History and the Ayodhya Judgement

42 • History and the Judgement of the Allahabad High Court Trenches ZE1-ZH1 in the north and E6-H5/H6 in the south (p. 41).

How then does one explain the location of niches outside the floor area of the massive structure? This is typical of a mosque/eidgah, which would have a long, wide north-south wall, the qibla being in the western direction, with niches at intervals on its inner face and there may be a small covered area in the centre, which would have narrow demarcating walls. The ASI is able to produce no example of a similar recess and niches from any temple.

3.12A. The context and positions of the recess and niches show that these could only have belonged to a Muslim mosque or eidgah.

The argument advanced by the “Hindu parties” has been that the niche (taq) and mihrab (recessed false-doorway) in mosques are invariably arched, and here the niche at least is rectangular and so must belong to a temple (Para 3991, VHP Counsel: sub-paras XXXIV to XXXVIII). But if we look at Fuhrer’s Sharqi Architecture of Jaunpur (a book submitted to the Court) we find in its Plate XXVII (‘Jaunpur: Interior of the Lal Darwaza Masjid’), a refutation of this facile assumption. The niche (taq) close to the mimbar on the right is rectangular, while the mihrab to the left, on the other side of the mimbar, is basically rectangular (flat-roofed) with the arches above being only ornamental. The VHP advocate’s claim that the floor of the mihrab is always at the same level as the main floor (Para 3991: VHP Counsel, sub-para XXXVIII) is a ridiculous one, as may be seen from the illustration of mihrabs in the Jaunpur Jami Masjid (Fuhrer, op.cit., Plates LXIII and LXIV), where the floor of the mihrab stands in one case two courses and in the other one course over the main floor. See also Fuhrer’s text, p.47, for how the mihrab is always placed ‘towards Makka’, i.e. to the west. The evidence from the 15th-century Lal Darwaza Masjid is crucially relevant since the Babri Masjid in its design closely followed the style of Sharqiperiod (15th-century) mosques of Jaunpur.

3.13. Now let us see the way in which Justice Agarwal in Para 3928 dismisses all the objections to the attribution of remains of the walls and floors, found under the extant floor of the Babri Masjid, to an imagined temple: “The statements of Experts (Archaeologist) (sic!) of plaintiffs (Suit-4) in respect of walls and floors have already been refer-