CMI Arts Initiative Talk
Date: Wednesday, 3 April 2024
Time: 3:30 PM
Venue: Seminar Hall, CMI.
Dravidian Islamic Architecture
Kombai S Anwar
Freelance Journalist.
03-04-24

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Abstract

The Tamil country has had extensive maritime contacts with West Asia and South-east Asia for more than two millennia. The ancient Tamil Sangam poems have many references to this maritime trade. With Arabia turning to Islam in the seventh century CE, the Arab traders brought Islam to Tamil country soon thereafter. Since the Muslim traders enriched the Tamil country with the wealth they brought, the Tamil rulers of yore granted them privileges to build mosques, as old inscriptions and copper plates attest. As there was no fixed architectural tradition in Islam, Muslims adopted the local architectural style wherever Islam spread, be it China or Mali in Africa. In Tamil Nadu, they adopted the locally prevalent Dravidian architectural style with Islamic sensibilities.

As the Tamil Muslim community came into being, over more than a millennium, hundreds of mosques and dargahs have been built across Tamil Nadu in the Dravidian Islamic architectural tradition. They were built even as late as the 1950s. The mosque architecture does not stand in isolation and has to be seen in the context of the cultural moorings of the Tamil Muslim community. This lecture also looks at a few Tamil Muslim majority or inhabited towns with mosques built in Dravidian Islamic architectural tradition at various periods and the stories behind the mosques/dargahs.