The new temple was built at the behest of Rani Ahilyabai Holkar long after Aurangzeb's desecration . As already explained by Sherring, all the temple… - Praful Goradia

It is strange that what a writer on Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti and the Dargah Sharief at Ajmer has said about the role of Raja Jaichand should have precipitated our visit to Kannauj on August 2, 2001. Equally strange is the fact that our interest in this great capital city of ancient Hindustan was first aroused in 1983 by Dr N .K. Bezbaruah, the versatile grand old man of Assam. He then told us how proud he was to claim direct lineage from one of the chosen Kannauj Brahmins, who were invited specially to introduce Hinduism amongst the Ahoms who had captured power in Assam and had set up their capital city at Sibsagar in the 13th century. Incidentally, the Ahoms belonged to the Shan race whose base was in Thailand. The doctor was bemoaning the paradox of his clan being, on the one hand, so proud of its Hindu ancestry and, on the other, a few sons of the same proud families taking to gun s and terrorism, as it were, against the rest of Hindustan.

The first example of shuddhi that the author came across was the tomb of Sultan Ghari which has an interesting history and a delightful present. If only this example of popular spontaneity can be extended to all the temples converted into mosques, would there not be Hindu-Muslim friendship? Just go any afternoon and see for yourself.

Mukhlis and Khalis were in tum governors of Jaunpur under Ibrahim Naib Barbak, who was anxious to build an edifice for the residence of a celebrated saint named Saiyid Usman ofShiraz, who had fled from Delhi during Timur's invasion. In 1908, when the gazetteer was published by Nevill, the descendants of the saint still resided near the mosque. The style of architecture is not very different from that of the Jhanj hari masj id. The roof stands on ten rows of Hindu temple pillars. According to the gazetteer; the mandir had been built by Raja Vijaya Chandra. The river Gomti flows through the city of Jaunpur and there is an impressive bridge across the river. It is a massive stone structure built in the 1560s. The bridge does not rise towards its centre but is flat. It is an original construction. The only feature that mars its originality is a colossal stone lion standing over a small elephant. According to Nevill, it bears the stamp of ancient Hindu workmanship and must have adorned the gateway of some building erected by the Raja ofKannauj. To the west of the northern end of the bridge is the big fort of Jaunpur, built in the time of Ibrahim. But Firoz Shah Tughlaq is credited with having rebuilt the fortress on an old structure inherited from the Hindu era. Evidence of the legacy. is the masjid inside the fort, built on temple pillars of various shapes and designs. Nevill has remarked that some of the pillars are upside down which supports the theory that a number of temples in Jaunpur were destroyed in order to provide stones required to build the fort; the inner face of almost every stone bore carvings, which had decorated Hindu temples.