Islamic Architecture in South Asia: Pakistan - India – Bangladesh
Muslim contribution towards evolving and perpetuating a distinctive style of architecture in the South Asian subcontinent has been epoch-making. Different and divergent from its local counterpart, the style was essentially a synthesized assimilation of foreign as well as local elements, which together created marvels both of religious and secular buildings. While foreign elements were introduced by the Arabs, Persians, Turks, and the Central Asians, local characteristics were borrowed from the Hindu-Jaina temples and Buddhist monastic establishments. The present book gives a résumé of these efforts and researches, putting it in chronological perspective and geographical sequence. The material researched and illustrated by the archaeologists and architectural historians and published in the annual reports, memoirs and journals of the old Archaeological Survey of India and the Pakistan Department of Archaeology, has been generously and extensively adapted and included in the text.