Shankaracharya Temple

Perched on the Zabarwan hill above Srinagar — a spot Kalhana’s Rajatarangini already calls Gopadri, and later chroniclers knew as Takht-i-Sulaiman — this Shiva temple has been rebuilt and reattributed by different eras more or less continuously. The chronicle tradition credits an early shrine to king Gopaditya centuries before the present era, dedicated to Shiva as Jyeshteshwara; other historians instead trace an early structure to the Hun ruler Mihirakula. What can be said with more confidence is architectural: the surveyor James Fergusson, examining the site in 1899, judged the visible stone temple to date only to the 17th or 18th century, whatever earlier shrine may have stood on the same spot. The Dharmarth Trust has managed the site since the 19th century, and it is today a centrally protected Monument of National Importance under the Archaeological Survey of India.

The temple’s popular name comes from a tradition, held locally rather than documented in any inscription, that the philosopher Adi Shankaracharya climbed this hill during his travels through Kashmir and composed the devotional hymn Saundarya Lahari here. Whatever its historical basis, the hilltop remains an active Shiva shrine and one of Srinagar’s most recognizable landmarks, drawing worshippers in largest numbers on Maha Shivaratri (observed locally as Herath) even as its hill-top position has made it, in recent decades, one of the more security-conscious pilgrimage sites in the valley.