Monthly Photos　March 2020

Photos taken by ILCAA staff and associates are posted here once a month; most of them are taken during their field research in Asia and Africa.

(The copyright belongs to the photographers.)

The Temple a Muslim Admired

Rafi’ al-Din Shirazi was born in Iran in 1540-41, and spent his youthful days in Shiraz. To achieve a prosperous business, he took a sea passage from Iran to India. Having spent days in the cities in western and northern India, he finally settled in the court of ‘Adil Shahi sultanate in Bijapur, Deccan. In 1611, at the age of 70, Shirazi composed a Persian chronicle titled the Tadhkirat al-Muluk that includes a rich amount of the accounts based on his firsthand experience. In this chronicle, Shirazi admired the Ellora temple (probably cave no. 16, the Kailasanatha) as one of the magnificent works of the ancients. The Tadhkirat al-Muluk is a rare pre-modern source that refers to the Ellora temple.

8 JAN 2020
Ellora, Maharashtra, India
Photograph by Satoshi OGURA