Sarkhej Roza is a mosque and complex tomb which is 7 km south-west of Ahmedabad situated in the village of Makarba. There were many Roza’s across Gujarat, the Sarkhej Roza is the most revered. Sarkhej was once a prominent centre of Sufi Culture in the country, where influential Sufi saint Shaikh Ahmed Ganj Baksh lived. It was on the saint’s suggestion that Sultan Ahmed Shah set up his capital on the banks of the Sabarmati, a few miles away from Sarkhej. The architecture of the complex is credited to Azam and Muazzam Khan; two Persian brothers who are buried in the tomb near Vasna, Ahmedabad. Shaikh Ahmed Khattu Ganj Bakhsh of Anhilwad Patan, the friend and adviser of Ahmad Shah I, retired to Sarkhej in his later life and died here in 1445. In his honour a tomb, begun in 1445 by Muhammad Shah II, was, in 1451, finished by his son Qutbuddin Ahmad Shah II. The next Sultan Mahmud Begada was fond of the place and expanded the complex greatly. The Sarkhej Roza complex has been interpreted as being composed of both ‘jism'(body) and ‘ruh'(spirit), giving it the qualities of a human being. Like many monuments built during that period, the Sarkhej Roza fused both non-Indian and Indian principles of architecture. While the ringed domes, the profusion of pillars and brackets can be claimed to follow the Islamic west asian genre (even though they can also be found in Indian architecture itself since much before), much of the ornamentation and motifs have Indian Hindu designs. Most of the buildings do not have arches and depend on pierced stone trellises for stability. In its architecture, Sarkhej Roza is an example of the early Islamic architectural culture of the region, which fused Islamic stylistic influence from Persia with Indian Hindu and Jain features to form a composite Indo-Saracenic architectural style.
