Guest Speaker: Allison James

Join History of Art & Architecture to learn from guest speaker Allison James who will present The Architecture of Procession on Tuesday March 20th at 5:30 pm in CAS Room B18. This event is free and open to the public!

The lecture will present an exploration of gardens and landscapes between the Golconda Fortress to the Qutb Shahi necropolis in Hyderabad, Southern India at the beginning of the Qutb Shahi dynasty (mid-16th Century) and the gardens and planning methods of Isfahan, during the Safavid Dynasty. Gardens were significant to the Deccani Sultanate because of the jointly political and spiritual qualities held by each. The lecture sheds light on their changing relative importance in shaping the Qutb Shahi landscape during the early history of the dynasty. The gardens were connected by pathways that extended northward toward a Sufi shrine and water complex and beyond that to the antecedent capital of Bidar 135 kilometers to the northwest. Later, these spaces would be important in connecting Golconda and the necropolis with the city of Hyderabad founded in 1592.

In order to understand the layout of the gardens, the lecture will explore methods used to examine these spaces, including a mix of historical, topographical, visual, and spatial investigations as they relate to the wider political and spiritual patronages of the sultanate. This research revealed how processions shaped the landscape, by moving through the pathways as these gardens were laid out. A series of architectural structures take advantage of the natural topography by framing key “views” of the processional ways and thereby connect Golconda to the necropolis. The lecture will show how these larger perspectives help to interpret the spatial layout of tombs on the necropolis, and explore the relationships with landscape planning, as seen in Isfahan. The research shows how the tomb complex was defined by an initial pair of orientations to the East and South during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah (1550-1580), and Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (1580-1611).

Bio

Allison James graduated from the Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) at MIT with a Master of Science in Architectural Studies in 2015, and received a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University in 2012 with an emphasis on cultural landscapes in Turkey and India. Allison worked and researched on international development projects in Turkmenistan, Turkey, India, Uzbekistan and in the United States. At Cornell, Allison focused on a Sejuck cultural landscape in Erzurum, Turkey. Her research at AKPIA focused on the processional gardens and landscapes of the Qutb Shahi Sultanate.