Mosque and shrine, Bagerhat
Chunakhola Mosqueচুনাখোলা মসজিদ
- Time needed
- Twenty minutes.
- best months
- Aug–Jan
- Cost
- Free.
A lone single-domed mosque standing in the middle of rice fields, the most photographed small building of the mosque city.
Plan your visit
- Opening
- Daylight hours.
- Best time
- July to October for the green paddy around it; early morning or late afternoon light.
At a glance
- Inside
- 7.7 m square; walls 2.24 m
- Period
- Late 15th century
About
No road, no wall, no village around it: Chunakhola stands alone in the paddy, a brick cube with a dome, reached by a raised path between the fields. In the green months it is the image of Bagerhat most people carry away. The name means "lime pit"; lime for the mortar was probably burnt here.
It is a little smaller than Bibi Begni, 7.7 metres square inside with walls 2.24 metres thick, three doors on the east, one each north and south, three mihrabs on the west under cusped arches. The dome sits on half-domed squinches, and the cornice curves gently in three rows of moulding. Its terracotta is a step away from the austere Khan Jahan manner: jali lattices, rosettes, scrolls, interlocking circles and a hanging-lamp motif, and a band of mesh under the lowest moulding that appears nowhere else in the city. Architectural historians place it late in the 1400s, a transition toward the richer mosques of the next century. The Department of Archaeology restored it in the 1980s under UNESCO's guidance.
Getting there: About 300 m north-west of the Bibi Begni Mosque in Chunakhola village, on foot by the field path; roughly 1 km from the Sixty Dome Mosque.
Things to do
- Photograph it from the field path with the paddy in front; this is the postcard.
- Look for the mesh band under the lowest cornice moulding, unique in the city.
Good to know
- The field path is narrow and slippery when wet; wear shoes you can rinse.
- Ask before walking through standing crops.
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