The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.44

v3.c30.s1.44

Constituting, as it does, the earliest and finest example of the Jaunpur style, this Atala *Masjid* merits particular description. The site on which it stood had been the site of a temple of Atala-devī, and it was out of the materials of that temple that the mosque was largely built; but the structure, as it stands, is entirely of the Muslim period and the stones taken from its predecessor were cut and sculptured afresh to suit the new requirements. Its plan is typical of most Indian mosques and many of its features are directly copied from the architecture of the Tughluqs. Seen, indeed, from the west and from without, the domes over the prayer chamber and its back wall, with its engaged and sharply tapering minarets, its *kangura* cornices and string courses, might have been transplanted almost bodily from the Imperial capital. On the other hand, the mosques of the Tughluqs are less ornate than the Atala *Masjid* or its successors at Jaunpur, nor is there anything in them to match the imposing propylon screens which adorn the latter. It is these features in particular,—the propylon screens and the surface decorations,—that give to the mosques of Jaunpur their distinctive character, but it is the former more than the latter that have become specially associated with the Jaunpur style. The idea of giving increased height and importance to the prayer chamber by throwing an arched screen across its façade had been, as we have already seen, initiated, three centuries before, in the *Quwwat-ul-Islām* mosque at Delhi, and since then had frequently found favour and been repeated in various forms. It was left, however, for the architect of the Atala *Masjid* to make of the screen a feature so massive and imposing as to overshadow all else in the quadrangle. This he did by devising the screen in the form of a gigantic propylon, uncommonly like the propylons of ancient Egyptian temples, set in front of the central *līwān* of the prayer chamber and sufficiently lofty (75 feet) to hide from view the great dome behind it. The propylon consisted of two square and battering minarets with an immense arch between, the whole relieved by tier upon tier of smaller arched recesses or trellised windows. To right and left of it was a smaller propylon of similar pattern masking the two subsidiary domes of the prayer chamber and serving as a support to lessen the glaring disparity between the central propylon and the adjoining wings. The gateways that pierced the cloisters on three sides of the quadrangle were also designed to match the propylons, and extra height and mass were given to the cloisters themselves by making them five bays in depth and adding to them a second storey. If the object of the architect of the Atala *Masjid* was to accentuate the importance of the prayer chamber and at the same time produce something novel, there is no doubt he succeeded remarkably well, for there are few mosques in Islam so imposing in their proportions or so arresting in style. But whether his work deserves the lavish praise that critics have bestowed upon it is another matter, and one to which we shall revert anon, after considering the other surviving examples of the Jaunpur school.