The Kamāl Maulā Mosque (), is a mosque in the city of Dhar, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. From 1903, the building also became known as the Bhojshala due to the efforts of K. K. Lele.See section below on the emergence of the current terminology.
Overview The building and site appears in the list Monument of National Importance under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Set in the centre of the old town, the building's history, ownership and use are disputed and are notionally claimed by both Muslims and Hindus, although the Republic of India has ultimate authority and jurisdiction over it. Until 2026, the ASI permitted Hindu worship on Tuesdays and Muslim worship on Fridays for two hours each week. Additionally, the site is open for worship of Sarasvatī on Vasant Panchami. When festivals coincided in the past, communal tensions arose, requiring a police presence to keep the peace. The rules set out in the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Rules 1959, published in The Gazette of India, govern day-to-day operations, management, and administration of the site.
Before Indian independence, the building was a protected monument under Dhar State and the Darbar issued a decree in 1935 stating that "From the use of the word 'Bhojshala' at the beginning, it should never be assumed that this protected royal building will be converted into any other form. Just as prayers (Namaz) are offered at this time and there is no restriction upon them, similarly, in the future as well, there shall be no prohibition on offering prayers herein. This is a mosque, and in the future, it shall remain a mosque."Dhar State, Baspat, B. S., & Nadkar, K. (1935). Dhar State. Dhār Darbār धार दरबार. Vol. 57, No. 6. Saturday 24 August 1935. पार्ट १ एलान नं ९७३ भोजशाला मसजिद कमालमवलाना. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10827582. In May 2026, the Madhya Pradesh High Court subverted this decree and gave the right to worship at the disputed Bhojshala Temple-Kamal Maulā Mosque Complex to the Hindu and Jain community, based on a survey conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The court said that it drew on the 2024 ASI survey and the principles laid down by the Supreme Court of India, further suggesting that Muslim community ask for an alternative site from the state government. The parties involved in the case have appealled to the Supreme Court of India and the outcomes are awaited.
Location and early history
The monument is located in the middle of the medieval circular city of Dhar, likely built by the Paramara dynasty from the 10th century. The city was long one of the capitals of Malwa and the seat of the provincial government in later centuries, becoming the Maratha capital of the Powars in the 18th century. A prominent centre of education, manuscripts compilation, exchange and cattle trading, it also seems to have been a centre of metallurgy, as suggested by the name Dhārānagara (city of swords) and the iron pillar found there (see Dhar iron pillar). After a number of wars between the Pramāras and the Western Chalukya Empire, the Seuna (Yadava) dynasty, the Chaulukya dynasty of Gujarat and the Vaghela dynasty, in the course of which Dhār was repeatedly sacked and burned, Malwa came part of the Delhi Sultanate in opening years of the 14th century under Ayn al-Mulk Multani. The Kamāl Maula masjid was put up soon after, but the exact year is not recorded. An inscription found beside the building dated 1392-93 CE describes repairs by Dilāwar Khān, the then governor (see illustration here).. The inscription is given in Zafar Hasan, “The Inscriptions of Dhār and Māndū,” Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1909–10): 6-29. Online: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15170381 At some stage after the death of Chishti Sufi saint Kamāl al-Din in about 1331 CE, his tomb was placed next to the mosque and the building came to be known as Kamāl Maula mosque.For the date, Mukhtar Ahmad Khan, Purāne charāg: Bujurgānadīn-ē Mālavā [Muslim saints of Malwa] (Dhar: Muslim Education Society, 1994) notes the precise date is not so certain. Online: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3701622 This suggests the building was constructed shortly after 1304-05 (the beginning of the tenure of Ayn al-Mulk Multani as governor) and before 1331 (the death of Kamāl-al-Dīn).
Architecture
The building is rectangular in plan, with a gatehouse on the east side and a prayer hall on the west. Narrow arcades run around the north, south and west sides. The arched entrance to the gatehouse was rebuilt in the time of Powars, probably in the 19th century, but the interior features are original. The inscription (illustrated here) was likely removed when the entrance was refurbished. The south wall of the building has been in a precarious state for more than a century and several parts of the wall toward the east appear to have been rebuilt; large buttresses were installed outside to support south wall beginning in the 1920s if not before and have since been strengthened.Current state of the southern buttresses can be seen in Tripathi, A. (2024). Report on Scientific Investigations, Survey and Excavations at Bhojshala Temple cum Kamal Maula Mosque Complex, Dhar (Madhya Pradesh): 10, 23. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16738073.
Internally, the building has numerous sandstone pillars of varying design, with most of these dating to the 12th and 13th centuries. The pillars were not simply re-cycled, but put one on top of the other to raise the height of the ceiling. This follows the building practices seen at Ajmer and the Qutb complex in Delhi. In two places, domes of trabeate construction, decorated with intricate cusps and lotus forms, have been added. The miḥrāb and minbar are later in date, likey added in the late 1300s by Dilawar Khan, the first king of Mandu under the Malwa Sultanate. The miḥrāb is notable for its cubical shape, a design that was consciously based on the Kaaba in Mecca.Zafar Hasan, “The Inscriptions of Dhār and Māndū,” Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (1909–10): 6-29. The slightly later mosques at Mandu have a similar and their inscriptions explicitly mention the Ka'ba. The practice is not unique to Dhār and has been noted in the Deccan.Peyvand Firouzeh, “Distance and Metaphor: Replicating the Ka‘ba in Deccan India,” The Art Bulletin 108, no. 1 (2026): 90–123. doi:10.1080/00043079.2026.2617846. In the south-east corner is a small cell or khazāna. Some inscriptions and antiquities were recovered here in 2024.Entrance door to the khazāna with photographs of the cell interior: Tripathi, A. (2024). Report on Scientific Investigations, Survey and Excavations at Bhojshala Temple cum Kamal Maula Mosque Complex, Dhar (Madhya Pradesh): 10, 84-85. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16738073. A square tank or Hawz is located in the middle of the courtyard. Ernest Barnes, the one time political agent, regarded this tank as a modern addition and sought its removal.Barnes, E., National Archives of India, & Archaeological Survey of India. (1904). Government of India. Proceedings of the Foreign Department, Internal B, 1904. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10809072. His suggestion was not heeded however.
Inscriptions The building contains a range of stone panels with Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions collected from different places and installed on the walls and floors, apparently assembled for display in medieval times rather like a modern museum, with K. K. Lele referring to it as "a sort of standing library"K. K. Lele, “Fragment of an Inscribed Hymn of Sarasvatī found at Mandu.” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 8, no. 1 (1926): 142–44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19697720. In this later piece, more than 20 years after his 1903 paper, Lele no longer uses the term Bhojshala..There are more than 150 inscription fragments from the site, the most important being as follows:Alok Tripathi et al, Report on Scientific Investigations, Survey and Excavations at Bhojshala Temple cum Kamal Maula Mosque Complex, Dhar (Madhya Pradesh), Volume 4, Inscriptions (Archaeological Survey of India, 2024) gives a census available at the time of the survey in 2024.
Grammatical inscriptions: Serpentine scimitars of Udayāditya and Naravarman The oldest dated inscriptions in the building contains two serpentine grammatical diagrams inscribed on the lower parts of pillars . One is located directly to the right of the minbar and was registered as pillar 50 in the survey conducted in 2024 by the Archaeological Survey of India (see illustration).Alok Tripathi et al. Report on Scientific Investigations, Survey and Excavations at Bhojshala Temple cum Kamal Maula Mosque Complex, Dhar (Madhya Pradesh), 10 vols (Archaeological Survey of India, 2024), volume 2. These records, which contain the system of Sanskrit phonology and grammar, are what prompted K. K. Lele to describe the building as the 'Bhojshala' or Hall of Bhoja because king Bhoja was the author of a number of works on poetics and grammar, among them the Sarasvatīkaṇṭhābharaṇa or 'Necklace of Sarasvatī'. The colophon of one grammatical chart, however, mentions that it is the "unique magical sword belonging to kings Udayāditya and Naravarman". The earliest date that can be assigned to these records is thus Naravarman, a Paramāra king who ruled circa 1094–1133.Saarthak Singh, “Serpentine Scimitars and Sarasvati’s Speech: The Materials of Knowledge in Medieval Malwa, c.1100–1400,” Arts Asiatiques 79 (2025): 5-30. Because Bhoja died about 1055 CE, this means the oldest inscriptions at the site are more than a century after his time.
Rāüla vela of Roḍa The remaining inscriptions belong to circa 1200 CE, either based on their date or paleographical style. The first inscription to be taken from the site was removed by John Malcolm from the minbar of the Kamāl Maula (see illustration). This is now identified as the Rāüla vela of Roḍa, a unique poetic work in the earliest forms of Hindi.
Kodaṇḍakāvya The Kodaṇḍakāvya was a very large work that contained more that 572 stanzas in Prakrit. Some of its parts were removed to the museum in Dhār fort where they are currently on display.
The Kūrmaśataka This inscription was found by K. K. Lele in 1903 in the miḥrāb, the inscribed text turned inward. It consists of two poems in Prakrit praising Kūrma. This is not the well-known Kūrma incarnation of the god Viṣṇu, but rather the primal tortise or Ādikūrma. The inscription is currently on display inside the building. An edition and translation appeared in 2003 by V. M. Kulkarni.V. M. Kulkarni, ed., Kūrmaśatakadvayam: Two Prakrit Poems on Tortoise Who Supports the Earth, 1st ed. (Ahmedabad: L.D. Institute of Indology, 2003).
The Vijayaśrīnāṭikā This inscription, like the Kūrmaśataka, was found by K. K. Lele in 1903 in the miḥrāb, the text again turned inward. It is a Sanskrit drama called Vijayaśrīnāṭikā composed by Madana, the preceptor of king Arjunavarman. The inscription opens with an invocation to Śiva and reports that the play was performed before Arjunavarman in the temple of Sarasvatī. The play refers to the temple under various names—Bhāratī bhavana, Śāradā sadman—and says that it was “the chief temple that adorned the eighty-four cross-roads of Dhar.” Old Dhār being laid out as a grid, the main temple would have stood at the centre. Only the first two acts of the play are preserved, the final acts would have been given in a second tablet that has not been located. The inscription is currently on display inside the building, just inside the entrance. The Sarasvatī mentioned in this record stands at the heart of current controversies about the building (see below, The Bhojshala controversy).
Restoration after 1903