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Shah e Alam's Tomb and Mosque
Shah e Alam's Tomb and Mosque
	Shah e Alam's Tomb in 1860s
Religion
Affiliation	Islam
Status	Active
Location
Location	Shah Alam, Ahmedabad
Municipality	Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation
State	Gujarat
	Location in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India Shah-e-Alam's Roza (Gujarat)
Geographic coordinates	22°59′40″N 72°35′22″E / 22.9945456°N 72.5893199°E
Architecture
Type	Mosque and tomb
Style	Islamic architecture
Funded by	Taj Khan Nariali and others
Groundbreaking	1475
Completed	1575
Designated as NHL	Monument of National Importance; ASI Monument No. N-GJ-30

Shah-e-Alam's Tomb and Mosque, also known as Rasulabad Dargah or Shah Alam no Rozo, is a medieval mosque and tomb complex (Roza) in Shah Alam area of Ahmedabad, India.

History

Shah e Alam was the son of Syed Burhanuddin Qutub-ul-Alam and the great grandson of Syed Makhdoom Jahaniyan Jahangasht. Attracted to the court of Ahmed Shah I, his father settled at Vatva and died there in 1452. Shah e Alam succeeded his father and, till his death in 1475, was the guide of Mahmud Begada's youth, and afterwards one of the most revered of Muslim religious teachers of Ahmedabad.^[1]^[2]^[3]

In 1670, Aurangzeb assigned several villages to the Roza and its custodians, the Saiyads of Vatva. In 1724, Trimbak Rao Dabhade Gaekwad assigned several villages as well. In 1867, the British government in Bombay paid for repairs and upkeep of the roza.^[4]

Roza

A group of buildings, a tomb, a mosque, and an assembly hall, enclosed by a lofty and bastioned wall, was erected in the sacred to the memory of Shah e Alam. From the north the enclosure is entered through two handsome stone gateways. Within the second gate on the left is an assembly hall built by Sultan Muzaffar Shah III. (1561–1572), and partly destroyed by the British in 1779 to furnish materials for the siege of the city during the First Anglo-Maratha War. On the right are some other buildings of which the date has not been traced. In front of these buildings, to the right is a reservoir, and to the left of the reservoir in the centre of the enclosure, is Shah e Alam's tomb. This, the oldest of the buildings, is said to have been constructed soon after the saint's death in 1475 (880AH) and completed in 1483 (888AH) by Taj Khan Nariali, a nobleman of Mahmud Begada's court.^[5] It is of very pleasing design and has much of the special character of the buildings of that time. Early in the seventeenth century Asaf Khan, the brother of Nur Jahan, ornamented the dome with gold and precious stones. The tomb of Shah e Alam is situated roughly in the center of the east end of roza. The tomb is on a square plan with 12 pillars and a high dome in the centre of the roof, surrounded by double corridors with 24 small domes on top. It has arch-shaped entrance on all sides. The main entrance on the west having a small dome projects out from the wall. On each wall of the mausoleum, there is an entrance in the center. On either side of the entrance, there are three arch-shaped windows, over which an arch-shaped part covered by perforated stone windows. The floor of the tomb is inlaid with black and white marble, the doors are of open cut brass work, and the frame in which the doors aro set, as well as what shews between the door frame and the two stone pillars to the right and left, is of pure white marble beautifully carved and pierced. The tomb itself is completely enclosed by an inner wall of pierced stone. The outer wall in the north is of stone trellis work of the most varied design.^[6]

West of the tomb is the mosque, built by Muhammad Salah Badakhshi, with minarets at either end begun by Nizabat Khan and finished by Saif Khan in 1620. The mosque though pleasing in outline and with skilfully constructed domes has much of the ordinary Islamic architecture found in other parts of India, and scarcely belongs to the special Ahmedabad style. To the south of the mosque, a tomb on a plan similar to that of the chief mausoleum having twenty four small domes, is the burying of Shah e Alam's family including Saiyyd Makhdum Alam, the sixth grandson of Shah e Alam. Outside of the wall to the west is an argo reservoir built by the wife of Taj Khan Nariali. The minarets of the mosque were damaged by the 1819 Rann of Kutch earthquake but were restored in 1863.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Gallery

The tomb, assembly hall and entrance, 1866
Plan of the tomb of Shah e Alam
The entrance of Roza in 1860s
The Mosque
Interior of the mosque, 1866
Tomb of Shah-e-Alam in 1860s
Tomb in 1866
The small tomb near Roza
Shah Alam Mosque from South
Drawing of Gate of Shah e Alam Roza, 1856

References

^ ^a ^b Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmedabad. Government Central Press. 1879. p. 286. dastur khan mosque.
^ ^a ^b "AHMEDABADS OTHER ROZAS". Times of India Publications. 25 February 2011. Archived from the original on 7 December 2014. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
^ ^a ^b Achyut Yagnik (2 February 2011). Ahmedabad: From Royal city to Megacity. Penguin Books Limited. p. 35. ISBN 978-81-8475-473-5.
^ Commissariat, M.S. (1938). A History of Gujarat: Including a Survey of its Chief Architectural Monuments and Inscriptions. Vol. I: From A.D. 1297-8 to A.D. 1573. Longmans, Green, and Co. pp. 212–214.
^ Kapilray M. Mehta (1959). Ahmedabad, 1958. Gujarat Publishers. p. 22.
^ Captain Lyon, 14. In this mausoleum is buried Shaikh Kabir, renowned for learning, who died in 1618 (1026 H.). Blochmann's Ain-i-Akbari, I. 547.

This article includes public domain text from Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmedabad. Government Central Press. 1879. p. 286. dastur khan mosque.