Place · chinitikri-mosaic mosque · Bangladesh
Star Mosque, Dhaka
Also known as Tara Masjid, Sitara Masjid, Mirza Ghulam Pir Mosque
The Star Mosque in Old Dhaka's Armanitola was built by the nobleman Mirza Ghulam Pir as a small three-domed Mughal-style mosque, and transformed in the early twentieth century when the businessman Ali Jan Bepari added a verandah and refaced it in chinitikri, a mosaic of broken china. Blue stars of Japanese and English tiles gave it its name, Tara Masjid. It was extended to five domes in 1987 and appears on the 100-taka note.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.716, 90.402
Worth knowing
It is one of very few surviving buildings decorated entirely in chinitikri, a technique popular in the 1930s.
About the place
Placed at the coordinates given on the Wikipedia article.
Wikipedia dates the first building both to the late eighteenth century and to the first half of the nineteenth; Mirza Ghulam Pir died in 1860.
Connections (3)
- Site adjacencyAhsan Manzil, Dhaka
Ahsan Manzil at Kumartoli and the Star Mosque at Armanitola stand about a kilometre apart in Old Dhaka, the river-port city that drew Portuguese, French, Dutch, British and Armenian traders. The palace site itself passed from a Mughal-era zamindar to French traders before the Nawab family bought it in 1830. Both buildings took their present form from the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century elites of the old city, landed and mercantile.
- Site withinDhaka
The Star Mosque stands in the Armanitola area of Old Dhaka and is one of the city's best-known sights; its image appears on Bangladesh's 100-taka note. Built by the local nobleman Mirza Ghulam Pir, who died in 1860, it was redecorated in the early twentieth century in chinitikri by the Dhaka businessman Ali Jan Bepari, and in 1987 its prayer hall was extended with two more domes.
- AnalogueWazir Khan Mosque, Lahore
The Star Mosque and the Wazir Khan Mosque are two of the subcontinent's ceramic-clad mosques, at opposite ends of the old Mughal world. Lahore's mosque of 1634 is covered in cut-and-glazed kashi-kari tile; Dhaka's was refaced in the early twentieth century in chinitikri, a mosaic of broken china and imported Japanese and English tiles set in white plaster to form blue stars. The same impulse, a mosque wrapped in colour, is achieved with very different materials.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Star Mosque".
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