History of amdavad in different perspectives

Amdavad no Itihash was written by maganlal Vakhatchand in the year 1851. It was written during the time of sudharavadhi movement when they were trying to unifying various dialects of Guajarati under one common amdavadi one. This text was thus written in amdavadi Guajarati dialect for elites of amdavad.

Architecture of Ahmedabad, History of goozerat is an English text written in the year 1896 to understand amdavad and convey the architectural details of the place to the people in Britain.it is primarily written for the purpose of documentation of the Islamic architecture in Ahmedabad.

Maganlal vakhatchand won the competition held by Gujarat vernacular society to write the history of amdavad, funded by British. May be because of the funding, British are portrayed as the good guys with Marathas as the bad rulers in this regional history

Being just a visitor to the places and trained in a positivist view of historiography, burgess covered only facts and details based on evidences. He describes the places on plan, conveys their dimensions and style of architecture. Then he goes into the architectural details of the place associating the existing place with the terminologies like courtyard and skylight, which lets them understand the purpose of the place and associate with it. But in that process, he loses out on conveying the importance of local terminologies used and the greater association the people have with the place. He also covered only the building he thought was important for Islamic architecture leaving out the domestic architecture that was prevalent during that time

Vakhatchand, being a native, wrote about the life of that place has and Included  myths and folk tales associated with the history of the place .While he does cites sources for his writing, vakhatchand doesn’t get burdened by the need of evidence and gives his views as a person part of the history. He also describes the places in amdavad with regards to how one accesses it and gives an experiential description of the place, concentrating on smaller details like a window. While describing how to access Jami masjid, he starts by describing how to access the place from manek chowk, like any native would do.

History has always been interpreted as a record of facts, but the view is changed when these books are read simultaneously. Even though both are written on history of amdavad, with the difference in the audience, the books are catering, their content and style of description and details vary.

By comparing these texts, one is curious as to what is the right way to write histories, whether the historian’s personal feel of the place plays a part in the description or should it be a mere objective architectural description of the place? The history of the place will always be the glimpse of what existed and conveyed with one line of thought. Thus the focus will always be on one aspect of it, leaving out others, giving different histories of the same place

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Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture

Anyone who has ever studied architecture would have definitely refereed to this book once in their life. Considered a primary and essential reference reading to understand history of architecture, it is interesting to see the transformation, the book has undergone form its conception to its present condition today.

The very first edition was written in 1896 by senior banister fletcher, a British architect and architectural historian, along with his son banister fletcher and it was titled History of Architecture on the Comparative Method

 To understand the context in which senior banister fletcher was commissioned (1890) to write this, we need to explore the thirst for knowledge that was going around Europe at that time. It was the time of enlightenment where reason and knowledge meant everything. People desired to understand and discover everything in the world so they went on expeditions and explorations gathering knowledge and compiling them. The documentation of knowledge gave rise to encyclopaedias, a one complete source of all the knowledge that is gathered. With time and more information gathered, specialised collection started coming up; one such being the history of architecture; an encyclopaedia in architecture

Though the title was history of architecture, the first edition was simply a compilation of western architecture arranged chronologically. It also started covering various styles of architecture like byzantine, gothic, baroque, Romanesque etc. It has a tree of architecture with Greek architecture as the foundation, and other styles as branches of it. Now this categorisation shows the insight into what constituted as architecture during that time. Greek architecture, with its pristine geometry and proportions with no ornamentation was considered the ultimate form of architecture. Architecture was something which gave importance to structure than ornamentation Rationale to categorise architecture. Thus structure and ornamentation became the rationale for deciding what architecture is and what is not. Thus Asian architecture were considered inferior and not even architecture.

With the influence of Alice Maud Mary, more other styles of architecture like Asian started getting included even though it was judged as “not architecture” for their preference of ornamentation. With its major revision in 6th edition in 1921, senior banister fletcher’s name was dropped from the book and the book became like students bible on architecture. The book has grown over the years including various styles, but domestic and folk architecture have not been included in it yet.

It was the first compilation of various architecture under one umbrella. It started the question what constitutes as architecture. Whether only European architecture were the supreme holders of that title. With each revision in the editions one could also trace the change in the outlook of architecture. In an age internet was not there, access to knowledge was only through books. This idea of one most effective source for everything fascinated everyone. This led to creating compendium of knowledge known as encyclopaedia which has given this nicely hard bound book with basics of architecture anyone needs to know. It may not be the complete history of architecture, but it does cover the basics for us to explore more on our own.

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References

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O1-FletcherSirBanisterFlight.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Banister_Fletcher