Wazir Khan Mosque

The Wazir Khan Mosque is a 17th-century Mughal mosque in Lahore's Walled City, renowned for its intricate faience tile work called kashi-kari and elaborate frescoes covering interior surfaces. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List.

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• Intricate kashi-kari tile work in Persian-style colors like cobalt blue, cerulean, white, green, orange, yellow, and purple on the exterior.
• Elaborate buon frescoes on interior walls, combining Mughal and local Punjabi decorative traditions.
• A 31-foot-tall dome over the main prayer hall with frescoes depicting trees, wine pitchers, and fruit platters, alluding to Paradise.
• The courtyard contains a 35-foot-square pool for ritual washing and a subterranean crypt with the tomb of the 14th-century Sufi saint Syed Muhammad Ishaq Gazruni.
• Four 107-foot-tall minarets at the corners of the courtyard.
• The entrance portal features a muqarna, an architectural element also found at the Alhambra in Spain.

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• Located along the Shahi Guzargah (Royal Road) in the Walled City, about 260 meters west of Delhi Gate.
• The mosque faces Wazir Khan Chowk and contains the shrine of Saint Sakhi Saif Souf.
• The mosque is part of a complex that originally included a row of shops for calligraphers and bookbinders, and the nearby Shahi Hammam baths.
• The octagonal chamber at the entrance is the first example of the Central Asian charsu bazaar concept in South Asia.

Een stukje geschiedenis

Commissioned in 1634 by Hakim Ilam-ud-din Ansari, known as Wazir Khan, the governor of Punjab under Emperor Shah Jahan, the mosque was built to enclose the tomb of the Sufi saint Miran Badshah. Construction took about seven years, and it replaced the Maryam Zamani Mosque as the main mosque for Friday prayers. Artisans from Chiniot, known for wood carving and stonework, were employed, though the chief architect remains unknown.