Moti Masjid

Owing to its pearl like (white) color and pretty small size, this mosque inside the fort was named as Moti Masjid or Pearl Mosque. This unique mosque has stories, myths, and mysteries associated with it. it is known to have housed  spirits and ghosts, and many tourists have claimed to see them. The mosque has a strange aura and will take you into a trance as you step in through the narrow stairs.

This unusual Mughal monument was built in 1645 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The historical accounts state that it might have been built along with Dolat Khana Khaas-o-Aam of Shah Jahan because the structure is located very close to the mosque area.

Main entrance to the Moti Masjid is through an irregular octagonal hallway of the mosque, hardly 21 x 25 ft, is impressive in the composition of its vaults with their lofty proportions. Entering through the low height doorway into the courtyard, one is dazzled by the sunlit courtyard. It is a two-bay five aisle mosque, with a footprint of 56 x 24 ft. This mosque entirely comprises of chaste white marble with multi-foil arched colonnade.

Even though it is a small mosque but it has all the constituents of a mosque: a courtyard, a place for ablutions, cloisters for scholars and main prayer chamber with a central mihrab. The shallow domes are double in structure, devised for better acoustics. The facade of gracefully cusped arches defining each aisle, with the central one rising above the rest, is terminated with an elegantly executed pietradura frieze. Worth noticing are the finely inlaid as a sandwich of gold strip between two fine black marble outlines and small niches in the center of the rear walls of bays.

Moti Masjid was turned into a temple and renamed Moti Mandir. Later the Mosque was used as a building for the state treasury or Tosha Khana. Moti Masjid has been conserved by Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) in 2020.