The citadel of Delhi’s sultans

SULTANATE ERA The Delhi Sultanate, founded by Qutubuddin Aibak, built five cities in its over 300 years of rule. The remnants of these structures exist to this day, spread across Mehrauli and nearby areas with the Qutub Minar at its heart

NEWDELHI: A group of tourists are trying to fit the Qutub Minar in their frame with the aid a selfie stick. After stretching and adjusting, they have what they want — the quintessential Delhi photo.

The Qutub Minar appears in almost everything related to Delhi — in stamps, guidebooks, Bollywood songs and depictions of the city skyline. It is among the monuments that get the highest tourist footfall in India. Yet, neither the Qutub site nor Mehrauli, a settlement dating back to 11th century that surrounds it, are fully understood by locals or tourists.

This means that in Mehrauli, heritage sites are often neglected. On the other hand, the Qutub site is perfectly preserved, but one interpretation of the site has been allowed to eclipse, often erase, other meanings.

QUTUB’S MANY MEANINGS

The Qutub Minar, the Quwwat ul Islam mosque that stands beside it and a new fort north of the mosque formed “the nucleus” of Delhi’s first iteration as an imperial city, writes historian M Athar Ali, a professor of medieval history at Aligarh Muslim University,’. According to Ali, this site was the original “Old Delhi” or Dilli-i-kuhna, its name during the 14th century.

The Sultans, in the 300 years of their rule in Delhi, built five cities, remnants of which exist to this day.

Qutubuddin Aibak, the founder of the Delhi Sultanate, started building the Minar around 1192 AD, but it was his successor, Iltutmish, who finished the project. Aibak was the trusted general of Turkish sultan Muhammad Ghuri, who wrested Delhi from Prithviraj Chauhan. For the first two centuries of the Sultanate, the area now called Lal Kot in Mehrauli was the centre of the sultans’ rule. They started building their city around Qila Rai Pithora, Prithviraj Chauhan’s fortress, appropriating and extending older structures.

The Minar was built close to the Lal Kot site. Its name is derived from Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, a Sufi mystic who lived during Iltutmish’s time and whose dargah is nearby. Sufis devoted to Bakhtiyar Kaki believed that he was the Qutb, the axis around whom the world revolves, and the Minar was his staff, and hence it was called “Qutub sahib ki lath”, though this oral legend is only recorded in the 18th century.

The Quwwatul Islam mosque near the Minar, Delhi’s first “Jama Masjid” or Friday mosque, was built using material from 27 local temples that were destroyed by Aibak. The Archaeological Survey of India’s signage at the spot states this fact, as do tourist booklets and guidebooks. Over the years, the interpretation of the site has come to rest on how the mosque as an icon of the might and authority of Islam.

Catherine Asher, who teaches at University of Minnesota and has authored several books on medieval India, locates this in larger historical context. “It was only the very first Muslim rulers who enter a newly taken area use spolia (reused materials) to construct the first mosque,” said Asher. “Note that Aibak’s mosque uses older material, but then the additions by later Sultans, Iltutmish and Ala al-din Khalji, do not use any older materials.”

In his essay, Qutub and Modern Memory, Sunil Kumar, who teaches medieval history at Delhi University, shows how historians have played a role in this interpretation. By the 13th century, the sobriquet of Delhi was the Qubbat ul-islam, which means the Dome of Islam. Later, in the early 19thcentury, it came to be called Quwwat ul-islam, a more strident term meaning Strength of Islam. But Kumar says it is Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s Asar-ulSanadid, an authoritative tome published in 1847, that records the mosque as being called ‘Quwwat ul Islam’ without any reference, and the name has stuck ever since.

How the pillars were chosen for the prayer hall is also significant. The anthropomorphic images, discouraged in Islamic religious contexts, were carefully removed. Instead, the pillars which displayed carved chains and bells were chosen. The Turkish sultans had not brought any masons along, so when the local Hindu masons were asked to carve Arabic texts from the Koran, they embellished them with floral patterns, usually found in temples.

“Today the Qutb complex is considered by the right as a symbol of Muslim conquest,” said Asher. “The name is perpetuated, and the sense of a hostile Islamic community associated with it.” By way of example, Asher pointed to labels installed at the site by the ASI. “Were these to be removed and updated,” said Asher, “it would be a start in a more accurate understanding of the Qutb complex and the historical events of the Sultanate period.”

THE STORY OF SIRI

Mehrauli and the Qutub site continued to be important even after the Sultanate waned. In 1290 AD, Jalaluddin Khilji, a commander in the Mamluk army, orchestrated a coup against the weakened Sultanate and ascended to the throne. The Khiljis were ethnic Turks but they had long settled in Afghanistan, intermarried with Afghans and adopted their customs.

Jalaluddin built his capital and palace in Kilokheri, near present-day Maharani Bagh, of which nothing remains. Six years later, in 1296, he was murdered by his nephew and son-in-law, Alauddin Khilji, at the banks of the Ganga. During the thirty years of their rule, the Khiljis staved off several attacks from hordes of Mongols. The threat of Mongol raids forced Alauddin to fortify the city and build a new capital at Siri, an area that spans present-day Green