Where the ground is flat and the water lies deep, raise it from wells by wheels into tanks and channels, and lay the garden out in regular, symmetrical plots round them, with walks, beds of flowers and trees in order.
The Friday mosque on its rock
Raise the Friday mosque on the highest ground of the city and on a lofty plinth, approached by broad flights of steps on three sides, with its main gate facing the palace and its prayer hall facing Mecca.
Shah Jahan built the Masjid-i Jahan-Numa, the ‘world-reflecting mosque’, in 1650–56 on a rocky outcrop, the Bhojla hill, between the two great streets. The rock was cut and built up into a plinth, and three gateways at the top of wide stairs lead into a court of about a hundred metres square, with the prayer hall of three marble domes and two minarets on its west side, towards Mecca. The east gate, the largest, faces the fort, and was used by the emperor coming to Friday prayers.
Bernier admired the mosque’s situation above the town, the approach by its stairs from three sides and the effect of the whole seen from the streets below.
Related rules
Orient the prayer hall so that its principal wall, the qibla wall, stands square to the direction of Mecca, and mark the middle of that wall with a niche, the mihrab.
qibla wall ⟂ direction of the Kaaba; mihrab on the axis
Build the tower for the call to prayer in the form of the regional tradition: square and stepped in the Maghreb and Spain, cylindrical and tapering in Iran and Central Asia, needle-like and polygonal in the Ottoman lands.
Lay out the garden as a walled square divided into four by raised walks with water channels on the two axes, and divide each quarter again.
1 → 4 → 16 beds; water on the axes
Stand the minarets free at the corners of the plinth, so that they frame the tomb in every view without crowding it.
Where people disagree about the width of a public road, make it seven cubits, and let no one build out into it; lanes that serve only the houses on them may be narrower.
public road ≥ 7 cubits (≈ 3.5 m)
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The Friday mosque on its rock”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/jama-masjid-plinth. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.