Taj-ul-Masajid
— — a pink mosque the Begums took a century to finish.
Not only on a wall.
“Taj-ul-Masajid stands above the old city of Bhopal, three white domes and two pink-stoned minarets reflected in the upper lake. Construction began under Shah Jahan Begum in the 1870s and was not completed until 1985, well over a century of stop-and-start work by four generations of patrons. It is among the largest mosques in Asia.
Taj-ul-Masajid, 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.
Taj-ul-Masajid sits in old Bhopal, the historic capital of the former Bhopal princely state, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The mosque was commissioned by Shah Jahan Begum, third of the four ruling Begums of Bhopal, and construction began in the 1870s. Funding lapsed after her death in 1901 and the building stood largely unfinished for most of the twentieth century. It was completed in 1985 under the supervision of Allama Mohammad Imran Khan Nadwi Azhari and Maulana Sayed Hashmat Ali Sahab. The mosque sits on the north side of the upper lake.
The facade is built of dressed red-pink sandstone, with three white marble domes lifted above a courtyard sized for very large congregations. The two minarets rise to about 206 feet and end in marble cupolas. Inside, the prayer hall is set with a marble mihrab and pillars carved with Quranic inscriptions in floriated kufic. The west wall holds a marble panel of carved geometry that diffuses the afternoon light. The pink reads warmest about an hour before sunset, when the upper lake on the south side turns silver.
Every November the mosque hosts the Aalami Tablighi Ijtima, one of the world's largest Islamic congregations, drawing more than a million attendees from across India and beyond over three days. The gathering has been held in Bhopal since 1947 and settled around Taj-ul-Masajid and its surrounding ground after the mosque's completion. The rest of the year it also serves as a madrasa, with students in residence around the courtyard. Friday prayers fill the main hall; weekdays are quiet enough that the courtyard tiles read clear and warm in the morning light.