CONTENTS.

The Great Mosque at Mandu.

CHRONOLOGY.

The Ghori dynasty of Mandu attained independence about the same time as the Sharkis of Jaunpore—Sultan Dilawar, who governed the province from A.D. 1387, having assumed the title of Shah in A.D. 1401. It is, however, to his successor Hoshang, that Mandu owes its greatness and all the finest of its buildings. The state continued to prosper as one of the independent Moslem principalities till A.D. 1534, when it was incorporated with Gujerat, and was finally annexed to Akbar’s dominion in A.D. 1568.

The original capital of the state was Dhar, an old Hindu city, twenty miles northward of Mandu, to which the seat of government was transferred after it became independent. Though an old and venerated city of the Hindus, Dhar contains no evidence of its former greatness, except two mosques erected wholly of Jaina remains. The principal of these, the Jumma Musjid, has a courtyard measuring 102 ft. north and south, by 131 ft. in the other direction. The mosque itself is 119 ft. by 40 ft. 6 in., and its roof is supported by sixty-four pillars of Jaina architecture, 12 ft. 6 in. in height, and all of them more or less richly carved, and the three domes that adorn it are also of purely Hindu form. The court is surrounded by an arcade containing forty-four columns, 10 ft. in height, but equally rich in carving. There is here no screen of arches, as at the Kutub or at Ajmir. Internally nothing is visible but Hindu pillars, and, except for their disposition and the prayer-niches that adorn the western wall, it might be taken for a Hindu building. In this instance, however, there seems no doubt that there is nothing in situ. The pillars have been brought from desecrated temples in the town, and arranged here by the Mahomedans as we now find them, probably before the transference of the capital to Mandu.

The other mosque is similar to this one, and only slightly smaller. It has long, however, ceased to be used as a place of prayer, and is sadly out of repair. It is called the LÂt Musjid, from an iron pillar now lying half-buried in front of its gateway. This is generally supposed to have been a pillar of victory, like that at the Kutub; but this can hardly be the case. If it were intended for an ornamental purpose, it would have been either round or octagonal, and had some ornamental form. As it is, it is only a square bar of iron, some 20 ft. or 25 ft. in height, and 9 in. section, without any ornamental form whatever. My impression is, that it was used for some useful constructive purpose, like those which supported the false roof in the Pagoda at Kanaruc (ante, page 428). There are some holes through it, which tend further to make this view of its origin probable. But, be this as it may, it is another curious proof of the employment of large masses of wrought-iron by the Hindus at a time when they were supposed to be incapable of any such mechanical exertion. Its date is probably that of the pillars of the mosques where it is found, and from their style they probably belong to the 10th or 11th centuries.

The site on which the city of Mandu is placed is one of the noblest occupied by any capital in India. It is an extensive plateau, detached from the mainland of Malwa by a deep ravine about 300 to 400 yards across, where narrowest, and nowhere less than 200 ft. in depth. This is crossed by a noble causeway, defended by three gateways, and flanked by tombs on either hand. The plateau is surrounded by walls erected on the brink of the cliff—it is said 28 miles in extent. This, however, conveys a very erroneous idea of the size of the place, unless qualified by the information that the walls follow the sinuosities of the ravines wherever they occur, and many of these cut into the hill a mile or two, and are only half a mile across. The plateau may be four or five miles east and west, and three miles north and south, most pleasingly diversified in surface, abounding in water, and fertile in the highest degree, as is too plainly evidenced by the rank vegetation, which is tearing the buildings of the city to pieces or obscuring them so that they can hardly be seen.

The finest building in the city is the Jumma Musjid, commenced and nearly completed by Hoshang, the second king, who reigned from A.D. 1405 to A.D. 1432, which, though not very large, is so simple and grand in outline and details, that it ranks high among the monuments of its class. Its dimensions are externally 290 ft. by 275 ft., exclusive of the porch.

Internally, the courtyard is almost an exact square of 162 ft., and would be quite so, were it not that two of the piers on the east and west faces are doubled. In other respects the four sides of the court are exactly similar, each being ornamented by eleven great arches of precisely the same dimensions and height, supported by piers or pillars, each of one single block of red sandstone. The only variety attempted is, that the east side has two arcades in depth, the north and south three: while the west side, or that facing Mecca, has five, besides being ornamented by three great domes, each 42 ft. in diameter.

As will be seen on the plan (Woodcut No. 308), these large domes are supported each by twelve pillars. The pillars are all equally spaced, the architect having omitted, for the sake of uniformity, to widen the central avenues on the intersection of which the domes stand. It follows from this that the four sides of the octagon supporting the dome, which are parallel to the sides of the court, are shorter than the four diagonal sides. Internally, this produces a very awkward appearance; but it could not have been avoided except by running into another difficulty—that of having oblong spaces at the intersections of the wider aisles with the narrower, to which the smaller domes must have been fitted. Perhaps, on the whole, the architect took the less inconvenient course of the two.

308. Plan of Mosque at Mandu. No scale.