The Moti Masjid () is an 18th-century Mughal mosque located in

Mehrauli Mehrauli is a neighbourhood in South Delhi, a district of Delhi in India. It represents a constituency in the legislative assembly of Delhi. The area is close to Gurgaon and next to Vasant Kunj. History Mehrauli is one of the seven medieva ...

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

. Named for its white marble, the mosque was constructed during the reign of

Bahadur Shah I Bahadur Shah I (14 October 1643 – 27 February 1712), also known as Muhammad Mu'azzam and Shah Alam I. was the eighth Mughal Emperor who ruled from 1707 until his death in 1712. In his youth, he conspired to overthrow his father Aurangzeb, t ...

, in the vicinity of the ''

dargah A dargah ( fa, درگاه ''dargâh'' or ''dargah'', Turkish: ''dergâh'', Hindustani: ''dargah'' दरगाह درگاہ, bn, দরগাহ ''dorgah'') is a shrine or tomb built over the grave of a revered religious figure, often ...

'' of

Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki ''Quṭb al-Aqṭāb'' Khwājā Sayyid Muḥammad Bakhtiyār al-Ḥusaynī, Quṭb al-Dīn Bakhtiyār Kākī ( ur, ) (born 1173 – died 1235) was a Muslim Sufi mystic, saint and scholar of the Chishti Order from Delhi, India. He was the d ...

Location

The Moti Masjid is located in Mehrauli, to the west of Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki's ''dargah''. Adjacent to the mosque is a burial enclosure containing the graves of several 18th and 19th-century emperors, such as

, Ahmad Shah,

Shah Alam II Shah Alam II (; 25 June 1728 – 19 November 1806), also known by his birth name Ali Gohar (or Ali Gauhar), was the seventeenth Mughal Emperor and the son of Alamgir II. Shah Alam II became the emperor of a crumbling Mughal empire. His powe ...

, and

Akbar II Akbar II (; 22 April 1760 – 28 September 1837), also known as Akbar Shah II, was the Nineteenth Mughal emperor of India. He reigned from 1806 to 1837. He was the second son of Shah Alam II and the father of Bahadur Shah II Akbar had littl ...

History

The Moti Masjid was built in 1709, during the reign of

Mughal emperor The Mughal emperors ( fa, , Pādishāhān) were the supreme heads of state of the Mughal Empire on the Indian subcontinent, mainly corresponding to the modern countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The Mughal rulers styled t ...

. The mosque is typically considered to have been constructed by Bahadur Shah; however, Dadlani argues that it is more likely the mosque was built by a family member or deputy of the emperor. The construction of the mosque in the vicinity of Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki's ''dargah'' is reflective of the unprecedented Mughal patronage at the ''dargah'' beginning with Bahadur Shah I. During communal uprisings in the

partition Partition may refer to: Computing Hardware * Disk partitioning, the division of a hard disk drive * Memory partition, a subdivision of a computer's memory, usually for use by a single job Software * Partition (database), the division of a ...

era, the Moti Masjid was attacked, despite being a protected monument. The mosque's marble '' minars'' were torn off and smashed. This was amidst the occurrence of similar attacks on several other Islamic religious sites in Delhi, as part of larger anti-Muslim violence in the city.

Architecture

The Moti Masjid in Mehrauli is the last example in the Mughal tradition of providing small marble-faced mosques. The mosque is a single-aisled prayer hall of five bays. This is a departure from the previous Moti Masjid in the Red Fort, which is double-aisled. The facade of the mosque bears three scalloped archways, with a '' pishtaq'' in the centre. The structure is topped by three domes, resting on constricted necks. Each corner of the east central bay is lined by balustrade-like columns. The mosque is surrounded by enclosure walls; one of these walls is shared with that of the ''dargah'', while the southern wall opens to the burial enclosure, also made of marble.

References

{{Mosques in India Mughal mosques Mosques in Delhi Mosques completed in the 1700s Monuments of National Importance in Delhi Mehrauli