Place · Sufi shrine complex · India
Sarkhej Roza
The 15th-century Sufi complex outside Ahmedabad holding the tomb of Sheikh Ahmad Khattu (1338-1446) — the Maghribi-Chishti saint who settled at Sarkhej after travels in Egypt and Mecca, became Ahmad Shah I's spiritual guide, and gave the Gujarat Sultanate its founding blessing. The sprawling tank, mosque, pavilions and tombs were built between 1445 and 1451 by Ahmad Shah's son Muhammad Shah II and grandson Qutbuddin Ahmad Shah II — Sultanate architecture in a wholly Gujarati vocabulary (jali stone screens, pyramid roofs, trabeated construction without arches). Le Corbusier studied Sarkhej for the layout of Chandigarh.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Gujarati Sufi tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.000, 72.500
Connections (2)
- Companion in the same setChampaner-Pavagadh
Sarkhej Roza and Champaner are the two great Gujarat Sultanate building sites, and both work in trabeate stone with no arches — the local temple-builders' technique applied to Islamic plans, which is what makes Gujarati sultanate architecture unlike anything in Delhi. Le Corbusier compared Sarkhej's proportions to the Acropolis, which is why architects visit a dargah on the edge of Ahmedabad.
- Site withinAhmedabad / Karnāvatī / Āshāval
Sarkhej Roza is the Sufi complex on Ahmedabad's southwestern edge, built in the Gujarat Sultanate idiom of trabeate stone and pierced jālis around the shrine of Ahmad Khattu Ganj Baksh, the fifteenth-century Chishti Sufi who advised Sultan Ahmed Shah on the founding of the city in 1411. Mahmud Begada later added his own tomb, his queen's tomb, a tank and pavilions here, so the complex also carries the royal necropolis of Ahmedabad's most assertive Sultanate builder. Le Corbusier compared its proportions to the Acropolis.
On these journeys
Sources
Sarkhej Roza, Ahmedabad
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