Page:The Architecture of Ancient Delhi Especially the Buildings Around the Kutb Minar 1872 by Henry Hardy Cole.djvu/114

 j 6 The Kutb Minar. the north-east, in the direction of Delhi, and the Minarets of the Great Mosque would be visible on a clear day, a little to the left of the unfinished Minar of Ala-ud-din. Syud Ahmed speaks of the latter as " Adhbani " (or half- finished) Lat or Lat Naturnam. The Emperor Ala-ud-din, wishing to render himself famous to all posterity, ordered the commencement of this tower, which he intended to be 200 yards high or double the height of the completed Minar of Shams-ud-din Altamsh. There is no doubt that, when under- taking the construction of this huge pile, he intended it to be the Mazinah (or Tower for calling to prayer) of the Mosque which he purposed to extend and in fact began the walls of, in a.d. 1310. No portion of these walls is visible in this photograph, but the unfinished Tower can be seen rising above .the trees and ruins to the left of the picture. Including the plinth and terrace, it now measures about eighty-seven feet in height, and, in its present state of rough rubble masonry, is about eighty feet in diameter. The terrace is about 124 feet square and 1 feet high above the ground which it occupies; the plan of the Tower having a shape similar to that of a large cog-wheel. When the Emperor Ala-ud-din died in a.d. 1316 the building had been abandoned, but it is uncertain at what precise period this occurred ; whether some years before his death, or immediately after it when no one remained to take an interest in its completion. The building to be seen next to this ruin is one of the gateways (see F on Plan II.) built by Altamsh (the son-in-law of Kutb-ud-din) to extend the mosque to the cloister at XW. (See plan No. II.) E, the second gateway, may be seen rising above the trees on the left and close to the Minar. The mosque underwent three formations — I. Kutb-ud-din constructed the present and most perfect court, (B) of which the great gate to the west (built a.d. 1195) may be seen half way between the two towers. II. His son-in-law Altamsh, in a. d. 1229, extended the enclosure to about six times its former area. See the two side gateways E and F, which increased the west front (H) to nearly three times its length. And, III. Finally, Ala-ud-din made the effort to more than double the second extension Y and F and to build a gigantic Tower (see Q, a. d. 1310). On coming into power Indian princes more generally [(referred to commence an entirely new and independent palace or mosque rather than to enlarge or preserve the buildings erected and used by a former king. That which appears to me to be an exceptional instance of successive enlargements of the same building may be accounted for