Indrajit Das, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Jamia Masjid
A mosque first built in 1394 and carried on more than three hundred deodar columns, each cut from a single tree — and the quietest large space in the old city.
A wooden mosque, rebuilt three times
Jamia Masjid stands in Nowhatta in the old city and was first built in 1394 under Sultan Sikandar. It has burned and been rebuilt more than once, and what stands is essentially a seventeenth-century reconstruction of a fourteenth-century plan. The interior is the reason to come: a forest of more than three hundred deodar columns, each cut from a single tree, carrying a low wooden roof over a square courtyard with a chinar-shaded tank at its centre. It is Indo-Saracenic rather than Mughal, with pagoda-like pyramidal roofs over the four gateways that mark Kashmiri wooden architecture out from anything else in India. It is an active congregational mosque, busiest on Fridays.
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What to look at
The structure is the architecture; there is little applied decoration.
🌲 The columns
- More than three hundred deodar trunks, each a single tree, in rows down the prayer halls
- Plain, enormous, and the whole effect of the building
🏯 The roofs
- Four pyramidal spires over the gateways — the Kashmiri wooden form rather than a Mughal dome
🌳 The courtyard
- A square court with a tank and chinars, and one of the few genuinely quiet spaces in the old city
🛠️ The lanes around it
- Papier-mâché, khatamband ceiling work, walnut carving and sozni embroidery are all worked in the streets nearby
Getting there
In the old city, which is best walked rather than driven through.
🚗 By road
- Nowhatta, about twenty minutes from the boulevard depending on the old-city traffic
🚶 On foot
- The shrines on the Jhelum — Shah-e-Hamdan and Khanqah-e-Moula — are a walk away and are the same wooden tradition
🎟️ Entering
- No ticket. It is a working mosque, and visitors are received outside prayer times
When to go
Around the prayer timetable, not through it.
🕰️ Time of day
- Mid-morning, between prayers, when the halls are empty and the light comes low through the columns
- Fridays are the congregational prayer and the mosque is full; visitors should not be inside then
📅 Season
- Comfortable year round — the interior is cool in summer and sheltered in winter
⏱️ How long
- Three quarters of an hour, and longer if you walk out into the craft lanes afterwards
Worth knowing
It is a working mosque in a working quarter.
👕 Dress
- Modest dress, shoulders and knees covered; women should carry a headscarf
- Shoes are removed at the entrance to the prayer halls
🙏 Prayer times
- Visits are outside them, and Friday midday in particular is not a visiting hour
🛠️ Combine it with the crafts
- The workshops around Nowhatta are the reason to give the old city an afternoon rather than a stop
🧭 Conditions
- The old city can close at short notice. Local advice on the day governs, not a printed plan
Nearby
The rest of Srinagar.
Frequently asked
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