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.