Quake spares religious monuments

“Who can damage these religious structures? They were built by the pure, and they are guarded by angels,” said Samad Naqash, a devout Muslim in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian administered Kashmir.

Soon after Saturday’s quake, Naqash and hundreds of other Srinagar residents rushed to Kashmir’s most revered shrine — the Hazratbal mosque with tall minarets and a white marble dome.

The mosque is believed to house a relic revered by millions of Muslims — a strand of hair of Prophet Mohammed.

“I thought that if the dargah (shrine) can be damaged, what would be left of us,” said Naqash. Like others, he was relieved to see that only some marble pieces fell off the mosque, which suffered no other damage.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir, ruled at various times by Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Afghans and Sikhs, became predominantly Muslim in the late 14th century after conversions by Muslim rulers. Hindus and Muslims have peacefully coexisted despite an ongoing Muslim separatist rebellion, and have been offered as an example of communal harmony for the rest of India, which has sharp religious fault lines.

The legacies of the various religions have left their mark in the region in the forms of temples, mosques and monuments, including the 200 B.C. Shankaracharya temple.

The stone temple, dedicated to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, suffered no damage.

“There has been no major damage reported to monuments around the state,” said a senior official of the Archaeological Survey of India, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly.

The bulk of Kashmir’s cultural and religious heritage is the Indian held part, around the Srinagar Valley, which for centuries was the most populous and influential part of the region.

There are relatively few monuments in the Pakistani side, and their fate was not immediately known because of lack of communications following widespread devastation there.

Mohammed Afzal, an archaeologist in Pakistan, said they don’t know whether any temples were damaged in Pakistani Kashmir. “There are two-three temples in (Pakistani) Kashmir, but we don’t know whether the earthquake has damaged them,” he told The Associated Press.

One of the most valuable and prominent landmarks in Indian Kashmir is the mud-and-brick wall around the old part of Srinagar. It was commissioned by the 16th century Mughal emperor Akbar as a way of generating employment during a famine.

The wall was intact, as were most of the monuments controlled by his department, including the old royal palace in Srinagar, said Kashmir’s director-general of tourism, Salim Beg.

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