The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.5.1

v3.c30.s1.5.1

It was at Gaur, or Lakhnāutī, the former capital of the rich Pāla and Sena dynasts, where the Muslims established their seat of government, that their first building operations in Bengal were started. Mosques, palaces and the like they must have provided for themselves immediately after their arrival, doubtless by appropriating and, if necessary, ruthlessly despoiling the buildings of the Hindus; and before twenty years had elapsed we hear of the Sultān Ghiyās-ud-dīn (Hisām-ud-dīn ‘Iwaz) constructing raised causeways across the low marshy country to serve as military roads, and erecting a madrasah, caravansarais and other edifices at his capital. Curiously enough, however, it is not at Gaur, but at Tribenī in the Hughlī District, that the oldest remains of Muslim buildings have survived. These are the tomb and mosque of Zafar Khān Ghāzī. The former is built largely out of the materials taken from a temple of Krishna, which formerly stood on the same spot, but is now so mutilated as to have lost most of its architectural value. The neighbouring mosque is reputed to have been built, at any rate in its present form, during the reign of Sultān ‘Alā-ud-dīn Husain Shāh (1493–1518)¹. Be this date correct or not, the mosque is certainly much later than the neighbouring tomb; but framing the central mihrāb, and obviously transferred here from some older monument, is a stone border bearing an Arabic inscription which records the conquest of Southern Bengal by Zafar Khān in A.D.