1. Introduction and Approach: Sharing Culture and Knowledge of the Core of Multan

Manrique, Sebastian, Charles Eckford Luard, and H. Hosten. 1927. Travels of Fray Sebastian Manrique (1629–1643), a translation of the “Itinerario de las misiones orientales”, with introduction and notes by Lt-Col.C. Eckford Luard,…assisted by Father H. Hosten, S.J. Oxford: the Hakluyt Society.

Sebastian Manrique describes the Punjab from Lahore to Multan as a country abounding in wheat, rice, vegetables, and cotton, with numerous villages and excellent inns. Multan was a considerable city carrying on an extensive trade, and was the rendezvous point of the caravans from Persia, Khorasan, and other western countries.

The work can be seen online at the following: http://​multan.​uniconsulting.​com/​

“This resembles the previous examples in being built of baked brick with some structural bonding courses of wood in addiction, with a lofty second storey which forms an octagonal drum, with an hemispherical dome, and with pinnacles at each external angle, but differs from them in its lowest store y which is also an octagon, with battering faces and engaged tapering buttresses terminating in pinnacles at each outer angle. The external decoration is worked out in stringcourses of tile-faced bricks and bands of raised diaper pattern, bands of calligraphy in carved brick, and the typical Multan tile work (known also at Ucch but nowhere else) wherein the main geometrical patterns are raised as much as 2 cm. above the tile background; this adds greatly to the richness of the tile work by adding depth and a constant effect of light and shade where the sheen of a plane surface would have become dulled by the dust which pervade Multan in the summer. The interior decoration includes fine woodcarving in shisham wood, with the six-pointed star (a common Ghaznavid motif, but otherwise rare in India until early Mughal times) in the spandrels of the wooden mihrab and scrolls of arabesque ornament similar to that of the maqsura of the Quwwat al-Islam mosque at Delhi.”

These photographs can be seen online at the following: http://​www.​marcointroini.​net.