[excerpt] Celebrated for its 'Adil Shahï (1490- 1686 ce) architectural treasures, the city of Bijãpur, in northern Karnãtaka, has in recent years gained prominence, both in the popular domain as a destination for travel and tourism, and in the scholarly domain as an object of academic study.1  Although art-historical studies of Bijãpur have tended to focus attention upon the monuments and urban layout developed during the 'Adil Shahï period,2 the city was already marked by a cosmopolitan population and architectural activity before the 'Ãdil Shahïs transformed it during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to serve as their capital.

The city's pre-'Adil Shahï periods, however, have received less attention. Two of Bijapur's lesser-known monuments, the Mosque of Karim al-Din (ca. 1320 ce) and the so-called Mosque of Khwãja Jahãn (ca. 14th c), stand approximately 400 yards apart within the citadel at the center of the city, just inside its southern and northern entrances, respectively.3 Built during a period when migrants from northern India were changing the character of Bijapur's population, they constitute the city's earliest surviving "buildings of Islamic worship."4 Both mosques were constructed in local trabeate techniques from a combination of reused and new architectural materials, which were carved from stone and which bear a stylistic resemblance to their counterparts in the region's surviving eleventh- to fourteenth-century temples.

• 1. For the most recently published study of 'Adil Shahï Bijãpur, see Deborah S. Hutton, Art of the Court of Bijapur (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). Mark Brand's (Doctoral Candidate, Cambridge University) thesis titled "The Citadel of Bijapur: The Architecture and Ritual Topography of a Deccan Sultanate Centre," not only treats the 'Adil Shahï period but also considers the city's pre-'Âdil Shahï stages.
• 2. In addition to the above sources, see Henry Cousens, Bijãpur and its Architectural Remains, vol. 37 of Archaeological Survey of India 19 16 (reprint, Varanasi: Bharatiya Publishing House, 1976); John Burton-Page, "Bijapur," in Islamic Heritage of the Deccan, ed. George Michell (Bombay: Marg, 1986), pp. 58-75; George Michell and Mark Zebrowski, Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates, vol. 1.7 of The New Cambridge History of India (New York: Cambridge University Press, !999)5 PP- 41~47> 86-98.
• 3. neither mosque has been treated extensively in any published discussion, for the Mosque of Karïm al-Dïn, see Cousens, Bïjapûr, pp. 41-43; B. D. Verma, Glories of Bijapur (Poona: B. D. Verma, n.d.), pp. 67-74; Z. A. Desai, "Architecture - The Bahmanis," in History of Medieval Deccan, vol. 2, éd. H. K. Sherwani and P. M. Joshi (Hyderabad: Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1974), pp. 229-30; Richard Maxwell Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300-1700. Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 15-17; Burton-Page, "Bijapur," pp. 62, 65; M. V. Srini-vas, "Karimuddin Mosque of Bijapur," in Art and Architecture in Karnataka, Papers Presented at the National Seminar on Archaeology, 1985, ed. D. V. Devaraj and Channabasappa S. Patil (Mysore: Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, 1996), pp. 273-75; Michell and Zebrowski, Deccan Sultanates, p. 63 (where the mosque is incorrectly dated to 13 10). For the foundation inscription of the Mosque of Karïm al-Dïn, see M. Nazim, Bijapur Inscriptions, Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, vol. 49 (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1936), p. 25; Verma, Glories, pp. 71-74. For the Mosque of Khwãja Jahãn, see Cousens, p. 43. Although the patron of this mosque is unknown, for the sake of consistency I shall use the label "Khwãja Jahãn."
• 4. I take the phrase "buildings of Islamic worship" (and "Islamic ritual buildings") from Alka Patel. See Building Communities in Gujarat: Architecture and Society during the Twelfth through Fourteenth Centuries (Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2004), PP· 3I~32.