The idea of curating a special issue on Srinagar, the capital city of Kashmir, was there in our minds for a long time. We had been discussing it with Intekhab Alam and Akshay Kaul, frequent travelers to the region. A few months ago Intekhab nudged us and our journey of conceptualizing a special issue on Srinagar started.
In his introduction, Hakim Saleem Hamdani, conservation architect, discusses the sense of pre-Islamic identity of the region, embedded in a culture that was “cosmopolitan in its outlook, and was always rooted in the peculiarities of the region’s history, its geography”. In his book, The Syncretic Traditions of Islamic Religious Architecture of Kashmir [Early 14th – 18th century], he investigates the roots of the cultural history of the valley while exploring connections and continuities of the syncretic traditions belonging to the Islamic faith. Expanding on the concept of continuities, Prof. Jan Haenraets, an expert scholar on the subject of Mughal Gardens in Kashmir shares his views about these gardens which are binding elements in the continuation of the existing culture of art and design in the valley. In his interview, Mohammad Saleem Beg, Convener of the J&K Chapter of INTACH elaborates on the growth, tradition of art and crafts, and environmental concerns of the city and its cultural assets, while giving pragmatic suggestions concerning its cultural and economical revival...
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