Place · timber-pillared congregational mosque · India
Jamia Masjid, Srinagar
Also known as Jamia Masjid Srinagar, Jama Masjid Srinagar, Nowhatta
The congregational mosque of Srinagar, founded in 1394 by Sultan Sikandar and rebuilt repeatedly after fires, built on three hundred and seventy deodar columns each cut from a single tree, around an open courtyard with a chinar garden in it — a Kashmiri timber building rather than a masonry one.
- Date
- 1394–None
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.090, 74.806
Worth knowing
The plan is a square with four arched entrances and pyramidal roofs, closer to the valley's own temple and shrine architecture than to anything in the plains, which is the point: Kashmiri Islam built in wood in a Kashmiri idiom. Friday prayers here have been a political event for six centuries and the mosque has been closed by authorities many times.
Connections (4)
- Craft tradition ofSrinagar papier-mâché and khatamband
Papier-mâché, khatamband ceilings and the Jamia Masjid's three hundred and seventy deodar columns are all Kashmir working in what it has: paper, walnut and pine rather than stone. Zain-ul-Abidin sent craftsmen to Samarkand and brought Persian masters back in the fifteenth century, and the shawl, the carpet, the lacquer and the woodwork all date their present form from his reign.
- Site adjacencyCharār-e-Sharīf
The Jamia Masjid and the Rishi shrines are the two halves of Kashmiri Islam: a congregational mosque of 1394 built on deodar columns in a Kashmiri timber idiom rather than a masonry one, and a line of ascetic shrines whose founder's verses are indistinguishable in idiom from Lal Ded's. Neither looks like anything in the plains, and that is the argument.
- Contemporary capital withHazratbal Shrine, Srinagar
Hazratbal and the Jamia Masjid are the two congregational centres of Srinagar and they are architecturally opposite: a domed marble mosque built for a relic in a valley that builds in wood, and a fourteenth-century timber hall on three hundred and seventy deodar columns. Both have been the site of mass political assembly, and both have been closed by authorities repeatedly.
- Site withinSrinagar
The Jamia Masjid of Srinagar is the city's great congregational mosque, founded by Sultan Sikandar in 1394 and rebuilt after fires three times — a Kashmiri timber building of three hundred and seventy deodar columns around a central courtyard rather than a masonry one. It stands in the Nowhatta quarter inside the Nagar Nagar wall and its Friday prayers have been a Srinagar political event for six centuries.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Jamia Masjid, Srinagar”. Jonaraja and Srivara's continuations of the Rājataraṅgiṇī; Archaeological Survey of India, Srinagar circle records.
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