Qutb-e-Alam's Mosque and Tomb

Also called the Vatva Dargah, this complex in the Vatva area of Ahmedabad grew around the memory of Qutb-e-Alam, a Suhrawardi saint born at Uch in 1388 who founded the Bukhari Sayyid line of Gujarat. Orphaned at ten, he was sent to Gujarat, where Sultan Muzaffar Shah I received him. After Ahmedabad was founded he settled first at Asaval and then at Vatva, and his best-known disciple was his son Shah Alam.

Nobles of the Ahmed Shah court first built a small shrine. Mahmud Begada then added a mosque, a tomb for one of the saint's sons, a big polygonal pond and a huge mausoleum. The mosque and son's tomb use the flat-roofed, trabeate temple manner, but the mausoleum relies on arches and lifts its dome high on a second tier of them. The tomb inside has an inlaid canopy, though the building was never finished.