| Farrukh Siyar Mosque also called
'Lalbagh Shahi Mosque', is located within a few yards of the southern
gate of the lalbagh
fort at Dhaka.
This is the largest Mughal mosque in Bangladesh, capable of accommodating
some 1500 devotees at a time. Built by Prince farrukh
siyar between 1703 and 1706, while he was at Dhaka as a representative
of his viceroy father Prince azim-us-shan.
Due to a series of later repair and extension works the mosque now gives
a modern look. The earliest known repair works to the mosque were done
around 1870 at the instance of khwaja
abdul ghani and it was at that time that the present masonry
roof of the mosque replaced its original wooden one. A new minaret was
built in the Pakistan period. In the 1980s the mosque was thoroughly repaired
and a large extension, covered with a flat masonry roof, was built in
the east.
The mosque still retains
its original layout. Its outer dimension is 49.99m from north to
south and 16.46m from east to west. Internally it is 47.85m by 14.33m
and the thickness of the walls is 1.07m only. The massive octagonal
towers on the four exterior angles rise above the horizontal parapet
and were originally topped by solid kiosks and cupolas that still
exist in a ruinous state above the southeastern one. |
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Farrukh Siyar Mosque
Lalbagh Fort, Dhaka |
Each of the north and south walls is pierced with three
arched openings, which correspond to the three aisles running north to
south.
There is a single semi-octagonal mihrab inside in the
centre of the qibla wall, now widened and completely modernised. On either
side of this mihrab the qibla wall is marked with four arched outlines
at regular intervals. In the axis of these arched outlines (eight in total)
and the single mihrab there were nine doorways in the east wall, the central
one being bigger than its counterparts. But at present the central opening
has been transformed into a triple-arched doorway. The nine doorways in
the eastern facade and the three in the side walls suggest that the interior
of the mosque was originally divided into three longitudinal aisles and
nine bays by two rows of free standing pillars, eight in each row. But
at present there are only four pillars in each of the two rows. And as
such it is now a three-aisled and five bay deep mosque. Originally the
mosque had a flat roof, made of wood and planks. The roof is still flat
but masonry built, supported by heavy iron beams on the four walls and
two rows of brick pillars. Nothing of the original ornamentation of the
building now survives, except the traces of muqarnas works inside
the half-domed top of the central mihrab niche. The walls are internally
covered with modern Spanish cut tiles.
The mosque is of no special architectural beauty. Nevertheless
it deserves some mention because of its ground planning and roofing system.
This is the only Mughal mosque in Bengal which exhibits a three-aisled
deep prayer chamber. Mosques with three longitudinal aisles were common
in Bengal during the Sultanate period, such as the chhota
sona mosque (1494-1519) and the bara
sona mosque (1526) in Gaur. The Mughal architects may have
borrowed the idea from these Sultanate examples. Its flat roof is a new
feature. No other Bengal mosque, produced either in the Sultanate or in
the Mughal period, has a flat roof. [MA Bari]
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