Note 70 — M (continued 3)

The mosques of the Māppillas are quite unlike those of any other Muhammadans. “Here,” Mr. Fawcett writes,70 “one sees no minarets. The temple architecture of Malabar was noticed by Mr. Fergusson to be like that of Nepāl: nothing like it exists between the two places. And the Māppilla mosque is much in the style of the Hindu temple, even to the adoption of the turret-like edifice which, among Hindus, is here peculiar to the temples of Siva. The general use nowadays of German mission-made tiles is bringing about, alas! a metamorphosis in the architecture of Hindu temples and Māppilla mosques, the picturesqueness disappearing altogether, and in a few years it may be difficult to find one of the old style. The mosque, though it may be little better than a hovel, is always as grand as the community can make it, and once built it can never be removed, for the site is sacred ever afterwards. Every Māppilla would shed his blood, rather than suffer any indignity to a mosque.” The mosques often consist of “several stories, having two or more roofs, one or more of the upper stories being usually built of wood, the sides sloping inwards at the bottom. The roof is pent and tiled. There is a gable end at one (the eastern) extremity, the timber on this being often elaborately carved.”