Page:The Architecture of Ancient Delhi Especially the Buildings Around the Kutb Minar 1872 by Henry Hardy Cole.djvu/109

 M asjid-i-Kutb-td-I sldm. 7 1 and pillars, wherever images were carved, he destroyed thern all, but otherwise spared the carved stonework and on the gate to the east he affixed the date of the victory and his name. Afterwards, when he had conquered Ajmir and the Forts of Ranthora, Nahrwala and Guzerat, he returned to Ghazni and received the orders of Sultan Moiz- ud-din to continue the work of building a mosque in the Butkhana. He therefore returned to Delhi, commenced the large range of gateways and constructed the mosque behind (a. d. 1195). This magnificent gateway originally consisted of seven pointed archways, but at present there are the remains of only five. The central opening measures twenty-two feet wide and is about forty feet high to the crown of the arch ; the side arches measure ten feet wide and are about twenty-five feet to the crown of the arch. The whole surface facing the east is covered with the most elaborate carvings and ornamental inscriptions in Arabic letters. At the back, facing the west and looking towards the mosque, the wall is quite plain. The thickness from back to front is about eight feet, and the stones are all laid in horizontal courses, excepting in the smaller pointed arches at the side, where the upper part has a few voussoirs. Much of the ornament quite differs from that adopted in the surrounding Muhammadan buildings. The lower band of the Minar is, however, an excejrtion, as the sculptured arabesque on it resembles that running up the spaces intervening between the small gateways and up each side of the great gateway. In the Minar ornamentation the pattern is incised, while the main surface is left flat; but on the gateways may be found several bands of scroll-work, which are carved and rounded to produce a foliated effect. These variations of carving and ornamentation tend to show that, at the period of commencing the gates of the Masjid and the Minar, the Hindu builders who were employed were permitted without much restriction to reproduce the style of ornament still to be found in many of the Hindu columns. Later, however, this freedom in decorating buildings was certainly not accorded. This is exemplified in the Minar and tombs, where the details are of a pure Muhammadan type. The flatter ornament, which was afterwards adopted here, appears in the spandrils of the arches, and is essentially Muhammadan in its flavour, it being the early Muhammadan instinct to use geometric patterns or to generalize only from natural forms. Amidst the ruins of the Masjid, visible in this photograph through the arches, there is T,