three arches each.[519]
