Place · Adil Shahi mosque · India
Safa Shahouri Masjid, Ponda
Also known as Safa Masjid, Shifa Shahouri Masjid
Safa Shahouri Masjid at Ponda is the oldest and largest Islamic monument in Goa, built in 1560 by Ibrahim Adil Shah I of Bijapur during the brief Adil Shahi reoccupation of the Ponda hinterland. The mosque survived the Portuguese 1564 anti-mosque edicts of the Goa Inquisition and the demolition of some 27 other mosques in the Old Conquests territories, because it sat just outside the Portuguese line at that date. A simple sloping-roofed hall on a tall basalt plinth, a brick ablution tank with ornamental Mughal-style niches on all four walls, and a Persian inscription inside the mihrab are its surviving features. One of only two pre-Portuguese mosques left standing in Goa.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Patron dynasty
- Adil Shahi
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 15.402, 74.006
Connections (2)
- Site adjacencyMangueshi Temple, Ponda
Safa Shahouri Masjid at Ponda stands in the same hinterland just outside the 16c Portuguese Old Conquests line into which the Goa Hindu temples (Mangueshi, Shantadurga, and other Goud Saraswat shrines) were also moved from the Zuari river after the 1564 anti-Hindu-and-mosque edicts. Both the 1560 Adil Shahi mosque and the 1738 rebuilt Mangueshi temple sit within three kilometres of each other in Ponda taluka.
- Site withinPonda
The Safa Shahouri Masjid at Ponda, built in 1560 by Ibrahim Adil Shah of Bijapur, is the oldest surviving mosque in Goa and one of only three to escape the Portuguese demolitions. A single-chamber laterite prayer hall on a basalt plinth with a stepped water tank; the mihrab arch is in the stylised late-Bijapur manner typical of the Deccan Sultanate's final years.
Sources
Standard reference.
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