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Shahi Jama Masjid

Coordinates: 28°34′51″N 78°34′02″E / 28.58073°N 78.56714°E / 28.58073; 78.56714
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Shahi Jama Masjid Sambhal
Entry Gate of Shahi Jama Masjid
Religion
AffiliationIslam
Location
LocationSambhal, Uttar Pradesh, India
Geographic coordinates28°34′51″N 78°34′02″E / 28.58073°N 78.56714°E / 28.58073; 78.56714
Architecture
TypeMosque
Date establishedc. 1526

Shahi Jama Masjid (Urdu: شاہی جامع مسجد) is the oldest surviving Mughal-era mosque in South Asia. Located in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, it was established during the reign of Babur in December, 1526.[1] The mosque is a protected monument under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act, 1904.[2]

Architecture

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A gate-complex on the east opens to a square-shaped courtyard with a well and an ablution tank.[3][1] The courtyard leads to the rectangular prayer chamber with a square-shaped central bay; a dome, supported on an octagonal squinch, enclose the top of the bay.[3][1] On either side of the chamber, there exists a three-bayed double-aisled arcade, accessible by doorways.[3][1]

Scholars have noted a high degree of similarity with the Sharqi architecture of Jaunpur, especially in the usage of stone-masonry—covered in plaster—as the chief building material and the use of iwans; Catherine Asher suggests a reliance on local artisans.[3][1] John Burton-Page, a scholar of Indian architecture, notes the mosque to be imposing but "utterly undistinguished" in architectural novelty.[4]

Establishment

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According to an extant inscription on the mihrab, on 6 December 1526, Emperor Babur commanded Mir Hindu Beg, the regional Governor, to construct the mosque.[3] Both Ram Nath and Catherine Asher, scholars of Mughal architecture, doubt that Babur had any personal involvement;[1][5] while Asher suggests that the inscription might have merely alluded to Babur's permission to regional governors to construct mosques in newly gained territories, Nath believes that Beg refurbished an old Lodi-era mosque.[1]

Adjacent inscriptions attest to repairs undertaken in 1625–26 and 1656–57; in the former, the mosque was referred to as an "old mosque".[6]

Claims of Existing Temple

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In 1874, A. C. L. Carlleyle, Assistant to the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, touring the district as part of an archaeological survey, found the bricks used in the central bay to have been stripped of their stone casings, before being plastered over, and the courtyard pathway stones to contain fragments of Hindu sculptures underneath; additionally, the bricks used for the central bay were larger than those used for the side-bays.[7] Thus, Carlleyle proposed that the central bay was indeed a Hindu temple that was converted into a mosque—wherein the stone casings with sculptures were stripped and repurposed as footsteps out of aniconic impulses—and followed up with the addition of side bays.[7]

Howard Crane, a scholar of Islamic art and architecture, found such a hypothesis to be implausible and denied that the site of mosque could have been ever occupied by a temple.[3] In contrast, Ram Nath, a scholar of Mughal architecture, agrees that a temple was converted into the mosque and notes pillars of the temple to have been reused; he believes the mosque to have been constructed during the Lodi era.[5][8] Likewise, Stephen Dale, a scholar of South Asian Islam and academic biographer of Babur, notes that the mosque was constructed on a site which was sacred to the Hindus and used temple spolia; however, he cautions that the act was unlikely to have a religious motivation, given no evidence exists to suggest that Babur was undertaking a religious crusade in India.[9]

History

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Mughal Era

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Abul Fazl, a court-historian of Akbar writing in the late 1500s, noted Sambhal to have a famed temple, called the Hara Mandal (trans. Temple for Shiva);[10] he also noted of a millenarian belief among Hindus about Kalki, the final incarnation of Vishnu, appearing among the descendants of the priests of the temple.[11][a] Fazl did not mention the mosque but having never been to Sambhal, he was, likely, reproducing from old non-extant chronicles.[citation needed]

Ānand Rām Mukhliṣ, a Mughal scribe who toured Sambhal in 1745, noted Babur's son, Humayun, to have ordered the conversion of what was once a domed temple, the Hara Mandal, into the mosque upon receiving the jagir of the district; Mukhlis came across Babur's foundational inscription and chronicled it.[15] However, he did not take umbrage at the conversion, remarking that what was a place of worship continued to be one.[15] Mukhlis further described an adjacent water tank that continued to attract Hindu pilgrims and was frequented by Brahmin priests and flower-sellers.[15]

British Rule

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35 years later, Aḥmad ʿAlī, a scribe under the employment of East India Company, toured Sambhal and reproduced a similar account.[16] In 1789, Thomas Daniell and William Daniell etched two drawings of the mosque while travelling through Sambhal; Thomas noted the mosque to be "on the site of a Hindoo temple."[17][b]

Pencil and wash drawing of the Sambhal Jama Masjid; 24 March 1789.

In 1873, Ganga Prashad, Deputy Collector of the district, noted Babur to have converted a Hari Mandir to the mosque; the mosque still had a chain for the suspension of a bell and pilgrims engaged in parikrama around the mosque.[18] Around the same time, Carlleyle alleged local Muslims to have confessed to him about the extant inscriptions being forgeries and about how they had usurped total control of the site only around 1850.[7][c]

In 1878, local Hindus filed a plea in the Moradabad Civil Court asking for the site to be returned to them; they lost the case having failed to prove that the Muslims did not have continuous possession of the site for the last twelve years.[19][20] Additionally, the parikrama path did not go through the mosque and witness for the Hindu side were noted to be of a "poor quality" who had never seen the inside of the mosque.[19]

In 1920, the mosque was brought under the purview of the Ancient Monuments Protection Act, 1904, and designated as a protected monument.[2]

Independent India

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On 29 March 1978, there was a riot in Sambhal after rumors spread about how local Hindus had murdered the Imam of the mosque.[21][22]

2024 Litigation and Riots

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Main article: 2024 Sambhal Violence

On 19 November 2024, Vishnu Shankar Jain, known for his involvement in the Gyanvapi Dispute, filed a petition in the Chandausi Civil Court arguing the mosque to have been built over a Shri Hari Har Temple and asked for an immediate survey of the site.[20][23] The prayer was granted ex parte and the survey was completed by evening.[20]

On 24 November, there was an attempt at a fresh survey which gave rise to apprehensions of the surveyors excavating the mosque; stone-pelting and arson followed, resulting in four deaths, likely from retaliatory police firing.[20] A week later, the Supreme Court of India directed the Civil Court to pause all proceedings until the Allahabad High Court heard the Mosque Committee's challenge to the survey order; the Court ordered the survey report to not be unsealed and emphasized upon the responsibility of the government to maintain peace.[24][25]

Local Hindus claim that they have always held the mosque to be Harihar Mandir and that they used to offer prayers at a nearby well till a few decades ago; local Muslims do not oppose the Hindu claims but assert that such a temple existed in the mosque’s vicinity in ancient times, and not at the site itself.[20]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Mahabharata, a text whose final redaction is roughly dated to the early first millennia, described how Kalki was slated to be born in "the village of Sambhala, in a pious brahmin dwelling" and reinstate Brahminical supremacy.[12] The concept was linked with apocalyptic beliefs in Puranic literature and reproduced extensively; however, none of these texts described Sambhala in any detail or gave the precise location of the place.[13]

    In the Laghukālacakratantra and translations thereof, Sambhala is a mythical lotus shaped kingdom, spanning millions of villages, surrounded by snow-clad mountains and with a celestial capital, Kalapa;[14] an eponymous city, located in the Himalayas, has been associated with messianic ideals in the Puranas.[13] In the text, Sambhala has affinities with Kailasa, the abode of Siva, too — the Manasa lake is beside Kalapa and the Kalki-King of Sambhala is prophesied to destroy the Muslims with the aid of Rudra (Shiva); and later Tibetan etymologies of Sambhala interpret the word as "the land held by Siva".[13] Laghukālacakratantra was introduced into India c. early 11th century and catalyzed intense discourse esp. among Vajrayana Buddhists;[14] this might have led to the fusing of Siva with what was originally a Vaishnavite belief.

    On the whole, Sambhala was always a conception of a sacred space and did not correspond to any particular physical region.

  2. ^ William noted it to be the tomb of Babur.[17]
  3. ^ Given Mukhliṣ' and others' description of the mosque, about a century before him, Carlleyle's informers seem unreliable; further, Mukhlis had reproduced the inscription in his accounts.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g Asher, Catherine (1992). "The beginnings of Mughal architecture". Architecture of Mughal India. The New Cambridge History of India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 28. ISBN 9781139055635.
  2. ^ a b "Survey of Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal completed". The Siasat Daily. 2024-11-24.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Crane, Howard (1987). "The Patronage of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Bābur and the Origins of Mughal Architecture". Bulletin of the Asia Institute. 1: 101–102. ISSN 0890-4464.
  4. ^ Burton-Page, John (2007). Michell, George (ed.). Indian Islamic Architecture: Forms and Typologies, Sites and Monuments. Brill. p. 27. ISBN 978-90-04-16339-3.
  5. ^ a b Nath, Ram (1982). History Of Mughal Architecture. Vol. 1. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications. pp. 103–104.
  6. ^ Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy: 1952–53. Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India. 1954. p. 98.
  7. ^ a b c A.C.L., Carlleyle (1879). Report of Tours in the Central Doab and Gorakhpur in 1874–75 and 1875–76. Calcutta: Archaeological Survey of India. pp. 25–26.
  8. ^ Nath, Ram (1991). Architecture & Site of the Baburi Masjid of Ayodhya: A Historical Critique. Jaipur: Historical Research Documentation Programme. p. 20. ISBN 8185105146.
  9. ^ Dale, Stephen (2004). The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Bābur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483–1530). Brill. pp. 442–443. ISBN 978-90-04-13707-3.
  10. ^ Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2011). "Violence, Grievance, and Memory in Early Modern South Asia". From Tagus to the Ganges: Explorations in Connected History. Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 95. ISBN 9780198077169.
  11. ^ Jarrett, H.S. (tr.) Sarkar, Jadunath (Rev.) The Ain-I Akbari by Abu'l-Fazl Allami, Vol. II, Repr. 1989. Delhi. p. 283
  12. ^ Eltschinger, Vincent (2020-07-20). "On some Buddhist Uses of the kaliyuga". In Wieser, Veronika; Eltschinger, Vincent; Heiss, Johann (eds.). Cultures of Eschatology: Empires and Scriptural Authorities in Medieval Christian, Islamic and Buddhist Communities. Vol. 1. De Gruyter. pp. 143–146. ISBN 978-3-11-059774-5.
  13. ^ a b c Bernbaum, Edwin Marshall (1985). The Mythic Journey and its Symbolism: a Study of the Development of Buddhist Guidebooks to Sambhala in Relation to their Antecedents in Hindu Mythology (Thesis). University of California, Berkeley. p. 158-167, 188.
  14. ^ a b Newman, John (1991). "A Brief History of the Kalachakra". The Wheel of Time: Kalachakra in Context. Snow Lion. ISBN 9781559390019.
  15. ^ a b c Alam, Muzaffar; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2007). "Acculturation or Tolerance?: Inter-faith Relations in Mughal North India, c. 1750". Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. 33: 441, 445–446.
  16. ^ Naqvi, Naveena (2020-10-01). "On the road: The novice munshi's view of inter-imperial North India". The Indian Economic & Social History Review. 57 (4): 495. doi:10.1177/0019464620948416. ISSN 0019-4646.
  17. ^ a b Archer, Mildred (1969). British Drawings in the India Office Library, Vol. 2: Official and Professional Artists. London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office. p. 580.
  18. ^ Prasad, Ganga (May 1873). "On Sambhal Inscriptions". Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal: 98–99.
  19. ^ a b "Story of the 500-year-old Sambhal mosque: Competing histories, mythology, and legal fights". The Indian Express. 2024-11-29.
  20. ^ a b c d e "How Sambhal row was born, post 1878 suit dismissal, post 1976 tension, when a priest met some familiar names". The Indian Express. 2024-11-28. Retrieved 2024-12-01.
  21. ^ 油井, 美春; ユイ, ミハル; Yui, Miharu (2017-12-15). "Can Citizen Involvement Overcome Hate Crime in Local Communities?". Senri Ethnological Studies (in Japanese). 96: 184–185. doi:10.15021/00008679. ISSN 0387-6004.
  22. ^ "April 2, 1978, Forty Years Ago". The Indian Express. 2018-04-02. Retrieved 2024-12-01.
  23. ^ "Uttar Pradesh: Court-Appointed Commissioner Surveys Mughal-Era Mosque Amid Claims of Ancient Hindu Temple". The Wire. 20 November 2024.
  24. ^ Debby Jain; Anmol Kaur Bawa (2024-11-29). "Sambhal Masjid: Supreme Court Asks Trial Court To Defer Proceedings Till Survey Order Is Challenged In HC, Keep Commissioner Report Sealed". Live Law.
  25. ^ "Sambhal mosque survey: SC asks Shahi Jama Masjid management to approach Allahabad HC, tells trial court to halt proceedings". The Indian Express. 2024-11-29.
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Media related to Shahi Jama Masjid, Sambhal at Wikimedia Commons

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