Monday, January 20, 2014

A writing on the wall ?

There was this peculiar structure I chanced upon in Junagadh fort, during my travels around Saurashtra last month. Junagadh's fort has structures across so many centuries, and one would have a chance to see various styles of architecture across cultures and times !

Inside the fort, among the various buildings is this curious construction. Unfortunately, I do not have photos of the actual building as such. So you'd have to take my word for it. The building had a clearly Rajput style of architecture. Long pillared halls, with the columns being filled with very intricate chisel work. Based on the kind of work on these columns, one felt that this was certainly a work commissioned by a Hindu king.

However, it was a west facing structure, with some provisions of a pool, and a fountain in front of its entrance. Some paintings on the roofs of the structure too led to think that it might be a mosque. Thus, I was puzzled by what the structure was! It looked both like a mosque, but had none of the standard architectural elements of the Islamic style. What could this structure possibly be? Could this be some synthetic style of architecture that evolved in this region? Questions were floating in my mind.

I left the structure, and more than an hour later, finished my walk through the fort, reaching the entrance. This is when I glanced upon this map below. In Gujrati, it points to the very same site as "Jama Masjid and Ranidevi's mahal".
Now there, suddenly all my observations seemed to make sense. This structure might have possibly been a mahal for one of the queens, and later might have been converted into a mosque, when conquered by a Muslim ruler. Or it might have been the other way around.. who knows!
But that is not the story of this pic. Someone has had a look at the writing, had a certain understanding of its history, and then, actually decided to scratch off the "Jama Masjid" part ! Fantastic right ?

Ponder over it...