 The architecture of Islamic mosques and tombs is an invaluable treasure of world heritage. Many countries have taken inspiration from this tradition. Islam had conquered Spanish parts, Spain and the part of Portugal and part of France also, in the year 750. After that, this architecture gradually travelled from Spain to Portugal into France and then it has influenced a lot of world architecture in almost all the countries. For example, one is surface decoration with tiles. The tile system was not there in European architecture. And in Islam it is known as Zulejo's and it is in European architecture also and especially in Portugal, they call it Azulejo's, that is the tiles. And if you see the colour, that would itself tell you that I mean it has been introduced directly from Islamic architecture. And that is even now being acknowledged also. After the Romans, the building of arches and domes had also been forgotten in Europe. These were reintroduced in this time. It's good to know that the art of dome construction, arch construction came, actually went from Iran to Europe. Actually the architecture of the egg is employed in the dome. What is important is, according to the beliefs of the old Persians, if you put an egg exactly perpendicular on the ground, even if you put a hoof of a camel on it, it won't break because of the cellular connection. Islamic architecture is characterised by a few visible symbols. One is the arch, which frames the space. Second is the dome, which looms over the sky and the skyscrapers. And the third is the minaret, which pierces the skies. These minarets were actually the symbols in the middle of the deserts, representing the fire, which was lit on the top, to guide the travellers when they travelled in the middle of the desert. A dome represents the infinite, it represents the sky. As the dome architecture represents the infinite, infinite both. So dome has a very important role to play. It is well known that the most famous Islamic monument of the world, the Taj Mahal, is in India. What is not equally well known is that the second oldest mosque in the world is also in India, in Kerala. In fact, India has a vast and rich architectural heritage of Islam. From Kerala in the south, till Kashmir in the north. From Tripura in the east, till Gujarat in the west. Islam came to India north from the north, as is very commonly believed. But it came through the Arab traders in what is today the region of Malabar in Kerala. And developed as a trading community, as a merchant community. And you can see still traces of that community amongst the Mopilas, who are basically who trace their ancestry to the Arabs. Since ancient times, India had considerable trade contact with the Arab world. In the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder writes in Rome about the roots which existed going to India. He mentions the July monsoon winds that traders used to catch to bring them to the Indian coast. He mentions a ship which left the coast of Arabia and took 40 days to reach Moosirisi, which was then the name of present day Kodangalur. With the advent of Islam, Arab traders became the carriers of the new faith. Behind me here, you see the first mosque which was made in India. It was made in Kodangalur by Raja Cheraman Perumal. It was made in 629 AD within the lifetime of the Prophet. Kailpatnam is an ancient town on the mouth of the Tamira Pirani River. It is about 1 km from its mouth. The Kodalkarai Mosque was built here by Arab traders as early as Hijri 12 or 633 AD. It is the first mosque to be built in Tamil Nadu. Kailpatnam has many early mosques. In fact, Kerala on the west coast of India and Tamil Nadu on the east coast has many mosques built during the years. In Nagore on the east coast, there is a large dargah that has been built. India reached the house of all the traditions of Islam, Sunni, Shia and Sufi. Islam in the north of course came through to different invasions starting with the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazna who went as far as Gujarat. But thereafter, there was a peaceful intrusion of different kinds of Sufi saints, of traders, of merchants and of other individuals who were basically moving into India, moving into the north of India because of the political instability or the diagnostic changes that were taking place in and around Central Asia and Afghanistan. So gradually this is how a community developed, a very small community which developed which of course increased its strength. Once the Turkish rule was established. Kuwaitul Islam was the first mosque built by Muslims soon after the conquest of Delhi. This mosque was built in 1193 and here every inch of the maksura is beautifully carved. There are a number of Quranic verses also very beautifully written on this one as if it has been written on wax. Some of the medieval writers have used this word that it is so beautifully done that it appears that it has been done on wax. On stones it was not possible. The concept of Minaris, Vestation and Central Asia. All over Vestatia and Central Asia in 12th and 13th century there were more than 70 minarets like this one. But just before Kutub Minar there were two very important minarets in Vestatia. One was in Ghazni and the second was in Khaja Siaposh in Jam. So that also had this kind of circular and angular floating. Kutub Minar is directly influenced by that one. In Persia and Central Asia their building material was mostly bricks. It was not stone so they were not having beautiful craftsmen working on this kind of stones. In India we had very excellent craftsmen who were working on Indian temples. Those craftsmen were very effectively used here in this monument and that is why we find the excellent carvings in this Kutub Minar. Ibn Battuta was a traveller who had travelled all over the Islamic Empire. He had started from Africa, he had seen the Samarkand, he had seen the Mosques and when he came to India he records that nowhere in the world, nowhere in the Islamic Empire we have a Minar like this one. Meanwhile Islamic influences continued to grow in the south, in the Deccan. At the end of the 15th century he saw the establishment of the five sultans in the Deccan. These were Rana Madnagar, Biyapur, Golkonda, Bedar and Berar. The Sultan of Biyapur was a descendant of the Ottoman dynasty of Istanbul. The Sultan of Golkonda was a Turkish prince who had fled to India. The sultans were followers of the sect of Islam and were allies close to the rulers of Safivat of Iran. A different culture was developed in the Deccan cosmopolitan community. The streets of the Sultanate of Deccan were full of Turks, Persians, Arabs and Africans. In India, the Deccan was the largest learning centre in Arabic literature. The Kutub Shahis founded the dynasty of Golkonda in 1512. They were committed to retain the roots of their Persian identity and culture. In this time the architects and artists emigrated to the Deccan of Persia. Sultan Ibrahim Adilshad II ruled Biyapur from 1580 to 1627. He was a contemporary of Emperor Akbar, the Mughal Emperor who ruled in North India. A visit to his rosa or tomb is a very special pleasure. In fact, it is like a pilgrimage for somebody deeply interested in Indian art. For some of the finest miniature paintings ever made in India were made in his rule. The Gol Gumbaz in Biyapur is the tomb of Sultan Muhammad Adil Shah, the successor of Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II. Muhammad ruled in Biyapur from 1627 to 1657 AD. This is the largest dome ever to be built in the Islamic world. It measures 37.92 metres on the inside. A particular attraction is a central gallery, popularly called a whispering gallery, where each sound that you make is echoed distinctly seven times. Every time I speak here, it echoes so many times. Tourists love to come here. When I managed to visit these sites and study them with a little bit more detail, we were able to appreciate what great centres these were of architecture, culture and learning. Iran and Central Asia only had single courts. If you were a soldier, a religious figure, an intellectual, a religious figure, and you could not find a sponsor, maybe in what is now Iran or Uzbekistan, chances are if you went to the Deccan, you could find some sort of patronage. And there was this continuous migration of people, ideas, artistic devices and architectures from the Near East into the Deccan. We have in fact, a lot of people who have come here, from the Near East into the Deccan. We have in fact, one very remarkable example of an architectural transplant from Central Asia. This is the great Madrasa of Mahmud Gawan from the 1480s in Bida. Now if you would take a photograph of this and put a label and say Madrasa in Uzbekistan or part of Eastern Iran, it would be very hard to tell the difference. Timur when he came to Hindustan, he was struck by the beauty of our historical cities. This is Malfuzate Timuri, the autobiography of Timur. He has given a description about the cities of India and then he says, I ordered that all the artisans and clever mechanics who were masters of their respective crafts should be picked out from among the prisoners and set aside. And accordingly, some thousands of craftsmen were selected to await my command. I had determined to build a Masjid-e-Jami in Samarkand, the seat of my empire, which should be without a rival in any country. So I ordered that all the builders and stone mazins of India should be set apart for my own special service. In some other records it is said that he had taken near about 3,000 artisans from India who were employed again in the construction of the Jami Masjid at Samarkand. 1526 was a year which changed the political map of India. It was the year of the advent of Babur who founded the great Mughal dynasty. Babur was a descendant of the Turku-Mongol conqueror Timur, whose family ruled in Persia. The dynasty founded by Babur was one of the greatest that had seen the world. They ruled an enormous empire whose fame spread all over the world. The culture and art that they had created helped to give a way to the development of the future in all spheres of life in the subcontinent of India. What is extremely important to recognise about the Mughals is that when they came to power and they took over northern India or Hindustan they had already been more than 250 years of Islamic building traditions, religious traditions, culture and literature in India. Humayun's tomb, which might be considered the first great imperial masterpiece of the new dynasty sponsored by the 20-year-old Akbar in memory of his father, is very much related to the previous architecture of Delhi. Then we look at the design of the tomb itself, these earlier systems which were already well entrenched in India like the little domed chattris, the different coloured stonework and we place all of those around a central dome which is in white marble, an Indian material, not a Middle Eastern material, but the dome is bulbous, it has this sort of shape and it's a double dome and it's something which was brought into India from the Timurid tradition of Uzbekistan. The fortress has palaces of Emperor Akbar, Jhangir and Shajah. The most prominent among all the structures are the white marble buildings of Shajah. Khasmel is one of the elegant buildings built by the pure marble. In 1571, Emperor Akbar decided to build a new capital. A magnificent city was built in a place which was not far away from the previous capital in Agra. It was called Fatehpur Sikri. In building Fatehpur Sikri, no cost was too much, no effort was too great for the Emperor Akbar. He wished to make the city true to his conception. As a matter of fact, miniature paintings of that period show the Emperor going amidst the workers, supervising the construction of the city himself. The world's best known tomb stands testimony to a timeless love story. The Taj Mahal was built in 1648 by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife, Arjumand Banu Begum, known to the world as Muntaz Mahal. The construction of the Taj Mahal was an amazing feat. It was built of marble and made of semi-precious stone. 20,000 workers and craftsmen worked for 17 years to build this magnificent building. In general, there are two rivers and the same kind of two rivers you can see in Taj Mahal also. The whole entire monument has been conceived in a very elaborate way with the domes, with the minarets and the cavity and the rotundity of the monument. The most important thing which beautifies the monument more than anything else is the Pietra Dura work or Inlay work. For depicting one particular flower, they have used 64 stones of various sides, various shades and of various colors also. And if you lit a torch into that one, you would feel that the whole thing is blooming. In the middle of the 17th century, the Emperor Mughal Shah Jahan built a new imperial capital in Delhi. He built his palace inside the Grand Fortress Roca, which he built at the rivers of the Ramna River. Divane Am, or the Peace of the Public Auditorium, is where the Emperor heard the prayers of the people. Divane Has is the Peace of the Private Auditorium. These structures are of the glories of the Fortress Roca. Hundreds of mosques and Islamic tombs of the Great Beauty are extended everywhere. In the west of the country, in Gujarat, it is the place of the 15th century World Heritage Site. In the east, there is an impressive mosque, Nahudah Masjid, and several adros in Kolkata. There are fine mosques, even in the farthest corners of India. Here we are in the northeast of India, in Agartala in the state of Tripura. This is the beautiful Gedu Biya Masjid behind me. In the mountainous state of Kashmir, Islamic architecture was influenced by ancient Hindu and Buddhist traditions. These were combined with influences coming from Persia and from Turkistan. Wood was used extensively in the mosques and tombs of Kashmir. I think one should recognize the fact that Islam in India is not peripheral to anything that Islam in India has been a very dynamic force. It has been a very invigorating force. To the entire Islamic architecture, the contribution of Indian architecture is outstanding. You can take two monuments as symbolical monuments. One is Kutubinar and the second one is Taj Mahal. India has an enormous heritage of Islamic architecture. These monuments are a great heritage of Indian culture and many are recognized as universal heritage monuments. In these we see the conference of local talent with inspirations from Iran, Arabia and Central Asia. These mosques, tombs, madarsas, palaces and fortifications are a beautiful and unique treasure of Islamic architecture. India has a vast and rich architectural heritage of Islam. From Kerala in the south till Kashmir in the north, from Tripura in the east till Gujarat in the west. With the advent of Islam, Arab traders became the carriers of the new faith. Behind me here you see the first mosque which was made in India. It was made in Kodungalur by Raja Cheraman Perumal. It was made in 629 A.D. within the lifetime of the Prophet. Kail Patnam is an ancient town on the mouth of the Tamira Pirani River. It is about one kilometer from its mouth. The Kodalkarai Mosque was built here by Arab traders as early as Hijri 12 or 633 A.D. Kuwaitul Islam was the first mosque built by Muslims soon after the conquest of Delhi. This mosque was built in 1193 and here every inch of the maksura is beautifully carved. There are a number of Quranic verses also very beautifully written on this one as if it has been written on wax. Some of the medieval writers have used this word that it is so beautifully done that it appears that it has been done on wax. On stones it was not possible. The most impressive monument in the Kutub complex is the Minar Kutub itself. It was built at the beginning of the 13th century by Kutubuddin Ebak, the Sultan of Delhi. It is one of the highest minarets in the world and is 72.5 meters high. Meanwhile, Islamic influences continued to grow in the south, in the Deccan. The end of the 15th century saw the establishment of the five sultans in the Deccan. These were Namednagar, Biyapur, Golkonda, Bedar and Berar. The Sultan of Biyapur was a descendant of the Ottoman dynasty of Istanbul. The Sultan of Golkonda was a Turkish prince who was a refugee to India. The sultans were followers of the sectarian Islam and were allies with the rulers of the Safis of Iran. In India, the Deccan was the largest centre of Arabic literature. The Gol Gumbaz in Biyapur is the tomb of Sultan Muhammad Adil Shah, the successor of Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II. Muhammad ruled in Biyapur from 1627 to 1657 AD. This is the largest dome ever to be built in the Islamic world. It measures 37.92 meters on the inside. We have in fact one very remarkable example of an architectural transplant from Central Asia. This is the great Madrasa of Mahmud Gawan from the 1480s in Biyda. Now, if you would take a photograph of this and put a label and say Madrasa in Uzbekistan or part of Eastern Iran, it would be very hard to tell the difference. 1526 was a year which changed the political map of India. It was the year of the advent of Babur who founded the great Mughal dynasty. The dynasty founded by Babur was one of the greatest that had seen the world. They ruled an enormous empire whose fame spread all over the world. Humayun's tomb which might be considered the first great imperial masterpiece of the new dynasty, sponsored by the 20-year-old Akbar in memory of his father, is very much related to the previous architecture of Delhi. Then we look at the design of the tomb itself with these earlier systems which were already well entrenched in India like the little domed chattris, the different coloured stonework. And we place all of those around a central dome which is in white marble, an Indian material, not a Middle Eastern material, but the dome is bulbous. It has this sort of shape and it's a double dome. And it's something which was brought into India from the Timurid tradition of Uzbekistan. Agra was the imperial capital of Akbar in the middle of the 16th century. The fortress here was one of the most powerful in the north of India since early times. In 1565 the Emperor Akbar ordered the reconstruction of the fortress. The fortress has palaces of Emperor Akbar, Jhangir and Shajah. The most prominent among all the structures are the white marble buildings of Shajah. In 1571 the Emperor Akbar decided to build a new capital. A magnificent city was built in a place that was not very far from the capital before Agra. It was called Fatehpur Sikri. Fatehpur Sikri is one of the biggest cities that is presented symmetrically to the medieval part of the world. The world's best known tomb stands testimony to a timeless love story. The Taj Mahal was built in 1648 by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife Arjumand Banu Begum known to the world as Mumtaz Mahal. The construction of Taj Mahal was an amazing feat. It is built of marble and built by semi-precious stones subtly. 20,000 workers and craftsmen worked for 17 years to build this magnificent building. In the middle of the 17th century the Emperor Mughal Shah Jahan built a new capital in Delhi. He built his palace inside the Grand Fortress Roca that he built at the rivers of the Ramna River. Divane Am, or the Peace of the Public Auditorium, is where the Emperor would hear the prayers of the people. Divane Haas is the Peace of the Private Auditorium. These structures are from the glories of the Fortress Roca. India has an enormous heritage of Islamic architecture. These monuments are a great treasure of Indian culture and many are recognized as universal heritage monuments. In these we see the conference of local talent with inspirations from Iran, Arabia and Central Asia. These mosquitos, tombs, madarsas, palaces and fortresses are a beautiful and unique treasure of Islamic architecture heritage.