Sixty Dome Mosque (Shait Gumbad Mosque)

The Sixty Dome Mosque (Shait Gumbad Mosque) is a 15th-century brick mosque at Shait Gumbad, 5 km west of Bagerhat town in Khulna Division, Bangladesh, and the centrepiece of the Historic Mosque City of Bagerhat World Heritage Site. It is still used for daily prayer, and visitors of all faiths can see it in about an hour outside prayer times.

The mosque stands at Shait Gumbad, about 5 kilometres west of Bagerhat town in Khulna Division, on the edge of the Sundarbans region. In the 15th century Khan al-Azam Ulugh Khan Jahan, remembered as Khan Jahan Ali, governed this region for the Bengal Sultanate and founded a town he named Khalifatabad in honour of Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud Shah. The mosque is considered his earliest and greatest work, built before his death in 1459.

Besides daily prayer, the building probably served as an assembly hall and madrasa, and one raised brick platform inside may have been used by Khan Jahan for official business. After his death Khalifatabad declined, and much of it returned to forest. UNESCO inscribed the Historic Mosque City of Bagerhat in 1985.

The building measures about 48.8 by 32.9 metres outside, including the corner towers, and about 43.9 by 26.8 metres inside. Sixty pillars, set in ten rows of six, divide the prayer hall; most are slender stone columns. Seventy domes cover the side aisles, and the central nave is roofed with seven chauchala vaults, curved roofs modelled on Bengali village huts, decorated inside with terracotta lotus flowers.

The four round corner towers taper slightly and are topped by small domed chambers, giving the building a fortress-like look. Each front tower holds a 26-step spiral stair, now bricked up. There are eleven doorways on the east, seven each on the north and south and one on the west. The west wall holds ten mihrabs: the central one is grey sandstone with low-relief carving, and the other nine are brick with terracotta ornament. The mosque still hosts daily prayers.

A single ticket from the Department of Archaeology covers the mosque and the small Bagerhat Museum beside it, with a higher rate for foreign visitors. Visitors of all faiths are welcome outside prayer times, especially the Friday midday prayer, and should dress modestly and remove shoes. Morning light is best for photography. Allow an hour here and another two to three hours to see the tomb of Khan Jahan Ali, Singar Mosque and the Nine Dome Mosque nearby.

The site opens from 9:00 to 17:00 and closes on Sundays and government holidays; on Mondays it opens only in the afternoon, from 14:00, and on Fridays it pauses at midday for Jumma prayers. Bagerhat is about 45 minutes by road from Khulna, and the mosque sits on the Khulna–Bagerhat road with parking at the entrance. The grounds are flat with paved paths, and the mosque has one low step at the door.

Since January 2026 the Department of Archaeology has sold tickets for the mosque and the adjoining Bagerhat Museum through the Mygov e-ticketing service, built with the a2i programme, and visitors show a QR-coded ticket on their phone at the gate. The northern gate stays open without a ticket for worshippers coming to pray, and the shrine of Khan Jahan Ali is outside the ticketing system.