Jama Masjid

This guide to the Jama Masjid in Delhi traces how Shah Jahan, fresh off building the Taj Mahal, raised his empire's holiest mosque here in the seventeenth century, with five thousand craftsmen shaping its red sandstone and one deliberate choice: the imam's pulpit set higher than the emperor's own throne. It follows the relics kept by the north gate, said to include hair and sandals of the Prophet Muhammad, and the mosque's darker turn after 1857, when British soldiers took it over as a barracks. Take a moment by the north gate cabinet, wrapped in red velvet, before you move on.