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 Green Palaces (which may have been behind the mosque), the Black Pavilion and the Red Palace, built by Balban. These were destroyed in the sack which followed the victory of Timur.

— Although this is sometimes supposed to have been built as the minaret of the mosque, close to which it stands, yet it is more probable that it is a monument of Victory, to record the Mahomedan conquest. It was started by Kutb-ud-din I-bak, while he was yet viceroy of Mahomed of Ghor, whose favourite slave and general he was, and after whose death he assumed the sovereignty of India, and was independent of Mahomed's successors. Shams-ud-din Altamsh, the slave and successor of Kutb-ud-din, completed the minar, and Ala-ud-din is said to have cased it in sandstone. Firoze Shah repaired or rebuilt the two top stories, after the minar had been struck by lightning, in 1368, and it was probably he who introduced the marble. Lightning again struck and injured the minar in the reign of Sikandar Lodi, who restored it in 1503. After that time it does not seem to have received any attention until early in the nineteenth century, when it was In a terribly dilapidated condition as the result of earthquakes in 1782, and again in 1803. In 1828, Major Robert Smith, of