Jama Masjid, Delhi
— — Shah Jahan's last great mosque.
Not only on a wall.
“The Masjid-i Jehān-Numā — the Jama Masjid of Old Delhi — was Shah Jahan's last great commission, completed in 1656 and raised on a red sandstone plinth above the lanes of Chandni Chowk. Red sandstone and white marble, three gates, two minarets of about forty metres, a courtyard that holds twenty-five thousand at prayer. The Red Fort stands a kilometre east; the call still carries between them.
Jama Masjid, Delhi, 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.
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The place, in three passes.
The Masjid-i Jehān-Numā, generally called the Jama Masjid, sits on a low rocky rise in Old Delhi, the walled city Shah Jahan founded as Shahjahanabad in 1639. The mosque was commissioned in 1644 and finished in 1656, the last of his great architectural projects before his son Aurangzeb deposed him. Three flights of red sandstone steps climb to its eastern, northern and southern gates; the courtyard measures about 100 metres on a side and is said to hold 25,000 worshippers at prayer. Chandni Chowk runs west from the foot of the steps; the Red Fort rises a kilometre to the east.
Built of red sandstone quarried at Tantpur near Fatehpur Sikri and inlaid with white marble from the Makrana quarries that also clothed the Taj Mahal, the Jama Masjid carries the material vocabulary of Shah Jahan's other monuments at lower altitude. Its two minarets, banded in red and white, stand about 41 metres high and can be climbed by a narrow internal stair. The prayer hall has three bulbous marble domes and eleven cusped arches across its facade, the central iwan set forward to mark the mihrab axis within. Construction employed around five thousand workers across twelve years.
The mosque is open to non-Muslim visitors outside the five daily prayer times, generally from about 07:00 until shortly before sunset, with a long midday close on Fridays for jumu'ah. Modest dress is required and provided at the gate; shoes are left at the entrance. There is no entry fee, though a camera fee of around 300 rupees applies, and a separate ticket — about 100 rupees — to climb the southern minaret. The nearest Metro station is Jama Masjid on the Violet Line, three minutes' walk from the eastern steps.