Madarsa Mahmud Gawan
Bidar district, India
The Mahmud Gawan Madrasa is a former madrasa, now mosque, in partial ruins, located in Bidar, in the state of Karnataka, India. It was completed in 876 AH (1471/1472 CE) and is an example of the regional style of Indo-Islamic architecture under the Bahmani Sultanate. Founded by the prime-minister of the sultanate in the late 15th century, it bears testimony to the scholarly genius of Mahmud Gawan, who first came to Delhi, in exile, as a Persian trader from Gilan in Iran and moved to Bidar in 1453. Mahmud reportedly built the madrasa with his own money and it functioned like a residential university which was built and maintained on the lines of Madrasa of Khurasan. The imposing and spacious building of the institution is considered as an architectural gem and an important landmark of Bidar. The structure is a Monument of National Importance, administered by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) since 1914. In 2014, UNESCO placed the building on its "tentative list" to become a World Heritage Site, under the name Monuments and Forts of the Deccan Sultanate.
Monument data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).