Lal Kot, Qila Rai Pithora (Pithorogarh), Qutub Complex – these are more than a litany of names. They are a summation of over twelve hundred years of the history of one place.
At least eight waves of occupation have been identified in this area. There are records of people living here intermittently from 2,500 B.C. and proof that humans inhabited this site continuously from the Mauryan period in the 4th century B.C. until the Mughals left in the 19th century. Their remains – the detritus of empires - litter the landscape.
The ghost of Anangpal of the Tomar Rajput dynasty is raised. He founded Lal Kot in 736 A.D. One of Anangpal’s ministers was a powerful Jain merchant by the name of Nattal Sahu. Nattal Sahu built the Jain temples, the remains of some of which, together with the remains of Hindu temples, form the colonnade under which today’s visitors shelter from the early rising heat.
The six ton Iron Pillar is the first known example of wrought iron manufactured on earth. It is at least sixteen hundred years old. Originally erected on a site in Udaygiri near Bhopal in present day India, it was part of an installation along the Tropic of Cancer which combined astronomical observations with religious worship.The date when it was removed from its mountain top and transported over 700 kilometres north to Delhi is disputed. Some claim the second emperor of the Muslim Slave dynasty Iltutmish, who ruled from 1211 – 1236, ordered the pillar moved. The explanation favoured by the guide at the complex is that Chandragupta II installed the pillar in the middle of the assortment of Jain and Hindu temples that were on the site in 1052.
One hundred and thirty years later the Chauhan King of Ajmer conquered Lal Kot and renamed it Qila Rai Pithora, but this was a short lived victory. The face of empire in India was changing.
These changes grew from two events that together led to the present day Qutub Complex in Delhi.
One of these events began in 1145. 1,900 metres above sea level, in Ghur, in what is today Afghanistan, the city of Firuzkah was founded as a summer capital of the Ghurids. Four years later the Ghaznavids captured and crucified the brother of the ruler of Ghur and sent his head to the Sultan in Iran. Legend has it that revenge was swift and intense. The Ghurids massacred 60,000 Ghaznavids, took the survivors prisoner and mixed their blood with mud to build Ghurid towers.Twenty years later two brothers ruled Ghur. During their reign a 65 metre high mud brick minaret was built in Firuzkah. Incidentally, less than fifty years later Firuzkah was destroyed by the Mongols. Only the minaret survived. It has stood in that high valley in Afghanistan for over eight hundred years and is known today as the minaret of Jam.
One of those ruling brothers, Mu’izz al-Din (known in India as Muhammad Ghori) was the man who changed the face of empire in India.
While the minaret was being built in Firuzkah, the second event was taking place. The Mamluk dynasty was being established in Egypt. Originally the Mamluks were the spoils of war, captured as children, sold on in slave markets, and raised as Muslims. Brought up in the military, Mamluks over time attained prestige and political power, and ruled colonies on behalf of their powerful owners. In the 12th century no aspiring empire builder was without his Mamluk army. The brothers from Ghur were no exception.
Qutub-ud-din Aibak (Aibak), was a favoured slave soldier of Muhammad Ghori. Together they came out of the hills of Afghanistan and invaded northern India. In 1192, only twelve years after the King of Ajmer renamed Lal Kot, the Afghans conquered the ancient fort. The following year, in his role as Governor on behalf of Muhammad Ghori, Aibak began construction of India’s first mosque.
First he destroyed the 27 Jain and Hindu Temples and defaced the images of the pagan gods carved in the few remaining pillars. He used the material from the temples in his building project.
The remains of these temples is the colonnade that once formed part of Aibak's Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque.
Aibak was not the first, nor would he be the last to proclaim the replacement of one religion, one culture, with another through destruction of and building over earlier buildings.In 1199 Aibak began construction of the Qutub Minar, of which Dalrymple, in City of Djinns says,
The tower still stands above the walls of the old Hindu fortress a tapering cylinder rising 240 feet in four ever diminishing storeys like a fully extended telescope placed lens-down on a plateau in the Aravalli hills. The tower is a statement of arrival... (p. 260)
Tower building seems to be a theme of empire building. The Emperor Ashoka who lived from 304 B.C. – 232 BC was not averse to erecting the odd tower. Some of the massive stone Pillars of Ashoka still stand, inscribed with edicts for the edification of Ashoka’s subjects.
Ghori was murdered in 1206 and Aibak took over as ruler of northern India. At first he ruled from Lahore but eventually moved the capital to Delhi. He became the first Muslim ruler of Delhi and established the Slave Dynasty which held power for most of the next century.
When Aibak died in 1210, his son-in-law, an ex-slave, Shams-ud-din-Ultutmish, completed the Qutub Minar. Ultutmish named as his successor his daughter Raziyya. She was murdered after three years in office. She was the first female ruler of Delhi.
Although the Qutub Minar is not mud brick but red and buff sandstone, it bears a striking resemblance to the Minaret of Jam and is a link not only to the origins of Islam in India but to a now remote area of Afghanistan and a little known period in Afghani history. It is also a timely reminder of the fugitive nature of right and the transience of might.
Observer
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Ref: Dalrymple, William, City of Djinns: A year in Delhi
, Penguin, New Delhi, 2004.
, Penguin, New Delhi, 2004.
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