Mosque and shrine, Bagerhat
Singair Mosqueসিঙ্গাইর মসজিদ
- Time needed
- Fifteen minutes.
- best months
- Nov–Feb
- Cost
- Free.
A single-domed brick mosque across the highway from the Sixty Dome Mosque, its corner towers and cornice bands still carrying 15th-century terracotta.
Plan your visit
- Opening
- Daylight hours.
About
Two hundred metres south-east of the great mosque, on the other side of the Khulna road, stands its small cousin. Singair is a square of thick brick, about 13 metres a side, with one hemispherical dome, three doors on the east and one each to north and south, and the usual four round towers at the corners. The cornice rises slightly toward the middle, the Bengali curve again.
It has no inscription, so its date rests on its style, which puts it in the mid-1400s with the rest of Khan Jahan's city. What makes it worth the crossing is the decoration: bands of terracotta on the towers and cornice, rosettes in the spandrels of the single mihrab, and a four-petalled lattice inside its frame. When the Department of Archaeology took it over in 1975 it was described as a ruin; the towers were still "in a shocking state" a decade later. It has been restored since and is in fair shape, and because almost everyone stays on the other side of the road you may well have it to yourself.
Getting there: On the south side of the Bagerhat–Khulna highway, 200 m south-east of the Sixty Dome Mosque gate.
Things to do
- Compare its single dome with the Sixty Dome Mosque's roof across the road; same builders, two scales.
- Find the terracotta rosettes beside the mihrab.
Good to know
- Cross the highway with care; buses come fast.
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