India, March 23 -- Above the southern entrance of the 600-year-old Jamia Masjid in Srinagar is an inscription singing praises to Allah.
Most visitors miss it. It isn't their fault. It sits far above eye-level, and is written in Persian.
It is, however, a telling piece of history.
Like most epigraphs, it lists the dates of the mosque's construction. But it also lists subsequent repairs and reconstructions, all the way from the 1400s to the reign of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, in the early 1600s.
Perhaps its most evocative detail: The main calligrapher was named Muhammad Murad, and the master craftsman was a man named Hari Ram.
"This was something that had not been documented, that a Hindu craftsman worked on the Jamia Masjid," says Sri...