The Adina (Friday) mosque at Padua, the largest in medieval India, was built by Sultan Sikandar Shah (r. 1358-89), son and successor of Shams ud din Ilyas Shah (r. 1352-58), founder of the Ilyas Shahi dynasty. An inscription on the mosque dated 1375 ce proclaimed Sikandar Shah as “the most perfect of the Sultans of Arabia and Persia ...”. That was an open declaration that the political and cultural orientation of the Ilyas Shahi kings “lay, not in Delhi or Central Asia, but much further to the west — in Mecca, Medina, Shiraz, and ancient Ctestiphon.” There was no reference to any sovereign of the Indian subcontinent “where he was actually ruling”.
Sources available for members. Sign up free to see where this quote comes from
Find Similar