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Bazaar  

Mohammad Gharipour

Bazaar, which is rooted in Middle Persian wāzār and Armenian vačaṟ, has acquired three different meanings: the market as a whole, a market day, and the marketplace. The bazaar as a place is an assemblage of workshops and stores where various goods and services are offered.

Primitive forms of shops and trade centres existed in early civilizations in the Near East, such as Sialk, Tepe in Kashan, Çatal Hüyük, Jerico, and Susa. After the 4th millennium BC, the population grew and villages gradually joined together to shape new cities, resulting in trade even with the remote areas as well as the acceleration of the population in towns. The advancement of trade and accumulation of wealth necessitated the creation of trade centres. Trade, and consequently marketplaces, worked as the main driving force in connecting separate civilizations, while fostering a division of labour, the diffusion of technological innovations, methods of intercultural communication, political and economic management, and techniques of farming and industrial production....

Article

Chinnery, George  

Patrick Conner

(b London, Jan 7, 1774; d Macao, May 30, 1852).

English painter. Although long rumoured to be Irish, Chinnery was brought up in London, where he showed a precocious talent as a portrait painter in the traditions of Romney and Cosway. His grandfather, the calligrapher William Chinnery sr, was the author of Writing and Drawing Made Easy, Amusing and Instructive (London, 1750); his father, William jr, was also a writing master, and exhibited portraits at the Free Society of Artists. George entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1792, and by 1795 had exhibited 20 portraits at the Academy.

In 1796 Chinnery moved to Dublin. There he married his landlord’s daughter, Marianne Vigne, who gave birth to his two legitimate children. He was active in the Royal Dublin Society and in 1798 was Secretary and Treasurer of its Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture. He experimented in several styles and media, to considerable critical acclaim; in July 1801 he received a silver palette ‘in Testimony of his Exertions in promoting the Fine Arts in Ireland’ … from ‘the Artists of Dublin’....

Article

Mughal dynasty  

R. Nath and Jonathan M. Bloom

revised by Sheila S. Blair

[MoghulMogul]

Dynasty of Central Asian origin that ruled portions of the Indian subcontinent from 1526 to 1857.

The dynasty’s name Mughal derives from the word Mongol, as the founder Babur (‘tiger’) was a Chaghatay prince in Central Asia who was descended on his father’s side from the Mongol warlord Timur (see Timurid family, §II, (1)) and on his mother’s from Genghis Khan. After losing his Central Asian kingdom of Ferghana, Babur conquered Kabul in 1504 and then defeated the Lodi sultan at Panipat in 1526 and the Rajput cliefs at Kanwa near Agra the following year. With these victories he gained a foothold in northern India and established a capital at Delhi (see Delhi, §I, 6; see fig.). Babur was succeeded by his son Humayun (‘auspicious’), who was dislodged within a decade by nobles of the old Lodi regime, particularly Farid Khan Sur (see Sur), who defeated the Mughal ruler at Kannawj in ...

Article

Purkhu  

B. N. Goswamy

(fl c. 1790–1820).

Indian painter. Often associated with the court of Kangra and its most famous ruler, Maharaja Sansar Chand (reg 1775–1823), he seems to have shifted his family’s residence from Kangra to the tiny village of Samloti when the Maharaja was forced to surrender the town and fort of Kangra to the Sikhs in 1809. Purkhu’s father, Dhummun, also a professional painter, had worked for Sansar Chand’s father and grandfather. Records of the period describe the family as belonging to the professional painter caste (chitrera) of Guleria, suggesting that at some earlier time they had come from Guler. Purkhu’s work includes portraits, court scenes and processionals, all connected with Sansar Chand and his son Aniruddha Chand. Purkhu’s output seems to have been prodigious: extensive series of paintings, including a Śiva purāṇa series (Chandigarh, Govt Mus. & A.G.), a Harivamsa series (dispersed), a Parijat-Harana series (New Delhi, N. Mus.) and a ...

Article

Solvyns, F(rançois) Baltazard  

Robert L. Hardgrave jr

(b Antwerp, July 6, 1760; d Antwerp, Oct 10, 1824).

Flemish printmaker and painter. He pursued his early career in Europe as a marine painter, but political unrest and his own insecure position led him to seek his fortune in India. Residing in Calcutta from 1791 to 1804, Solvyns undertook the work for which he is best known, A Collection of Two Hundred and Fifty Coloured Etchings Descriptive of the Manners, Customs and Dresses of the Hindoos. After a limited printing in 1796, the collection was published by Solvyns in Calcutta in 1799 in 12 parts. The first of these, comprising 66 prints, depicts ‘the Hindoo Castes with their respective professions’, while the following sections portray servants, religious mendicants, forms of transportation, modes of smoking, musical instruments, and festivals. Solvyns approached his task as an ethnographer but, lacking the appeal of the picturesque which was then in vogue, the project proved a financial failure. On his return to Europe, Solvyns prepared new etchings from his drawings and produced a folio edition of 288 plates, ...

Article

Varanasi  

M. A. Claringbull

[anc. Kāsī: ‘City of Light’KashiVārāṇasīBanārasBenares]

Sacred city and pilgrimage centre on the banks of the Ganga River between the Barna, or Varuna, and Asi rivers in Uttar Pradesh, India. It is the most holy of the seven sacred cities of Hinduism (the others being Ayodhya, Mathura, Hardwar, Kanchipuram, Ujjain and Dwarka) and has been the focus of Brahmanical learning and religious pilgrimage from ancient times.

The existence of the city from earliest times is attested by myriad references in the sacred texts. The kingdom of Kashi is mentioned in the Vedas, and the kings of Kashi are referred to in the Mahābhārata, although not until the Puranas is Varanasi mentioned as the capital city of Kashi. Around the time of the Buddha (600 bc) 16 great city states flourished in north India, the three most prominent being Maghada, Koshala and Varanasi. Owing to its strategic position at the confluence of the Ganga and Varuna rivers, Varanasi was a significant trading and commercial centre. In many tales of the previous lives of Buddha (Skt ...

Article

Zoffany [Zauffaly; Zauphaly; Zoffani], Johan  

Geoffrey Ashton

(Joseph )[Johannes Josephus John ]

(b nr Frankfurt am Main, March 13, 1733; d Strand-on-the-Green, nr Kew, London, Nov 11, 1810).

German painter, active in England. Born Johannes Josephus Zauffaly, he was the son of Anton Franz Zauffaly (1699–1771), Court Cabinetmaker and Architect in Regensburg to Alexander Ferdinand, Prince of Thurn and Taxis. After an apprenticeship in Regensburg under the painter and engraver Martin Speer (c. 1702–65), a pupil of Francesco Solimena, Zoffany left in 1750 for Rome, where he studied under the portrait painter Agostino Masucci and came into contact with Anton Raphael Mengs. By 1757 and after a second trip to Rome, Zoffany was commissioned by Clemens August, Prince-Archbishop and Elector of Trier, to produce frescoes and paintings for his new palace at Trier and the palace of Ehrenbreitstein at Koblenz. All Zoffany’s early work at Ehrenbreitstein and Trier has been destroyed, but it may have been in the German Rococo manner of Cosmas Damian Asam and Johann Baptist Zimmermann. A number of small easel paintings such as ...