Arathi Menon

Furnished by original research on churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples, this book project examines the Malabar coast of southwestern India as a point of convergence for diverse artistic, cultural, and religious histories in the medieval period. Beginning with the rise of the mercantile-savvy Cēra kingdom in ca. 800 and spanning a period of eight hundred years, this book foregrounds the emergent cosmopolitan milieux of the medieval Indian Ocean maritime network. It reveals a confluence of factors, including the roles played by artisans, rulers, merchants, and religious leaders, to demonstrate the engendering and canonization of artistic similitude, across religions, in Malabar’s idiomatic hipped and gabled sacred landscape.