Bagerhat
This town in Southern Bangladesh has several Islamic monuments from the 15th century. Most of these are attributed to Khan Jahan Ali, a local ruler and celebrated Sufi saint. The buildings are in a homogenous style that is an unusual blend of Tughlak and Bengali architecture. Common features include the Bengali curved cornice sloping towards the corner, and the Tughlaki thick tapered walls. The architectural fusion betrays Khan Jahan's origins - a Tughlak nobleman who seems to have come to Bengal just after Timur's sack of Delhi in 1398. He acquired the forest area of the Sundarbans as a jagir from the sultans of Delhi and Bengal, established a fortified capital at Khalifatabad (now Bagerhat) and launched an energetic building program in and around the city. The most notable of his architectural monuments are the Shaith Gombuz mosque, the Masjidkur mosque, his own tomb and mosque, all built in the mid-15th century. Of these the Shaith Gumbaz Masjid (seen here) is the earliest and most ambitious. The Masjid stands in a large enclosure defined by a low wall and entered through an large gateway on the east embellished by terracotta decoration. The masjid itself is heavy, almost fort-like, in construction with thick sloping walls and bastion-like tapering corner towers with rounded cupolas. The slightly curved roof has rows of simple, hemispherical domes, except for the domes on the central aisle which are in the Bengali charchala style.
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