Alevi – the Jamatkhana acts as a site for less formalized religious gatherings, weddings, feasts and other events aligned with special days. Among Sunni Muslims known as Memons, the term Jamatkhana is used to denote a space for cultural gatherings and special occasions. Spaces designated as Jamatkhanas can also be seen in Mughal complexes, such as that of the Taj Mahal in Agra. The Jamatkhana in Nizārī Ismā'īlīsm The exact origins of the use of Jamatkhana in the Nizārī Ismā'īlī tradition are not as yet clear. However, communal memory, oral traditions and individual Ginans (Indo-Muslim religious poems) narrate that Pirs Shams (fl. between 13th and 15th centuries) and Sadr al-Din (fl. 14th century), emissaries appointed by the Ismaili Imam in Persia and sent to the South Asia in the service of the faith, established the first such spaces for the nascent Nizārī Ismā'īlī communities in Sindh, Punjab, Kashmir and China during their lifetimes. Jannatpuri, a long composition known as a granth and belonging to the genre of the Ginans, by Sayyid Imamshah (d. after 1473) situates one of the earliest of these Jamatkhanas to a place by the name of Kotda, which is thought to be in modern-day Sindh in Pakistan. The same composition also mentions that the village headman, the mukhi (Sanskrit: mukhya) was closely associated with the Jamatkhana as an official. Earliest Jamatkhanas The Jamatkhana was a space particular to several localized Ismaili communities of the South Asia, primarily in delta regions. It was subsequently adopted by a wider range of Indian Ismaili communities in subsequent decades and centuries. These diverse groups, each with their own histories, identities and social organization identified themselves using various names such as Momin (or Mumna), Shamsi, Khoja and Gupti. Collectively, these communities adopted the practice of Satpanth (lit. true path), a designation for Shi‘i Ismailism of this period in the Subcontinent which included communal congregation in the Jamatkhana. The term seems to have come in use to designate the place of Satpanthi religious gathering fairly late, possibly not until the last decades of the 18th or early years of the 19th centuries. The most common term used in the Nizārī Ismā'īlī ginans to refer to these spaces is the term gat. Evolution of the Jamatkhana By the mid-19th century, as Nizārī Ismā'īlī communities migrated from towns and villages to urban centres throughout the Indian Ocean littoral, the khana seems to have become