Mosque and shrine, Bagerhat
Ronvijoypur Mosqueরণবিজয়পুর মসজিদ
- Time needed
- Fifteen minutes.
- best months
- Nov–Feb
- Cost
- Free.
The biggest single dome in Bangladesh, eleven metres across, over a square brick hall at the turn-off to the saint's tomb.
Plan your visit
- Opening
- Daylight hours.
At a glance
- Dome
- About 11 m across, the largest in Bangladesh
- Walls
- 2.74 m thick around a 10.8 m square hall
- Protected
- Since 1961
About
Where the road from Bagerhat to the Sixty Dome Mosque sends a branch south toward the tomb of Khan Jahan Ali, a fat brick building with a smooth hemispherical cap sits at the junction. Its dome spans about 11 metres, the widest ever raised in Bengal in the Sultanate, carried on four half-dome squinches and four arches on brick pilasters; the walls needed to hold it are 2.74 metres thick around a hall 10.8 metres square. Locals also call it the Fakirbari Mosque.
Three pointed arches on each side but the west; three mihrabs there, the middle one pushed out through the wall as a rectangular projection you can see from outside. Little of the terracotta survives: some rosettes, scrolls and jali at the doors, mihrabs and corner towers. One oddity is on the dome itself, which was once dressed in bricks set corner-wise, a technique otherwise known from the Samanid tomb in Bukhara, though restoration has plastered it smooth. It was declared protected in 1961 and has been repaired many times since; what you see is sound but plain. Its date is a matter of style: Khan Jahan's time, before 1459.
Getting there: At the junction where the Bagerhat–Sixty Dome road branches south to the tomb, about 1.5 km east of the Sixty Dome Mosque and 3.5 km west of the town.
Things to do
- Stand under the dome and look up: nothing else of its age in the country spans so much without a pillar.
- Note the central mihrab's projection on the outside west wall.
Good to know
- A natural stop between the Sixty Dome Mosque and the tomb; ask the rickshaw to wait.
