Place · tiled congregational mosque · Pakistan

Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore

Also known as Wazir Khan Mosque, Masjid Wazir Khan, kashi-kari, Lahore

Date

1634–1641

Function

Sacred site & pilgrimage

Confidence

Established / referenced

Location

31.583, 74.323

Worth knowing

It is entered through a bazaar rather than a courtyard wall — the shops in its plinth were endowed to pay for its upkeep, which they still partly do — and it sits over the grave of a fourteenth-century Sufi. The tilework technique is Persian by way of Multan and Thatta, and the Aga Khan Trust's restoration after 2012 had to re-learn it.

Connections (4)

• Craft tradition ofMakli Necropolis, Thatta

  The cut-and-glazed kashi tilework of the Wazir Khan Mosque at Lahore, the Shah Jahan Mosque at Thatta and the Makli tombs is one Sindhi and Multani tradition worked at three scales. It runs cobalt, turquoise, green and white over whole surfaces rather than as inlay panels, and the Aga Khan Trust's restorers at Lahore after 2012 had to re-learn the technique from the buildings themselves.

• Craft tradition ofShah Jahan Mosque, Thatta

  The cut-and-glazed kashi tile of Multan, Lahore's Wazir Khan Mosque, Thatta's Shah Jahan Mosque and the Makli tombs is one Sindhi and Multani tradition worked at four scales, running cobalt, turquoise and white over whole surfaces rather than as inlaid panels. The Aga Khan Trust's restorers at Lahore after 2012 had to re-learn the technique from the buildings themselves.

• AnalogueMahābat Khān Mosque, Peshawar

  Two mosques built by Mughal governors within a few decades and a few hundred kilometres of each other, in two different materials. Wazīr Khān's at Lahore, of 1634–41, is covered in kāshī kāri — glazed tile mosaic in cobalt, turquoise and white over almost every surface, the largest such scheme in the subcontinent. Mahābat Khān's at Peshawar, of the 1660s, is marble-faced outside and painted inside, floral and geometric work in pigment on plaster. The frontier city used paint where Lahore used tile.

• Site withinLahore

  Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore sits inside Lahore and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.

On these journeys

• The north-west — Gandhara, the Indus and the Hindu Kush
• Punjab before partition — five rivers, one landscape

Sources

Wikipedia, “Wazir Khan Mosque”. Aga Khan Trust for Culture conservation reports on the Walled City of Lahore; Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture (1991).

• Wikipedia — Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore