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Updated: June 14, 2025
At the very foot of the Kutub Minar the famous Iron Pillar commemorates the victories of the "Sun of Power," the Hindu Emperor of the Gupta dynasty with whose name, under the more popular form of Raja Bikram, Indian legend associates the vague memories of a golden age of Hindu civilisation in the fifth and sixth centuries.
"As the prince reflected upon the fever of events, and calculated their possible consequence to himself, the ambition often napping, seldom in slumber which he secretly cherished, awoke to disturbing vividness. "His allowance was ample; his retinue, all things considered, impressive; and the Kutub, although in a state of disrepair in certain portions, was still unmistakably a royal residence.
It was seemingly useless to offer terms, yet the native was clearly so anxious for an amicable settlement that he caught at a straw. "You come from Delhi?" he asked. "Honored one, you have great wisdom." "None but a Delhi man swears by the tomb on the road to the Kutub. You have escaped from the Andamans?" "Sahib, I did but slay a man in self-defence."
But Delhi itself with all its age-long memories was around one to provide the historic setting for an historic scene, and Delhi still stands under the sign of the Kutub Minar, the splendid minaret a landmark for miles and miles around which dominates the vast graveyard of fallen dynasties at its feet and the whole of the great plain beyond where the fate of India, and not of India alone, has so often been decided.
Co-related with these books on "good qualities" stand, in our opinion, the books on "good morals and their opposite," or "goodness and wickedness," Kutub al Mahasin wal Azdad, or Kutub al Mahasin wal Masawi. Although in the Fihrist we do not come across books with this title, we have a book so named from the beginning of the tenth century whose author was Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al Baihaki.
Manoelino architects had always been fond of bundles of round mouldings and so naturally used them here, nor indeed are the piers at all like either the Kutub or the minars at Ahmedabad. They have not the batter or the sharp angles of the one, nor the innumerable breaks and mouldings of the others.
Two or three other Mahomedan gentlemen had come out to meet us, and there, under the shadow of the Kutub Minar, the loftiest and noblest minaret from which the Musulman call to prayer has ever gone forth, we sat in the Alai Darwazah, the great porch of red sandstone and white marble which formed the south entrance to the outer enclosure of the Mosque, and still presents in the stately grandeur of its proportions and the infinite variety and delicacy of its marble lattice work, one of the most perfect monuments of early Mahomedan art, and discussed for upwards of two hours the future that lies before the Mahomedan community of India.
The Kutub is shortly to be attacked by the British. We must fly come! and the speaker advanced with unreflective haste to the side of the palpitating girl. "In an instant, however, his headlong progress was checked as Lal Lu, with a superb gesture, raised the gleaming dagger above her head and cried, encouraged by the lowering eyes of the evilly-expectant waiting-woman: 'With thee never!
"To the degree that Prince Otondo had reason to suspect that his grandfather had certain of his servants subsidized at the Kutub, he measured secretly by similar secret embassies at the Delhi palace.
"However, to mitigate the nuisance as far as possible, the British Government consented to recognize his grandson, Prince Otondo, as the successor to the throne, and yield a degree to the exactions of the moghul if his young kinsman would agree to remove himself permanently from Delhi and reside in the Kutub.
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