The Forts of India

This large format luxury volume (25 x 32 cm) describes and familiarizes not only the expert with historic forts, sea fortifications and the British fort of the Indian subcontinent with an excellent depiction.

It is the special credit of the English photographer Virginia Fass, who presents another volume about architecture history after her remarkable success “The Palaces of India”. It was not least possible to publish it in such a way and at a reasonable price thanks to the financial support by the two sponsors Jutta and Tikki Oberoi. The lyrical editing was done by the couple Rita and Vijay Sharma and Dr. Christopher Tadgell, Senior Lecturer for Architecture History at the Institute for Architecture of the University of Canterbury.

Already flipping through the book it impresses from the first to the last page. It aligns and balances the words and pictures, the clear structure with a preceded map (p.10), the introduction which leads to the actual topic with a short chronological overview which begins in the 13th Century, and the detailed single depictions of the forts up to 10 pages. The thematic part ends with a view on the sea fortress and the history of British forts, which begins in the 17th Century and ends in the year of 1799. This book is completed by a personal retrospective of the photographer about the development of the book ("Forts and castles have long held a fas¬cination for me ... It took four separate visits between 1980 and 1985, to achieve my ambition. It was tough, va¬ried and exciting. I enjoyed the chal¬lenge and the fun, and feel very privile-ged to have the opportunity to expe¬rience such unforgettable and unusual adventures ... ").A thanks to the contributors, a glossary and a location and name register are of course part of this volume.

It would be wrong to assume that his work is about a depiction of pure military architecture. In the introduction the maharaja of Jaipur emphasises that the forts did not only serve military purposes but also house some of the greatest palaces. That is shown in a historic sketch of the Red Fort, depicted as the first of several forts in Delhi (pages 20-29). Impressively rises the palace architecture behind the reddish shining fortress walls and remembers in its function of the citadel in Cairo situated on a cliff of the Mokkatam, which bastion fortifications is crowned by pointed minarets of the Mohammed-Ali-Mosque. World-famous it the Tāj Mahall at the bank of the Yamnunā, no less important the close Red Fort of Agra developed around 70 years earlier. In the fort the mogul emperor Sāh Jahān spent his retirement as a prisoner: The emperors view might have been directed from the Musamman Burj in the fort to the marble monument built by himself for his favourite wife Arjmand-Bānū Be¬gam, called Mumtāz-i Mahall (choses by the palace) (p. 31).

Around the same time as the fort in Agra the fortress Gwālior is developed. Here too the 3km long and 90m high sandstone rock is protected by a huge fortress wall, which accommodates an excellent palace architecture inside. The wall is segmented in its bottom part only by belt ledges; in its upper, tower fortified part a blind arcade cornice from torana arcs is held by a console ledge (p. 114-115). Great mogul Baburs’ (14831530) main attention and admiration was directed to the palace which was finished by rahja Man Singh in Gwālior around 20 years before. But he did not like the huge Dschain figured, carved into the stone at the bottom of the fortress. “These graven images are shown completely naked without covering the prudenda”, wrote the emperor. “I myself gave the order to destroy them” (Gascoigne). The architecture of this Rāj¬puten citadel appears very interesting: Hindu forms mix with constructions parts the former mogul art was derived from (Moeller). The circle formed floor plan of the Sikh fort of Patiala from the 18th Century impresses with its geometric form in the shown aerial picture (p. 110). The Sikh movement began in the 16th Century and tried to melt the teachings of Hinduism and Islam to a unity. Under the guru Gobina the Sikhs became a militant community, which was prosecuted with military conflicts in the 18th Century. The architectural cubature requests comparisons with Dürers’ circular designs of his fortification teachings. All in all the publication includes 38 single descriptions of historic fortifications, which are completed by the depiction of maritime and British forts.