Archives of Asian Art 74:2 October 2024 DOI 10.1215/00666637-11483450 © 2024 Asia Society Introduction Beginning in the thirteenth century, many political powers were attracted to Daulatabad, a fortified city in Deccan India (Figure 1). 1 Controlling the city implied control of much of the northern Deccan—no other fort in the region could offer such defenses. Concur- rently, some Sufi shaykhs also migrated from central Asia and north India to Daulatabad and settled to the northwest of the city. Over time, this settlement grew into the town of Khuldabad and became one of the most important centers of Sufi pilgrimage in South Asia. 2 e political powers and religious figures com- ing to Daulatabad had to reckon with what already existed at the site to assert their own authority. One way they did so was by constructing buildings that cre- atively reused architecture and iconoclastically altered earlier or contemporaneous materials. In this article, I analyze two structures from Daulatabad that include overlooked instances of reuse and iconoclasm: its prin- cipal eastern gate (Figure 2) and the shrine, or dargāh, of the Sufi shaykh Ganj-i Rawan (Figure 3). An exami- nation of these structures reveals new insights about the larger political and religious forces that shaped this important medieval city, which served as a linchpin for premodern transregional politics in South Asia. 3 Fur- thermore, the study of the city gate and the Sufi dargāh allows for a broader reassessment of the conjunction of reuse and iconoclasm in architectural works in medi- eval South Asia. While instances of both reuse and iconoclasm are well-known in medieval Indian build- ings, the twinning of these two related-but-distinct Reuse and Iconoclasm in the Medieval Deccan A City Gate and a Sufi Shrine at Daulatabad MOHIT MANOHAR abstract While instances of both reuse and iconoclasm are well known from several medieval buildings in South Asia, the conjunction of these two related-but-distinct processes have seldom been analyzed. In this article, I present two architectural case studies from Daulatabad, a major for- tified city in Deccan India, that include unexamined cases of reuse and iconoclasm: its principal east- ern gate and the shrine of the Sufi shaykh Ganj-i Rawan. Although occurring within an Islamic con- text, the instances of reuse and iconoclasm within these palimpsestic spaces are not coeval with what is seen in early Indian mosques—the structures through which issues of reuse and iconoclasm have been most extensively analyzed in existing scholarship. Nor can stereotypical ideas of “Islamic icon- oclasm” explain the complex iconographic program of the city gate or the unexpected rituals at the Sufi shrine. I argue that reuse and iconoclasm at the city gate served a political purpose, whereas that at the Sufi shrine had a religious signifi cance. I also propose a way to collectively examine instances of reuse and iconoclasm in the built environment. While the logic of these two processes appears to be in an inherent tension, I theorize that the deployment of reuse and iconoclasm in the built envi- ronment served to reinforce a particular agenda—in the current case, a political and a religious one, respectively—and was not guided by disparate concerns. Alongside, I develop the concept of “ide- ational reuse,” in which later occupant(s) of a site creatively reused narratives and rituals associated with earlier occupant(s). keywords Ideational reuse, “Islamic iconoclasm,” Bahmani, Deccan fort, Sufi shrine, palimpsest Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/archives-of-asian-art/article-pdf/74/2/197/2195040/197manohar.pdf?guestAccessKey=7fd7d225-f97d-4d28-af63-1825253c52e2 by guest on 30 January 2025