KUSUMBA MOSQUE

It is situated at the village Kusumba at Manda upazila under Naogaon district and located on the western side of Rajshahi-Naogaon high road. This mosque is just 50 km away from Naogaon city.   This mosque is one of the best preserved ancient monuments of Bangladesh. According to an inscription it was erected by a patron Sulayman in 1558 during the reign of Ghiyath al-Din Bahadur Shah. In front of the mosque there is a Dighi (large pond) which catered mainly for the need of the ablution for the Musallis. Brick and stone are used for its construction. It measures internally 12.34m by 8.07m with a wall thickness of 1.82m. A row of two stone pillars divides the interior of the mosque into two aisles and three bays which correspond to the arched doorways on the south, east and north respectively. There are three mihrabs in the qiblah wall (smaller one is in the ladies gallery). It has four octagonal corner towers of each corner. In the north-west corner of the prayer hall is a raised stone gallery which is called Badshah-ka-takht or ladies gallery. The roof of the mosque is covered with six domes. The decoration of the mosque entirely consists of stone carvings, confined mainly to the mihrabs and archways like the Chhota Sona mosque in Gaur.