Varanasi

In the 15th century the city of Sanskrit learning also heard poets who preached in the language of the street. The most famous was Kabir, raised in Varanasi by a Muslim weaver, who mocked the rituals of Hindus and Muslims alike and sang that God was found in neither temple nor mosque. His verses outlived him in the mouths of weavers and pilgrims, and when he died, both faiths claimed him as their own.

The city's chief temple of Shiva, the Vishvanath, rose and fell with its rulers. Akbar's Rajput general Man Singh and his finance minister Todar Mal rebuilt it in the late 16th century, but in 1669 Aurangzeb had it pulled down and a mosque raised on its foundations, and for a century pilgrims prayed among the ruins. Only in 1780, after Varanasi had passed to the East India Company, did Ahilyabai Holkar, the Maratha queen of Indore, build a new Vishvanath temple beside the mosque.