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Rikabi Bazar Mosque situated in Tangar village
under the Rikabi Bazar union of Munshiganj district,
about 4.8 km. to the west of the district town, and
about 2 km. to the west of the famous Baba Adam's Mosque,
is a thoroughly renovated building. A masonry verandah
has been added in the east. A Bangla inscription fixed
over the central doorway of the verandah records that
it was restored in 1384 BS.
This is a single-domed square mosque and built entirely
of brick, measuring 6.95m a side internally. The walls
are about 2.13m thick. There were four corner-towers
in the four exterior angles of the building, but these
were removed at the time of renovation work. The mosque
has five arched-doorways, three in the east and one
each on the north and south sides. The north and south
doors are now used as windows. All the arches are of
the two-centred pointed variety. The central archway
in the east is bigger than the flanking ones. Corresponding
to the three eastern archways there are three renovated
semi-circular mihrabs inside the qibla wall that are
set within rectagular frames. Like the central doorway,
the central mihrab is bigger than its flanking counterparts.
The north and south walls have two alcoves on either
side of the archway. The square prayer hall of the mosque
is covered with a large brick shouldered dome, which
rests on the four blocked arches over the central mihrab
and the three axial doorways springing from the brick
pilasters, two inside each wall, in combination with
Bengali pendentives and half-domed squinches on the
upper angles.
An octagonal drum can be seen externally in the lower
part of the dome. The parapets and the inner side of
the dome is decorated with rows of blind merlons, and
each rectangular frame of the three mihrabs is crowned
by a frieze of blind merlons. These are not original
ornamentations. The outer walls of the mosque were once
ornamented with terracotta plaques, but now these are
all missing. The mosque is at present covered with cement
plaster.
An Arabic inscription, originally fixed over the central
archway of eastern wall, can now be found fixed to an
enclosure wall of a nearby newly built mosque, locally
known as Pashchimpada masjid. According to the inscription,
the Rikabi Bazar Mosque was built by one Malik Abdullah
Miah, son of Amin Khan Fakir Miah, in 1569 AD during
the reign of Sultan sulaiman karrani.
Architectural features of this mosque include massive
walls, a large dome, two-centred pointed archways and
a dome supported by blocked arches springing from brick
pilanters in combination with pendentive and half-domed
squinches. These are very feature similar to the Goaldi
Mosque in sonargaon and baba saleh's mosque in Bandar,
both in narayanganj district.
Courtesy: Muhammed Nasir Uddin, Banglapedia, Asiatic Society
of Bangladesh. |