Lal Qila (Red Fort)

It's been a month since we came back from New Delhi, and I STILL have not caught up with this blog.

Here is the outer wall of the Red Fort, which is in the old(er) section of Delhi. As noted, you can see it from the Jama Masjid. Still a puzzle to me why historical remnants of forts and mosques seem so much more cheerful than the active mosques in New Delhi.


Even on this hot day, over 100 F, you can see how crowded it is here. As I suspected, people do not stay indoors when it's hot. Life goes on, everyone has to go to work, and everyone still wants to have fun, which in New Delhi seems to require leaving the house, rather than staying in and watching TV.

To the left is one of the entrances to the fort. and to the right is a kind of outdoor hallway lined with little shops, just as it was in the great days of the fort. The high arched ceiling was a wind tunnel that created a pleasant breeze.

People have been asking me if it was hazy like this the whole time. Well, I didn't notice the haze until we looked at the photos. It was dry (premonsoon) most of the time we were there.









Even now I am enthralled with the delicacy of the stone art that one sees in Indo-Islamic architecture.

I hope you take a closer look at the detail in these photos. Those little alabaster boxes we see in World Market or Earthbound or the like are just echoes of the fine detail that decorate Islamic monuments.

For instance, that would be semi-precious gem inlay on that fenced-in bench.




Here is another Indo-Islamic feature, Islamic arches of Indian red stone.











Doesn't this remind you of Greek architecture?

This

Another little mosque. I believe. This was quite a lovely fort.

And another example of semi-precious gem inlay. On pillars for pete's sake. Even with remnants of the original fort, one gets a sense of the opulence of life for the Muslin rulers.

In the foreground is a structure from the Islamic empire, and in the background a building from the British empire.

Jama Masjid

I adore the angle Usha took in this photo of the steps to the entrance the Jama Masjid, so it will be the thumbnail for this post.

On the right is the view of the Jama Masjid, with the sad crowded little market in front.

As it turns out, there are several Jama Masjids in India, but this one is the largest: The Lonely Planet  guide to India says it can hold 25,000 people in the courtyard. Here is an enthusiastic link about the Delhi edifice: Jama Masjid.

Another cloudy hot day, and so not so many people there, but we tried to give a sense of how large that area is.  

Of course we had to remove our shoes (that is the case with the Hindu. Muslim, and Sikh places of worship in India). The pavement was so hot they laid down strips of cloth as walkways.

There is no inner sanctum as such for worship, but a wall that faces Mecca, as I understand it. Look below:  only men were lying out front. The women were off to the side.

The men were unconcerned as Usha and I wandered, unaware for the first few minutes that we were on the men's side. I felt an ancestral shudder when I realized that, and we got out of there. Of course, I would not have felt that in the US. For instance, in our Hindu temple in Savannah, the men sit up front by the priest and the women in the back. It seems more like a polite formality there.

As I may have mentioned earlier, Usha is collecting images for inspiration in her upcoming sophomore year as a visual arts major at Savannah Arts Academy, a magnet high school. Of course she had to sample these images.

I felt a persistent sadness here at this mosque, whereas  the ancient remains of mosques and tombs in the parks were cheerful. Perhaps because no one was smiling at the mosque, only at the parks. Or it could be the nature of Islam, because the one little Hindu temple and the Sikh Golden Temple, both in Amritsar, were quite spiritually sunny, evident even to an agnostic like me.

On the left is a view of the Lal Qila, or Red Fort, which is also in Old Delhi. That is the topic of another blog.