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Tangar Shahi Masque
Rekabi
Bazzar Mosque situated in Tangar village under the Rikabi
Bazar union of Munshigonj district, about 4.8 km. to the
west of the district town, and about 2 km. to the west of
the famous Baba Adam's Mosque, is a thoroughly renovated
building. A masonry verandah has been added in the east.
A Bangla inscription fixed over the central doorway of the
verandah records that it was restored in 1384 BS.
This
is a single-domed square mosque and built entirely of brick,
measuring 6.95m a side internally. The walls are about 2.13m
thick. There were four corner-towers in the four exterior
angles of the building, but these were removed at the time
of renovation work. The mosque has five arched-doorways,
three in the east and one each on the north and south sides.
The north and south doors are now used as windows. All the
arches are of the two-centred pointed variety. The central
archway in the east is bigger than the flanking ones. Corresponding
to the three eastern archways there are three renovated semi-circular
mihrabs inside the qibla wall that are set within rectagular
frames. Like the central doorway, the central mihrab is bigger
than its flanking counterparts. The north and south walls
have two alcoves on either side of the archway. The square
prayer hall of the mosque is covered with a large brick shouldered
dome, which rests on the four blocked arches over the central
mihrab and the three axial doorways springing from the brick
pilasters, two inside each wall, in combination with Bengali
pendentives and half-domed squinches on the upper angles.
An
octagonal drum can be seen externally in the lower part of
the dome. The parapets and the inner side of the dome is
decorated with rows of blind merlons, and each rectangular
frame of the three mihrabs is crowned by a frieze of blind
merlons. These are not original ornamentations. The outer
walls of the mosque were once ornamented with terracotta
plaques, but now these are all missing. The mosque is at
present covered with cement plaster.
An
Arabic inscription, originally fixed over the central archway
of eastern wall, can now be found fixed to an enclosure wall
of a nearby newly built mosque, locally known as Pashchimpada
masjid. According to the inscription, the Rikabi Bazar Mosque
was built by one Malik Abdullah Miah, son of Amin Khan Fakir
Miah, in 1569 AD during the reign of Sultan sulaiman karrani.
Architectural
features of this mosque include massive walls, a large dome,
two-centred pointed archways and a dome supported by blocked
arches springing from brick pilanters in combination with
pendentive and half-domed squinches. These are very feature
similar to the Goaldi Mosque in sonargaon and baba saleh's
mosque in Bandar, both in narayanganj district.
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