Address: Qutub Area, Mehrauli
City: New Delhi
State: Delhi
Location: North India
Year of Construction: 1192-98 AD
Constructed By: Qutub-Ud-Din Aibak
Type of Construction: Medieval
Type of Building: Mosque
Religion: Islam
Accomodation: Accomodations are easily available in hotels and lodges in Delhi.
Accesibility: New Delhi is connected to the other major Indian cities by air, rail and road.

Quwwatul Islam Masjid

The mosque known as Might of Islam was begun by Qutbuddin Aibak in AD 1192 to celebrate his master, Mohammed Ghuri's victory over the Rajputs and is the oldest surviving mosque in India. When Ghuri was assassinated in 1206, Qutbuddin anointed himself sultan and made the Quwwatul Islam masjid the Jami Masjid or the congregational mosque of Delhi.

Passing through the main gateway, you find yourself standing under an intricately carved temple ceiling with richly ornamented pillars on both sides. These were taken from 27 Hindu and Jain temples of Qila Rai Pithora, a fact recorded by Qutbuddin on the main eastern entrance. Some of the pillars with motifs like bells and garlands are still resplendent.

Although the mosque, completed in AD 1198, contains many Arabic architectural features like the use of mud and brick for buildings and glazed tiles for decoration, it also displays marked Hindu elements. The cloister, for instance, is built entirely of undisguised temple columns, placed rather incongruously one on top of another to achieve the height the Muslim planners wanted.

The sandstone screen at the western end of the courtyard, too, has carved lotuses mingling with Koranic calligraphy in happy fusion. The screen is a series of arches in the corbelling style favoured by the Hindu craftsmen who built it.

Quwwatul Islam mosque was enlarged in AD1230. Qutbuddin's successors and son-in-laws, Iltutmish, doubled the size of mosque by extending its colonnades and prayer-hall to accommodate the increasing numbers of the faithful.

Alauddin Khilji of the next dynasty to rule Delhi again enlarged the enclosure in the first quarter of the 14th century and also added gateways on the eastern, northern and southen walls.

The Hindu temples of North India seldom featured arches. The gateways of these temples were either flat-roofed or else modelled on mountain peaks, with the layers of stones increasing in length until they met in a speak above two pillars.

Muslim Sultans wanted to recreate the pointed arches that had fired the imagination of Islamic architects ever snce they were first built in the mosque of Samara in Iraq, in AD 752.

But the local masons were unfamiliar with the keystones technique that held up an arch. This involved arranging and cutting individual wedge-shaped stones in such a manner that they formed a semi-circle whose centre was also the centre of the arch. The centre stone of the arch was called the keystone and carried the weight of the arch.

Pressed by their Muslim masters, Hindu craftsmen innovated the corbelled arch. They laid their stones horizontally and in layers of increasing length like they had done for their peaked gateways.

But they rounded the sides of individual stones to form the curved lines of an arch. This was also called the sham arch and is the style seen in the Quwwatul Islam mosque..