Jaunpur
— — the city the Sharqi sultans built and left.
Not only on a wall.
“A small city on the slow brown Gomti, about 60 kilometres northwest of Varanasi. For eighty-five years in the fifteenth century it was the seat of the Sharqi sultans, and their mosques are still here: heavy stone screens, deep arches, a pylon-fronted Jama Masjid that nothing else in India quite resembles. Akbar's bridge has carried carts across the river since 1574. from the studio
Jaunpur, 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.
Jaunpur sits on the Gomti River in eastern Uttar Pradesh, roughly 60 kilometres northwest of Varanasi. Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq founded the city in 1359 and named it for his cousin Jauna Khan. From 1394 to 1479 it was the capital of the independent Sharqi Sultanate, briefly one of the wealthiest courts in north India. The Gomti, a tributary of the Ganges, runs through the centre and is crossed by Akbar's stone bridge, the Shahi Pul, built between 1568 and 1574 by the governor Munim Khan. The district holds roughly 4.5 million residents today.
Sharqi architecture has a look found nowhere else in India: a tall rectangular pylon, or propylon, set in front of the prayer hall, drawn from older Tughlaq forms but stripped to a single severe gesture. The Atala Masjid, completed in 1408 on the foundations of an earlier Hindu temple, is the earliest surviving example. The Jama Masjid, finished around 1470 under Sultan Husain Shah, is the largest, raised on a high plinth above the surrounding lanes. The stone is local sandstone, mostly buff, mostly unornamented, the bulk of the buildings doing the work.
The easiest approach is by road from Varanasi, about 90 minutes by car along NH-31. Jaunpur Junction sits on the main Delhi-Howrah broad-gauge line, with daily trains from Lucknow, Allahabad, and Kolkata. The four principal monuments, Atala Masjid, Jama Masjid, Lal Darwaza Masjid, and the Shahi Bridge, lie within a five-kilometre radius and are usually open from dawn to dusk without ticketing. Mornings are quieter; late afternoon light flatters the sandstone. The city is also known for the imarti, a saffron-orange sweet eaten warm from the karahi at shops near Sabzi Mandi.