Sidi Saiyyed mosque/ Sidi Saiyyed ni jali was built in 1573, the last year of the Gujarat Sultanate before the Mughals invaded, the mosque is one of the finest specimens of the prodigious architectural accomplishments of the Sidis in India. Sidi Saiyyed, or “Sidi Saeed” as an inscription in the mosque refers to him, was a royal slave in the service of Sultan Mahmud III, the last ruler of the Gujarat Sultanate. Upon the sultan’s death, he joined the retinue of the Abyssinian general Bilal Jhajhar Khan. By the time he retired from service, Sidi Saiyyed had amassed a considerable fortune, which he used to build his beautiful mosque, as well as for acts of philanthropic charity, such as feeding the poor daily in his public kitchen. Situated in the heart of the 600-year-old walled city of Ahmedabad, the design of the mosque is entirely in the arcuate system of construction, involving arches, domes, squinches, and vaults. The mosque is set up like a theatre without a fourth wall, celebrated for the intricately carved filigree work on its jalis (screen windows). The 20th-century Indologist and art historian Vincent Arthur Smith described these jalis as the “most artistic stone lattice-work to be found anywhere in the world.” The ornamental latticework adorns the 10 nearly semicircular windows of the mosque, with some displaying complex geometrical designs and others carved in the manner of intertwined trees and foliage. The most impressive of them all is the Sidi Saiyyed Jali, located to the right of the central walled arch. Sixteen feet in size, the carvings on this jali represent the Tree of Life motif, which is an artistic representation of a tree believed to grow in paradise according to Islamic mythology. This finely wrought motif has become an unofficial symbol of Ahmedabad, India’s first UNESCO World Heritage city.
