The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.13.4

v3.c30.s1.13.4

XXIV) was the principal entrance to the outer court-yard of the palace, where feudatories and foreign ambassadors assembled before making their way to the Royal presence. It is 37 feet in thickness and pierced by three openings (the central one 17½ feet wide), connected one with the other by three cross passages. The charm of this gateway springs from its perfectly proportioned and delicately framed archways set off against highly ornate buttresses on the faces of the intervening piers, though the latter, be it said, are not entirely homogeneous in feeling with the rest of the design. The *Jāmi‘ Masjid* is a far more magnificent creation. By the collapse of its two minars in the earthquake of 1819 it has been shorn of a prominent feature, but it is questionable whether the minars ever added materially to its beauty. As it now stands, it is one of the most superb, as it is also one of the most imposing structures of its class, in the world. The defect of most mosques planned on a large scale is, as we have seen in connexion with the Ādīna *Masjid* at Pāndua, the dull monotony of their composition. In the *Jāmi‘ Masjid* at Ahmadābād there is no such weakness. The prayer chamber is 210 feet in width by 95 feet in depth, but its façade is so admirably composed, so broken up and diversified, and so well proportioned in its parts, that its vastness only serves to enhance the beauty and impressiveness of the whole.