Shah-i Alam Roza

Ahmedabad, India

Shah-i Alam Roza is a large mosque and tomb complex located southeast of the old city center of Ahmedabad in a neighborhood which takes its name from the complex. It commemorates the burial place of Muhammad Shah-i Alam (d. 1475/880 AH), the son of 'Abd-Allah Qutb-i Alam Bukhari who is buried in another complex some miles to the south. The complex contains the tomb of Shah-i Alam, another large tomb, a cistern, an ablutions tank, a mosque, and an assembly hall or guest house (diwan-khana). The buildings in Shah-i Alam Roza are dated to various times, spanning from as early as the period after his death during the reign of Mahmud Shah I (d. 1511/917 AH), and up until the early seventeenth/eleventh century AH. 

The main entrance to the complex is a gate on its north side, which takes the form of a square, two-story gatehouse. The first story contains a large arched gateway flanked by two smaller windows. The second story is a gallery that affords views over the surrounding area through windows in the form of an arcade. 

Entering the complex, visitors proceed across an oblong open area before reaching the guest house. The guest house is a rectangular building in the form of an iwan: open on one side to the south and closed on its three other sides. The open southern facade leads onto a large pillared hall. Small, closed off rooms line the east and west walls, and two larger rooms occupy the north (back) end of the hall. This hall was constructed in the early seventeenth/eleventh century AH.

Directly south of the guest house, across an open space, is the tomb of Shah-i Alam. The tomb is presumably the oldest structure at the site, and is typical for sixteenth/tenth century AH funerary monuments of Gujarat. It is a square building sitting on a raised platform. At the center of this building is a domed tomb chamber. It is demarcated by a twelve pillars in the form of a square that support the dome, which rises above the rest of the building over a clerestory level. Surrounding the inner tomb chamber is a double ambulatory created by two more colonnades: an inner square of twenty pillars and an outer square of twenty-eight pillars. The spaces between the outer pillars are bridged by arches filled with carved marble screens (jali), creating outer walls. The main entrance to the building is on its west side, where a grand porch projects from the outer wall. 

Between the guest house and main tomb, to the west, are a square ablutions tank and the mosque, which is a rectangular building closed on three sides and open to the east. Framing the open eastern facade are two large and ornate tower-minarets. The interior is a large pillared hall. Three rows of six free standing pillars divide this hall into three aisles seven bays wide. Covering most bays is a vault: four shallow domes and three oblong vaults for the inner (qibla) and outer aisles, and two oblong vaults and three larger domes over the center aisle.

The qibla (west) wall has three mihrabs. The minarets of the mosque take the form of tapering cylindrical shafts. The lower third of the shaft is divided into registers of variably carved ornamental motifs. A cornice separates this section from the upper two thirds of the shaft, which is divided into increasingly smaller segments by four additional cornices. 

To the south of the mosque is another large tomb of similar form to Shah-i Alam's tomb (referred to here as the "western tomb"): it is a square building with an entrance porch on its east side. The interior is divided by three sets of pillars arranged as concentric squares. The inner square of twelve pillars demarcates a central tomb chamber. The outer two squares of twenty and twenty-eight pillars form open ambulatories around this central space.

A cemetery with many cenotaphs occupies the large and irregularly shaped area south of Shah-i Alam's tomb and east of the second large tomb. This cemetery contains a smaller tomb structure as well as many cenotaphs.

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