Wazir Khan Mosque

Wazir Khan Mosque sits deep within the Walled City of Lahore, reached through the bazaar near Delhi Gate, and was constructed between 1634 and 1641 on the orders of Hakim Ilmuddin Ansari, a physician who rose to become governor of Lahore under the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and took the title Wazir Khan. The mosque is built over the grave of a Sufi saint, Miran Badshah, and its five-chambered prayer hall and surrounding courtyard are covered almost entirely in kashi-kari, a technique of glazed tile mosaic in which cut ceramic pieces are set into geometric and floral patterns; frescoes with Quranic calligraphy and Persian verse cover additional surfaces. Two minarets rise above the main gateway, and small chambers around the courtyard originally functioned as a khanqah, or lodging for religious scholars and travelers, alongside shops whose rents helped fund the mosque's upkeep, an early example of an endowed commercial arrangement supporting a religious building. Considered the most richly tiled Mughal-period building surviving in Pakistan, the mosque suffered significant tile loss and structural deterioration over the 19th and 20th centuries. A major conservation project led by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture together with the Punjab government, completed in phases through the 2010s, restored large sections of the original tilework and frescoes, repaired the courtyard's drainage and structure, and revitalized the surrounding bazaar. The mosque remains an active place of worship, and donations collected on site go toward continuing restoration and maintenance of the complex.