Re-evaluating the audience hall of Lalbagh Fort, Dhaka, Bangladesh, from an Islamic perspective

Architecture played an instrumental role in spreading Islamic civilization around the world. The true Islamic architecture demonstrates the Islamic Diaspora through time and spaces. There was neither one definition nor a particular vocabulary that represent the Islamic architecture in general. In the early 17th century, when Mughal first arrived in Bengal and started their grand building activities they also brought a new architectural expression that originated from their Turkic-Afghan concept of ‘Islamic’ architecture and at the same time respond to the local condition. The Audience Hall of the Lalbagh fort in Dhaka is one of the best examples that demonstrate the attempts of the Mughal builders. There is a need to examine this hybridized forms and shared architectural narratives to counter the myopic but persistent representation of supposedly authentic, largely Arab-centric, forms of ‘Islamic’ architecture. By re-evaluating this building, this paper critically re-examines the reductive but pervasive conceptions of ‘Islamic Architecture’ that obscure the historical processes of hybridization and its diverse morphological outcomes to comprehend the process of resilience and assimilation through which architecture is shaped in a particular context.