Of all the mosques remaining at Jaunpore, the Atala Musjid is the most ornate and the most beautiful. The colonnades surrounding its court are four aisles in depth, the outer columns, as well as those next the court, being double square pillars. The three intermediate rows are single square columns, supporting a flat roof of slabs, arranged as in Jaina temples. Externally, too, it is two storeys in height, the lower storey being occupied by a series of cells opening outwardly. All this is so like a Hindu arrangement that one might almost at first sight be tempted, like Baron Hügel, to fancy it was originally a Buddhist monastery. He failed to remark, however, that both here and in the Jumma Musjid the cells open outwardly, and are below the level of the courtyard of the mosque—an arrangement common enough in Mahomedan, but never found in Buddhist buildings. Its gateways, however, which are the principal ornaments of the outer court, are purely Saracenic, and the western face is adorned by three propylons similar to that represented in the last woodcut, but richer and more beautiful, while its interior domes and roofs are superior to any other specimen of Mahomedan art I am acquainted with of so early an age. They are, too, perhaps, more striking here, because, though in juxtaposition with the quasi-Hinduism of the court, they exhibit the arched style of the Saracenic architects in as great a degree of completeness as it exhibited at any subsequent period.
The other buildings hardly require particular mention, though, as transition specimens between the two styles, these Jaunpore examples are well worthy of illustration, and in themselves possess a simplicity and grandeur not often met with in this style. An appearance of strength, moreover, is imparted to them by their sloping walls, which is foreign to our general conception of Saracenic art, though at Tugluckabad and elsewhere it is carried even further than at Jaunpore. Among the Pathans of India the expression of strength is as characteristic of the style as massiveness is of that of the Normans in England. In India it is found conjoined with a degree of refinement seldom met with elsewhere, and totally free from the coarseness which in other countries usually besets vigour and boldness of design.
The peculiarities of this style are by no means confined to the capital; they prevail at Gazeepore, and as far north as Canouge, while at Benares the examples are frequent. In the suburbs of that city, at a place called the Bakaraya Kund,[512] there is a group of tombs, as mentioned above, and other buildings belonging to the Moslems, which are singularly pleasing specimens of the Jaunpore style, and certainly belong to the same age as those just described.
The kingdom of Jaunpore is also rich in little tombs and shrines in which the Moslems have used up Hindu and Jaina pillars, merely rearranging them after their own fashion. These, of course, will not bear criticism as architectural designs, but there is always something so indescribably picturesque about them as fairly to extort admiration. The principal example of this compound style is a mosque at Canouge, known popularly as “Sita ka Rasui,” “Sita’s kitchen.” It is a Jaina temple, rearranged as a mosque, in the manner described at pp. 263-4. It measures externally 133 ft. by 120 ft. The mosque itself has four rows of fifteen columns each, and three domes. The cloisters surrounding the court are only two rows in depth, and had originally sixty-eight pillars, smaller than those of the mosque. Externally it has no great beauty, but its pillared court is very picturesque and pleasing. According to an inscription over its principal gateway, its conversion was effected by Ibrahim Shah, of Jaunpore, A.D. 1406.[513]
At a later age, and even after it had lost its independence, several important buildings were erected in the capital and in other towns of the kingdom in the style of the day; but none of these, so far as is now known, are of sufficient importance to require notice in such a work as the present.
CHAPTER V.
GUJERAT.
CONTENTS.
Jumma Musjid and other Mosques at Ahmedabad—Tombs and Mosques at Sirkej and Butwa—Buildings in the Provinces.
CHRONOLOGY.