History of Ajmer’s Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra, now facing demands of survey

Adhai Din ka Jhonpra: A 12th century mosque

The Ajmer mosque was commissioned by Qutbuddin Aibak, a slave-turned-general in the Ghurid army, who established the Mamluk Dynasty to kickstart the Delhi Sultanate in 1206. It was commissioned by Qutabuddin after the Muhammad of Ghor defeated Prithviraj III (popularly known as Prithviraj Chauhan) in the Second Battle of Tarain.

The Afghan invader went on to sack Ajmer (then known as Ajaymeru), the capital of the Chauhan dynasty. Ajmer-based jurist Har Bilas Sarda wrote in Ajmer: Historical And Descriptive (1911) that during his short stay in the city, Muhammad of Ghor “destroyed the pillars and foundations of the idol temples”, and “dismantled” Visaldeva’s College, “a portion of it converted into a mosque” known today as Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra. Sarda’s book is the primary historical source cited by the petitioners in the Dargah Sharif survey petition.

The central mihrab in the mosque contains an inscription indicating its completion in 1199, with the roof of a second dome from the north giving a date of 1200. This makes it the oldest surviving monument in Ajmer, and the second oldest completed mosque in North India after the Quwwat ul Islam mosque in Delhi (There are much older mosques in South India, where Islam reached via Arab traders as early as the seventh century).

The iconic screen wall that forms the mosque’s facade, with its seven corbelled arches, was commissioned by Iltutmish, Qutabuddin’s son-in-law and third Sultan of Delhi, and completed in 1213.

According to legend, the mosque gets its name — literally meaning “the shed of two-and-a-half-days” — from the fact that Qutabuddin had ordered for it to be built in only 60 hours. But this is likely untrue since this name finds no mention till as recently as the 18th century. According to Sarda, it was so named because certain faqirs used to take shelter at the structure during the two-and-a-half day long urs (death anniversary) of their religious leader Panjaba Shah.

Built by Hindu workers

Two crucial factors informed the architecture of the mosque, according to art historian Micael W Meister. One, the use of “the spoils of Hindu temples in the construction of [its] pillared halls” (more on this later). Two, the deployment of Hindu workers (under Muslim supervision) in the construction of the mosque. (‘The Two-and-a-half day Mosque’ published in 1972 in Oriental Art).

“That Hindu workmen continued to work for the new Muslim rulers can be determined quickly from the material remains. Previous writers, enamoured of the plunder recorded by the Mamluks in their building of the mosque in Delhi, have largely called the pillars of the great hall ‘Hindu’. They are ‘Hindu’, but they are not all plundered, a new order having been created by Hindu workmen for their iconoclastic rulers and combined with plundered pillars (images defaced), piled two on one, to give a new height to form the hall,” Meister wrote.

These ornate pillars, some 70 of which still stand today, are the other notable architectural feature of the mosque after Iltutmish’s screen. Aside from these pillars, the lintels as well as ceiling show evidence of workmanship associated with the Chauhan dynasty but not the “pure” Hindu tradition, Meister wrote, indicating that they were likely “made newly for the mosque”.

However, the “Kufic inscriptions and quotations from the Koran leave no doubt of [the] Islamic origin” of Iltutmish’s screen, which was built more than a decade after the rest of the structure. That said, Meister noted that even here one can see “not only a mixing of motifs, but also an aesthetic balancing between the decorative styles of Hindu India and Islamic styles most probably of Afghanistan and Russian Turkistan [Central Asia]”.

Art historian Ziyaduddin Desai in Indo-Islamic Architecture (1970) wrote that although the Ajmer mosque “closely resembles the Quwwatul-Islam mosque in style and construction, but it is more spacious and dignified; some defects of the earlier experiment have been sought to be removed here”. He mentions among other things the height of the pillars, the symmetric placement of these pillars and the domes over the prayer-hall, the massive arches “decoration of [whose] front surface is admirable and its workmanship is perfect”.

Hindu college, temple

Sarda writes that according to Jain tradition, the mosque was built over a shrine constructed by Seth Viramdeva Kala in 660 for the Panch Kalyan Mahotsava — a five-day celebration to mark the five auspicious events in the life of a Jain tirthankara. East India Company officer James Tod, who visited the mosque in 1819, believed that the mosque was built at the site of a Jain temple. He went on to describe the pre-existing structure as “one of the most perfect as well as the most ancient monuments of Hindu architecture” in his Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (1829).

This analysis was disputed by Alexander Cunningham, the founding director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), who wrote in his account of the mosque that “… the Ajmer mosque was built of the spoils of many Hindu temples, which were thrown down by the bigotry of the conquerors.” Specifically addressing the ornate pillars, he wrote: “It is certain that they are not Jain pillars, as I found many four-armed figures sculptured on them [generally not a Jain motif], besides a single figure of the skeleton goddess Kali”. (Four Reports Made During the Years 1862-63-64-65, Volume 2).

Later ASI excavations from 1874-75 at the site uncovered a number of inscriptions which referred to a Sanskrit college. According to Sarda, the college was built in 1153 by the Chauhan emperor Visaladeva. “A comparison of this building with an almost similar one at Dhar, also converted into a mosque, and which is still known as Raja Bhoja’s Pathshala (school), would remove all lingering doubts regarding its origin.”