Moti Masjid

This is a pearl inside the fort. This mosque was named as Moti Masjid or Pearl Mosque because of its white pearl-like color and small size.

This small mosque has stories, myths, and mysteries associated with it. This mosque is known to have spirits and ghosts and many tourists have claimed to see them. The mosque has a strange aura and will take you into a trance as you step in through the narrow stairs.

The mosque was built in 1645 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The historical accounts state that it might have been built along with Dolat Khana Khaas-o-Aam of Shah Jahan because the structure is located very close to the mosque area.

Main entrance to the Moti Masjid is through an irregular octagonal hallway of the mosque, hardly 21’ x 25′, is impressive in the composition of its vaults with their lofty proportions. Entering through the low height doorway into the courtyard, one is dazzled by the sunlit courtyard. It is a two-bay five aisle mosque, with a footprint of 56’ x 24’. The mosque entirely faced with chaste white marble from its multi-foil arched colonnade.

Even though it is a small mosque but it has all the constituents of a mosque: a courtyard, a place for ablutions, cloisters for scholars and main prayer chamber with a central mehrab. The shallow domes are double domes, devised for better acoustics. The facade of graceful cusped arches defining each aisle, with the central one rising above the rest, is terminated with an elegantly executed pietradura frieze. Worth noticing are the finely inlaid as a sandwich of gold strip between two fine black marble outlines and small niches in the center of the rear walls of bays.

Moti Masjid was turned into a temple and renamed Moti Mandir. Later the Mosque was used as a building for the state treasury. Moti Masjid has been conserved by Punjab Walled Cities and Heritage Area’s Authority in 2020.