Idgahs are a common sight in villages and towns and date back at least 800 years in north India and even longer in Kerala and Sindh (now in Pakistan). Built for special congregations particularly during festivals, they are also sites for intermixing between diverse sections of Muslims as well as those from other religions through the setting up of small fairs and temporary markets. The oldest Idgah of India, which is in Bayana, today stands forgotten—waiting for preservation.

The celebrated Jama Masjids of Delhi and Agra remain icons of Mughal architecture and are thronged by devotees and tourists alike. It is inside the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Delhi–Agra–Fatehpur Sikri that Bayana, a historic town, lies. The town has sprawling fort that is braving both the ASI’s neglect and the vicissitudes of time and nature. The conquest of Bayana (a Persian version of ‘Bhayana’) took place in the early Sultanate period around the 12th and 13th centuries. Situated along the general route towards Gwalior and the Deccan, the older name of the fort was Vijayamandargarh or the Fort of the Temple of Victory.

When the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visited Bayana in the 14th century, during the reign of Sultan Mohammad bin Tughlaq, he described it as a thriving urban centre: “The first stage that we arrived was Tilbat, which was two leagues and a third from the capital Delhi, from there we travelled to Au and to Helau and then to Bayana. It is a great city and has fine buildings and attractive bazaars, and its Jami mosque is one of the finest mosques, with walls and ceilings all of stone”, Batuta wrote in his memoirs, the Rihlah.

Bayana’s prominence didn’t last too long and it appears to have faded once the centre of power moved to Agra in the third decade of the 16th century, following the ascension of Akbar to the Mughal throne. Before that Agra and Sikri were small villages under the territory of Bayana whose glory peaked between Timur’s invasion in 1398 and the rise of Mughal power.

Bayana’s connection to political power in medieval north India survived through its red sandstone, which was used in the building of Akbar’s capital in Fatehpur Sikri. Its influence on architecture goes beyond just providing raw materials.

The Bayana Idgah

Now a part of the expanding town of Bayana, in a nondescript field, stands a nearly 800-year-old Idgah, one of the oldest such extant structures in India. The Bayana Idgah is a 60-metre- long wall containing a central mihrab and four small niches on either side, with a tower at both ends of the wall. The Idgah was likely built during the reign of Baha-al-din Tughrul (1195–1210), a Turkic slave of Ghurid conqueror Muhammad bin Sam who after pacifying the region of Bharatpur-Bayana made Tughrul the local governor.

Tughrul seems to have been a popular overlord and constructed several religious buildings, including the Jami masjid (now known as Ukha masjid), another Idgah and the Chaurasi Khamba (84-pillared) mosque at Kaman, a nearby village.

The 13th century chronicler Mihaj i Siraj recorded Tughrul in edifying terms. “Malik Baha al-din Tughrul was of handsome disposition, very just and kind to the needy or strangers (gharEb nawaz). He was a slave of long-standing of the victorious sultan Muizz al-din Muhammad bin Sam who had brought him up and given him a good education. The fortress of Tahangar was in the territory of Bhayana and was part of the realm of the rai. When the sultan conquered it, he gave it to Baha al-din Tughrul who made that territory prosperous. Merchants and men of distinction from different parts of Hindustan and Khurasan joined him and he gave all of them houses and resources which were to be their own property, and for this reason they settled near him. As he and his army found the fort of Tahangar unsuitable, he built the town of Sultankot in the territory of Bhayana, and here he made his abode. Baha al-din Tughrul was extremely benevolent and in the region of Bhayana numerous beneficial monuments of his have remained.”

Mehrdad and Natalie Shokoohy wrote in their seminal work, Bayana: The Sources of Mughal Architecture, “The Idgah has the characteristics of an early Indo-Islamic building, including a corbelled dome and corbelled arches, distinctive of the first two decades of the conquest. True arches and domes were built in Bayana as early as 1320 and it would be unlikely for craftsmen to abandon a new and successfully used technique for a less-advanced one when constructing a sizeable building. The Idgah must therefore date from the time when Bahaʾ al-din Tughrul’s Sultankot was at the earliest stage of its development and a quickly-built structure was essential for the army of the Faithful. If so, the ʿIdgah would be one of the first of the buildings mentioned by Minhaj-i Siraj to have been constructed by Bahaʾ al-din in Bayana, and the earliest of its kind still standing”.

HistoriCity is a column by author Valay Singh that narrates the story of a city that is in the news, by going back to its documented history, mythology and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal.