Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/241

 CHAP. III. DELHI. 199 10 miles, are seen the towers of Shahjahanabad, the modern capital, and till 1857 the seat of the nominal monarchy of the Great Mughal. Still further north are situated the civil station and ruins of the old British cantonments. It is a fortunate circumstance that the British station was not, as at Agra, placed in the midst of the ruins, since it is to this that we owe their preservation. But for the distance, marble columns would doubtless have been taken for all purposes for which they might have been available, without regard to their beauty, and the interest of the ruins thereby annihilated. Even as it is, the buildings belonging to the celebrated Shalimar gardens, which were the only buildings of importance in the neighbourhood of the English station, have long since disappeared. The general arrangement of the principal ruins will be understood from the plan (Woodcut No. 369), which was taken with great care, though the scale to which it has been necessary to reduce it prevents all its peculiarities from being seen. The disposition of the various erections may first be briefly ex- plained : The inner court on the west side is that of the original mosque of Qutbu-d-Din, which measures 142 ft. by 108 ft. within the corridors ; and in the middle of its west half the Iron pillar stands. The main entrance is under a dome, about 20 ft. in diameter on the east side, along which runs a corridor supported on four rows of pillars, the back row being placed against the walls, and in the north and south ends are two- storeyed pavilions. The side corridors had each three rows of pillars with an entrance on each side, though the gateway and all the western portion of the corridor has quite disappeared. About 20 yards of the eastern half of the wall remain and part of the colonnade, the pillars of which are of much plainer patterns than those of the other sides. 1 The west end of this court is the great screen wall, 8 ft. thick, with its gigantic arches forming the entrances into the mosque itself which stood behind it and was 135 ft. in length by 32 ft. deep, but is now a complete ruin only some twenty-two of the tall columns that supported its roof being left. Outside the south-east corner of the court stands the Qutb Minar, erected at the same time. 2 Shamsu-d-Din Altamsh, about A.D. 1225, extended the great 1 This colonnade and its back wall were, "with a strange want of dis- crimination, reconstructed " by Major R. Smith, Executive Engineer, early in last century, who used the pillars of Altamsh's extension in front of the eastern gate of the mosque, for the purpose. And even the windows of Qutbu-d -Din's work did not escape "re-arrangement at the same time." Carr Stephen's 'Archaeology of Delhi,' p. 43 note. 2 The inscription on the east gateway of the mosque court gives its date as A.D. 1191 (or 1193), and another on the north entrance says it " was commenced " in 1196. Cunningham, 'Archaeological Reports,' vol i. pp. 185-186.