Talk:Shahi Jama Masjid

Removal of sourced content

• 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.
• 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.

Are these sources unreliable? If not, the content sourced to these sources cannot be removed. I can source a summary of Carlleyle's views to similar sources if you wish.

Further, why did you remove the photograph and the caption or the architectural details sourced from Asher and Crane - do you dispute the accuracy?

Now, to respond to your edit summary:

> The primary sources (Baburnama and inscriptions) and scholarly research, including works by Howard Crane, confirm that the mosque was purpose-built by Babur in 1526-27.

What I wrote did not claim otherwise and I agree that there is absolutely no doubt that the mosque was built by Babur. On an aside, Baburnama has nothing on the mosque.

> No credible evidence supports the assertion of a prior Hindu temple on the site. Claims relying on 19th-century reports or local traditions lack substantiation in historical records.

Mukhliṣ' Safarnama (c. 1750) or Aḥmad ʿAlī's Kawāʾif al-Sair (c. 1780) are neither "19th-century reports" nor "local traditions". Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Muzaffar Alam use the example of the mosque to drive their thesis about communal relations under the Mughals!

Also, in all probabilities, Crane, not being a South Asianist, didn't know about Mukhliṣ' Safarnama or Aḥmad ʿAlī's Kawāʾif al-Sair and (rationally) didn't take the ever-expanding Hindu victimhood very seriously. Further, scholars of Islam in South Asia like Asim Roy (and Alam) accept that the Sambhal Mosque was constructed by converting a temple.

Upd Edit (talk) 17:42, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Cerium4B, you cannot continue to edit war and remove sourced content without participating in a substantial discussion. Upd Edit (talk) 20:14, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Comment. I have reinstated the content. Cerium4B, Aliyiya5903, reverts need to be policy-based, and you need to cite the policy per which you are reverting. For anything more complicated, you need to explain your reasons here. As far as I can see, your objections are merely an instance of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:57, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I had clearly provided my reasons in summary which emphasized that the claim of a Hindu temple existing prior to the mosque is not supported by credible primary sources. While works like Mukhliṣ' Safarnama and Aḥmad ʿAlī's Kawāʾif al-Sair offer valuable insights into the historical context and communal relations during the Mughal period, they do not provide concrete evidence of a pre-existing temple on the site. The sources user cited primarily reflect local beliefs and traditions, which the authors have used as the basis for their historical accounts. While these accounts are interesting, they do not meet the standard for verifiable, primary evidence needed to substantiate the claim.

Additionally edits have included biased language that suggests the mosque was built over a converted Hindu temple. This type of language is not appropriate for an article dedicated to the mosque itself and could mislead readers. If there is a need to explore the existence of a temple on the site prior to the mosque, it would be more suitable to create a separate page that focuses on that topic. Aliyiya5903 (talk) 10:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

First of all, note that Wikipedia is not WP:CENSORed.

When you want to contest sourced content that has been added to the article, your objections need to be specific, and need to address those sources and that content. You can;t make blanket statements like "no credible evidence exists". See WP:VNT. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:22, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are expected to cover everything reliable sources say about a topic. The talk of creating a "separate page" comes up only when the page becomes too large and a WP:SPINOUT is needed. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:25, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Aliyiya5903 Original research is not permitted. All of these are your personal opinions and are not cited to reliable sources:

• However, these claims are not supported by primary evidence.
• Importantly, Carlleyle did not provide conclusive evidence for this assertion,
• it is problematic to attribute a religious identity to building materials such as bricks and stones, which have no inherent religious significance
• however, he [Ram Nath] does not provide any concrete evidence to substantiate this assertion.

Upd Edit (talk) 11:36, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

That is not quite correct. As WP:NOR says, This policy does not apply to talk pages and other pages which evaluate article content and sources, such as deletion discussions or policy noticeboards.. But the problem for me is that the objections are not specific enough for me to evaluate them. Aliyiya5903 seems to be believe that his own judgement should carry. That is not the case. Wikipedia is written through editor WP:CONSENSUS. So it is their job to provide enough information to convince the rest of us. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:42, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Kautilya3 These lines, I quoted, were added by Aliyiya5903 to the article. I am not commenting on their talk page comments. Upd Edit (talk) 13:53, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Your presentation of sources seems to imply that the mosque was indeed a temple, but this assertion is based on assumptions and interpretations of local lore, with limited scholarly evidence available online. Many sources contradict each other, and not much has been written about the mosque's real history by scholars.

1. Abul Fazl mentions a "temple in present form," which was written long after the mosque's construction, suggesting that it could refer to separate structures rather than the same one.
2. Ānand Rām Mukhliṣ refers in his Safarnama, to a mosque in Garhmukteshwar, located over 60 km from Sambhal, which is not directly associated with the mosque in question.
3. Campbell argues that Muslims only acquired the site in the 1850s and claims that the structure was originally built as a temple by Prithviraj Chauhan.
4. Local lore drawn from the Skanda Purana connects Sambhal to Kalki's prophesied birthplace, but this is purely mythological and not based on historical evidence related to the mosque's origins. Given the limited and often contradictory sources, it's important to distinguish between historical facts and local myths

Aliyiya5903 (talk) 14:59, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Fazl was compiling from existing sources and he was not abreast of the latest developments; see Alam's other works on Fazl's historiography. I CITED A SOURCE (Subrahmanyam & Alam) which points to Fazl's work while discussing Mukhlis' reaction to the mosque.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Muzaffar Alam, and Naveena Naqvi disagree with you. I HAVE CITED MULTIPLE SOURCES.

Carlleyle was wrong on that aspect.

What is the relevance of the Skanda Purana? If you have PROPER SOURCES, you can add it. Upd Edit (talk) 17:35, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

You still can't even decide whether the temple belongs to Shiva or Vishnu. 😅 Aliyiya5903 (talk) 18:52, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

You seem to believe that I care about the temple. I do not and my attitude is similar to Ānand Rām Mukhliṣ. What was a place of worship has continued to be one.

That said, you can refer to Subrahmanyam & Alam's footnote 38 in p. 445 (more clarified in Subrahmanyam's From Tagus to the Ganges (fn 34; p. 95)): "For an earlier brief mention of the Har Mandal, see the late sixteenth-century account of Abu'l Fazl, A'in-i Akbari, tr. H. S. Jarrett, revised Jadunath Sarkar, 3 Vols, reprint, Delhi, 1989, Vol. II, p. 285. For details of the mosque, also see Catherine B. Asher, Architecture of Mughal India, The New Cambridge History of India, I.4, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 28-9. Asher follows Jarrett in misreading 'Hara' (Shiva) as 'Hari' (Vishnu)." Thanks, Upd Edit (talk) 19:06, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

You removed the details where I mentioned pro-Hindutva advocate Hari Shankar. I had provided three sources: one confirming who filed the petition and two that verifying his Hindutva advocacy. By removing these, it seems you are focusing more on the temple and less on presenting the facts. Good luck with shaping your narrative—sooner or later, there will be more reliable scholarly sources available about the site's origin. Keep shaping the narrative until then. Also don’t forget to fix this. _{Local Hindus claim that they have always held the mosque to be Harihar Mandir} Aliyiya5903 (talk) 20:08, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I do not oppose mentioning Hindutva. For example, a local far-right Hindu organization appears to have manufactured consent about the need of "recovering" the temple. Such details can be added.

Please read the sources I added to the article. I have my sympathies but the belief that the mosque sat atop a temple is not new at all, as Alam, Subrahmanyam, and Naqvi document. What is new is Hindutva turning into a grievance industry to persecute Muslims. Similarly, going by the architecture, it is not far-fetched to speculate that the mosque can actually be a converted temple. And absent excavations, which I do not wish under any circumstances, scholars will have hardly anything new to say.

And I do not understand what's there to fix about the line. Thanks, Upd Edit (talk) 20:45, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Painting does not show a mosque

https://x.com/TrueIndology/status/1863831657351889372 - Debunked. It was not a mosque. 128.214.129.85 (talk) 15:28, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't know about "TrueIndology", but I too could not match the structure in the painting with the Shahi Jama Masjid. Many of these paintings from British era get wrongly labelled by curators that don't know what is what. There was also a "Babri Masjid painting" that floated around for a long time before somebody conclusively argued that it wasn't the Babri Masjid. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:19, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

This section of the Wikipedia article on Caunter and Losty (2019) provides reasons about not trusting the Oriental Annual to any extent. I took a quick look and Thomas Daniell (who titled the sketches in ink) noted it to be of a mosque while William (who titled the sketches in ink) noted it to be the tomb of Babur; both were in agreement about the structure being at the site of an earlier Hindu temple. William's diary has nothing of interest. Upd Edit (talk) 18:22, 3 December 2024 (UTC)