File:Surya temple artwork, Thangadh Gujarat.jpg

English: Thangadh, also known as Thān (Thaan) is a name derived from Sthān – or a "place". It is an epithet for the "holy place" where devout sages lived and taught their students, where pilgrims go to visit numerous temples. Thān is ancient, as it is mentioned in Skanda Purana and other ancient Hindu texts as Thān Purana or Tarnetar Mahatmya listing numerous shrines and gadhs (forts). Most of those shrines suffered campaign of destruction during the Sultanate period after the 14th-century. Only ruins and a few heavily mutilated temples have survived into the modern age.

The surviving monuments include two Surya temples, the Trinetresvara, the Munibava, and several related to Krishna legends. Some of these ruins were restored by Walojis and others between the 15th and 17th centuries, but were destroyed again with an attempt to convert it into mosques as new Sultanates formed. In the modern era, some have been restored once again, adding new complexes around the historic core. All of these are ASI monuments or state protected monuments.

The Surya mandir of Thangadh above is also referred to as Suraj Deval of Songadh or Sun temple of Thaan. It is a restored complex. The temple has a mandapa and garbhagriya, but with Islamic domes on top. A fortified wall (kanguras) was added by a Shujat Khan along with the dome like structure, when a broken slab with a historic inscription was used upside down to make the wall. This inscription is from the 14th-century, as is the historic artwork on surviving walls near the sanctum. The sanctum doorway is clearly older, likely 11th-century. So is some of the broken temple parts that were used by Shujat Khan to build the kanguras around the Indo-Islamic structure he partially completed.