The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.s1.5.2

v3.c30.s1.5.2

1298 during the reign of Sultān Rukn-ud-dīn Kai-kāūs. Slightly later than these remains at Tribenī is the Sālik mosque at Basīrhāt in the Twenty Four Parganas, which was founded originally in A.D. 1305, but has been completely renovated in modern times. With these unimportant exceptions, however, the history of this Bengal style is a blank until we come to the reign of Sikandar Shāh (1358–89), and by a strange coincidence the first monument that we then meet—the far-famed Ādīna *Masjid* which the Emperor erected in the new capital of Pāndua—was also the most ambitious structure of its kind ever essayed in Eastern India. In area, this *masjid* was almost as big as the Great Mosque of Damascus¹: 507½ feet from north to south by 285½ from east to west. But though it was regarded in Bengal as one of the ‘Wonders of the World,’ its design was far from being worthy of its size. Imagine an immense open quadrangle, more than twice as long as it was broad, bounded on its four sides by arched screens, every archway (and there were 88 in all visible from the court) identical with its fellows and every one surmounted by an identical dome, with nothing to relieve the monotony of the whole save a single archway which, rising higher and wider than the rest, fronted the vaulted *līwān* in the middle of the western side.