ABSTRACT
The chapter provides a detailed description of Asaf’s architectural projects at the Machhi Bhavan and Daulatkhana precincts and the Bada Imambada Complex. The precincts are reconstructed by accessing several archival imagery, colonial accounts, and maps. It carries a drawing which provides a speculation of the precincts during Asaf’s times. It follows a spatial sequence determining the location of several buildings which have only been vaguely located in previous scholarship. It highlights the deviation from axiality in the Naubat Khana Court, the integration of new buildings within an existing settlement in the Panch Mahalla, the architectural capacities of evading colonial comprehension in the Hussein Bagh, the navigational capacities in the Baoli Palace Court, the overlaps of leisure and political in the Sangi Dalan Court, and the colonial erasures in the Durbar Court. It discusses the ceremonial nature of the courts and gateways of the Daulatkhana precinct, the dynamics of the royal family through the Sunera Burj, the Europeanization of domestic architecture through the Asafi Kothi, and the colonial curiosity for gendered spaces through the zenana. As the Bada Imambada Complex still exists, the chapter takes the reader through an embodied journey through it as it would have existed during Asaf’s times.
