Chapter 22 - The Qutb Minar: Epigraphic Notes

Summary

Given that the Qutb Minar [Figure 22.1] is not only a staple of the tourist trade but figures so prominently in every account of Islamic architecture in India, it is surprising that the coverage of its decoration in the scholarly literature is so incomplete. True, epigraphy is only one aspect of its significance and tends to be overshadowed by a multitude of other topics, such as its importance as a spectacular architectural masterpiece, its relation to minarets in the eastern Iranian world, and its role as a victory monument and as a model for later architects.

Another key topic is the importance of the Hindu elements in this structure, which are surprisingly varied. They include its inscriptions in devanagari script, its use of temple spolia and the significance of its siting in what was then the capital of northern India, Delhi. Above all, it is attached to a mosque significantly entitled Quwwat al-Islam (the Might of Islam), which was built, as its Persian inscription proclaims, of the stone taken from twenty-seven idol temples, and accordingly fragments of Hindu carving festoon its walls, its capitals and its inscription bands. More than that, in their execution though not in their content the spirit of those bands is unmistakably Hindu, and some of that spirit can also be detected in the epigraphy of the Qutb Minar. That building rises, moreover, close to one of the Ashoka columns erected in the third century bc all over India, some of them inscribed with the edicts of the emperor of that name.

Nineteen of them survive today and, of course, in the sixth/twelfth century there would have been many more. The main point is that they were already by then a millennial symbol of the glorious Indian past, and in the modern nationalistic age the Ashoka column from Sarnath, crowned by three lions standing shoulder to shoulder, decorates the country's stamps, coins and banknotes, and even the national flag has the Ashoka chatra, a 24-spoke wheel, at its dead centre. So the fact that the Qutb Minar rises only 59 metres from the Ashoka column [Figure 22.2] invites comparisons between the two monuments that would have wounded Hindu sensibilities. Indeed, in its early seventh/thirteenth-century incarnation the Qutb Minar was 72.5 metres high (about 240 ft), more than ten times taller than its predecessor, which is 7.2 metres high.