Ajmer
— — a marble courtyard where a flame has not gone out.
Not only on a wall.
“A pilgrimage city in the hills of central Rajasthan, holding the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, the thirteenth-century Sufi saint whose tomb has drawn Muslims and Hindus together for eight hundred years. The Ana Sagar Lake at the centre was dug in the twelfth century and still cools the marble pavilions Shah Jahan added in the seventeenth. Pushkar lies fifteen kilometres west, over the pass.
Ajmer, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Ajmer sits in central Rajasthan, India, 135 kilometres southwest of Jaipur, in a valley at the foot of Taragarh Hill on the eastern flank of the Aravalli range. The city's population is about 550,000 and its elevation is 480 metres. Founded in the late seventh century by the Chauhan king Ajayraj II, it was the seat of the Chauhan dynasty until the defeat of Prithviraj III by Muhammad of Ghor in 1192, then a Mughal stronghold under Akbar, who built the brick fort known as Akbar's Daulat Khana at the centre of the old city in 1572.
Two buildings define the old city. The Dargah Sharif of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, who died in 1236, is the most visited Muslim shrine in India, with silver gates and twin marble courtyards added by Mughal patrons over four centuries. The Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra, a few hundred metres uphill, is a mosque built in 1199 from the columns of a dismantled Sanskrit college: seventy carved pillars hold a screen of seven arches that Iltutmish added in the 1220s. Taragarh Fort, on the ridge above, was rebuilt in the twelfth century and looks down on both.
The Urs of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti is held over the first six days of Rajab, the seventh month of the Islamic calendar, and draws between four hundred thousand and six hundred thousand pilgrims to the dargah. Qawwali singing continues through the nights from the Mahfil Khana. The Pushkar Camel Fair, fifteen kilometres west over the Naga Hill pass, runs for roughly a week each November around Kartik Purnima and remains the largest livestock fair in India. Ajmer is the rail and road junction for both, on the Delhi-Ahmedabad main line.