Chawk Mosque, Dhaka

• 1. A Rainbow Minaret in Old Dhaka

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  The Chawkbazar Shahi Mosque, also known as Chawk Mosque, stands in the Chowk Bazaar area of the old city of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Its name in Bengali is চকবাজার শাহী মসজিদ. Among the things it is noted for is a rainbow minaret. Yet the building a visitor sees today is only part of the story. Who ordered it built, and why is it called Shahi? What lies beneath the domes, and what did people do there besides pray? How much of the original design survives? And what does a line of Persian verse over one doorway reveal about the man who founded it?

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• 2. A Governor's Foundation

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  In 1664, Shaista Khan, the Subahdar of Mughal Bengal, had this mosque constructed. A Subahdar was a Mughal governor, and that is exactly why the building carries the name Shahi. It was founded by the governor himself. The three-domed mosque on top of the platform was originally a copy of another three-domed mosque that Shaista Khan had built. That second mosque stands in the Mitford Hospital compound near the Buriganga River. So the Chowk Bazaar building began as a repeat of a design its founder already knew. What made it different lay in the structure underneath the domes.

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• 3. Beneath the Domes

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  The three-domed prayer chamber rests on a raised platform, and a promenade runs around it. No separate building was set aside for study. For that reason, the promenade might have served as an open-air classroom. Beneath the platform are vaulted rooms with book-shelves built into their walls. These may have been designed as lodging for the people who taught and studied there. In that light, Chawk Mosque may be regarded as the first known example of a Residential Madrasa Mosque. Square-shaped rooms were also built for the Imam and for the students of the madrasa. The platform itself also places the mosque in a larger line of Bengal's mosque building.

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• 4. Echoes and Alterations

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  As far as is known, Chawk Mosque is the earliest dated mosque in the history of Muslim architecture in Bengal built on a high vaulted platform. Its design was perhaps influenced by Tughlaq architecture, such as Khirki Masjid or Kalan Mosque in Delhi. The influence then travelled onward. Inspired by this structure, other mosques were built in Dhaka and Murshidabad. The original building has not stayed intact, however. Multiple renovations and extensions have stripped away much of its first form. The platform and domes are now part of a multi-storied structure. One item in the building still records its beginnings: a Persian inscription over a doorway.

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• 5. The Poet's Inscription

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  Over a doorway of the mosque, an inscription in Persian dates the construction to 1664 CE. It credits the project to Subahdar Shaista Khan. It has been suggested that Shaista Khan composed the verse himself, because his poetic pen name was Talib. The inscription reads: "The rightly guided Amīr al-Umarā Shaista Khan - built this mosque for the sake of God / To the seeker (t̤ālib) enquiring its date - I said, "God's bidding is accomplished" / Year 1086 Hijri (1675-76 CE)." The word for seeker in the second line, t̤ālib, matches the governor's pen name. The year given in the verse, 1086 Hijri, corresponds to 1675-76 CE. That is later than the 1664 date attached to the mosque's construction.

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