Ressources numériques en sciences humaines et sociales OpenEdition Nos plateformes OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypothèses Calenda Bibliothèques OpenEdition Freemium Suivez-nous

Epigraphic Practices in Sultanate India: A View from Chanderi

Figure 1. Map of Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh, India, Credits : Saarthak Singh

 

Strategically positioned within the forested hills of central India, the city of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh offers an unparalleled view of epigraphic practices during the period of Sultanate rule (Fig. 1). Annexed from the Pratihāra kings, the city and hill fortress became the seat of a governorate (iqāʾ) under the Sultans of Delhi (1310–1398), and rapidly grew from a garrison town (qasba) into a capital city under the Sultans of Mandu (1401–1565). By the end of the 15th century, its urban topography comprised a citadel (qala‘), a castle (hiṣār), a walled town (shahr), and a walled suburb (bīrūn shahr) with numerous reservoirs, stepwells, mosques, caravanserais, and palatial garden estates. These urban foundations are documented by a voluminous corpus of inscriptions in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and Hindi languages, which provide one of the richest repositories for architectural calligraphy produced for a variety of patrons, places, and publics in the provinces of Hindustan.

The inscriptions of Chanderi have been known since they were listed in annual archaeological and epigraphic reports prepared under the British Crown (1857–1947), the princely state of Gwalior (1857–1948), and the government of India (1947–). The Persian texts were collected and studied by the Chanderi Research Group (1993), comprising Denis Matringe and Yves Porter, culminating in a landmark publication by Gérard Fussman, Naissance et déclin d’une qasba : Chanderi du Xe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Boccard, 2003). Despite these efforts, many inscriptions remain unpublished, while others are damaged or removed from their original contexts for display in the museums of Chanderi, Gwalior and Bhopal. Moreover, the singular pursuit of an abstracted text, deciphered and filtered for hard facts of history, has entirely overlooked questions of epigraphic address: the capacity of inscriptions to communicate in both scripted and unscripted ways through their visual form, calligraphic style, overall size, and placement in a given architectural or urban space and in relation to the human body. Recovering these practical dimensions of designing and staging script in the city requires working across text, composition, material fabric, and built topography, both at the scale of a single structure and in relation to the urban whole.

Figure 2. Mosque inscription of Ismāʿīl, son of ʿAbd al-Salām, dated 1312, Chanderi Museum AMC 97/98, Credits : Saarthak Singh

 

The earliest Islamic inscription from Chanderi is a stone tablet recording the foundation of a mosque in 1312, but found preserved in a brahmin’s house in the heart of the walled town and now displayed in the local museum (Fig. 2). The rectangular slab of red sandstone is carved in sharp relief with four densely packed lines of writing. The Persian text proclaims the victorious rule of Sultan ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Khaljī (r.1296–1316) and his commander, Malik Tamar Sulṭānī, appointed to the newly conquered province of Chanderi.[1] Next in the chain of authority is the founder of the mosque, Ismāʿīl son of ʿAbd al-Salām, who held the post of secretary (muarrir) in the Aligarh district (khiṭṭa-i Kol) near Delhi, indicating that he was well-trained in the scribal conventions of sultanate administration and knew the appropriate political titulature, to have written the foundation record himself. Composed in a cursive script (naskhī), the inscription displays a rhythmic arrangement of letters whose tapering shafts rise into sharp, oblique ends and whose curved tails hook onto the following letter in their vigorous movement. Calligraphy echoes content where the letters are bold and enlarged to highlight royal titles (al-sulān). Following the format of official announcements, the letters are shortened and imbricated and the words stacked diagonally and compressed towards the end of each line, presumably to preempt the addition or alteration of the text, as illustrated by a firman of Sultan Muḥammad Tughluq issued in 1325 for the good treatment of non-Muslim communities.[2]

Figure 3. Cenotaph inscription from the Dargāh of Wajīhuddīn Yūsuf (d. 1329), Credits : Saarthak Singh
Figure 4. Cenotaph inscription reused over the central mihrab of the cave-shrine called Nūruddīn-Shāh-ka-Takiyā. Photo: Muzaffar Ansari.

 

Few securely dated Islamic inscriptions have survived from the 14th century, when Chanderi was a province of the Delhi Sultanate. Among the earliest is around a grave, situated in the shrine complex of Maulānā Wajīh al-Dīn Yūsuf (d. 729/ 1329), an influential disciple of Shaykh Nizām al-Dīn Chishti (1325) sent from Delhi to accompany the armies of Malik Tamar and established his practice outside the walled town. Carefully placed on three sides of the open-air grave, verses from the Qur’an in boldly carved letters proclaim the shahada upon the head and the basmala with four verses of al-Ikhlas, the sincerity of intention to worship God, on two sides of the body (fig. 3). The holy text is avoided on the side of the feet, which are instead marked by lotus roundels in an arched frieze. Such tomb stones must have been produced in great numbers, as shown by a fragmentary slab reused above the central mihrab of a cave shrine called Nūruddīn-Shāh-kā-Takiyā (fig. 4). The rectangular slab bears a tell-tale baluster column on its corner and is carved in two lines with Qur’anic verses on the omnipotence of God whose throne extends from heaven to earth (2: 255–6). The packed composition is marked by the vertical rise of tapering shafts and the downward slope of letters that lend an undulating quality that is developed to striking effect in the following century.

Figure 5. Delhi Gate inscription of Junaid b. Zaid, dated 1411. 157 x 71 cm, Credits : Saarthak Singh

 

Chanderi witnessed a significant change in the quantity and quality of epigraphic production in the 15th century, when the provincial governor from Delhi inaugurated an independent sultanate in Malwa. The new regime was emphatically announced by a Persian inscription dated 1411, on the Delhi Gate of the massive fortification (hiṣār) raised around the city “on the orders of the imperial standards” of sultan Dilāwar Khān (d. 1406) (fig. 5).[3] Fixed below the drummer’s balcony (naqqār-khāna), the rectangular slab of red sandstone is crisply carved in four horizontal lines of curving letters that run smoothly like the wave of water. The bowl-shaped nūn rises like a crescent across the seriffed shaft at regular intervals, punctuated by knotted motifs, floral bosses and vines that lend a sparkling effect to the whole.

Figure 6. Jāmi‘ Masjid inscription of Qadr Khān, c.1406, Credits : Saarthak Singh

 

Closely comparable in style and execution is an inscription that commemorates the foundation of a Jāmi‘ Masjid, following the pattern of grand mosques built in major cities of the Malwa Sultanate in 1403–1406 (fig. 6).[4] The inscription proclaims the august reign of Qadr Khān (c.808–835/ 1405–31), the son of Dilāwar Khān and younger brother of Hūshang Shāh, who ruled the principality of Chanderi and extended patronage to poets and scholars, with no less than four Persian dictionaries dedicated to him.[5] The lofty praise of the ruler invokes Rustam, Jamshīd, Ḥātim, and Anūshīrwān as the Persian paragons of battle, banqueting, generosity and justice—their illustrious names strung together in an unbroken chain of thuluth letters in the third line. The mosque itself is described in Persian verse as “built with gates of victory and arches of triumph (abwāb-i futūh wa aywān-i fath)”, its rhythmic cadence visually articulated at the beginning of the second line by sweeping bowls of rounded letters nested one inside the other.

Figure 7. Inscription at the tomb of Shaykh Burhān al-Dīn, Nizamuddīn Graveyard, 828/ 1424–25, Credits : Saarthak Singh

 

The virtuosity of epigraphic design lay in the interlacing of letters rising and falling like a wave, as showcased by a Persian inscription on the tomb-shrine of Shaykh Burhan al-Dīn (d. 1420) (fig. 7). Placed at eye-level on the door-lintel and intricately carved on a small area of 88 by 16 cm, ten verses and a line of prose are arranged in three rows of seven panels each. The cartouches define separate compositional units, but are unified by the stacking and stringing of letters on a rising slope towards the left. Dated 1425, the inscription is rich in information about the founder Malik Sālār, the supervisor-of-works Jamāl son of ‘Ūlā, the composer of verses Shams b. Farīd, who is followed it seems by the calligrapher himself, Saif al-Dīn son of Shajāwal, described merely as the ‘servant of the court’ (bandah-i dargāh).[6]

Figure 8. Inscription over the main mihrab of the Moti Masjid, dated 1462, 64 x 31 cm, Credits : Saarthak Singh

 

While these epigraphs are certainly works of accomplished scribes, identifying the adherence to a canonical calligraphic style is complicated by the fact that each inscription invents its own form and composition in relation to the given content and space. A foundation inscription above the central mihrab of the Moti Masjid, dated 1462, shows the remarkable creativity in accordance with established conventions of beautiful writing (Fig. 10). Carved on a rectangular tablet with raised borders, the text comprises seven Persian verses arranged in four lines, the first verse set between roundels inscribed with Allāh, followed by three successive lines of six hemistiches— each on a gradual slope rising to the right and culminating in the superscription of letters, especially the crescent-shaped nūn. The rhythmic quality of writing is reiterated by a line of ornaments rising and falling at the base. Incidentally, the mosque’s founder, a high official called nā‘ib-i ard Muhammad b. Zain, is poetically praised for his abilities to “perform such amount of account-keeping (siyāqat) in one moment that even the secretary of the sky (dabīr-i āsmān) cannot render a single word thereof till eternity,” thus situating the art of calligraphy within the scribal praxis of sultanate administration while emphasizing the artistic qualities of such epigraphic texts.[7]

Figure 9. Stepwell inscription in the Qāḍīyon-kī-Bāolī, dated 890/ 1485, Credits : Saarthak Singh

 

Besides mosques and tombs, Chanderi is particularly well-endowed with water-storage monuments, which were furnished with foundation inscriptions praising the purity of their waters and their founders, even as the written text itself appears to capture the evanescent flow of water.[8] Among a series of stepped wells and tanks built in the outskirts of the expanding city during the last decades of the 15th century, the Qāḍīyon-kī-Bāolī stands out for a pair of extraordinary inscriptions dated 1485 (fig. 9). Installed in a pair of niches along the staircase leading down to water, they record the foundation of the step-well by Qāḍī Mihrān as part of a large suburban estate with a mosque, a garden and a caravanserai for passers-by and travellers.[9] The inscriptions state that  “although there were innumerable step-wells in this region, all were dry and of no use (lekin badast khālī pey īnchonīn az kār),” a rare reference to a dry period that explains what was at stake for the patronage of stepwells, as well as the poetic description of water—here compared to Zamzam, Nile, Euphrates, and Bactrus.[10] The slab illustrated here is distinguished by the elegant concatenation of letters whose deep plunging bowls take the following letters in their stream, and by the serial repetition of letterforms, such as the kāf and dāl that open and close the first three verses.

Figure 10. Bilingual inscription in Sanskrit and Persian at Kaṭighāṭī, 1490–95, Credits : Saarthak Singh

 

An important but little discussed dimension of epigraphic practice during the Sultanate period is the use of Arabic and Persian alongside Sanskrit and Hindi. One striking example from Chanderi is a bilingual inscription carved into the gateway of Kaṭighāṭī, a monumental passage hewn out of a hill south of the city (fig. 10). Emulating the form of a stone tablet with raised borders, the rock-cut inscription is rather like two leaves of a bilingual book with a juxtaposition of two distinct scripts, in accordance with their direction of writing: an angular nāgarī on the left, incised in the form of Sanskrit praśastis and a curvilinear naskhī on the right, carved in relief as was common for monumental Persian epigraphy. The two texts are distinct and present information significant in their own epigraphic traditions, even if both begin with homage to god and end with the date of the foundation—given as 1490 in the Nāgarī and 1495 in the Persian text.[11] Beyond their literal contents and material form, the juxtaposition of these two epigraphic traditions on a city gate calls attention to the performative character of the written text in staging urban identity, for it presupposes an audience that was able to recognise and move between different verbal and social language worlds.

The examples discussed above form part of a large corpus of some sixty inscriptions dating from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries that offer a rare glimpse into the epigraphic practices current in the Indian sultanates. These include literary references to Persian heroes and Qur’anic paradise, calligraphic compositions of Arabic characters imbricated in an undulating rhythm, the sculptural treatment of inscribed text punctuated by ornamental motifs, and the architectural placement of epigraphic slabs over doors, on arches, and along passageways leading into a variety of public spaces. Attending to these elements of practice can not only help uncover the exceptional character of an epigraphic event and the constraints operating on its realization, but also tell us something about the spaces in which epigraphy was encountered—from mosques and mausolea to stepwells and city gates—as part of an evolving urban discourse.

Saarthak Singh

*all maps and photos are by the author, unless specified otherwise


[1] Z.A. Desai, “The Chanderi Inscription of ‘Alau’d-din Khalji,” Epigraphia Indica: Arabic and Persian Supplement 1968, 7–8.

[2] R.W. Skelton in B.W. Robinson (ed.), Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1976), 283–284. Eloïse Brac de la Perrière, « Bihârî et naskhî-dîwânî: remarques sur deux calligraphies de l’Inde des sultanats », Studia Islamica 96 (2003): 90–91. Sheila Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (2006): 385–386.

[3] Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica 1925-26, p. 17, pl. 7a; Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy 1966-67, D61

[4] See the foundation inscriptions of mosques in Ujjain (806/ 1403–4), Lalitpur (807/ 1404–5), Dhar (807/ 1404–5), and Mandu (808/1405–6).

[5] Solomon I. Baevskii, Early Persian Lexicography: Farhangs of the Eleventh to the Fifteenth Century, tr. N. Kilian (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 84–104.

[6] S.A.A. Rahim, “Inscriptions of the Sultans of Malwa,” Epigraphia Indica: Arabic and Persian Supplement (1964): 51–53.

[7] Rahim, “Inscriptions of the Sultans of Malwa,” 60.

[8] Saarthak Singh, “Rethinking the Regional in Rājamatī’s World: Placemaking, Patronage and the Performance of Polity in Chanderi, c. 1479,” South Asian Studies 39.2 (2023), 192–93.

[9] Rahim, “Inscriptions of the Sultans of Malwa,” 63–66.

[10] Rahim, “Inscriptions,” 64, v. 5 and 66, v. 7.

[11] Shamsuddin Ahmad, “Inscriptions from Gwalior State,” Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica 1939–40, 45–46.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
callfront (23 juin 2025). Epigraphic Practices in Sultanate India: A View from Chanderi. CallFront. Consulté le 23 janvier 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/146hg


Laisser un commentaire

Votre adresse e-mail ne sera pas publiée. Les champs obligatoires sont indiqués avec *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.