"Close to the eastern or Bangalore gate stood formerly a Hindu temple with a prakara wall and a verandah running around. It was very probably a structure of the early eighteenthcentury and was not of great architectural importance. It is said to have been dedicated to Hanuman or Anjaneya. Near it, in the field, Tipu is said to have played in his younger days when his father was yet a rising young officer in the Mysore army. One day a Fakir told the boy that he would some day become very prosperous and directed him to convert the temple into a mosque when he became a great man. When he became king, Tipu compelled the Hindus to remove the image from the temple, filled up the ground floor and on the top of the temple got erected the Jumma Masjid, the hall of which has numerous foil arches and a Mihrab on the west in the form of a small room. On the walls of the hall are found stone inscriptions with quotations from the Quran, etc. One of them gives the date of its construction corresponding to 1787 A.D. The main points of interest in the mosque are its two great and beautiful minars which combine majesty with grace. Their shafts are ornamented with cornices and floral bands while near the top are narrow terraces with ornamental parapets. From there a visitor gets a panoramic view of the neighbourhood. At the crown of the minars are large masonry kalashas placed upon flowers and fully ornamented. Above are small metallic kalashas of the Hindu type."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
The Annual Report of the Mysore Archaeological Department of 1935, in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Masjid-i-Ala
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Masjid-i-Ala
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