THE relationship between cultural traditions and architectural expression in any society is an important aspect of studies on historic architecture. Fortunately, despite a phase of neglect, new architectural/anthropological studies are now being undertaken with a view to better understand the role of culture in shaping the architectural expression of people. The essential aspects that need exploration relate to cultural values and how these manifest through architecture in a society.

‘The definition of the concept of culture has been subject to a variety of approaches, ranging from the perception of a linear evolution from primitive society to a sophisticated civilization, as well as the more recent recognition of a multicultural approach. For an economist, culture and cultural heritage tend to remain rather marginal, and are only viewed in the context of economic development. In this context, cultural heritage has now gained some visibility, principally in relation to cultural tourism and cultural industry – one importing people to visit major monuments and sites, the other exporting marketable products that represent the identity of a particular cultural region or ethnicity.’¹ 

‘We can ask if there are other ways of defining culture in relation to the economy and community development. In the past couple of centuries, culture has become some sort of elitist notion, discussed by anthropologists, and others. Instead, we should assume that culture is an intrinsic feature of all human life. It means cultivating and improving. In the communal economy, culture is the aspect that characterizes the striving towards something better. Over time, it can produce what we call "art" or "heritage". But, in reality, it is always present. It is the underlying feature of humanity, and therefore a fundamental factor of the economy. And, it is gradually being recognized in the context of integrated urban conservation planning, and the identification of the intangible cultural heritage.’² 

 

The foundation of Sultan Ahmad Shah’s city, Ahmedabad, was laid in 1411 AD. The site for the first fortified town was selected on the eastern bank of the Sabarmati river on one of the higher planes of the ravines, which sloped down in its south-west corner. The fort was approximately a square of about three hundred metres with a jagged periphery on the southern side. The eastern limit was set by the main Bhadra gates which opened towards the Maidan-e-Shahi, on a lower flat contour beyond which the Sultan established the main Jama Masjid for the city, which was located at the same height as the fort planes. The mausoleums for the royal family were subsequently planned beyond that.

The construction of the fort, the three gates at the end of the Maidan-e-Shahi and the Jama Masjid, with a large maidan on its north and south, were the first structures to be built by Sultan Ahmed Shah. The adherence to geometric proportioning systems in planning these areas illustrates the Islamic tradition of layout which is reflected in the relationship of the measurements of the fort, the Maidan-e-Shahi and the Jama Masjid, drawing upon established tenets of Islamic spatial planning which have strong cultural connotations. The tenets mention the range of walking distances to mosques for the worshippers for daily prayers. Planning of these Islamic institutions was the first act by the Sultan when establishing the city of Ahmedabad.

The immediate settlements for the population came up on either side of the Maidan-e-Shahi and on the periphery around the Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque). The ‘pur’ or suburbs came up in succeeding phases of the city’s development. This pattern followed the traditional tenets of Islamic town and settlement planning with narrow winding streets, sub-streets and compact court houses packed next to each other, which allowed for a compact settlement pattern incorporating the ideals of congenial living prescribed in Islamic tenets of good neighbourly living and ensuring a secure private family life. Ahmedabad’s early settlement planning displays a strong similarity to its historical counterparts in Islamic cultures elsewhere.

 

The city’s foundations and its growth have been shaped by circumstantial factors. Understanding these would involve delving into its beginnings and how they directed the growth of the city through the course of history. It is a truism that every successive layer of development is based on an earlier existing footprint. It is rare that settlements emerge without such already existing reference points of layers of human civilization. Ahmedabad is no exception to this. ‘Ahmedabad has passed through five important periods in its history until late 19th century – two of greatness, two of decay and one of revival. First under strong rulers came a hundred years (1411-1511) of growth and rising wealth; then sixty years (1512-1572) of decline of the Gujarat dynasty; next 135 years (1572-1707) of renewed greatness under Moghul emperors; again 110 years (1707-1817) of disorder and loss under weak Moghuls and greedy Marathas and finally, sixty years (1818-1878) of steady progress under British rule.’³ 

 

The settlement pattern of Ahmedabad reflects an additive character. Different community groups were settled within the old city during different phases. As already mentioned, the Muslim population is spread in the suburbs, the ‘pur’ (established by Muslim nobility and named after them) at the periphery of the old city. In line with the early traditions of Islamic culture as many as 27 smaller Jami mosques were established within the fortified town so that the Muslim inhabitants could easily walk there for their daily prayers. During the densification which took place in subsquent centuries, the merchant communities, a majority of them Hindu-Jaina, migrated to the city and occupied the in-between areas of the old town.

The craft based merchant communities favoured a mixed residential and commercial set up with their shop-houses. Their settlements developed along commercial or main streets. The other traders and merchant communities preferred strictly residential settlements away from the busy commercial areas, along the key routes of the city.

The oldest of these settlements – namely Muhurat Pol, Mandvi-ni-Pol and others – are still more or less intact around Manek Chowk. The main community groups settled in these areas are Jaina and Vaishnava, and one can notice an identical attitude to the planning of settlements with the temple as a focus. These are similar to the Muslim areas with more than 400 Jain temples, also situated within the fortified town, for the daily worship needs of its residents.

 

The overall settlement structure of the inner city area reflected a system of circulation that was hierarchical in nature, along the main city streets. Each sub-street was linked by a residential ‘pol’ or ‘mohalla’ which were closed systems around which the residential clusters were arranged. Various scales of streets forming this hierarchical order were: main streets, secondary streets, pol, mohalla, khancha, khadki and dela. They were all in a descending scale, establishing a hierarchical order as a key element in organizing settlements in the city.

A typical residential settlement reveals the ordering and relationships at various levels. Residential areas normally branch off from the main or sub-streets, which are often commercial in character. The transition element here is devised by a gate structure which, besides providing certain utilitarian functions, also ensures an element of security required to safeguard the community from external threats. Generally the pol is the main circulation element in a residential community and its scale is very moderate with widths rarely going over three meters. Sometimes a pol or mohalla could be open ended, connecting major streets. In most cases, however, it represented a closed system which could be compared to a stem and branches or arterial systems. Normally a pol or a mohalla has an open space at its centre, situated in front of a religious place or at nodes which also have a chabutaro, a dovecote or parabadi by the community well that served as a source of water for the community.

The circulation distances within the pol or mohalla were broken down to smaller cluster of houses (khancha) and still smaller clusters serving a few houses, sometimes occupied by a single joint family member. The transition at each level was established sensitively to break down the order of scale to appropriate the environments for different levels of living, from the community to the family. Elements highlighting transitions were: ‘air tight’ houses with the lower storey making a passage, a gate structure, large doors, or sometimes subtly introducing a change of levels or paving on the street. All these elements of transition and movement sensitively establish a scale within the settlement, making for good neighbourly relations and personal affinity between inhabitants, much like an extended family.

 

Such structures of community settlement were common in the city within the walled area of the fort. There was variation in terms of the street to house relationship in different cultures (Islamic, Hindu, Jain) depending upon the social habits and ways of life of the people. For instance, the Muslim community in the city have houses which are more private and closed off from the street given the importance of privacy in family life. The residential areas of Vaishnava or Jaina communities are more open in their residential environment with verandah facades at street level. This is partly due to their informal social life within the community. Though both Islamic and Hindu-Jaina cultures shared similar social ideals of co-existence, their preferences for family life differed. This is amply expressed in the different house forms even as the general planning principles of the settlement and its level (the court being a central element) are similar. The settlement patterns, compact plotting with narrow streets, induce intimate human associations at the community level in both cases.

The organization of settlements for community bonding was acceptable to the local Hindu-Jaina communities because they shared this tradition with their Islamic counterparts.

 

In the historic city, the organization of houses, the structure of streets and open places for community areas, and allocation of public facilities along with a need for security and identity, exhibit a refined sense of societal unity. The uniformity in materials used for building houses and their conception and adornment was viewed as an effort to enrich the overall environment, which reflected people’s cultural identity in an urban settlement. Ahmedabad’s Sultanate rulers appreciated the best of this regional culture, and whole-heartedly promoted the communities to enrich the city. In their effort to build new institutions, they adopted the best of indigenous Hindu-Jaina traditions of architecture. The synthesis of these two cultures – Muslim and regional Hindu-Jaina – reflects the combined expression of the Gujarat Sultanate in this part of the Indian subcontinent.

Ahmedabad has passed through several stages in its growth, starting from a traditional merchant town on the trade route to a capital of the sultanate, from a trade and commercial city to a wealthy industrial town. In the established system, growth was contained within individual units, which meant that the structure of the settlement was seen as complete as far as the spatial limits were concerned. Since all growth had to be in the vertical scale, the expanse of the settlements was not affected and, helped retain the cohesiveness and proximity between parts of the old city. Due to this, the pol was normally between one and two kilometres in length and the smallest scale of khadki, only about twenty or thirty metres.

In most instances, the houses shared common walls, which sometimes gave a unified compact structure to a whole block. This compact and collective form of housing was a concept which was indigenous. The facade became an important adenda to the house form, its design highlighted by the use of timber in construction which made it lighter, ornate and exquisite.

 

Like the facade which partly revealed the house-form, the other major element was the inner court, the main characteristic spatial element of these houses. A majority of the houses had a court as its central space around which the other spaces of the house were organized. The court with areas around served as the main space for social activities and festivities. In a hot climate, it not only helps develop a comfortable micro-climate for living but also serves as a ventilating shaft and light court. In the houses, the facades of spaces flanking the court were richly decorated and constructed in wood. In almost every house the facades enclosing the court were created to express the image of the house and decorated as befitting the main part of the building.

The spatial articulation around the court exhibited an openness in family living in which the parsal or veranda spaces around, were the most utilized multi-functional area for family living during the day. The formal conceptions of the court facades were also, like the facade in front, similar and open. Timber constructions with pillars and brackets and enclosed projected facades with windows on the upper level had exquisite carving on timber members, creating an impressive spatial environment which highlighted the individual desire for tasteful living. The court, besides being the most functional spatial element in the house, also had the distinction of being the most significant element of the house forms.

The community settlements are self-contained units with a gate structure at the entrance. All the houses shared common walls, which also served to demarcate the extent of land ownership. The facade of each house was worked out in accordance with the material used for construction, basically timber. Irrespective of the width of the plot owned by the individual, the streets’ composite facade displayed a remarkable uniformity given the similarity of facade divisions, all worked out in timber elements. Almost invariably, each house was projected outwards on all floors and the street facades closed as one looked up. These projections were conceived over the brackets springing out from timber posts. This gave the street a spatial quality which was accentuated by people extending their leisure activity out on the verandah and otta, which they effectively used as an external extension of their homes.

 

At times the street is transformed into a community living room – an enlarged version of the court-living inside the house. This pattern of using external spaces is very typical of this city, perhaps because of the informality and tight bonds of human relationship that are characteristic of these communities. The analogy between the court within a house, with its beautifully decorated facade befitting a living space (and an image of family expressed in the ‘public’ space within the house), and the residential street with its richly decorated individual house facade befitting a community space for living together (and an image of the collective expressed in the public space for the community) is indeed very consistent. And so is the relationship of the whole to the part, a sequence which has direct links with the patterns of associations that exist in their day-to-day socio-cultural milieu.

 

The intrinsic correlation of lifestyles and living patterns govern the settlement’s physical environment. Human activities follow patterns, which serve as the format for planning/organizing the physical environment. Activities defining relationships between individuals and groups display patterns of associations. This characterizes the organization of settlement patterns, giving physical form to settlements at varying scales in a given society. Thus the culture of a society governed by human relationships and the settlement patterns complement each other. This is what provides richness to a society. The history of urban development can best be summed up as a consequence of such attitudes and reflects a fusion of these two aspects. This is the ‘use value’ of historic heritage.

Cultural heritage is an important architectural resource for a city’s identity, historic learning, and as a constantly evolving tool for development. Besides, heritage carries an important symbolic meaning. This resource creates an emotional connect, and generates historic pride in addition to providing use value. Its conservation is an important safeguard in ensuring the continuation of local traditions, including building practices, indigenous skills and craft. In this sense the philosophy and practice of conservation and development evolving from within the cultural context, supports the communities in general and becomes a resource for its economic and social development. Heritage is thus a positive living and evolving resource for the future development of society and should not be viewed as a frozen ‘protected’ historical relic of a bygone era, out of sync with the mainstream milieu.

 

Footnotes:

1. Jesper Asp Sorensen, ‘The Concept of Culture’, Theories of Culture, Centre for European Cultural Studies, 1995; http://www. jesperasp.dk/tekster/kulturteoriopgave.pdf (accessed, 22 May 2012); George W. Stocking, Jr., ‘Franz Boas and the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective’, American Anthropologist 68, 1966, pp. 867-882.

2. Jukka Jokilehto, Culture as a factor of Development, May 2012.

3. Gazetteer of Bombay Presidency, Vol. IV, Section I, Ahmedabad, 1879.