Jama Masjid, Delhi

• 1. Introduction

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  Jama Masjid, Delhi stands at the highest point of the old walled city of Shahjahanabad, elevated ten metres above the surrounding streets on a massive stone plinth. Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor who commissioned the Taj Mahal, ordered its construction between 1650 and 1656 as the centrepiece of his new capital. He gave it a name that translates as "mosque that reflects the whole world." Around five thousand workers raised its walls: Indians, Arabs, Persians, Turks, and Europeans, all on the same site. The cost came to ten lakh rupees, which at the time amounted to one million. What did Shah Jahan intend this building to be? Why did soldiers later sleep inside it? And what did a speech from its pulpit in October 1947 have to do with the fate of an entire city's population? Those are the questions worth following.

• 2. Shah Jahan's Grand Design

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  The mosque was inaugurated on the 23rd of July 1656, when Syed Abdul Ghafoor Shah Bukhari, invited from Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan, led the first prayers as Shahi Imam, a title meaning Royal Imam. Shah Jahan had conceived the position deliberately: he wanted the Imam of this mosque to be the most important religious leader of his reign. Every subsequent Mughal emperor from Aurangzeb to Bahadur Shah II, who reigned until 1857, was crowned by the Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid.

  Shah Jahan drew on earlier mosques he knew well. He claimed his design was modelled on the Jama Masjid at Fatehpur Sikri, which is visible in the facade and courtyard. The interior, however, more closely follows the Jama Masjid in Agra. The building uses predominantly red sandstone, but sets itself apart from earlier Mughal mosques through a much heavier use of white marble. Black marble also appears as a decorative element throughout.

  The prayer hall measures 61 metres long and 27 metres wide. Seven mihrabs line the western qibla wall, one for each of the hall's seven bays. The floor is laid with white and black ornamented marble arranged to resemble a Muslim prayer mat. Three marble domes cap the roof, each topped with a golden finial. Two sandstone minarets rise 41 metres at the northeast and southeast corners, each containing 130 steps and three viewing galleries.

  The courtyard, or sahn, is square and paved with red sandstone. Its sides measure at least 99 metres, enough to hold 25,000 worshippers. A marble ablution tank at its centre is 17 metres long and 15 metres wide. Construction supervisors included Sadullah Khan, the wazir or prime minister under Shah Jahan, and Fazil Khan, the comptroller of Shah Jahan's household.

• 3. Imperial Symbol, Friday Ritual

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  Every Friday at noon, the Mughal emperor would recite the khutba, the sermon, from within the Jama Masjid. This act was not merely religious; it formally legitimised his rule. The mosque was not just a place of prayer but an instrument of sovereignty, and Shah Jahan's intent was that it should have no parallel anywhere else in the Mughal Empire.

  The mosque also functioned as a social hub that crossed class lines, providing a shared space for diverse residents of Shahjahanabad. At a practical level, this meant the mosque had political weight beyond its religious role. In 1757, that weight tipped visibly: the khutba was read in the name of Ahmad Shah Durrani, the Afghan conqueror who was invited to Delhi by Emperor Alamgir II, marking a moment when the mosque became a stage for a transfer of symbolic power.

  The eastern gate, three storeys high and the tallest of the three entrances, was reserved historically for the emperor and his associates alone. The northern and southern gates, each two storeys, were for the general population. Each gate is accompanied by a three-sided sandstone stairway, with white markings on the steps to indicate where worshippers should stand for prayer. The north gate cabinet holds a collection of relics attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, including a copy of the Quran written on deerskin, a red beard-hair, his sandals, and his footprints embedded in a marble block.

• 4. Confiscation and Barracks

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  When the British took over Shahjahanabad in 1803, the Mughal emperor remained the ritual head of the mosque in name, but actual patronage had badly diminished. Early British policy in the city was relatively conciliatory; the colonial administration undertook repairs and even some renovations of the Jama Masjid. The mosque continued hosting theological debates between Muslims and Christians, among other forms of public discourse.

  The Revolt of 1857 changed everything. After reclaiming the city that same year, the British perceived the revolt as instigated by Muslims and incubated in Delhi's mosques. They razed a number of mosques outright, and banned Muslim congregation in any that remained standing. The Jama Masjid was confiscated, its religious use forbidden. British authorities considered destroying it altogether on more than one occasion. Instead, they converted it into barracks for Sikh and European soldiers. One scholar, Aziz, characterised this as a deliberate act of desecration calculated to insult the city's Muslim inhabitants.

  Muslim resentment grew steadily enough that the mosque was returned in 1862, though with conditions attached. Religious use was to be strictly maintained; British policing was mandatory. The Jama Masjid Managing Committee was formed, drawing on respected Muslims of Delhi, to represent the mosque and ensure compliance with those conditions. Regional Islamic rulers stepped in as patrons where the dissolved Mughal state could not: in 1886 the Nawab of Rampur donated 1,55,000 rupees for repairs, and in 1926 the Nizam of Hyderabad contributed 1,00,000 rupees for similar work.

• 5. Resistance and Sacred Ground

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  From 1911, Delhi's mosques became a focal point for anti-colonial political activity, and the Jama Masjid was no exception. Despite the 1862 conditions restricting it to religious use, political gatherings repeatedly took place there. The British could police public squares and streets, but the Jama Masjid occupied a different category: the Religious Endowments Act of 1863 and the sheer weight of community feeling provided it a degree of legal and practical protection that open spaces did not enjoy.

  Hindus often joined Muslims inside the mosque as a gesture of solidarity against British rule, a striking alliance given the intercommunal tensions that ran through the same colonial period. The mosque became in this way a site where political necessity and religious space intertwined in ways the British found difficult to manage.

  After independence, on the 23rd of October 1947, Indian independence activist Abul Kalam Azad delivered a speech from the mosque's pulpit during Thursday prayers. The Partition of India was producing vast population movements in Delhi at that moment. Azad spoke directly to the Muslims of the city, urging them to stay in India and telling them it remained their homeland. The tomb of Azad now stands adjacent to the mosque.

• 6. Dispute, Protest, Violence

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  The Babri Masjid dispute, one of independent India's most divisive communal conflicts, drew the Jama Masjid repeatedly into its orbit. Abdullah Bukhari, who served as Shahi Imam from 1973 to 2000, delivered multiple speeches from the mosque in 1986 condemning the political support being given to the Hindu cause in that dispute. On at least one occasion, his words ignited riots and clashes in Old Delhi.

  On the 28th of May 1987, as communal violence spread across India, the Imam closed the Jama Masjid and had it draped in black cloth, a symbolic statement of Muslim resentment at government actions. The gesture was highly controversial within Islamic leadership at the time. A major peaceful protest centred on the Babri Masjid dispute had already used the mosque as its staging point earlier that year.

  Two explosions hit the mosque on the 14th of April 2006, arriving in swift succession shortly after Friday prayers. One person was left in serious condition; eight others sustained minor injuries. The manner in which the blasts occurred was not immediately clear. Imam Ahmed Bukhari asked his community to maintain calm. Four years later, on the 15th of September 2010, two Taiwanese tourists were wounded after gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a bus parked near gate number three. The police detained thirty people for questioning. By November 2011, Delhi Police had arrested six members of the Indian Mujahideen believed responsible for the 2006 blast, alongside the 2010 Pune bombing. Yasin Bhatkal, a leader of the group later arrested in September 2013, said he had acted on orders from Riyaz Bhatkal, the Karachi-based head of Indian Mujahideen.

• 7. A Living Mosque

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  The Nizam of Hyderabad, Asaf Jah VII, made one of the more memorable donations in the mosque's post-independence history. Asked during 1948 to contribute 75,000 rupees to repair one-fourth of the mosque floor, he instead gave 3,00,000 rupees, reasoning that the remaining three-fourths should not look old by comparison.

  Today the mosque functions as Delhi's primary congregational site, drawing the city's Muslims for Friday prayers and for major festivals including Eid. Foreign tourists also visit in significant numbers and represent a meaningful share of the mosque's income.

  A renovation project aimed at the mosque and its surroundings has remained unbuilt since the early 2000s, stalled by administrative and logistical difficulties. In 2006, the Saudi king Abdullah offered to fund repairs directly, and the Imam confirmed receiving the offer, though he asked that the Saudi authorities approach the Indian Government formally. The Delhi High Court subsequently ruled that the arrangement carried no legal standing. An imperial college, an imperial dispensary, and a madrasa once stood adjacent to the mosque, but all three were destroyed in the upheavals of 1857. The line of Shahi Imams, however, has continued unbroken from Syed Abdul Ghafoor Shah Bukhari in 1656 to Shaban Bukhari, who took office in 2024.