Baqi Tashqandi, also known as Mir Baqi, was a Mughal commander (beg) originally from Tashkent (in modern Uzbekistan) during the reign of the first Mughal emperor Babur. He is often associated with serving as the governor of the province of Awadh and is traditionally credited with overseeing the construction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in 1528, which later became the focal point of the Babri Masjid–Ram Janmabhoomi dispute. [1]
Baburnama (Chronicle of Babur) mentions a commander called Baqi Tashkindi (Baqi of Tashkent). His name also appears with other suffixes: Baqi Shaghawal, Baqi Beg (commander) or Baqi Mingbashi (commander of a thousand troops). However, the chronicle does not describe him as a Mir (prince or noble). Police officer-turned-scholar Kishore Kunal believes that the appellation "Mir Baqi" was constructed in 1813–1814 in a forged inscription on Babri Masjid for the benefit of the British surveyor Francis Buchanan, and there was in fact no prince called "Mir Baqi" in Babur's regime. [2] [a]
Baqi Tashqandi served as a commander in the Mughal force of Emperor Babur.
In 932 AH (January or February 1526 AD), Baqi, described as "Shaghawal", was given Dibalpur in Punjab as a fief (near Lahore), and sent to help quell a rebellion in Balkh. After his return, Baqi appears to have been assigned as a commander in a force of six or seven thousand troops headed by Chin-Timur Sultan. In 934 AH (1528 AD) the force was sent on an expedition to Chanderi. The enemy fled and Chin-Timur Sultan was ordered to pursue them. The subordinate commanders were given instructions "not to go beyond this [Sultan's] word". [3]
In March 1528, the same force headed by Chin-Timur Sultan was sent in pursuit of Afghan nobles Bāyazīd and Biban (formerly in the employ of Ibrahim Lodi) near Awadh. The duo however took control of Lucknow by May 1529 (935 AH), signalling a loss for the Mughal force. The defeat was attributed to Baqi, who was possibly in charge of the Mughal fort in Lucknow. Babur sent reinforcements under the command of Kuki and others. Bāyazīd and Biban fled at the news of reinforcements. However, Baqi and his team could not catch hold of them. The temporary loss of Lucknow to the rebels as well as Baqi's inability to capture them annoyed Babur. The monsoon had set in and the horses needed rest. So Babur called a halt to the pursuit. On 13 June, Baqi called on Babur, who was apparently dissatisfied, and, on 20 June 1529, Babur dismissed Baqi (issued rukhsat) along with the army of Awadh that he was commanding. [b] No more is known of Baqi Tashqandi until his mysterious reappearance on a supposed inscription on the Babri Masjid as "Mir Baqi", as reported by the British East India Company's surveyor in 1813. [3]
Francis Buchanan (also called Buchanan-Hamilton) did a survey of the Gorakhpur Division in 1813–14 on behalf of the British East India Company. Buchanan's report, never published but available in the British Library archives, states that the Hindus generally attributed destruction of temples "to the furious zeal of Aurangzabe [Aurangzeb]", but the large mosque at Ayodhya (now known as Babri Masjid) was ascertained to have been built by Babur by "an inscription on its walls". Buchanan had the said inscription in Persian copied by a scribe and translated by a Maulvi friend. The translation however showed two inscriptions. The first inscription said that the mosque was constructed by 'Mir Baqi' in the year 935 AH or 923 AH. [c] The second inscription narrated the genealogy of Aurangzeb. [d] [e] The translator had a difficulty with the anagram for the date, because one of the words was missing, which would have resulted in a date of 923 AH rather than 935 AH. These incongruities and mismatches made no impression on Buchanan, who maintained that the mosque was built under the orders of Babur. [4]
The Babri Masjid stands at a location believed by Hindus to be the birthplace of Rama. There are no inscription records of a mosque at the site till 1672 and no known association with Babur or Mir Baqi prior to Buchanan's discovery of these inscriptions in the 19th century. The Baburnama does not mention either the mosque or the destruction of a temple. [5] The Ramcharit Manas of Tulsidas (AD 1574) and Ain-i Akbari of Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (AD 1598) made no mention of a mosque either. [6] [7] However, it is clearly mentioned in doha shatak by Tulsidas (AD 1574).
In 1611, an English traveller William Finch visited Ayodhya and recorded the "ruins of the Ranichand [Ramachand] castle and houses". He made no mention of a mosque. [8] In 1634, Thomas Herbert described a "pretty old castle of Ranichand [Ramachand]" which he described as an antique monument that was "especially memorable". [9] However, by 1672, the appearance of a mosque at the site can be inferred because Lal Das's Awadh-Vilasa describes the location of birthplace without mentioning a temple. [10] In 1717, the Moghul Rajput noble Jai Singh II purchased the land surrounding the site and his documents show a mosque. [11]
Kishore Kunal states that all the claimed inscriptions on the Babri mosque were fake. They were affixed sometime around 1813 (almost 285 years after the supposed construction of the mosque in 1528 AD), and repeatedly replaced. [12] In a petition filed by Syed Mohammad Asghar, the Mutawalli (guardian) of the Babri Masjid, with the Commissioner of Faizabad in 1877, it was stated that the word "Allah" above the door was the only inscription. The inscription mentioned by Buchanan was apparently not in evidence. [4] In 1889, archaeologist Anton Führer recorded two inscriptions. One said that the mosque was erected by a noble 'Mir Khan' of Babur. [f] Another said that the mosque was founded in the year 930 AH by a grandee of Babur, who was (comparable to) "another King of Turkey and China". [g] The year 930 AH corresponds 1523 AD, three years before Babur's conquest of Hindustan. Moreover, the texts of these inscriptions were completely different from those documented by Buchanan. [13]
Babur was the founder of the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent. He was a descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan through his father and mother respectively. He was also given the posthumous name of Firdaws Makani.
Ayodhya is a city situated on the banks of the Sarayu river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ayodhya district as well as the Ayodhya division of Uttar Pradesh, India. Ayodhya became the top tourist destination of Uttar Pradesh with 110 million visitors in the first half of 2024, surpassing Varanasi.
Babri Masjid was a mosque in Ayodhya, India. It has been claimed to have been built upon the site of Ram Janmabhoomi, the legendary birthplace of Rama, a principal deity of Hinduism. It has been a focus of dispute between the Hindu and Muslim communities since the 19th century. According to the mosque's inscriptions, it was built in 1528–29 by Mir Baqi, a commander of the Mughal emperor Babur. Before the 1940s, the masjid was officially known as "Masjid-i-Janmasthan". The mosque was attacked and demolished by a Hindu nationalist mob in 1992, which ignited communal violence across the Indian subcontinent.
Awadh, known in British historical texts as Avadh or Oudh, is a historical region in northern India, now constituting the northeastern portion of Uttar Pradesh. It is roughly synonymous with the ancient Kosala region of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain scriptures.
Ram Janmabhoomi is the site that, according to Hindu religious beliefs, is the birthplace of Rama, the seventh avatar of the Hindu deity Vishnu. The Ramayana states that the location of Rama's birthplace is on the banks of the Sarayu river in a city called "Ayodhya". Modern-day Ayodhya is in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is contested whether the Ayodhya mentioned in the Ramayana is the same as the modern city.
The Liberhan Commission was a long-running inquiry commissioned by the Government of India to investigate the destruction of the disputed structure Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. Led by retired High Court Judge M. S. Liberhan, it was formed on 16 December 1992 by an order of the Indian Home Union Ministry after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December and the subsequent riots there. The commission was originally mandated to submit its report within three months. Extensions were given 48 times, and after a delay of 17 years, the one-man commission submitted the report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 30 June 2009. In November 2009, a day after a newspaper published the allegedly leaked contents of the report, the report was tabled in Parliament by the Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
The archaeology of Ayodhya concerns the excavations and findings in the Indian city of Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh, much of which surrounds the Babri Mosque location.
The Ayodhya dispute is a political, historical, and socio-religious debate in India, centred on a plot of land in the city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The issues revolve around the control of a site regarded since at least the 18th century among many Hindus to be the birthplace of their deity Rama, the history and location of the Babri Masjid mosque at the site, and whether a previous Hindu temple was demolished or modified to create the mosque.
Kishore Kunal is a former officer of the Indian Police Service from the state of Bihar, India. During his police career, he was appointed as the Officer on Special Duty (Ayodhya) by the prime minister V. P. Singh to mediate between the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Babri Masjid Action Committee on the Ayodhya dispute. He continued to serve in this position during the premierships of Chandra Sekhar and P. V. Narasimha Rao.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid was carried out on 6 December 1992 by a large group of activists of the Vishva Hindu Parishad and allied organisations. The 16th-century Babri Masjid in the city of Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh, India, had been the subject of a lengthy socio-political dispute, and was targeted after a political rally organised by Hindu nationalist organisations turned violent.
Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas is an organisation which was formed as a trust to promote and oversee the construction of a temple in Ayodhya, India at the Ram Janmabhoomi, the reputed site of the birth of the Hindu deity Rama. The Nyas was formed by members of the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
William Finch was an English merchant in the service of the East India Company (EIC). He travelled to India along with Captain Hawkins during the reign of the Mughal emperor Jehangir. The two of them attended on the emperor at the Mughal court and established trade relations between England and India. Finch subsequently explored various cities in India and left a valuable account of them in his journal, which was subsequently published.
Shaheed Ganj Mosque, originally named the Abdullah Khan Mosque, was a mosque in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. The Mosque was commissioned in 1722 during the reign of Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah and built by Abdullah Khan. construction was completed in 1753 during the reign of Ahmad Shah Bahadur. It was constructed next to the shrine of Pir Shah Kaku. Sikh rule began in 1762, the Gurdwara Bhai Taru Singh was built afterwards within the same grounds. The mosque site was under dispute during British rule, but was demolished by Sikhs on the night of 8 July 1935.
Persian Inscriptions on Indian Monuments is a book written in Persian by Dr Ali Asghar Hekmat E Shirazi and published in 1956 and 1958 and 2013. New edition contains the Persian texts of more than 200 epigraphical inscriptions found on historical monuments in India, many of which are currently listed as national heritage sites or registered as UNESCO world heritage, published in Persian; an English edition is also being printed.
The Ram Rath Yatra was a political and religious rally that lasted from September to October 1990. It was organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu nationalist affiliates, and led by the then-president of the BJP, L. K. Advani. The purpose of the yatra was to support the agitation, led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its affiliates in the Sangh Parivar, to erect a temple to the Hindu deity Rama on the site of the Babri Masjid.
Ram ke Naam is a 1992 documentary by Indian filmmaker Anand Patwardhan. The film explores the campaign waged by the right-wing Hindu nationalist organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad to build a temple to the Hindu deity Ram at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, as well as the communal violence that it triggered. A couple of months after Ram ke Naam was released, activists of the VHP and other Hindu nationalist groups demolished the Babri Masjid in 1992, provoking further violence. The film earned Patwardhan a wide recognition, and received several national and international awards.
The Vishnu Hari inscription is the name given to a Sanskrit language inscription found in the Uttar Pradesh state of India. It records the construction of a temple by Anayachandra, a feudatory of the king named Govindachandra, and also contains a eulogy of Anayachandra's dynasty. Its date portion is missing, and its authenticity has been a matter of controversy.
Ram Nath is an Indian historian who specializes in Mughal architecture. He obtained a doctorate from the Agra University, and later taught at the University of Rajasthan. He is regarded as one of India's leading art historians.
The Ram Mandir is a partially constructed Hindu temple complex in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India. Many Hindus believe that it is located at the site of Ram Janmabhoomi, the mythical birthplace of Rama, a principal deity of Hinduism. The temple was inaugurated on 22 January 2024 after a prana pratishtha (consecration) ceremony. On the first day of its opening, following the consecration, the temple received a rush of over half a million visitors, and after a month, the number of daily visitors was reported to be between 100,000 and 150,000.
Islamic archaeology involves the recovery and scientific investigation of the material remains of past cultures that can illuminate the periods and descriptions in the Quran, and early Islam. The science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. The Egyptian "Antiquities Authority" was established in 1858 and remains a government organization which serves to protect and preserve the heritage and ancient history of Egypt.
It asserts that the Mughal Emperor Babar's Governor at Awadh, Mir Baqi Tashqandi, built the Babri Masjid (mosque) at Ayodhya ... The mosque was built in 1528 ...