[5] It was built by Todar Mal, a premier courtier and minister of Akbar, in conjunction with Narayana Bhatta, a pre-eminent Brahmin scholar of Banaras from Maharashtra, during the late 16th century.

[8][a] Architectural historian Madhuri Desai hypothesizes that the temple was a system of intersecting iwans —a borrowing from Mughal architecture— with prominent pointed arches; it had a carved stone exterior.

[11] 21st century accounts of the history of the mosque, as purveyed by Hindus,[b] center around a litany of repeated destruction and re-construction of the original temple which is situated in contrast to the timelessness of the lingam.

[16] Bakker said that a temple, located at the current-day Gyanvapi precincts and devoted to Avimukteshwara, was indeed destroyed in 1194; he cites Hasan Nizami's chronicling of wanton temple-demolition during Qutb ud-Din Aibak's raid on Banaras in support.

[39] Catherine Asher, a historian of Indo-Muslim architecture, notes that not only did the zamindars of Banaras frequently rebel against Aurangzeb but also the local Brahmins were oft accused of interfering with Islamic teaching.

[1] Consequently, she said that the demolition was a political message in that it served as a warning for the Zamindars and Hindu religious leaders, who wielded great influence in the city;[1] Cynthia Talbot, Richard M. Eaton,[40] Satish Chandra and Audrey Truschke agree on similar grounds.

[43] Ian Copland and others support Iqtidar Alam Khan who said Aurangzeb built more temples than he destroyed; they said that the religious politics of the Mughal emperors ought not to be viewed in light of their personal piety but in the sociopolitical contingencies of their times.

[43] The Oxford World History of Empire said that while the demolition of Gyanvapi might be interpreted as a sign of Aurangzeb's "orthodox inclinations", local politics played an influencing role and his policies towards Hindus and their places of worship were "varied and contradictory, rather than consistently agnostic."

[50] Nonetheless, there has been little engagement with these claims in historical scholarship;[k] Desai said Nomani's arguments were a strategic "rewriting of history" arising out of the Hindu-hegemonic nature of discourse in postcolonial Benaras.

"[54][m] In 1698, Bishan Singh, the Kachhwaha ruler of Amber, had his agents survey the town — rather its ritual landscape — and gather details about the land-use patterns; their maps ('tarah') were explicit in holding the Gyanvapi mosque to lay at the site of the dismantled Vishweshwar temple.

[56][n] The Amber court went on to purchase significant land around the Gyanvapi precincts, including from Muslim inhabitants, with an aim to rebuild the temple — but without demolishing the mosque — yet failed.

[15][65] In the late eighteenth century, as East India Company gained direct control of Banaras ousting the Nawabs, Malhar Rao's successor Ahilyabai Holkar constructed the present Kashi Vishwanath Temple to the immediate south of the mosque — this, however, had a markedly different spatial configuration and was ritually inconsistent.

[66][p] Compounded with the belief that the original lingam was hidden by the priests inside the Gyan Vapi during Aurangzeb's raid, the plinth would attract greater devotion than the temple for well over a century.

[62][36] Under British Raj, the Gyanvapi, which was once the subject of whimsical Mughal politics, got transformed into a site of perennial contestation between local Hindus and Muslims spawning numerous legal suits and even, riots.

[68][69] A new generation of aristocrats and well-to-do traders took over the role exclusively played by petty rulers in late-Mughal India in controlling the ritual life of the city, most often under the guise of urbanization.

[73] Four years later, Baiza Bai, widow of the Maratha ruler Daulat Rao Scindhia, constructed a pavilion around the well — reducing it in size —, and erected a colonnade to support a roof, pursuant to a proposal raised by member of a Peshwa family.

[68] M. A. Sherring,[s] writing in 1868, said the Hindus had claimed the plinth as well as the southern wall; the Muslims were allowed to exert control over the mosque but quite reluctantly, and permitted to only use the side entrance.

"[68] In 1886, adjudicating on a dispute about illegal constructions, the District Magistrate held that unlike the mosque proper, which had belonged to the Muslims exclusively, the enclosure was a common space thereby precluding any unilateral and innovative use.

[80] His description of the pavilion paralleled Sherring's;[81] the well commanded significant devotion too — however, pilgrims were not allowed direct access and instead, had to received its sacred water from a priest, who sat on an adjoining stone-screen.

This spurred fellow Mahasabha-ites to mount routine agitations at the mosque pavilion across the next few months, demanding the restoration of the temple; by July, two hundred and ninety one "satyagrahis" spread across twenty three batches had courted arrest and served imprisonments of varying duration.

[21][87] In 1991, a title-dispute suit[y] was filed by three local Hindus in the Varanasi Civil Court on behalf of three Hindu deities — Shiva, Shringar Gauri, and Ganesha — for handing over the entire site to Hindu community to facilitate the reconstruction of temple;[z] AIM, acting as one of the defendants, said that the petition contravened the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act (henceforth PoW), which had expressly prohibited courts from entertaining any litigation that sought to convert places of worship.

[91][ab] Further, VHP leaders issued multiple calls across the mid-90s for Hindus to congregate in large numbers on the occasion of Maha Shivaratri and worship the Shringar Gauri image at the southern wall; public response was poor and no fracas occurred due to a proactive state administration.

[88][94] Nonetheless, the request for survey was granted in April 2021 and a five-member committee of archaeologists — with two members from the Muslim community — was constituted to determine whether any temple existed at the site, prior to the mosque.

[97] An object was discovered on draining the ablution pool which was alleged to be a shivling by the petitioners and the Court not only sealed-off the area but also restrained congregations of more than twenty mosque-goers at a time.