Being a huge structure, built in solid stone, it was able to survive and be restituted a mandir, three times. Not many temples have had the misfortune of having been desecrated four times. This episode is described with relish in Tabqat-I-Nasiri. The honour of being the first iconoclast, went to Sultan Shamsuddin Iitutmish, 1234, yet another half a century earlier. About 200 years earlier, Sultan Alauddin Khilji, 1293, had also enjoyed the “devout” pleasure of damaging Vijay Mandir. The episode is recorded in Mirat-I-Sikndri. He captured the town and about the first thing he did was to desecrate the Vijay Mandir claiming that the conquest of Bhilsa was in the service of Islam. Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat, 1526-37, was the iconoclast of Vidisha, preceding Aurangzeb. Khwaja Kamal Khan demolished the temple in 1364 AD and Ibrahim completed the mosque in 1408 AD. According to the gazetteer, there stood an equally large temple built by Raja Vijaya Chandra of Kannauj, the father of Jaichand.
Opposite the mosque is also a similar cloister, which now houses a madrassa. On two sides, in front of this rectangular edifice, are rows of two-storeyed cloisters. Not far from Jhanjhari is what is popularly known as the Atala Devi masjid. Nevill, the district collector of Jaunpur, confirms that the temple was demolished by Ibrahim Naib Barbak, the brother of Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlaq who erected the Jhanjharimasjid in honour of a saint called Hazrat Ajmali. The Gazetteer of Jaunpur district dated 1908, written by H.R. He asked Qutbuddin Aibak, his slave general, to have the needful done in 60 hours time so that he could offer prayers in the new masjid on his way back. He was so awed by the temples that he wanted them destroyed and replaced instantly. After the second battle of Tarain in 1192 AD, in which Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghauri defeated and killed Prithviraj Chauhan, the victor passed through Ajmer. So called, because the triple or three temples were converted into a Masjid over only two and a half days. The complex is, for the last 800 years, popularly known as “Adhai Din Ka Jhopra” (the shed of two and a half days). What you see is one example.Ī furlong beyond the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti is the triple temple complex built by an ancestor of Prithviraj Chauhan. Vandalized idols are also seen lying around the mosque.
Material from twenty-seven temples, which were worth five crore and forty lakhs of Dilwals, were used in the mosque, and an inscription giving the date of conquest and his own name was installed in the eastern gate. But the structure of the idol housekept standing as before. This idol house (of Rai Pithora) was converted into a mosque. The immense congregational mosque in Delhi known as Quwwat al-Islam (Might of Islam) was one of the first built in India. Before its upper part was destroyed on Aurangzeb’s orders in anticipation of his visit to Vrindavan in 1670 AD, the mandir was reputed to be twice that height.īegun in 1191, the mosque stands on the site of a pre-Islamic temple whose ruins were incorporated in the structure. He accordingly resolved that it should be put out and soon after sent some troops to the place who plundered and threw down as much of the temple as they could and then erected on the top of the ruins a mosque wall where, in order to complete the desecration, the emperor is said to have offered up his prayers. Aurangzeb had often remarked about a very bright light shining in the far distant southeast horizon and in reply to his enquiries regarding it, was told that it was a light burning in a temple of great wealth and magnificence at Vrindavan.