Building a Stairway to Heaven

Khan e Jahan Juna Shah Maqbool Telangani was a first generation convert, and like new converts to any faith, was excessively devout. He had been told that anyone who built a mosque was sure to go to heaven; Telangani did not want to take any risks, so he built not one or two but seven mosques in Delhi.

Telangani’s father, Malik Maqbool, the first convert in the family – voluntary or under compulsion is an issue on which the jury is still out – was a very capable soldier in the court of Prataprudra, the Kakatiya ruler of Warangal. When Warangal fell in 1323 to the forces of then prince Mohammad Bin Tughlaq (also known as Adilshah and Juna Shah), Malik Maqbool (then known as Gannama Nayaka or Yugandhar) was hand-picked by Mohammad bin Tughlaq for important positions in the court hierarchy.

He first became the governor of Multan and administrator of Punjab, was promoted to the position of finance minister and eventually became Wazir or Khan e Jahan during the reign of Feroze Shah Tughlaq. His annual salary was reported to be 1.3 million tankas. Feroze Shah called him his brother and virtual ruler of Delhi. He died in 1369 and as per an assurance given to him by Feroze Shah, his son (strategically named Juna Shah, one of the names that Mohammad bin Tughlaq was known by), succeeded him as Khan e Jahan.

So Khan e Jahan Juna Shah Maqbool Telangani, inheritor of great wealth and political power, set out to improve his chances in the hereafter and one after the other built seven mosques in Delhi. Of these seven, four are more known than the other three:

1. The Kalan Masjid opposite the mausoleum of a 13th-century saint, Sultan-ul-Arifin Shah Turkman Bayabani (died 1240), in an area now known as Mohalla Qabristan due to the construction of many houses in the middle of this 13th century graveyard that grew around the shrine of Shah Turkman. The area was a part of Ferozeabad, now known as Kotla Ferozeshah, the fifth city of Delhi. When Shahjahan included this part of the old city within the limits of Shahjahanabad, he named one of the 13 gates that pierced the enclosing wall of the city ‘Turkman Darwaza’, after the great seer.
2. The Jami Masjid of Basti Nizam ud Din, built by Telangani for the devotees of Nizam-ud-Din Aulia, is now gentrified out of recognition by a bunch of zealots who have encroached upon this beautiful mosque.
3. The Begumpur Mosque, sandwiched between Bijay Mandal of Mohammad bin Tughlaq and Begumpur village abutted by Shivalik Enclave of rather recent vintage.
4. The most remarkable of them all, the famous Khirki Mosque, almost lost to view due to the recent construction of a Pracheen Temple opposite the Saket Mall.

The other three, according to Bashir-ud-Din Ahmad, who wrote a rather exhaustive account of the history of Delhi, (Waqeaat-e-Daar-ul-Hukumat Dehli 1919) were:

1. The Kalu Sarai Masjid, located inside a graveyard (opposite IIT Delhi, wedged in between Azad Apartments and Mother’s International School) encroached upon by a family that has been living there for decades if not longer.
2. A small mosque inside Kotla Ferozeshah.
3. A small mosque outside what used to be the Kabuli Darwaza of Shahjahan’s Delhi.

According to Bashir-ud-Din Ahmad, no trace of the latter two could be found.

Some bloggers on Delhi have identified a small mosque known as 64 Khambha inside an old graveyard, bearing the same name and located off the now lost Meer Dard Road, behind Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital. This mosque is not too far away from the Khooni Darwaza opposite Maulana Azad Medical College.

The Khooni Darwaza has also been described as the Kabuli Darwaza of Dinpanah, the sixth Delhi built by Humayun named Deenpanah, and now known as the Purana Qila. Bashir-ud-Din Ahmad had described one of the mosques as being located near the Kabuli Darwaza, so it has been suggested that 64 Khambha mosque that looks like a Sultanate period structure could be the sixth mosque of Telangani.

The seventh has been identified by bloggers as the Jami Masjid of Kotla Ferozeshah. This possibility too cannot be ruled out – since the builder of these mosques was the wazir of Feroze Tughlaq, he could well have built the Jami Masjid of the city.

Be that as it may, the first four have survived centuries of neglect. In some cases despite terrible additions and horrible coats of a myriad colours – gold, silver, pink and green, tacky additions of electrical fittings and claddings of marble and Kota stone, rocks that were not in use at the time when Telangani was constructing these monumental structures.

The Turkman Gate, Basti Nizam-ud-Din, Begumpur and Khirki mosques stand out as remarkable examples of an architectural design that brought together the corbelled arch and the true arch, incorporating the motif of the Gajalakshmi in the main gates, of many of these mosques. The little stumps that flanked the gates and imitated the form of the Qutub anticipate the evolution of the minaret that grew through the Lodhi period to eventually evolve into the minarets of the Jama Masjid and other mosques built in the time of Shahjahan.

It is these mosques that also contributed the idea of a projecting and dominating central arch, and perhaps the first use of the dome in mosque architecture in Delhi, aside from creating beautiful visual patterns through the grid of arches that filled up the prayer chambers and the covered verandahs in these mosques.

To Telangani must also go the credit of using a large number of domes to create perhaps the largest roofed mosque of his time – the Khirki Mosque. It is the mosque architecture that evolved under his patronage that was to so deeply impress Taimur that he carried a drawing of the Jami Masjid of Kotla Ferozeshah and a couple of hundred stone masons from India to use their skills for construction back home.

The Jami Masjid of Kotla thus became the prototype of mosque architecture that travelled with Taimur to Central Asia and was to find echoes in the Bibi Khanam Mosque, built by Taimur in Samarqand after his return from India.

Sohail Hashmi is a filmmaker, writer and heritage buff.