Sidhpur and its Dawoodi Bohra Houses

While the religious and trading skills of the Bohra Muslim Community have received scholars’ attention, other facets which mirror the consciousness of this prosperous trading group have scarcely been studied. Treating architecture as the focal point, the author reconstructs this unique characteristic that reflects the fusion of the Gujarati, Islamic and other foreign styles in a way that still retains the distinguished architectural form. Sidhpur, a small town on the banks of the mystical Saraswati in Gujarat, contains a rich cultural heritage of the ‘Bohra Style of Architecture’. This pictorial book takes the reader to the almost forgotten splendour of bygone days. Zoyab A Kadi traces this elegant evolution through three phases: the ‘Post and Lintel System’ of Hassanpura, the ‘Flying Bracket System’ of Harariya and finally the ‘Framework System’ of Najampura in a lucid language tagged on with coloured photographs.