Aurangabad with Daulatabad, Khuldabad and Ahmadnagar

This guidebook focuses on four cities and sites in Maharashtra of exceptional historical importance and architectural interest. While Aurangabad is well known as a convenient base from which to reach the celebrated cave-temples at Ajanta and Ellora, the city’s tombs and mosques are less visited. Many of these were built in the 17th century, when the city served as the second capital of the Mughal Empire, taking its name from the emperor Aurangzeb who spent many years here.

A short distance from Aurangabad is Daulatabad. This citadel is dominated by a rugged basalt hill, the sides of which have been scarped into vertical faces, and beneath which are a number of palaces and mosques dating from the 13th to the 17th centuries. The nearby walled town of Khuldabad is celebrated for its holy Sufi shines, inside one of which Aurangzeb himself is buried.

The city of Ahmadnagar, a day trip from Aurangabad, was capital of the Nizam Shahi sultans in the 16th century. From their era date a number of impressive mosques, palaces and tombs, all worth visiting.

All these sites and more are described and profusely illustrated in this guidebook, the first ever published for the whole region.

AUTHOR AND PHOTOGRAPHERS

Pushkar Sohoni studied architecture at the University of Pune, and later trained as a conservation architect and an architectural historian. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, from where he received his Ph.D. in 2010 for research on Nizam Shahi architecture in and around Ahmadnagar. Among his publications are contributions to Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan (14th to 19th centuries), Mumbai: Marg Foundation, 2010, Garden and Landscape Practices in Pre-colonial India: Histories from the Deccan, London: Routledge, 2012, and The Visual World of Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era, London: I.B. Tauris, 2014. He is currently the South Asia Bibliographer at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches while pursuing his interests in architecture, history, archaeology, and numismatics.

Clare Arni is a photographer based in Bengaluru, whose work encompasses architecture, social documentary and cultural heritage. She has exhibited throughout India and internationally. Her photographs have been widely published, most recently in Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan (14th-19th Centuries), and Kanara, A Land Apart: The Artistic Heritage of Coastal Karnataka, Mumbai: Marg Foundation, 2010 and 2012, and Gulbarga, Bidar, Bijapur, Mumbai: Pictor, 2012.

Selvaprakash Lakshmanan has a Masters in Mass Communication, and works as a photographer and visual journalist based in Bengaluru. His photographs have been published in Timeout and Asia Geo, and exhibited throughout India and internationally.