The Dargah of Zafar Khan Ghazi

About this monument

There are two monuments standing on an elevated ground on the west bank of the rivder Ganges. They comprise a mosque and a roofless double chambered Dargah. The latter houses the graves of Ulugh-I-Azam-Humyun Zafar Khan Gazi, his sons and grandsons and a daughter-in-law. The mosque, which stands to the south-east of the Dargah, has an Arabic inscription fixed into its wall. This inscription records that Zafar Khan Gazi built the mosque in 1298 A.D. after driving out the infidels from there. This is the earliest surviving example of a covered mosque of rectangular plan. Its façade on the east has five arched entrances. The arches spring from heavy piers. The arched openings led to the rear wall accommodating the mihrab.The mosque had ten domes now mostly gone. Surviving ones were also damaged. These were restored in recent years. The double-chambered Dargah has in the one on the west the tombs of Zafar Khan Gazi, his two sons, Ain Khan Gazi and Ghain Khan Gazi and the wife of the youngest son, Bar Khan Gazi. In the other chamber on the east lie buried Bar Khan and his two sons, Rahim Khan and Karim Khan. The general believe that the Dargah was originally a Hindu temple converted into an Islamic monument is not tenable. The haphazard way in which the base mouldings were set and many images and panels were fixed upside down prove that the monument was constructed after uprooting a Hindu temple and liberally using its materials while building the Dargah. Inside the Dargah has on its wall a number pre-Islamic inscriptions in proto-Bengal script referring to the episodes of the Ramayana like Sitavivaha, Sri Rama Ravana vadha, Ramabhiseka and Bharatabhiseka. Several others cannot be deciphered. Apparently these labels described the reliefs on the demolished temple.

Site plan

Site plan from the ASI Inventory of Monuments and Sites of National Importance, Vol. VII Part IV, Kolkata Circle (2015).

Photographs