The history of Jama Masjid of Srinagar is a singular chequered one. Its original conception and erection are ascribed to Sikandar But-shikan, who reigned in Kashmir from A.D. 1390-91 to 1414-15. He is said to have laid its foundation in A.D. 1398 and completed it in 1402. His illustrious son Zain-ul-abidin is reported to have greatly exerted himself in adding to its aesthetic attractions. He also established an Islamic school as an appendage to the mosque and endowed it with estates to enable it to defray the cost of maintenance. In A.D. 1479 a large conflagration reduced it to ashes, and the then-reigning sovereign, Sultan Hasan Shah, set about its reconstruction with greater splendour. Unfortunately, the King died before completing his task, which was brought to a successful end in A.D. 1503 by Ibrahim Magre, Commander-in-Chief of the Kashmir forces, during the reigns of Muhammad Shah and Fateh Shah. In the year 1620, in the reign of Jahangir, a severe conflagration again broke out in Srinagar and destroyed twelve thousand buildings, among them the Jama Masjid. The emperor, who is stated to have been in Kashmir at the time, immediately directed its reconstruction, which was taken in hand and completed in the space of seventeen years. Malik Haidar of Tsodur, the historian of Kashmir, was entrusted with the execution of the work. The inscription on the southern entrance, which was erected about this time, gives the history of the mosque up to this date.
The mosque is a quadrangle and roughly square in plan, its northern and southern sides being 384’ in length. Its principal features are the four minars, one in the middle of each side (Plate IX). They are covered by a series of pyramidal roofs, which terminate in an open turret crowned by a high pinnacle (Plate X). All these minars, except that to the west, which contains the pulpit, cover spacious arched entrances which are plain but very imposing. The southern entrance seems, as now, to have always been the one most commonly used. This is borne out by the fact that the inscriptions - among them Shah Jahan’s farman, which would naturally be placed at the most frequented spot in the mosque - has been built into the wall of this entrance. The roof of each minar was supported on eight wooden columns, 50’ in height and over 6’ in girth, whose modern substitutes still stand in the original square limestone bases. The columns are plain and unornamented. The minars are connected by spacious halls, the principal feature of which is the vast array of 378 wooden columns which support the roof.
The compound is bisected by two broad paths, planned in the manner of a formal Mughal garden. At the point of their intersection, a small and insignificant barahdari has been built.
Formerly, a small canal which entered through the eastern entrance used to feed the large, but now dilapidated, tank in the compound. Its place is now taken by an ordinary P.W.D. water supply. The water from the tank flows down a small ornamental chute, and passing out of the channel leaves the mosque by an underground passage in the west wall. After a meandering course of a quarter of a mile the pretty little rill, now replaced by the usual gutters, emptied itself into the Mar canal. The streamlet was in existence as recently as thirty years ago and bore the name of Lachhma-kul. It was originally brought from Sindh by King Zain-ul-abidin, and its first name was Zaina-Ganga.
The most charming feature of the compound, apart from the singularly imposing aspect of the arcaded front of the halls, is a group of shady chinars, which tradition assigns variously to Zain-ul-abidin’s and Hasan Shah’s reigns. But there seems to be little doubt that some, if not all of them, are of more recent growth.
In the earlier part of the Sikh regime in Kashmir, the mosque was closed and its doors were blocked. After a period of twenty-one years, it was reopened by Ghulam Muhi-ud-din, the Sikh Governor, who spent nearly a lakh and a half rupees on its repair1.
1 R.C.Kak, Ancient Monuments of Kashmir (Kashmir: Ali Mohammad & Sons, 2005), 84-87.