area about ten miles in length and between two and three miles in breadth, date from the last half of the fourteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth. Some of them have pillars of polished basalt, instead of the usual brick piers, and the brickwork is faced with fine masonry, instead of tiles, exquisitely decorated in low relief. When the Indian mason was thus employed in the service of Islam he began experimenting with arch-construction in the same way as at Jaunpur, but the forms of the arches he used were those he had been accustomed to use in Buddhist and Hindu temples.
Gaur was absorbed into the empire of the Great Moguls in 1576, and soon became subject to the fate of the former Hindu city and many others like it. Its splendid deserted buildings were used as brickfields and quarries, from which ready-made materials could be transported for the building of other cities. It thus happens, says Fergusson, that Murshidābād, Māldā, Rangpur, and Rājmahal have been built almost entirely with its materials, whilst Hughly and even Calcutta are rich in the spoils of the old capital of Bengal.
