The architecture of ritual: Eighteenth-century Lucknow and the making of the Great Imambarah Complex, a forgotten world monument (India).

摘要

In the late eighteenth century, a large urban redevelopment program was initiated by the Shī`ī Isnā `Asharī Muslim ruler Ās&dotbelow;af al-Dawlah in Lucknow, a city located in the prosperous, semi-autonomous north Indian region of Awadh. The development included four monumental entrances, a congregational mosque and a monumental imāmbārah, a ritual centre used for the annual mourning of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson H&dotbelow;usayn by the city's small, elite Shī`ī Isnā `Asharī community. Incorporating one of the largest masonry vaults ever built in human history, the imāmbārah has a monumental scale that contributes to its uniqueness. Although Shī`ī Isnā `Asharī communities elsewhere developed smaller imambarah facilities, none ever thought to build one using monumental proportions typically reserved for congregational mosques. Ās&dotbelow;af al-Dawlah's Great Imābārah is unusual in the history of world architecture and in Shī`ī Isnā `Asharī, Islamic religious practice, but the building and complex have never been the focus of study. They receive only passing treatment in historical, religious and architectural surveys of the period. As a result, an uncritical version of the site's development has entered into circulation. The Great Imāmbārah, in particular, is seen as a famine relief project by Ās&dotbelow;af al-Dawlah, designed by the architect Kifāyat Allāh and undertaken in 1784 with the labour of an impoverished nobility. I will demonstrate that this version is unsupportable. Instead, a more complex view of the site's development can be put forward that portrays it as the product of several social discourses. In fact, the site is not a series of unrelated monuments. It is a cohesive, interwoven complex where social discourses within the Lucknow community, generated by rulers, elites, builders, and Islamic religious leaders converge to define ritual practices for the citizenry of Lucknow and the city's Shī`ī Isnā `Asharī community, who were inheritors of Safavid and Mughal imperial legacies and aspired to be a distinct but authentic Islamic community. This view can be illustrated by examining how the site appears today, how it has been understood in the past, how it served the ambitions of its patrons, how its designers and builders brought their vision to reality, and lastly how it was an instrument in religious believing.