The jaali screens of Fatehpur Sikri.
A jaali is a wall you can see through: a slab of stone carved right through into a geometric lattice, so the pattern is made of what is cut away. The Mughals raised it to an art at Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's red-sandstone city near Agra, where light and air arrive already patterned.
What a jaali is
A jaali is a pierced screen. A mason takes a slab of stone, most often red sandstone or white marble, and cuts a repeating geometric lattice clean through it. The stone that remains is the line of the pattern; the holes are the field. Because the geometry repeats and every opening is braced by its neighbours, a screen the size of a wall holds together with no frame. It is one of the most complete answers the tradition gives to the question of what geometry is for.
Light, air, and a cooler room
A jaali is also a climate device. It lets daylight in but breaks the glare into a soft, even pattern; it lets a breeze through while the small openings speed it up and cool it; and it holds privacy without shutting out the world. Long before mechanical cooling, the jaali did with cut stone what a building now asks of glass and machinery. The geometry is doing environmental work, not only decorative.
The hexagram at Fatehpur Sikri
Fatehpur Sikri, begun about 1571, is Akbar's short-lived capital, and its screens are the reason it is remembered. Many turn on the six-point star, the hexagram sometimes called the Seal of Solomon, which tiles the plane cleanly and carves strongly enough to survive being cut right through. From here the craft would pass to marble and reach its finest at the Taj. The studio draws the jaali the way the stone reads it, the linework carrying the pattern and the fields left open as the cut.
Derived, not generated
A jaali cannot be faked. The lattice has to close, every opening braced, or the stone falls apart when it is cut. The studio draws it from the construction so it always closes, derived not generated, and exports it as true linework a workshop can cut. The Mughals proved the geometry with a chisel; the studio proves it the same way, on the way to the saw.
Draw a jaali yourself.
Build the six-point screen and the hexagram lattice, set the fills open as a pierced screen and export true linework for cutting - free in the browser.
Open the studioCommon questions
What is a jaali?
A jaali is a pierced screen, a slab of stone carved right through into a geometric lattice, used in Indian and Mughal architecture in place of a solid wall or window. The stone is the line of the pattern and the openings are the field, so the geometry is made of what is cut away. Jaalis let light, air and view pass while holding privacy and cutting glare, and the finest are red sandstone or white marble.
What is Fatehpur Sikri?
Fatehpur Sikri is the red-sandstone city built by the Mughal emperor Akbar from about 1571, near Agra, and used as his capital for a short time before it was abandoned. Its palaces and the tomb of Salim Chishti are famous for their jaali screens, among the most refined pierced stonework anywhere, and for a geometry that leans on the six-point star.
Why are jaali screens geometric?
Because the geometry does the work. A repeating star or hexagram lattice can be carved right through a stone slab and still hold together, since every opening is braced by its neighbours, and it breaks light and air into an even, repeating pattern across the whole screen. The Mughals favoured the six-point hexagram, sometimes called the Seal of Solomon, which tiles cleanly and carves strongly.