Wazir Khan

Few buildings capture the artistic confidence of Mughal Punjab quite like the Wazir Khan Mosque, tucked deep inside the walled city of Lahore just beyond the Delhi Gate. Commissioned in 1634 during the reign of Emperor Shah Jahan and completed seven years later, the mosque was the vision of Hakim Ilm ud din Ansari, a physician from Chiniot who rose to become governor of Punjab and earned the honorific Wazir Khan. He chose a site already associated with piety, namely the shrine of the fourteenth century saint Syed Muhammad Ishaq, known affectionately as Miran Badshah, whose resting place remains in the mosque courtyard to this day.

Visitors entering the forecourt are met by the Chowk Wazir Khan, a restored bazaar square that once supplied the mosque with scribes, bookbinders and calligraphers. Beyond the towering iwan, the inner courtyard opens into a world of colour that feels almost unreal. The mosque is celebrated globally for its kashi kari, the Persian inspired tile mosaic work that covers almost every vertical surface. Cobalt blues, turquoise greens, mustard yellows and iron reds form interlocking floral panels, cypress trees, wine flasks and poetic verses in Persian and Arabic. The four minarets, each around thirty metres tall, were the first of their kind in the subcontinent to be octagonal and tiled right to the very top.

The prayer chamber is divided into five bays beneath a line of shallow domes, and the central mihrab carries elegant Quranic calligraphy attributed to Muhammad Ali of Tabriz, one of the finest calligraphers of his era. The faithful still gather here daily, reciting the same verses read in the presence of Shah Jahan's courtiers almost four centuries ago, invoking blessings upon the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him and his family and upon his noble companions may God be pleased with them.

Painstaking conservation led by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Walled City of Lahore Authority has stabilised the minarets, revived faded frescoes and returned the building to its intended brilliance. It remains a living, working mosque, never a museum piece, welcoming worshippers before every adhan across the seasons of the year.