Adina Mosque

About

Rising from the landscape of Pandua in the Malda district of West Bengal, the Adina Mosque stands as one of the most ambitious architectural undertakings ever attempted in the subcontinent. Commissioned in 1373 and brought to completion in 1375 under Sultan Sikandar Shah of the Ilyas Shahi dynasty, it served as the congregational mosque of an empire that had twice repelled the armies of the Delhi Sultanate. Its name, Adina, is understood to derive from the word for Friday, evoking the central congregational prayer of the Islamic week.

The structure measures 172 by 97 metres and once sheltered hundreds of domes over its vast prayer halls and surrounding cloisters. Its defining architectural gesture is a great ribbed barrel vault spanning the central nave, the first of its scale on the subcontinent, deliberately recalling the palatial idiom of pre-Islamic Sassanian Persia. The prayer hall extends five aisles deep, while the three colonnaded galleries encircling the open courtyard contain a further triple row of aisles. In total, 260 pillars support 387 domed bays, and a continuous arcade of 92 arches lines the inner face of the courtyard, above which domes rise in quiet procession. The gallery reserved for the Sultan and his court can still be found at its elevated position, and his tomb chamber remains attached to the qibla wall.

The mosque was built partly from stone salvaged from dismantled Temples of earlier faiths, and its walls carry carved ornament that weaves Bengali, Arab, Persian, and Byzantine sensibilities into a coherent whole. Elephant carvings and dancing figures appear on certain outer sections, silent witnesses to the layered religious landscape from which the building emerged. Today the site is designated a Monument of National Importance.

History

Sultan Sikandar Shah commissioned the mosque after his kingdom twice defeated the Delhi Sultanate, in 1353 and 1359, building it to rival the grandest religious architecture of the Islamic world. Its central nave carries the first ribbed barrel vault of its scale raised on the subcontinent, consciously recalling pre-Islamic Sassanian Persia. Earthquakes in the nineteenth century damaged the structure, and as Pandua declined the mosque was left standing largely in ruin.

Significance

Built partly from stone taken from earlier Temples, the Adina Mosque was the first mosque in Bengal to use terracotta decoration, translating motifs such as the lotus and the caitya window from Pala-Sena era Buddhist and Hindu sculpture into a new Indo-Islamic ornamental language. It stands as the founding monument of Bengal's own Islamic architectural tradition and is protected today as a Monument of National Importance.

Architecture

Bengal Sultanate imperial mosque architecture; hypostyle plan with a Sassanian-influenced ribbed barrel vault and Bengal's earliest mosque terracotta ornament