Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/235

 The following extracts, from Captain William Franklin's Memoirs of Mr. George Thomas, and his Visit to Delhi in 1793, are interesting:—

"A mile to the southward of the city are the remains of the fort, palace, and mosque of the Patan emperor, the first Feroze. These ruins embrace a considerable extent. The walls of the fort are of immense thickness, and the prodigious quantity of granite, with other stones, spread in heaps over the whole of the interior of the inclosure, denote it to have been a grand and splendid edifice. This fort was built Anno Hijirah 755, and was destroyed by the Mogul conqueror Timoor, in his invasion of Hindostan. Toward the centre of the place, is a building, of an ancient style, flanked with round pillars, and crowned with turrets of three stories. At the top of this building, on an ample terrace of stone, about forty feet in height, is a column of brown granite. On this column is an inscription, in the ancient character before-mentioned, as discernible on the pillar in the Fort of Allahabad, and composed of the same materials. This pillar is called by the natives Feroze Cotelah, the staff of Feroze; and from the construction of the building on which it is placed, I should conjecture it has been a monument of Hindoo grandeur prior to the irruptions of the Musulmans. Adjoining to the Cotelah is a very large building, differing in the style of its architecture from those mosques built subsequent to the establishment of the Moguls. This mosque is square, has four extensive aisles, or cloisters, the roofs of which are stone, and supported by two hundred and fifty columns of stone, about sixteen feet high. The length of the cloisters gives a grand appearance to the building. An octangular dome of stone and brickwork, about twenty-five feet high, rises from the centre of the mosque. In the western cloister, is a kibla, or niche in the wall, in the direction of Mecca. Of this mosque, the Emperor Timoor took a model, and carrying it with him on his return to Samarcand, his capital, accompanied at the same time by artificers and workmen of every description, he, shortly after his arrival, built a magnificent temple.

"In the northern aisle of this mosque, at the upper end, is a