Sambodhi 2011 Vol 34

Author(s): Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 45

Vol.XXXIV, 2011 The Minarets of the Hilāl Khāṁ Qāzi Mosque, Dholkā. 39
From among the post-conquest mosques, the earliest and the largest one, namely, the Adină Mosque at Pātan?4 (A.D. 1305), was destroyed in the 19th century during Marāhā occupation. The two buildings next in date and importance, namely the Jāmi Masdjid at Cambay (A.D. 1375) and the Hilāl Khāṁ Qāzi's Masdjid (A.D. 1333) at Dohlkās still survive and are in tolerably good condition. Of the two, the Cambay mosque is more impressive by virtue of its scale: The Dohlkā one, though smaller, is more graceful. What is more, it contains, unlike the former building, only traces, if at all, of material pilfered from the Brahmanical and Jaina temples earlier desecrated in that town.16 It is, therefore, a building with a greater emphasis on the authenticity of the local purely Islāmic style of that age in Gujarat.
The Dohļkā Mosque, as a whole, is very chaste in workmanship and possesses several elements—the well-proportioned entrance hall and the grilles in the women's gallery—which are of considerable beauty17. Outshining in significance, no less in elegance, is a pair of minarets placed above the battlemented parapet over the central arch in the front wall of the prayer hall: They apparently represent the earliest examples of the minarets in Gujarat. (Pl. 1).
The Jayaprccha takes no notice of minār in the context of mosque, nor do the Bhadreśvara and the Junāgadh mosques, referred to earlier, betray any. It is not certain whether the Gujarāt mosques of the Solanki period (942-1298) possessed minarets. Even when they occur, as they do in Cambay and Dohļkā, they by far are small and hence not particularly monumental compared to the later examples of the Sultanate period (1412-1537) in Ahmedābād are. The Cambay ones lack even the primary beauty of shape, besides dimensions.18
Jas. Burgess was perhaps the first archaeologist to write about this Dohļkā mosque with a photographic illustration of its inner front20 and a drawing along the longitudinal section.21 Burgess takes only a brief notice of the pair of minarets there: "There are no minârs proper, but two little turrets stand on the front wall, - and on each side of the central arch, which are quite unlike any other employed in similar circumstances elsewhere: they just stand behind the battlementing of the façade, and are 17 feet high with shafts 2' 3" in diameter."22 (Burgess also gives a small, separate drawing of one of the two minarets.23)
While comparing the Hilal khāṁ Qāzi's mosque with the Cambay one, Percy Brown specially dwelt on its minarets and his comments are more than casual.24 Wrote he: "It is a smaller and even simpler structure but with notable innovation to the façade in the shape of a pair of tall ornamental turrets, one on each side of the central archway. In design these turrets are indigenous, with no definite traces of Islamic influence, but they are apparently an attempt to produce something corresponding to a minaret without, however, any exact knowledge as to what this was like, or for what purpose is was intended."25
Burgess saw these minarets not as "minār proper" but rather as "turrets" which in a certain sense-dimensionally indeed-they are, but in a more specific