Indo-Saracenic architecture

Madras High Court buildings are a prime example of Indo-Saracenic architecture, designed by J. W. Brassington under the guidance of British architect Henry Irwin, 1892.
The Victoria Memorial, Kolkata, has very discreet Indo-Saracenic touches, such as the corner chatris, in the Raj metropolis least touched by the style.
The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (previously Victoria Terminus) in Mumbai, 1878–88. A mixture of Romanesque, Gothic and Indian elements.
North Block of the Secretariat Building, New Delhi, designed by Herbert Baker.

Indo-Saracenic architecture (also known as Indo-Gothic, Mughal-Gothic, Neo-Mughal, in the 19th century often Indo-Islamic style[1]) was a revivalist architectural style mostly used by British architects in India in the later 19th century, especially in public and government buildings in the British Raj, and the palaces of rulers of the princely states. It drew stylistic and decorative elements from native Indo-Islamic architecture, especially Mughal architecture, which the British regarded as the classic Indian style.[2] The basic layout and structure of the buildings tended to be close to that used in contemporary buildings in other revivalist styles, such as Gothic revival and Neo-Classical, with specific Indian features and decoration added.

The style drew from western exposure to depictions of Indian buildings from about 1795, such as those by William Hodges and the Daniell duo (William Daniell and his uncle Thomas Daniell). The first Indo-Saracenic building is often said to be the Chepauk Palace, completed in 1768, in present-day Chennai (Madras), for the Nawab of Arcot.[3] Bombay and Calcutta (as they then were), as the main centres of the Raj administration, saw many buildings constructed in the style, although Calcutta was also a bastion of European Neo-Classical architecture fused with Indic architectural elements. Most major buildings are now classified under the Heritage buildings category as laid down by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), and protected.[citation needed]

The style enjoyed a degree of popularity outside British India, where architects often mixed Islamic and European elements from various areas and periods with boldness, in the prevailing climate of eclecticism in architecture. Among other British colonies and protectorates in the region, it was adopted by architects and engineers in British Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) and the Federated Malay States (present-day Malaysia). The style was sometimes used, mostly for large houses, in the United Kingdom itself, for example at the royal Brighton Pavilion (1787–1823) and Sezincote House (1805) in Gloucestershire.

The wider European version, also popular in the Americas, is Moorish Revival architecture, which tends to use specific South Asian features less, and instead those characteristic of the Arabic-speaking countries; Neo-Mudéjar is the equivalent style in Spain. In India there had been an earlier inversion of the style in Lucknow before the British takeover in 1856, where Indian architects rather "randomly grafted European stylistic elements, as details and motifs, on to a skeleton derived from the Indo-Islamic school." This is known as the "Nawabi style."[4] Saracen was a term used in the Middle Ages in Europe for the Arabic-speaking Muslim people of the Middle East and North Africa, and the term "Indo-Saracenic" was first used by the British to describe the earlier Indo-Islamic architecture of the Mughals and their predecessors,[5] and often continued to be used in that sense. "Saracenic architecture" (without the "Indo-") was first used for the architecture of Muslim Spain, the most familiar Islamic architecture to most early 19th-century writers in English.

  1. ^ A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. ISBN 978-0-19-860678-9.
  2. ^ Das, 98
  3. ^ Das, 95, 102
  4. ^ Jayewardene-Pillai, 10
  5. ^ Jayewardene-Pillai, 14