BARA SONA MOSQUE
SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:
Ar. SHOBHITA SOOD KOMAL AGARWAL
5TH SEM
1503009
BARA SONA MOSQUE(Masjid)
The Bara Sona Masjid (literally, "large golden mosque") was built in 1526 AD
by Sultan Nusrat Shah.
It is the largest building still standing in Gaur, a ruined city on the border of India
and Bangladesh.
DESIGN
The mosque is composed of eleven entrances, two
buttresses, four corner towers and a
spacious courtyard which is almost seventy meters in
diameter.
The building is faced in plain stone and the doors would
originally have been framed by mosaics of glazed colored
tiles in floral patterns.
The roof was strewn with 44 hemispherical domes of which
11 on the corridor still remain.
These domes were originally gilded, and, hence, gave the
mosque its name
From the interior, these domes are arcaded, half in brick and
half in stone.
The mosque is a rectangular building; brick faced with stone with no carvings, and
measures 51.20m by 23.15m with the usual octagonal towers at the corners.
In front there is a spacious veranda, running north south, with eleven pointed arched
doorways in front, and one on each of the sides for entrance.
The veranda leads to a prayer hall of three by eleven bays.
The three aisles mosque is deep with three additional entrances on the north and south
sides, having thus a total of forty-four domes built on pendentives carried by spacious
rectangular columns.
At present, only the domes of the veranda and the lateral walls of the mosque remain.
On the northwest corner of the mosque, there was once a royal gallery covering an area
of four bays with four domes above. Like all other mosques, the entrance to the gallery
was from outside. The mihrabs of the mosque, corresponding to the eleven doorways,
are now all dilapidated.
The mosque has two gateways, still surviving, to its east and north, making space for an
open courtyard in front.
The gateways are similar, having a vaulted passage through the middle, and correspond
to a roof, curvilinear in form, to that of the main building.
The simplicity of the building has not been satisfactorily explained.
The Bara Sona has close resemblance in general appearance with the Chhota Sona built
by a wali of Alauddin HUSAIN SHAH, perhaps during the early part of his reign.
PLAN
