Qutub Minar: Delhi's Medieval Victory Tower and Its History

The Qutub Minar (also spelled Qutb Minar) is a brick and sandstone tower about 72.5 metres high in Mehrauli, south Delhi, begun around 1199 under Qutb al-Din Aibak and completed by his successor Iltutmish. Built as the minaret of Delhi’s first great mosque and as a monument to the Ghurid conquest of northern India, it is the tallest medieval tower in South Asia. Today it is the centrepiece of the Qutb complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Background: a new power in Delhi

In 1192 Muhammad of Ghor defeated the Chahamana king Prithviraj III at the Second Battle of Tarain. Soon afterwards his general Qutb al-Din Aibak occupied Delhi and made the old Rajput citadel known as Lal Kot, or Qila Rai Pithora, his headquarters.

The new rulers marked their arrival with buildings. Within the citadel Aibak began a congregational mosque in about 1192–1193. A few years later, around 1199, he started a monumental tower at its south-eastern corner. When Muhammad of Ghor died in 1206, Aibak became the first ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, and the tower became the emblem of the new state.

Building the tower

Aibak completed only the first storey before his death in 1210. His son-in-law and successor, Shams al-Din Iltutmish, added three more storeys, and the work is usually said to have been finished by about 1220.

The original design had four storeys, each ending in a projecting balcony supported by stone brackets carved with honeycomb (muqarnas) patterns. The lower storeys are faced with red and buff sandstone. Their surfaces are fluted in different ways: the first has alternating round and angular flutes, the second only round ones and the third only angular ones.

Bands of carved inscriptions wrap around the tower. They include verses from the Quran and the names and titles of Muhammad of Ghor, Aibak and Iltutmish, carved in Arabic script. The craftsmen were mostly local Indian stonemasons, which helps explain the fine floral and geometric carving that blends Islamic designs with older Indian traditions.

Inside, a spiral staircase of 379 steps climbs the full height of the tower, lit by small openings in the walls. Each balcony gave access to the outside and helped to divide the vast shaft visually into stages. The tower tapers steadily as it rises, so that its upper storeys appear even higher from the ground than they are.

The building was a considerable feat of engineering for its time. The core is made of rubble and masonry bonded with mortar, and the outer facing of dressed stone is tied into it. The structure has survived more than eight centuries of monsoons, lightning and earthquakes, though not without damage and repair.

Inspiration and purpose

The Qutub Minar belongs to a family of tall Islamic towers built in Iran and Afghanistan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The closest relative is the Ghurid Minaret of Jam in Afghanistan, about 65 metres high, which the Delhi tower deliberately surpasses.

Historians see two purposes. The tower was a minaret (in Arabic, a mi’dhana, a place for the call to prayer) for the mosque beside it, although its great height made it impractical for daily use. It was also a victory monument, visible for miles across the plain, announcing that a new Muslim dynasty now ruled Delhi.

The inscriptions support both readings. Some Quranic verses chosen for the tower relate to prayer and the faith, while the long titles of the sultans stress their power and legitimacy. A tower of this scale in a newly conquered city was a statement aimed at subjects, rivals and fellow Muslims alike.

The mosque and the Qutb complex

The mosque beside the tower is popularly called the Quwwat al-Islam (“Might of Islam”) Mosque, although this name is not found in medieval sources and appears to be later. An inscription over its eastern gateway states that materials from 27 Hindu and Jain temples were used in its construction, and the reused carved pillars are still visible in its colonnades.

In 1199 Aibak added a great screen of pointed arches in front of the prayer hall. Because local masons were not yet using true arches, they built them by corbelling, laying horizontal courses of stone that step inwards. Iltutmish extended the mosque in the 1220s, and Alauddin Khalji enlarged it again in the early fourteenth century.

The courtyard also contains the Iron Pillar of Delhi, a rust-resistant iron column made centuries earlier under the Gupta dynasty and moved to this site. Other monuments in the complex include:

• the tomb of Iltutmish, built around 1235, one of the earliest surviving royal tombs in India;
• the Alai Darwaza, a domed gateway of red sandstone and white marble added by Alauddin Khalji in 1311;
• the Alai Minar, an unfinished tower Alauddin began to rival the Qutub Minar, which reached only its first storey;
• the tomb and madrasa (college) of Alauddin Khalji.

Damage and rebuilding

The tower has been damaged several times by lightning and earthquakes. In 1369, during the reign of Firuz Shah Tughlaq, lightning destroyed the top storey. Firuz Shah rebuilt it as two storeys faced largely with white marble and red sandstone, giving the tower its present total of five storeys. An inscription records his work.

Further repairs followed under Sikandar Lodi in the early sixteenth century, after another earthquake. Persian and Nagari inscriptions record the names of masons and repairers over the centuries.

A severe earthquake in 1803 damaged the top of the tower and its cupola. Major Robert Smith of the Bengal Engineers carried out a restoration completed in 1828 and placed a new cupola in a later style on the summit. It was widely criticised as out of keeping, and in 1848 it was taken down on the orders of the Governor-General, Lord Hardinge. It now stands on the lawn, where it is known as Smith’s Folly.

For more than a century after Smith’s restoration, visitors were allowed to climb the tower. On 4 December 1981 a power failure plunged the narrow staircase into darkness while a large group, many of them schoolchildren, was inside. In the panic that followed about 45 people were killed. The interior was then closed to the public and has remained closed since.

The Archaeological Survey of India now manages the site, monitors the stability of the tower and maintains the surrounding gardens and ruins. The complex is often used for cultural events, including an annual music and dance festival.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: the tower was a Hindu building converted by the sultans. Some popular claims say the minar was an earlier Hindu observatory or tower. Its structure, inscriptions, style and relationship to Ghurid towers such as Jam show that it was built from the 1190s as an Islamic minaret. Reused temple materials, however, really were used in the neighbouring mosque.

Myth: it was named only after Aibak. The name is often linked to Qutb al-Din Aibak, but it may also honour the revered Sufi saint Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki, whose shrine lies nearby in Mehrauli.

Timeline

• 1192–1193: Qutb al-Din Aibak occupies Delhi and begins the congregational mosque.
• c. 1199: The first storey of the minar is begun; the great arched screen is added to the mosque.
• c. 1220: Iltutmish completes the original four-storey tower.
• 1311: Alauddin Khalji builds the Alai Darwaza.
• 1369: Lightning damages the top; Firuz Shah Tughlaq rebuilds it with two storeys.
• 1803: An earthquake damages the tower.
• 1828: Major Robert Smith completes restoration and adds a cupola, removed in 1848.
• 1981, 4 December: A stampede inside the tower kills about 45 people; the interior is closed to visitors.
• 1993: The Qutb complex is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Legacy

The Qutub Minar is one of India’s most visited monuments and an enduring symbol of Delhi. It marks the beginning of Indo-Islamic architecture, in which Islamic forms such as arches, domes and minarets were combined with Indian craftsmanship and materials. Later buildings by the Tughlaqs, Lodis and Mughals developed this tradition further.

The tower also influenced later minarets and victory towers in the subcontinent. Rulers of regional sultanates in Bengal, Gujarat and the Deccan built their own minarets, and the idea of a towering monument as a sign of royal power remained strong. None, however, matched the height of the Qutub Minar, which remained the tallest masonry tower in India for centuries.

Iltutmish’s tomb in the complex is a reminder that his dynasty ruled from here for most of the thirteenth century, including the brief reign of his daughter Razia. The minar appears on stamps, travel posters and, for many visitors, as their first image of medieval India.

Why it matters

The Qutub Minar is the earliest and most spectacular monument of the Delhi Sultanate. It records in stone the arrival of a new political and religious order in northern India and the meeting of Islamic design with Indian craftsmanship that shaped South Asian architecture for centuries.