146 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [April, 1910. 



11 Saith Almighty God; Verily mosques belong to Allah ! 

 Do not worship any one save Allah ! 



" This gate was firmly constructed and built in the days 

 of the reign of the Khalifah of Him whose aid is sought (by men) 

 Nasiru-d-Duniya wa-d-Din Abu-1-Muzaffar Mahmud Shah, the 

 King — May Allah perpetuate his rule ! — by one entitled Khwa- 

 jahJahan — May the Merciful protect him from (all) evils! — in 

 the frontier territory of Mubarakabad — May Allah preserve it 

 to the Day of Judgment ! And this was on the 20th of Sha'ban 

 in the year 863 of the years of the Hijra (of the Prophet) — May 

 the peace of God be on him and on all his family !" 



Dr. Wise, who was probably misled by Stewart's asser- 

 tion that Dacca is a modern city, suggested to Dr. Blochmann 

 that the slab on which the inscription is found "has been re- 



-1 - ") •> 



moved from some other older mosque and city to Dhaka, 

 but from the position of the mosque on high land close 

 to the Dhakeswari shrine and next to the site of the old fort 

 erected by Ibrahim Khan Fath Jang, the third Mughul Governor 

 of Bengal, about the year 1620 AJX,* as well as the facts 

 stated earlier in this paper, there seems no reason to doubt 

 that the inscription has always belonged to the Gird-i Qila' 

 mosque. The original building has now disappeared, the 

 roof having collapsed in 1902 as the combined result of being 

 struck by lightning and shaken by the 1897 earthquake, but 

 the local people are now rebuilding another mosque on the 

 foundations of the old one. According to Khan Bahadur Saiyid 

 Aulad Hasan {op, tit., p. 34) the original building measured 

 inside 27' x 16|' and the walls were 4' thick. The slab (now 

 broken in two pieces) is of slate and has the following dimen- 

 sions : — 



Length . . 4' 9" Length of actual inscription 4' 6£" 



Height .. V l\ m Height of ditto IH" 



Thickness . . 5" at top decreasing to 4|" at the bottom. 



The stone originally belonged to some even older building, 

 as the top is still covered with sculptured floral designs. 



1 As pointed out by Dr. Ross this is unlikely though apparently 

 &*»» is the reading of the inscription. Mr. Azo, to whom a photo of the 

 slab was subsequently shown, suggests that just as in the middle of the 



first line the individual letters of the words **♦ <^V 3 S 5 ^' 1 are fused 



together, so it might be possible here to read {&****!* %Jf^ S>^*> itf* 

 " (in the year 863) of the Hijra of the Noblest of the Prophets." 

 * Aulad Hasan, op. tit., p. 17. 



