Photo 1. This is a wooden model of the mosque as envisaged by Shah Jahan Begum. When Shah Jahan Begum died in 1903 the mosque was incomplete.

It was completed only in 1973.

Stone was replaced by cement and domes were lighter.

Photo 2. Shah Jahan Begum had ordered Belgian glass finials for the Taj ul masajid.

Unfortunately her plans didn’t materialize

Photo 3. : This gorgeous Belgian glass rahal in the Taj ul masajid especially made for Shah Jahan Begum for the mosque

Photo 5&6 : inside the Dome.

The dome was completed later and has small bumps inside

Fathegarh was the first fort of the Bhopal State. The construction of Fatehgarh began in 1716 and Dost Mohammad Khan named it after his wife Fateh Bibi. It is said that the idea of this fort was conceived by both of them during a shikar expedition and Dost Mohammad selected the site on that very moonlit night. Remains of the fortification wall can be seen from the mosque

It is one of the cities highest points it offers a commanding view of the city.

Initially a makeshift mosque for the prayer of the guards,  the mosque of 2 and a half steps was built during the construction of Fatehgarh fort begun by  Dost Mohammad Khan.

Daniel McCrohan of Lonely Planet paced  the floor and estimates its interior dimensions to be 16 metres square, smaller than another “world’s smallest mosque” of 25 metres square in built in 2002 at Naberezhnye Chelny, in honour of those who fought Ivan the Terrible.

The the mosque is plain inside , the two and half steps leading to the prayer hall is distinctive and gives the monument its name (2-1/2 stairs mosque).
The holes in the turret walls for pisitioning guns are a constant reminder of the danger under which the soldiers must have prayed while others guarded them and the Fort.

Today however they are building a dome and one storey above it thus enclosing the open burj and two prayer chambers on the rooms below which must have initially been for the soldiers to stay in.

The corresponding bastion on the other side of the wall has a water tank on it.
Fatehgarh itself no longer exists except for its walls.
It houses a medical college instead

The original steps leading upto the wall. The steps seen now in the mosque are a recent edition.
There were 2 1/2 steps from the wall to the bastion mosque originally.

These are recent. Syed Zia ul Hasan the Imam who showed me around

Before the mosque

Stones for sitting on for wuzu earlier. Now replaced by more convenient and lighter ones.

Sheds made to accommodate crowds of worshippers

The upper level being built

The wall ramparts which led to the mosque.

The medical college where once fort existed

I loved the place