The Babri Masjid (ISO: Bābarī Masjida; meaning Mosque of Babur) was a mosque located in Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. According to the mosque's inscriptions, it was built in 935 AH (1528/1529 CE) by Mir Baqi, a commander of the Mughal emperor Babur. The mosque was attacked and demolished by a Hindu nationalist mob in 1992, which ignited communal violence across the Indian subcontinent.
The Babri Masjid site has been disputed between the Hindu and Muslim communities since the mid-19th century. In 1949, a group of Hindus placed idols of Rama and Sita inside the mosque, after which the government locked the building to avoid further disputes. Court cases were filed by both Hindus and Muslims asking for access. On 6 December 1992, a large group of Hindu activists belonging to the Vishva Hindu Parishad and allied organisations demolished the mosque, triggering riots all over the Indian subcontinent, resulting in the death of around 2,000–3,000 people.
In September 2010, the Allahabad High Court upheld the claim that the mosque was built on the spot believed to be Rama's birthplace and awarded the site of the central dome for the construction of a Rama temple. Muslims were also awarded one-third area of the site for the construction of a mosque. The decision was subsequently appealed by all parties to the Supreme Court, with a five judge bench delivering its judgment 9 November 2019, which quashed the lower court's judgement and ordered the entire site to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple. It also ordered the government to give an alternative plot to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board to replace the Babri Masjid that had been demolished in 1992..
The government allotted a site in the village of Dhannipur, in Ayodhya District, 18 kilometres (11 mi) from Ayodhya City and 30 kilometres (19 mi) by road from the site of the original Babri Masjid. The great breaking ceremony for the mosque was held on 26 January 2021. In September 2024 it was reported that construction of the mosque had not commenced due to lack of funds and community antipathy towards the proposed mosque.
Etymology
The name "Babri Masjid" comes from the name of the Mughal emperor Babur. Although many say that Babur ordered its construction., experts agree that Mir Baqi, Babur's general, did so. Before the 1940s, it was called Masjid-i Janmasthan ("mosque of the birthplace") including in official documents.
Architecture
Background
The rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and their successors, the Mughals, were great patrons of art and architecture and constructed many tombs, mosques and madrasas. These have a distinctive style which bears influences of "later Tughlaq" architecture. Mosques all over India were built in different styles; the most elegant styles developed in areas where indigenous art traditions were strong and local artisans were highly skilled. Thus, regional or provincial styles of mosques grew out of local temple or domestic styles, which were conditioned in their turn by climate, terrain, materials, hence the enormous difference between the mosques of Bengal, Kashmir and Gujarat. The Babri Mosque followed the architectural school of Jaunpur Sultanate. When viewed from the west side, it resembled the Atala Masjid in Jaunpur.
Architectural style
The architecture of the mosque is completely a replica of the mosques in the Delhi Sultanate. Babri was an important mosque of a distinct style, preserved mainly in architecture, developed after the Delhi Sultanate was established, seen also in the Babari Mosque in the southern suburb of the walled city of Gaur, and the Jamali Kamili Mosque built by Sher Shah Suri. This was the forerunner of the Mughal architecture style adopted by Akbar.
Acoustics
"A whisper from the Babri Masjid mihrab could be heard clearly at the other end, 200 feet [60 m] away and through the length and breadth of the central court" according to Graham Pickford, architect to Lord William Bentinck (1828–33). The mosque's acoustics were mentioned by him in his book Historic Structures of Oudhe where he says "for a 16th-century building the deployment and projection of voice from the pulpit is considerably advanced, the unique deployment of sound in this structure will astonish the visitor".
History
Construction
The date of construction of the Babri Masjid is uncertain. The inscriptions on the Babri Masjid premises found in the 20th century state that the mosque was built in 935 AH (1528–29) by Mir Baqi in accordance with the wishes of Babur. However, these inscriptions appear to be of a more recent vintage.
There are no records of the mosque from this period. The Baburnama (Chronicles of Babur) does not mention either the mosque or the destruction of a temple. The Ramcharitamanas of Tulsidas (1574) and Ain-i Akbari of Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1598) made no mention of a mosque either. William Finch, the English traveller who visited Ayodhya around 1611, wrote about the "ruins of the Ranichand [Ramachand] castle and houses" where Hindus believed the great God "took flesh upon him to see the tamasha of the world." He found pandas (Brahmin priests) in the ruins of the fort, recording the names of pilgrims, but there was no mention of a mosque. Thomas Herbert described in 1634 the "pretty old castle of Ranichand built by a Bannyan Pagod of that name" which he described as an antique monument that was "especially memorable". He also recorded the fact of Brahmins recording the names of pilgrims.
The earliest record of a mosque at the site traditionally believed by Hindus to be the birthplace of Rama comes from Jai Singh II (or "Sawai Jai Singh") – a Rajput noble in the Mughal court who purchased land and established a Jaisinghpura in the area surrounding the mosque in 1717 (as he had also done in several other Hindu religious places). The documents of Jai Singh preserved in the Kapad-Dwar collection in the City Palace Museum of Jaipur, include a sketch map of the Babri Masjid site. The map shows an open court yard and a built structure with three temple spires (sikharas) resembling today's Babri Masjid with three domes. The courtyard is labelled janmasthan and shows a Ram chabutra. The central bay of the built structure is labelled chhathi, which also denotes birthplace.
Joseph Tiefenthaler, a European Jesuit missionary who lived and worked in India for 38 years (1743–1785), visited Ayodhya in 1767. He noted one Ramkot fortress — comprising the house that was considered as the birthplace of Rama by Hindus — to have been demolished by Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707); however, "others" said it to have been demolished by Babar. A mosque with three domes was constructed in its place but Hindus continued to offer prayers at a mud platform that marked the birthplace of Rama.
Inscriptions
The Disputed Mosque: A Historical Inquiry by Sushil Srivastava mentions that the Babri Masjid has three inscriptions in Persian, in different styles of calligraphy, two outside and one inside the mosque-just above the pulpit. A.S. Beveridge's translation of the inscription inside the mosque, mentions that by the order of Babar, Mir Baqi constructed the mosque in the year AH 935 (AD 1529). The summary of the findings of B. B. Lal's excavating team by S. P. Gupta is in agreement with this inscription. Only six lines of one of the two external inscriptions are legible. The legible inscription has apparently been written in praise of God, prophet Muhammad and Babar, who has been called a qalandar.
Francis Buchanan-Hamilton (Buchanan) did a survey of the Gorakhpur Division in 1813–14 on behalf of the British East India Company. His report was never published but partly reused by Montgomery Martin later. Kishore Kunal examined the original report in the British Library archives. It states that the Hindus generally attributed destruction "to the furious zeal of Aurangzabe". Yet, it was ascertained to have been built by Babur by relying upon "an inscription on its walls". The said inscription in Persian was said to have been copied by a scribe and translated by a Maulvi friend of Buchanan. The translation however contained five pieces of text, including two inscriptions. The first inscription said that the mosque was constructed by Mir Baqi in the year 935 AH or 923 AH. The second inscription narrated the genealogy of Aurangzeb. In addition to the two inscriptions and their monograms (tughras), a fable concerning a dervish called Musha Ashiqan was also included. The translator doubted that the fable was part of the inscription but recorded that the scribe "positively says that the inscription was executed at the erection of this building". The translator also had a difficulty with the anagram for the date, because one of the words was missing, which would have resulted in a date of 923 AH rather than 935 AH. These incongruities and mismatches made no impression on Buchanan, who maintained that the mosque was built by Babur.
In 1877, Syed Mohammad Asghar the Mutawalli (guardian) of the "Masjid Baburi at Janmasthan" filed a petition with the Commissioner of Faizabad asking him to restrain the Hindus that raised a chabutara on the spot regarded as the birthplace of Rama. In the petition, he stated that Babur had inscribed one word "Allah" above the door. The district judge and the sub-judge visited the mosque in the presence of all parties and their lawyers and confirmed this fact. No other inscriptions were recorded. In 1889, archaeologist Anton Führer visited the mosque and found three inscriptions. One was a Quranic verse. The inscription XLI was Persian poetry in the metre Ramal, which stated that the mosque was erected by a noble 'Mir Khan' of Babur. The inscription XLII was also Persian poetry in metre Ramal, and said that the mosque was founded in year 930 AH by a grandee of Babur, who was (comparable to) "another King of Turkey and China". The year 930 AH corresponds to 1523, three years before Babur's conquest of Hindustan. Despite the apparent contradiction, Führer published the date of "A. H. 930 during the reign of Babar", in his book of 1891.
Writer Kishore Kunal states that all the inscriptions claimed were fake. They were affixed almost 285 years after the supposed construction of the mosque in 1528, and repeatedly replaced. His own assessment is that the mosque was built around 1660 by governor Fedai Khan of Aurangzeb, who demolished many temples in Ayodhya. Lal Das, who wrote Awadh-Vilasa in 1672 describes the janmasthan (Rama's birthplace) accurately but does not mention a temple at the site.
These developments were apparently known to local Muslims. In mid-nineteenth century, the Muslim activist Mirza Jan quoted from a book Sahifa-I-Chihil Nasaih Bahadur Shahi, which was said to have been written by a daughter of the emperor Bahadur Shah I (and granddaughter of Aurangzeb) in the early 18th century. The text mentions mosques having been constructed after demolishing the "temples of the idolatrous Hindus situated at Mathura, Banaras and Awadh etc." Hindus are said to have called these demolished temples in Awadh "Sita Rasoi" (Sita's kitchen) and "Hanuman's abode." While there was no mention of Babur in this account, the Ayodhya mosque had been juxtaposed with those built by Aurangzeb at Mathura and Banaras. The manuscript, Sahifa-I-Chihil Nasaih Bahadur Shahi, has not yet been found, and scholar Stephan Conermann has stated that Mirza Jan book, Hadiqa-yi shuhada, is not reliable. Some historians like R.S. Sharma, M. Athar Ali, D.N. Jha and Archeologist Suraj Bhan have concluded in their work, A Historians' Report to the Nation, that It is very likely, that the work (Sahifa-I-Chihil Nasaih Bahadur Shahi) or the passage (quoted above in this paragraph) was a figment of Mirza Jan's imagination.
1850s-1930s disputes and temple construction attempts
In 1853, a group of armed Hindu ascetics from Hanuman Garhi temple occupied the Babri Masjid. Periodic violence erupted in the next two years, and the civil administration had to step in, refusing permission to build a temple or to use it as a place of worship. Gulam Hussain led a group of Sunni Muslims who asserted that the mosque site was home to the Hanuman temple in 1855. After a Hindu-Muslim clash, a boundary wall was constructed to avoid further disputes. It divided the mosque premises into two courtyards; the Muslims offered prayers in the inner courtyard. In 1857, the mahant of the Hanuman Garhi temple erected a raised platform and marked the site of Rama's birth. The Hindus offered their prayers on a raised platform, known as "Ram Chabutara", in the outer courtyard.
In 1883, the Hindus launched an effort to construct a temple on the platform. After Muslim protests, the deputy commissioner prohibited any temple construction on 19 January 1885. On 27 January 1885, Raghubar Das, the Hindu mahant (priest) of the Ram Chabutara filed a civil suit before the Faizabad Sub-Judge. In response, the mutawalli (Muslim trustee) of the mosque argued that the entire land belonged to the mosque. On 24 December 1885, the Sub Judge Pandit Hari Kishan Singh dismissed the suit. On 18 March 1886, the District Judge F.E.A. Chamier also dismissed an appeal against the lower court judgment. He agreed that the mosque was built on the land considered sacred by the Hindus, but ordered maintenance of status quo, since it was "too late now to remedy the grievance". A subsequent appeal before the Judicial Commissioner W. Young was also dismissed on 1 November 1886.
On 27 March 1934, a Hindu–Muslim riot occurred in Ayodhya, triggered by cow slaughter in the nearby Shahjahanpur village. The walls around the Masjid and one of the domes of the Masjid were damaged during the riots. These were reconstructed by the British Indian government using Hindu funds.