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Lieutenant Henry Hardy Cole, Illustrations of Buildings near Muttra and Agra: Showing the Mixed Hindu-Mahomedan Style of Upper India. Prepared at the India museum under the authority of the secretary of state for India in council, from photographs, plans, and drawings taken by order of the government of India, by Henry Hardy Cole, lieutenant, R.E., late superintendent, Archæological survey of India, North-western Provinces, London: India office, sold by W. H. Allen and Co., 1873

116 pages, including 42 photographed albumen plates and 11 of 12 lithographed plates and plans; contemporary calf-backed boards, spine lettered in gilt
33.8 x 25 cm

BETWEEN TEMPLE AND MOSQUE: COLE’S INDIA OFFICE RECORD OF MIXED STYLES IN MUTTRA AND AGRA, 1873

Commissioned by the India Office in 1873, this monumental folio captures the syncretic architectural language of Hindu and Islamic sacred sites in Upper India. Featuring early albumen photographs and meticulously drafted plans, Cole’s volume records Mathura and Agra’s hybrid temples, tombs, and mosques—where form and faith intertwine in stone.

This rare and monumental folio, commissioned by the India Office and prepared under the direction of the Archaeological Survey of India, represents one of the earliest systematic attempts to record and interpret the religious architecture of Upper India as a syncretic form. Henry Hardy Cole’s Illustrations of Buildings near Muttra and Agra (1873) documents the stylistic convergence of Hindu and Islamic traditions in the sacred and monumental architecture of Mathura, Deeg, Goverdhan, and Fatehpur Sikri. It focuses on the palaces and sacred structures around Mathura and Agra that embody a “mixed Hindu-Mahomedan style”, particularly those at Fatehpur Sikri—such as the Panch Mahal, Beerbul Palace, and associated courtyards—where Mughal building traditions absorbed local Hindu decorative motifs.

The drawings and plans reproduced here as reduced lithographs originated in February 1869 at Bindrabund (Vrindavan), where Cole began his survey in the field. Assisted by Thakoor Dass and Habeeb-oo-lah, two native surveyors trained in architectural draftsmanship, Cole undertook on-site measurements and supervised the production of pencil drawings. These drafts were later reduced and transferred by photolithography upon Cole’s return to England later that year.

Photography, too, was central to the project. The Reverend Mr Simpson, Chaplain of Muttra, was appointed by the Government of the North-Western Provinces to photograph key monuments. Working in tandem with Cole, he visited the latter’s mobile encampments at Bindrabund, Deeg, Goverdhan, and Fatehpur Sikri, selecting vantage points and framing decisions collaboratively, ensuring that the photographs would serve as visual complements to the architectural plans.

Cole's descriptive framework—the so-called "Mixed Hindu-Mahomedan Style"—emerged from a specific historical moment. Prior to the sixteenth century, the architecture of North India reflected sharp sectarian divides, with Mahomedan princes often hostile to Hindu traditions. It was under Emperor Akbar's reign that a policy of tolerance and aesthetic fusion was inaugurated. Encouraged by imperial patronage and intercultural exchange, the religious and funerary buildings of the region came to reflect a hybrid style, combining elements such as domes and chattris, Islamic arches and Hindu brackets, floral arabesques and figurative motifs—testament to the shared visual language of devotion and sovereignty.

Cole’s volume not only preserves visual records of many sites since altered or lost but also exemplifies the Victorian state’s investment in the scientific documentation of India’s material culture. Combining measured architectural elevations, photographic views, and commentary rooted in colonial architectural theory, this work straddles the disciplinary spaces of archaeology, ethnography, and imperial design.

Rarely encountered complete and in strong condition, the volume remains an essential artefact in the historiography of Indo-Islamic architecture—at once a visual atlas, a field diary, and a politically charged statement on the layered nature of India’s sacred built environment.

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