Place · stepwell
Dādā Harīr Vāv, Ahmedabad
A five-storey stepwell of 1499 in Asarwa, built by Dhai Harir, a superintendent of the women's apartments in Mahmud Begada's household — octagonal well shaft, spiral stairs, and Sanskrit and Arabic inscriptions giving the cost and the date in two languages.
- Function
- Water & infrastructure
- Patron dynasty
- Solanki / Chaulukya
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.041, 72.617
Worth knowing
Adalaj and Dada Harir were built in the same year, twenty kilometres apart, both commissioned by women, one a Hindu queen and one a Muslim officer of the sultan's household. Between them they are the best evidence that the stepwell was a form Gujarat's two religious establishments shared completely.
Connections (2)
- Site adjacencyAhmedabad / Karnāvatī / Āshāval
Dada Harir's well and Rani Sipri's mosque were both built in Ahmedabad around 1500 and both were commissioned by women of Mahmud Begada's household, in the same Gujarat sultanate idiom — a style built out of Solanki temple carving applied to Islamic plans, with jali screens, carved brackets and minarets that are really pilasters. It is the most thoroughly hybrid architecture in India and it was produced by Hindu masons working for Muslim patrons within living memory of the conquest.
- Site withinAhmedabad / Karnāvatī / Āshāval
The Dada Harir Vav stepwell sits within Ahmedabad in Gujarat, 15 kilometres east of the walled old city in the Asarwa area. The 1499-1500 CE octagonal five-storey stepwell commissioned by Harir Sultani, a eunuch and nurse to Sultan Mahmud Begada's harem, is one of the finest surviving Sultanate-era baolis in Gujarat. Its Sultanate-period construction places it within the Muzaffarid-era Ahmedabad heritage network alongside the Sarkhej Roza and the Jama Masjid of Ahmad Shah.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Dada Harir Stepwell”. Hemachandra’s Dvyashrayakavya and the Prabandhachintamani; Jutta Jain-Neubauer, The Stepwells of Gujarat (1981).
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