A Mughal mosque in the heart of Bengaluru

AHebdomad from today, Muslims crossways the domain testament collect with their families to partake of the first suhoor, or pre-dawn meal, of the holy month of Ramzan. For 30 days after that, in Bengaluru as everywhere else, they will throng the mosques, offering praise and gratitude to Allah.The first mosque in India – the Cheraman Juma Mosque in Kerala’s Kodungalloor – is believed to have been raised as far back as 629 CE, during the Prophet’s lifetime. The first mosque in Karnataka – Masjid Zeenath Baksh, also known as Beliye Palli (palli is mosque in Tamil and Malayalam) – came up around 644 CE, in the Bunder area of Mangaluru.Given the ancient, robust trade links between Arabia and the southern Indian peninsula, it is no surprise that these early mosques were established in coastal towns.Despite Mangaluru being a mere 350 kilometres away from us, Bengaluru did not get its first mosque until a staggering 1000 years after Beliye Palli. How that came to be is a long and winding tale.The first independent Muslim kingdom in the Deccan, the Bahmani kingdom, was established in 1347 CE by Alla-ud-Din Bahman Shah, an Afghan-origin commander under Delhi Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq, after a successful revolt against his master. Ruling first from Gulbarga (1347-1425) and then from Bidar (1425-1527), the Bahmanis, who were not only great builders of fortresses, madrasas, tombs and mosques but also, arguably, the first kingdom to invent and use gunpowder artillery and firearms in the subcontinent, transformed the military and architectural landscape of today’s Kalyana-Karnataka. Their constant wars against the Vijayanagara Empire enervated the Bahmanis; ultimately, they were defeated by Krishna Deva Raya in 1527. In the political vacuum the Bahmanis left behind rose the five Deccan sultanates – Bijapur, Golconda, Bidar, Berar and Ahmednagar; in 1565, they banded together to destroy Vijayanagara in the Battle of Talikota.In 1526, a year before the Bahmanis crumbled, Timur’s descendant, Babur, founded the Mughal Empire in Delhi. In 1537, between the arrival of the Mughals and the fall of Vijayanagara, Kempegowda I, a vassal of Vijayanagara, established Bengaluru. A century later, in 1638, his descendant Kempegowda III lost Bengaluru to the Sultan of Bijapur. The Sultan gifted the city to Maratha military adventurer Shahaji Bhosale, who played a significant role in the victory. After Shahaji, Bengaluru passed to his son Venkoji, who ruled from Thanjavur.In the decades that followed, Shahaji’s other son, Shivaji, created a powerful Maratha confederacy, frequently shifting his alliances between Bijapur and the Mughals – first under Shah Jahan and then under Alamgir Aurangzeb – to his advantage. In 1674, Shivaji, who had extensive wealth and territories but no formal title, was finally crowned king – Chhatrapati – of the Maratha Empire. In 1677, he attacked the kingdom of Mysore and sacked Srirangapatna, only to be defeated by Chikkadevaraja Wadiyar.After Shivaji’s death in 1680, his son Sambhaji came to the throne. In 1682, fed up with the constant run-ins with the Marathas and the Deccan sultanates, the Alamgir stepped up his ultimately pyrrhic southern campaign. In 1687, Kasim Khan, Aurangzeb’s governor in Sira (near Tumkur) captured Bengaluru briefly from Venkoji, before selling the city to Chikkadevaraja Wadiyar for three lakh gold pagodas.It was during or soon after Kasim Khan’s short rule that Bengaluru got its first mosque – the Sangeen (built of stone) Jama Masjid, or the Taramandal masjid. Nestled deep in the original fort town that Kempegowda built, on Siddanna Lane, and endowed over the centuries by patrons like Tipu Sultan, who built his spectacular rockets in the neighbourhood abutting the masjid, Taramandalpete, the historic mosque continues to serve the faithful to this day.(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)