Nanha Idrus Dargah

Ahmedabad, India

The Dargah or Masjid of Nanha Idrus is a complex including two tombs and a mosque located in the Gheekanta neighborhood in the center of the historic walled city of Ahmedabad. It lies across from the Old Collector's Office, near the intersection of Gheekanta Road and the Relief Road. In his 1905 survey of the Islamic architecture of Ahmedabad, James Burgess reported that the mosque had been known as Ali Khan Qazi Masjid, but it had become known as Nanha Idrus or Chhota Idrus, and that the two tombs on the grounds belonged to Nanha Idrus and Shah Ali Razzak. He also gives the date as during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, that is between 1658-1707/1068-1118 AH.1

The mosque had been reduced at the time of Burgess' survey to one half of its original size. It consisted of a square space divided into three aisles perpendicular to the qibla, each three bays deep, by two rows of three columns. Arches spanned the spaces between the columns. An ornate mihrab marked the qibla wall, and was flanked by two windows. Two further windows pierced the southern side wall. The west facade of the mosque, behind the qibla, had three ornate buttresses, marking what were originally three mihrabs (the only mihrab remaining in 1905 was the southernmost one). 

The first of the two tombs, that commemorating Shah Ali Razzak, was a square pavilion roofed by nine small domes covering nine bays. In a photograph taken in 1984, the spaces between the outer pillars of this pavilion had been filled in.

The second tomb, Nanha Idrus' was a square pavilion raised on two sets of columns: an inner row of twelve arranged in a square and an outer row of twenty. The inner row supported a dome and were connected by carved marble screens (jali), forming a screened square domed tomb chamber. The outer row was left open, forming a veranda around the central chamber.

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