Mahabat Khan Mosque

• 1. Introduction

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  The Mahabat Khan Mosque stands in Peshawar, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. During Sikh rule, the minarets were used for hanging prisoners. Sikh rulers had banned the five daily calls to prayer, known as Azan. The minarets became a substitute for the gallows, and five people were hanged there each day. Today the mosque is remembered differently. Its white marble façade draws attention across Peshawar, and locals consider it among the city's most iconic sights. The mosque was built in 1630 and named after Mahabat Khan, the Mughal governor of Peshawar who commissioned it. How did a building meant for daily prayer come to be used for punishment under Sikh rule? And what drew refugees to its courtyard generations later, when war broke out in neighboring Afghanistan?

• 2. Ground And Refuge

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  Construction took place between 1660 and 1670, carried out under Mughal rule. Builders chose the highest point in the old city for the site.

  After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, tribal elders who had become refugees gathered inside the mosque. They met there to forge unity among Afghans opposing the Soviet occupation. Some records spell the building's name differently, as the Mohabbat Khan Mosque, describing the very same structure above Peshawar's old city.

• 3. Scale And Symmetry

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  The mosque covers 30,155 square feet, most of it an open courtyard. At its centre sits an ablution pool, used for the ritual washing that precedes prayer. A single row of rooms lines the courtyard's exterior walls.

  The prayer hall occupies the west side of the complex. Two tall minarets flank the hall, each divided into three distinct sections.

  Three fluted domes cap the prayer hall. The roofline climbs from the outer edges toward the centre in four small, incremental steps. Rows of merlons decorate the roofline along its length. At the very top, the white marble façade is finished with cavettos, a concave moulding that caps the edge.

  The archways ahead are painted in shades that set the mosque apart from other Mughal buildings, including the green-toned motifs found at Badshahi Mosque.

• 4. Arches And Ornament

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  Five arched portals lead into the mosque's main prayer hall. Six smaller decorative minarets flank these five entryways across the façade. Two more minarets flank that set of six, layering the entrance with rhythm.

  The central archway stands tallest among the five, its cusped shape typical of Mughal design. Two slightly shorter arches flank it on either side, left uncusped in a style drawn from Persia and Central Asia. Smaller arches, decorated to match, sit outside those. Above the tip of each arch runs a row of seven small arched portals.

  Muqarnas, a form of ornamental vaulting, cover the three central portals just above their row of miniature arches. The outermost arches instead carry ghalib kari, a network of ribs formed from stucco and plaster and applied to curved surfaces for decoration. Multi-coloured vegetal motifs curve along the upper edges of every archway.

  Inside and out, wall panels are covered in floral patterns and Quranic calligraphy. The domes overhead carry more of the same floral and geometric detail. Ghalib kari was applied for decoration alone, and it still ribs the outer archways of the mosque today.