Page:The Architecture of Ancient Delhi Especially the Buildings Around the Kutb Minar 1872 by Henry Hardy Cole.djvu/139

 Shams-ud-din s Gateways and Tomb. 95 prising and, at the same time, a good prince. The erection of the upper stories of the magnificent Minar would alone suffice to hand down his name and memory. But he also elevated the status of his empire to that of one of the finest in the world, and did so moreover at a period of the Muhammadan History of India made critical both by frequent but futile aggressions on the border by the Moguls, and by the jealousy which his antecedents and relations with his predecessor aroused amongst the nobles and princes of the dominion. All Hindustan, with the exception of a few remote districts, acknowledged the sovereignty of Delhi during his reign ; the obedience of the various dependencies varying, however, in different degrees from complete subjection to almost independent vassalage. In succeeding reigns it therefore frequently happened that the rule of weak princes threw the country into great confusion, from which it required a vigorous monarch to re-establish order. The inscriptions which Shams-ud-din placed upon the works carried out under his Shams-ud-din's inscriptions. directions are to be found : I. Over the doorway of the second story of the Kutb Minar. II. On the upper band of the second story. III. On the third story, over the doorway. IV. On the centre arch of the Masjid. During the reign of this Emperor, the Masjid-i-Kutb-ul-islam was enlarged by the His extension of erection of two Gateways to the north and south, and by the adaptation of a portion of the remaining Hindu columns in the construction of a new court, about six times the size of the original one. The Colonnade of this Court has to me the appearance of being hi situ as the Hindus placed it, General Cunningham, in estimating the pillars of the first Mosque and in testing the validity of the assertion inscribed on the east Gate, that they composed twenty-seven temples, does not include these outer pillars. It is possible that Shams-ud-din, in making his enclosing Colonnade, took advantage of some of the pillars which probably formed a portion of the palace of Raja Pithora, alluded to by Syud Ahmed as having been constructed in the year a. d. 1143. Each of the two additional Gateways consists of ranges of five arches, the centre one being the largest ; according to the General, they were intended to form new and separate Mosques and not merely