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Quite close to the Gurudwara
Sis Ganj Sahib is this golden domed building called Sunehari Masjid,
popularly known as the Golden Mosque.
According to the Islamic calendar, it was built in the 1134 Hijri, during
the reign of Sultan Mohammad Shah. It is believed that the Persian invader
Nadir Shah had sat on the terrace for hours on 11th March 1739 - watching
his soldiers pillage the golden bazaars of
Chandni Chowk
Other Elegant Sunehri Masjids Of Delhi
Outside the Delhi gate stands the Sunehari Masjid. It is a small
three-domed structure with two minarets. At one time these domes used to
be copper-plated. It bears an inscription, which attributes the mosque to
Nawab Qudsiya Begum wife of Ahmad Shah (1748-54) and it was built in 1751.
In Delhi, there are three mosques popular by the name of Sunehari Masjid.
One is close to the Delhi Gate, Red Fort,
built by Javed Khan during the reign of Ahmed Shah in 1751 AD. The other
two were built earlier by Roshan-ud-Daulah at Chandni Chowk in 1721 in
Faiz Bazar (Daryaganj) in 1745. There is another mosque at Rafi Marg known
as Sunehari Bagh Masjid built by the local residents of Sunehra village.
The Sunehari Masjid near the Red Fort is small but remarkably elegant, a
wonderful combination of smallness of size and a perfect symmetrical form.
The mosque consists of a main prayer chamber with two minarets and three
graceful domes, once covered with gilt plates.
Later, in 1852 Bahadur Shah II repaired the mosque and covered the ruined
domes with sandstone, striped lengthwise with red stone and crowned with
gilt pinnacles. The central dome is about 45-feet high while the side
domes are 5-feet lower.
The mosque stands on a plinth built of red stone and sandstone,
consisting of three rooms. There are three arched entrances to the mosque,
the arch in the middle is scalloped like the other two, but it is more
lavishly ornamented with scrolls and foliage.
A room capped by a circular dome follows each arch. The side rooms are
separated from the central room by two arches. The central arch is flanked
by two minarets, which rise about eight feet above the roof and are topped
with gilt pinnacles. On the northern and southern extremities there are
two elegantly constructed minarets, 60-feet high, supporting an octagonal
open pavilion with a small dome. In the inscription on its central arch
two personages are referred to-Qudsia Begum and Nawab Bahadur Javed Khan,
the chief eunuch.
Javed Khan was raised to the position of chamberlain and chief eunuch of
the 'harem'. Even though he was illiterate and totally inexperienced in
the warfare of administration, he was later raised to the position of
confidential adviser and ranked as a 'Sat Hazari' with the title of 'Nawab
Bahadur' and honoured with the highest possible insignia of honour. Ever
since the time of Taimur, no eunuch had reached such an exalted position
above the head of the hereditary nobles.
It is believed that the Queen Mother, Qudsia Begum, had an affair with
Javed Khan, which scandalized everybody except her son Ahmed Shah. His
intimacy with the Queen Mother outraged public sentiment and lowered the
imperial prestige. The notorious scandal reached such proportion that the
royal guards tied a young ass and a bitch at the palace gate and when the
courtiers came to attend the durbar, the guards urged them to bow before
those animals, signifying the Queen Mother and the Nawab