In the old walled city of Ahmedabad, a short walk from Lal Darwaja and the traffic of Relief Road, stands a modest sandstone mosque that most visitors could pass in a minute. It has no towering minarets and no grand courtyard. What stops people is a window: a pointed stone arch filled with a carving of intertwined trees, their branches curling into tendrils, a palm rising at the centre, the whole thing cut so finely that the stone reads as lace against the light. This is the Sidi Saiyyed jaali, and for many people in India it is the single image that stands for Ahmedabad.
The window is reproduced everywhere — on the logo of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, on souvenirs and city branding, and, increasingly, on CNC-cut pooja doors, headboards and living-room partitions in homes far from Gujarat. Most of those copies miss what makes the original work. They trace the outline of the trees but lose the structure underneath: the way the trunk and the palm carry the composition, the way the openings are spread evenly so the light falls softly, and the way the carving's thickness and bridge widths suit stone. A tree of life cut in thin MDF with hairline branches looks impressive on a screen and snaps within a year.
This article looks closely at one monument rather than the jaali tradition as a whole, which is covered in this blog's broader history of the Indian jaali. It sets out what is reliably known about the mosque, reads the tree-of-life composition piece by piece, explains why a stone screen of this kind controls light and privacy so well, and turns those lessons into dimensions, materials and rules for anyone who wants a tree-of-life jaali in a modern interior.
The mosque in its time: Ahmedabad at the end of the Sultanate
Ahmedabad was founded in 1411 by Sultan Ahmad Shah I of the Gujarat Sultanate, on the east bank of the Sabarmati. Over the next century and a half the Sultans and their nobles filled the city with mosques, tombs and stepwells built in the yellow sandstone of the region, and they did it with a particular kind of craftsmanship. Gujarat already had one of the strongest stone-carving cultures in India, refined over centuries of temple building in the Solanki tradition. Sultanate builders drew on those same carvers. The result, visible in the Jama Masjid of 1424 and in dozens of smaller buildings, is an architecture that uses the arches and plans of mosque design but is dense with the carved columns, brackets, niches and foliage of the region's temple workshops.
The Sidi Saiyyed Mosque belongs to the very end of that story. It was completed in 1572–73, the years in which the Mughal emperor Akbar brought Gujarat into his empire and the independent Sultanate came to an end. Its builder, according to the standard accounts, was Sidi Saiyyed, an Abyssinian (Habshi) nobleman in the service of the Sultanate's later court. Gujarat's ports had long-standing links with the Horn of Africa, and men of African descent rose to high military and court positions in the Sultanate; the mosque is one of the most visible reminders of that history. Because it was built so late, and so close to the political upheaval of the conquest, the mosque is often described as unfinished — the most commonly cited sign being an arch in the rear wall that is filled with plain stone where a carved screen might have been expected.
In plan, the mosque is small and simple: an arcaded prayer hall, open on its east side, with its back wall facing west towards Mecca. That back wall and the side walls are where the screens are. The rear wall carries pierced stone panels — most in geometric designs of squares and stars — and in the arches on either side of the central bay sit the two famous screens carved with trees and foliage. One of them, with its tangle of curving branches around a central palm, is the image the world knows as the Sidi Saiyyed jaali.
| Fact | What is reliably known | How confident |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Near Lal Darwaja, inside the old walled city of Ahmedabad | Certain — a well-known landmark |
| Date | Completed 1572–73 (AH 980), at the end of the Gujarat Sultanate | Standard date in heritage accounts |
| Builder | Sidi Saiyyed, an Abyssinian (Habshi) noble of the Sultanate period | Standard account; personal details vary by source |
| Material | Yellow sandstone, like most Sultanate buildings in the city | Visible on site |
| Plan | Arcaded prayer hall, open to the east, rear (qibla) wall to the west | Visible on site |
| The screens | Pierced stone panels in the rear and side arches; two carved with trees and foliage | Visible on site; counts differ slightly by source |
| Unfinished look | One rear arch filled with plain stone instead of a screen | Visible; the reason is traditionally linked to the Mughal conquest |
| Status today | Active mosque within the Historic City of Ahmedabad World Heritage property (2017) | UNESCO listing is certain |
The table separates what can be stated firmly from what is tradition. Heritage writing about the mosque sometimes adds colourful detail — exact counts of craftsmen, the name of a designer, the precise size of each screen — that is not well documented. Where this article gives dimensions, they are for modern reproductions, not measured figures from the monument, and the drawings of the mosque are schematic.
Reading the tree of life: how the composition is built
The famous screen fills the upper part of a pointed arch. At first glance it looks like a free, almost wild drawing of trees. Look longer and a clear structure appears, the same structure a designer needs to understand before redrawing it for a modern panel. There is a central vertical axis — a slender trunk that rises to a palm-like crown. On either side, larger trees grow from the base and lean outwards, their main branches sweeping up and then curling back inwards. From those branches come secondary branches, and from them a dense web of tendrils and leaves that fills every remaining space. The composition is close to mirror-symmetrical about the centre but not mechanically so; small differences between the two halves keep it alive.
Three design ideas hold it together. First, hierarchy: the trunk and the main branches are visibly thicker than the tendrils, so the eye reads the big shapes from across a room and discovers the fine detail only up close. Second, even distribution of openings: there are no large blank areas and no large holes, so light comes through as hundreds of small, similar patches rather than a few bright ones. Third, containment: everything grows within the arch, and the outer branches follow its curve, so the frame and the carving read as one object. A modern copy that keeps the outline of the trees but loses these three ideas is a picture of the Sidi Saiyyed jaali, not a working version of it.
| Element of the composition | What it looks like | The design job it does | Keep in a modern copy? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arch frame | Pointed arch that contains the carving | Gives a hard edge so the organic pattern does not look unfinished | Yes — even in a rectangular panel, keep a border |
| Central trunk and palm | Slender vertical stem rising to a fan of fronds | Sets the axis of symmetry and the focal point | Yes — it is the visual anchor |
| Main trees | Two larger trees rising from the base and leaning outward | Fill the width and carry most of the weight of the image | Yes — keep them visibly thicker than the detail |
| Primary branches | Long curves sweeping up and curling inward | Echo the arch and tie the trees to the frame | Yes — they also act as structural ribs |
| Tendrils and leaves | Dense small curls filling every gap | Spread the openings evenly; turn glare into dappled light | Simplify — scale them to the material's minimum bridge |
| Base | Ground line or mound from which the trees grow | Stabilises the composition visually | Yes — and give it a solid strip for strength |
| Asymmetries | Small differences between left and right | Stop the carving looking mechanical | Optional — CNC copies often mirror exactly |
Why the screen works: light, depth and privacy
A carved stone screen does not behave like a printed pattern on glass. Its openings have depth. When the low morning or late-afternoon sun strikes the screen at an angle, the sides of each opening catch some of the light and throw it back, so the light entering the room is softened and the glare of the sky is broken into many small, warm patches. Seen from inside against a bright exterior, the stone becomes a dark silhouette and the tree shapes glow at their edges. This is the view in most photographs of the Sidi Saiyyed jaali, and it depends on two things that thin modern copies often lack: enough thickness for the openings to have sides, and a dark-enough room behind the viewer for the contrast to read.
The same depth gives privacy. As explained in the broader jaali article, privacy through a screen depends on the brightness difference between its two sides: a person on the bright side sees the lit surface of the stone, not the dimmer interior behind it, while a person inside looks out with ease. A deeper screen narrows the angle through which anyone outside can see in, so even at moderate openness the interior stays private except from directly in front. The tree-of-life design adds a further effect: because the openings are irregular and curving rather than in straight rows, the eye cannot easily line them up to read a clear view through. That is a quality any designer of a privacy screen should borrow.
Fig. 3 explains why a convincing tree-of-life screen needs depth as well as detail. With openings about as wide as the screen is deep, angled sunlight strikes the sides of the openings and oblique views are cut off; with a thin board, both pass straight through. This is not an argument for using only stone. A 12 mm MDF screen can be given visual depth by backing it with a second, offset layer, by setting it in a deep frame, or by choosing 18–25 mm board and a slightly coarser pattern. What it argues against is the commonest modern mistake: a highly detailed tree drawn with hairline branches and cut in the thinnest board that will go through the machine.
The craft: carving a stone tree of life
Large stone screens of the Sultanate period were cut from sandstone slabs by hand. The broad method is well understood even where the specific workshop is not documented. The design was drawn full size and transferred to the dressed face of the slab. Carvers then drilled and chiselled through the openings, working from both faces so the stone did not spall where the tool broke through, and finally modelled the surface of the branches and leaves so that they read as rounded forms rather than flat strips. Big compositions were usually assembled from more than one slab fitted into the frame of the arch, with joints placed along branch lines where they would be least visible.
Two practical facts about stone shaped the design. First, sandstone is strong in compression but weak in tension, so a long thin branch spanning across a gap is fragile; the carvers kept connections short and frequent, with tendrils touching the next branch or the frame every few centimetres. Second, every branch also had to work as structure. In the Sidi Saiyyed screen the decorative tree and the load path are the same thing — the trunk and main branches carry the panel, the tendrils brace it. Modern CNC reproductions need exactly the same thinking, expressed as a minimum bridge width for the chosen material.
| Aspect | Sidi Saiyyed tree-of-life screen | Mughal marble geometric screen (e.g. Fatehpur Sikri, Agra) | Lesson for a modern designer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pattern type | Organic: trees, palm, foliage | Geometric: stars, hexagons, interlaced polygons | Organic patterns can filter light as well as geometric ones if openings are even |
| Material | Yellow sandstone | White marble | Material colour changes the mood of the light — warm vs cool |
| Scale of detail | Fine tendrils within large tree forms | Repeating module, often 50–300 mm | Organic designs need a clear hierarchy of thick and thin |
| Repeat | One composition per arch, near-symmetrical | Pattern repeats across the whole screen | A single composition must be sized to its frame, not tiled |
| Structure | Trunk and branches carry the load | The grid of bars carries the load | Thicken the structural lines first, then add detail |
| Best modern use | Feature panel: pooja door, headboard, single arch | Long partitions, facades, railings | Choose organic for a focal point, geometric for long runs |
From monument to emblem: the jaali in Ahmedabad's identity
By the twentieth century the tree-of-life screen had become shorthand for the city. When the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad was set up in 1961, it adopted a stylised version of the screen as its emblem, and it has stayed with the institute ever since. The image now appears on city heritage material, on hotel interiors and handicrafts, and on countless CNC panels sold as "Sidi Saiyyed design". That popularity has a cost: a motif that once belonged to one building becomes generic, and the copies drift further from the original with each generation of redrawing.
The renewed attention also has a positive side. In 2017 UNESCO inscribed the Historic City of Ahmedabad on the World Heritage List — the first Indian city to be listed as a whole — recognising the walled city's Sultanate monuments together with its pols, the dense neighbourhoods of carved wooden houses. The Sidi Saiyyed Mosque sits inside that historic city, and the listing has brought more structured heritage walks, signage and conservation attention to the area. For designers, the lesson is that the screen is part of a living urban fabric, not an isolated pattern to download.
Adapting the tree of life today: sizes and layouts
A tree-of-life jaali in a home is almost always a feature, not a partition run. It works best where a single panel can be seen as a whole: a pooja unit door pair, a backlit panel behind a bed, a single arch in a foyer, the upper part of a door between living and dining, or one bay of a facade screen. Because it is one composition rather than a repeating module, the panel must be drawn to fit its frame. Stretching a downloaded file to a different proportion distorts the trees, and tiling it side by side breaks the symmetry that gives the design its calm.
The safest proportions are close to the original's tall arch: roughly 2:3 to 1:2 width to height. A 1200 × 1800 mm panel, or a pair of 600 × 1800 mm pooja doors that read as one composition when closed, keeps the trees upright and lets the branches follow the curve of an arched top. For wider openings, the better move is a central tree-of-life panel flanked by simple geometric or plain slatted panels, exactly as the mosque itself sets its two carved screens among geometric ones.
| Use | Typical size (mm) | Recommended material | Openness target | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pooja unit door pair | 2 × 450–600 wide, 1500–2100 high | 18 mm MDF or HDHMR, PU or duco | 20–35 % | Backlight 50–100 mm behind for a glowing tree |
| Headboard feature | 1500–1800 wide × 900–1200 high | 12–18 mm MDF with 18 mm backing frame | 25–40 % | Fix to wall on battens; warm LED behind |
| Foyer arch | 900–1200 wide × 2100–2400 high | 18 mm HDHMR or 3 mm MS | 30–45 % | Arched head echoes the original |
| Upper door panel | 750–900 wide × 600–900 high | 12 mm MDF or 2 mm MS | 30–40 % | Keep lower door solid for strength |
| Facade bay | 1200–1500 wide × 2400–3000 high | 3–4 mm aluminium or GFRC | 35–50 % | Coarsen the pattern for viewing from the street |
| Garden or courtyard screen | 1000–1500 wide × 1800–2400 high | Sandstone or GFRC | 30–45 % | Structural check for weight; footing or slab fixing |
Materials and cost for a tree-of-life jaali
The fineness of the tendrils decides which material can reproduce the design. Metal cut by laser or waterjet keeps the closest detail because its minimum bridge is about equal to its thickness. Boards cut by CNC router need bridges of about one-and-a-half times their thickness, and the router bit leaves a radius in every inside corner, so tendrils must be simplified and slightly thickened. Stone and GFRC can be modelled in depth — the branches rounded rather than flat — which is the only way to get close to the original's carved surface. The costs below are the same indicative October 2026 ranges used in this blog's jaali history article, for finished, installed panels per square foot; an organic tree-of-life file usually sits in the upper half of each range because it takes longer to cut and finish than a simple geometric repeat.
| Material | Thickness | Minimum practical bridge | Detail fidelity to the original | Indicative installed cost (₹/sq ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MDF, CNC routed, PU or duco | 12–18 mm | ≈ 18–25 mm | Medium — tendrils simplified | ₹350–800 |
| HDHMR, CNC routed, painted | 12–18 mm | ≈ 18–25 mm | Medium | ₹450–950 |
| Mild steel, laser cut, powder coated | 2–6 mm | ≈ thickness | High — fine tendrils possible | ₹450–1,000 |
| Stainless steel, PVD gold | 1.2–3 mm | ≈ thickness | High; strong glow when backlit | ₹1,200–3,500 |
| Aluminium, laser cut | 3–4 mm | ≈ thickness | High; good for facades | ₹550–1,200 |
| GFRC, moulded | 15–30 mm | ≈ 25–40 mm | Medium; can be modelled in relief | ₹700–1,600 |
| Sandstone or marble, CNC plus hand finish | 25–50 mm | ≈ 20–30 mm | Highest — true carved depth | ₹1,500–6,000+ |
Two further costs are often forgotten. The design file itself — redrawing a tree of life properly for a given size and material, with a structural hierarchy and bridges checked — takes skilled drafting time, and a cheap downloaded file almost always needs this work anyway. And a backlit panel needs a lighting cavity, an LED strip with a diffuser and a driver, which adds a modest amount per running foot. For a 1200 × 1800 mm panel of about 23 sq ft in painted HDHMR, the panel alone falls in the region of ₹10,000–22,000 at the ranges above, before backlighting and the frame it sits in.
Fig. 5 shows the one lighting decision that makes a tree-of-life panel look like the mosque rather than a cut-out. The light source is placed at the back of the unit and washes a pale back panel, so the jaali is seen in silhouette against an evenly glowing surface — the same relationship as the stone screen against a bright sky. Lighting the front of the jaali, or placing the LED strip directly behind the openings, produces hot spots and visible dots, and flattens the carving.
Where the tree-of-life motif is going
The motif's future is being shaped by the same tools that are reshaping the jaali in general. Parametric software can vary the size of openings across a panel, so a tree-of-life screen can be denser where privacy is needed and more open where a view or breeze is wanted, without losing the drawing. Five-axis CNC machines can carve stone and solid wood in relief rather than simply cutting through a flat sheet, bringing back some of the rounded modelling of the original branches. Laser-cut metal with a PVD finish allows a level of fineness close to the stone carving at a fraction of its weight. At the same time, heritage practice is moving towards documentation and careful conservation of the original screens, so that copies can be measured against a reliable record rather than against earlier copies.
The risk is over-use. As the image spreads to every kind of product, it can lose its meaning and become a generic "ethnic" pattern. Designers who use it well will do what the mosque does: use it sparingly, as a single focal composition set among quieter elements, in a material and thickness that respect its structure. Aaditya Interior's approach on projects is to treat a tree-of-life panel as one carefully drawn piece of the room, not a texture applied to every surface.
Rules for using a tree-of-life jaali well
- Use it once per room as a focal panel; set it among plain or geometric elements, as the mosque does.
- Redraw the composition to the exact frame size and proportion — never stretch or tile a downloaded file.
- Draw the structure first: border 75–100 mm, trunk and main trees 40–50 mm, branches about 30 mm in 18 mm board.
- Keep every tendril above the material's minimum bridge: about 1.5 × board thickness for MDF or HDHMR, about 1 × thickness for metal.
- Prefer a tall proportion of about 2:3 to 1:2, ideally with an arched or framed head that contains the branches.
- Give the screen depth — 18–25 mm board, a deep frame or a second offset layer — if it must control glare or views.
- Backlight the panel behind it, 50–100 mm away, with warm white light; do not light the jaali from the front.
- Ask for a cutting preview at full size, or a test piece, before the full panel is cut.
Frequently asked questions
Who built the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque?
Standard accounts credit Sidi Saiyyed, an Abyssinian (Habshi) noble in the service of the Gujarat Sultanate's later court. The mosque was completed in 1572–73, in the same years that Akbar annexed Gujarat to the Mughal empire.
Why is the Sidi Saiyyed jaali called the tree of life?
Because its carving shows intertwined trees growing from a common base around a central palm, with branches and tendrils filling the arch. The tree of life is a widespread symbol across many cultures, and the name has been attached to this screen in popular and heritage writing; the carving itself shows trees and foliage rather than an inscription explaining its meaning.
Is the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
It lies within the Historic City of Ahmedabad, which UNESCO inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2017. The listing covers the walled city as a whole, including its Sultanate-period monuments and its pol neighbourhoods.
Can the tree-of-life jaali be made in MDF for a pooja door?
Yes, and it is one of the most popular uses. Use 18 mm MDF or HDHMR with PU or duco paint, simplify the tendrils so that no bridge is thinner than about 25 mm, keep a 75–100 mm solid border, and backlight the panel behind it. For finer detail closer to the stone original, use 2–3 mm laser-cut mild steel with a powder coat.
Why does the central arch of the mosque have no jaali?
One arch of the rear wall is filled with plain stone. It is traditionally explained as a sign that the mosque was not finished before the Mughal conquest of Gujarat; this is the commonly given explanation rather than a documented fact.
Where is the IIM Ahmedabad logo from?
The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, set up in 1961, uses a stylised version of the Sidi Saiyyed tree-of-life jaali as its emblem.
Sources & standards
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Historic City of Ahmedabad (inscribed 2017): official description and nomination documentation
- Archaeological Survey of India — monument notes for Sultanate-period Ahmedabad, including the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque
- Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, Heritage Cell — heritage walk and walled-city documentation
- Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad — institute emblem and its origin in the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque jaali
- Bureau of Indian Standards — IS 12406 (medium density fibreboard) and IS 2062 (structural steel) for modern reproductions
- Aaditya Interior — The Story of the Indian Jaali: History, Patterns, Sizes and Modern Uses (companion article for material ranges)
- Price ranges: indicative October 2026 estimates — confirm locally before budgeting
