The Mosques of Bayana, Rajasthan, and the Emergence of a Prototype for the Mosques of the Mughals

Abstract

Bayana’s political autonomy during the sultanate history of Delhi is reflected in its architectural monuments, particularly the mosques. The town, built by Muhammad b. Sām’s governor Bahā al-dīn Tughrul, has preserved his late 12th century mosque, which together with its early 14th century extension was praised by Ibn Battūta, but it is the later mosques which show a pattern of continuous independence in architectural style. When in the 14th and 15th centuries, arcuate forms imported from Khurāsān flourished in Delhi, the Bayana architects, although aware of the style, continued to choose the ancient Indian trabeate system, not as a result of lack of innovation, but as a display of their autonomy. Their design developments in the late 15th to 16th centuries led to a new concept for mosque plans, where the prayer hall no longer filled the western side, but jutted out into the courtyard, so that the northern and southern walls of the mosque stood within its courtyard. Akbar, who had his capitals in Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, once two villages in the Bayana territory, also adopted features of the architecture of the region. The new mosque plan first appears to some extent in Shaikh Salīm Chishtī’s Mosque, but the fully-fledged plan becomes a feature of later Mughal mosques of the time of Shāh Jahān and his successors.