Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

This mosque was built mainly with the construction materials collected from a number of demolished Hindu and Jain temples — twenty-seven of them, according to an inscription at the entrance of the mosque. But it was necessity rather than choice that made Aibak use those materials, because the mosque was urgently needed for the Friday congregational prayers of Muslims, and it was easier and quicker to build it with the pillars and stones collected from the demolished temples, than to quarry fresh building materials for it. The use of the demolished temple materials to build the mosque was also symbolically appropriate, as a display of the triumph of Islam over Hinduism.

This method of construction, and the fact that the masons and artisans who were employed in planning and building the mosque were predominantly Hindus, gave this mosque a distinctive Indian appearance. The practice of Muslim rulers building mosques with the materials of demolished temples continued in India for a while under the successors of Aibak, but in time the practice declined, partly because not so many temples were demolished in later times — as Hindus, being then treated as zimmis, received government protection for their institutions and way of life — and partly because Muslims preferred to retain the purity of their architectural style, and Indian craftsmen and builders had by then learned to build in the Muslim style. The migration of a number of Muslim architects and artisans from the Middle East and Central Asia into India at this time also facilitated this transformation. However, some elements of the local architectural style continued to be evident in the structures built by Muslim rulers in provincial towns for quite a while.

The mosque that Qutb-ud-din built in Delhi was enlarged to more than double its size by Iltutmish, and was further expanded by later sultans, as the Muslim population in the city grew, and they had to be provided space for their congregational prayers. ‘The cathedral mosque occupies a large area; its walls, roof, and paving are all constructed of white stones, admirably squared and firmly cemented with lead,’ writes Battuta in his vivid but factually imprecise account of what he saw in Delhi in the mid-fourteenth century. ‘There is no wood in it at all. It has thirteen domes of stone; its pulpit is also made of stone, and it has four courts. In the centre of the mosque is an awe-inspiring column [12] This is a Gupta age iron pillar, which the builders of the mosque had the good sense not to tamper with. Most remarkably, the pillar has not rusted even after the passage of some sixteen centuries of exposure to weather. The height of the pillar is 7.21 metres, of which 1.12 metre is below ground; its diameter at the bottom is 420 millimetres, and it tapers to 306 millimetres at the top. Its weight is estimated to be over six tons. There is a common belief that anyone who can encircle the pillar with his arms while standing with his back to it and makes a wish, will have that wish granted. , and nobody knows of what metal it is made. One of their learned men told me that it is called Haft Jush, which means “seven metals”, and that it is constructed from these seven. A part of this column, of a finger’s breadth, has been polished, and gives out a brilliant gleam. Iron makes no impression on it. It is thirty cubits high; we rolled a turban round it, and the portion which encircled it measured eight cubits. At the eastern gate [of the mosque] there are two enormous idols of brass prostrate on the ground and held [in place there] by stones, and everyone entering or leaving the mosque treads on them. The site was formerly occupied by an idol temple, and was converted into a mosque on the conquest of the city.’

Aibak’s mosque complex in Delhi is dominated by its towering minaret, known as Qutb Minar. Its construction was begun by Aibak, but he could build only its bottom storey. The structure was completed by Iltutmish, Aibak’s successor, by adding three storeys to it, each of diminishing girth and height. In 1370, during the reign of Firuz Tughluq, the fourth storey of the minaret was struck by lightning and severely damaged. Firuz then dismantled the storey and in its place built two new storeys of plain circular design, raising the total height of the minaret to about 73 metres, nearly as tall as a twenty-four storey building. The minaret was repaired again by Sikandar Lodi, towards the end of the history of the Delhi Sultanate. Qutb Minar was not just a minaret for the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer, but was also a victory tower proclaiming the establishment of the Turkish empire in India. According to some authorities it is ‘the most perfect example of a tower known to exist anywhere’ in the world.

Battuta saw the Minar before it was damaged by lightning. ‘In the northern court [of the mosque] is the minaret, which has no parallel in the lands of Islam …,’ he reports. ‘Its passage is so wide that elephants could go up by it. A person in whom I have confidence told me that when it was built he saw an elephant climbing with stones to the top …’ Despite its immense size, Qutb Minar is an elegant structure, its soaring upward thrust emphasised by vertical flutings — alternately round and angular — which in turn are decorated with horizontal bands of inscriptions and foliated designs. The starkness of the building is also relieved by its richly decorated balconies at the base of each storey. The bottom three storeys of the tower are built of grey quartzite faced with red sandstone, but its top two storeys, built by Firuz Tughluq, are of red sandstone faced with marble.

After the reign of Iltutmish till the reign of Ala-u-din Khalji there was hardly any major construction activity in the Delhi Sultanate. The only notable building of this period was the tomb of Balban. Building activity picked up again under the Khaljis and the Tughluqs, particularly under Firuz Tughluq, who was a compulsive builder of all sorts of structures, such as forts, palaces, mosques, tombs and so on. He even built some new towns.

A major innovation in the architectural style introduced in the late Sultanate period, during the reign of Sikandar Lodi, was the practice of building the double-dome, one enclosing the other. This, according to John Marshall, had become necessary ‘in order to preserve the symmetry and relative proportions of the interior as well of the exterior … [of the mosque, when the exterior dome was] elevated on a lofty drum …’

THE FINEST EXPRESSIONS of Muslim architecture in India were, naturally, in Delhi, but there was a good amount of engaging construction activity in the provinces also. Particularly notable among them was the modification of the fort and city of Daulatabad by Muhammad Tughluq. Daulatabad was originally a Hindu fort named Devagiri, but it was substantially modified by the sultan in the fourteenth century, who renamed it Daulatabad and shifted his capital from Delhi to it for a while.

One of the main reasons for the sultan to shift his capital to Daulatabad was that its fort, built atop a solitary, precipitous rocky hill rising starkly from the surrounding plain, was virtually impregnable. ‘Its inner citadel stands on an isolated conical rock 600 feet in height, with sides scraped sheer for 150 feet and a moat hewn out of the living rock at their base,’ writes Marshall about Daulatabad. ‘The only entrance is through a devious tunnel which in times of siege was rendered impassable by an ingenious contrivance. At a bend in the tunnel … near to the outer edge of the rock was a small chamber provided with a flue pierced through the thickness of the wall and fitted, in addition, with a staging of iron plates … [If] on these plates a charcoal fire was lit, … [it], fanned by the wind blowing incessantly through the flue, would quickly fill the tunnel with its fumes and make any ingress impossible.’ [13] See Part VIII, Chapter 1, for Mughal chronicler Lahauri’s description of the fort.