Helen Stephenson's India Trip - June-July, 2006 - Qutab Minar

Saturday June 24^th ...continued

Our first official sight-seeing stop was at Qutab Minar.

I think it cost me 350 Rupees to buy my ticket. As I walked through the security screening area and emerged inside the compound, I was approached by a guide who offered his services for 100 Rupees. That’s a little over a pound. I accepted his services and he showed me around. I think he was well worth the money and I added an extra 10% on when I paid him. When he left me, he directed me to one of the tombs on the site and two women there showed me the best vantage points for photographs, and I had to hand over another 100 Rupees, which I didn’t think was quite such good value. I also had to tip the toilet attendant, who unlocked a cubicle for me to use. There was a rather large ant crawling around inside the toilet bowl, but ants don’t worry me. If it had been a spider, it could have been a different matter!

Anyway, Qutab Minar is a very old site indeed and my guide informed me that history is usually written by the victors, in this case, the Muslims, who ruled Delhi for some hundreds of years. Therefore Qutab Minar is described as a Muslim building, but he said that in actuality it was there before the Muslims invaded and was built by the Hindus. According to my guide, the Muslims refaced it by turning the stones inwards and putting their own carvings on the outside. This seems like a lot of effort, so it could just be a good story, particularly as I haven't found this story repeated anywhere else. What I have found is that more than 24 Hindu and Jain temples were destroyed to build Qutab Minar, which would have provided a lot of stones with Hindu carvings on them. You can definitely find Hindu carvings in places – and in one place the guide showed me, the stone containing a carving of a Hindu god had been placed upside down, which seems to indicate that even if the Muslims built the site, they undoubtedly recycled stone that was already there.

This Hindu carving is to be found at ground level behind a wire grate. I never would have found it without a guide to point it out.

The quality of the photograph is affected by the wire grate in front of it, which is out of focus, but still contributing to the picture.

Here is another stone at ground level. The picture on the left shows it the way it is placed in the structure of the building, while on the right, I've zoomed in on the two carved panels and turned them up the other way. One of the panels is now clearly seen to be a man sitting cross-legged.

Here is another ground level view of the stone containing carved panels, but this time I've included more panels.

I've rotated the three panels with carvings which to me were apparent examples of stones of Hindu origin.

My guide asked me if I’d noticed whether the tower was straight or not and I said that I thought it was leaning back a little. I’d thought that this was because I was looking up at it, but it really does lean by five degrees. This lean makes it more likely that in the event of an earthquake, if the tower collpses, it will collapse into a part of the site which is not built on. The degree of the lean also means that the tower casts no shadow on midsummers day, as the sun is five degrees from directly overhead at the solstice, and the angle of the lean points to the direction in the sky where the midsummers sun will be.

My guide asserted that the original purpose of the building was astronomical and my attention was drawn to parallels with Stonehenge. However, I think that I should take this assertion with a pinch of salt. There's a very large jump from re-using material from demolished Hindu and Jain temples to finding a tower ready-built within such a complex and originally used as an observatory.

Some of the Hindu carvings and some of the best vantage points for photographs turned out to be from ground level, and I was very glad that I’d opted to wear trousers and a t-shirt. I’d very nearly chosen to wear a skirt for coolness, but trousers were much more practical for sitting on the ground and then getting back up again.

These pillars withing the cloister area of the mosque could be photographed without the need to descend to floor level. The carvings on them are Hindu rather than Muslim.

The Iron Pillar is a much older structure than the rest of the complex. It was built by Samrat Ashoka who ruled around 280 B.C. and it couldn't be destroyed as the Hindu and Jain temples were. Despite being over 2,000 years old, this pillar has not rusted, indicating that metallurgical skills in India were well developed more than two millenia ago. My guide is posing by the pillar in the picture on the left. I've photographed the translation of the inscription on the pillar and included that as well.

Here is another view of the cloister area of the mosque which includes the Iron Pillar.

There were numerous photo opportunities involving framing the main tower in doorways and arches.

As well as the main tower, there is a second tower, which was started by the Muslims and then abandoned when about two storeys high.

I was attempting to photograph the incomplete tower from a different angle when these two ladies walked into my line of view. They make a rather nice picture!

I did also run off a couple of shots of my intended picture without the ladies, but I think the picture looks better with them.

The incomplete tower also got the doorway framing treatment!

There are also remains of a Madrasar, or school, which are of Muslim origin.

This view of a wall with an arched entrance was taken in the same part of the site as the pictures of the Madrasar, but facing towards the Minar. The sign was the next picture on my memory card, but I'm not sure whether it refers to the Madrasar at the rear of the site or to another building closer to the tower. (I shouldn't have left it more than six months before doing this web page!)

My guide apparently had a favourite place for photographing his customers with their own cameras, as he directed me to stand on some stones while he took my camera and stood below and took my picture with Qutab Minar behind me.

I was then shown Major Smith's Cupola. This was a replacement top tier on the tower which dated from when the British were in India. It has since been removed and now occupies a position in the grounds. I have reunited it with the main tower in the photograph on the right; and used it to frame the main tower in the photograph in the centre.

Major Smith's Cupola was the last place on the site which my guide showed me, and I then retraced my steps around the site by myself to take some more photographs at my leisure.

I like this set of three pictures showing the Minar alone, the dome of the Mosque, and then Mosque and Minar side by side.

Here are some more pictures I took, mostly featuring the Minar tower.

I'm not quite sure where this doorway top belongs on the site. I believe that I took it while the guide was still with me. The stonework is beautiful.

I believe that these three pictures belong together. The centre picture is certainly close-up detail from the arch on the left. The picture on the right has similar architectural details, but I can't identify where it came from on the arch.

These pictures undoubtedly belong together, with the picture on the right providing close-up detail of the central feature in the wall.

This is the tomb where it cost me 100 Rupees to be shown the best places to sit on the floor to take photographs of Qutab Minar framed in the doorways.

And here are the photographs taken under the direction of the women who were pointing out the vantage points. They were pretty good vantage points, as the scaffolding which is apparent in some of my other pictures does not feature in these at all.

Here are two close-up pictures of the top of the Minar.

And here are two close-up pictures of the base of the Minar.

I'm not sure whether the text recorded in the picture on the left refers to the building in the other two pictures below, but I took it when I was in that vicinity. When I took the picture in the centre, I was trying to get an uninterrupted view into the garden below, but it proved impossible, so I'm presenting it here with one figure standing in the arched doorway. The picture on the right shows the detail of a window slit in the same building.

These two pictures give the official details of Qutab Minar and show a map of the whole site.

My guide had nothing to say about the Mosque near the entrance to the Qutab Minar site, but I thought it was in a beautiful setting among the trees.

It was very hot while I was at Qutab Minar. I made use of what shade I could; fished out my Baker & Tilley cap; and also my umbrella. A lot of umbrellas are carried here for sun protection. I’d brought my umbrella in my backpack for that very reason, as Gagan had recommended that I use an umbrella. I had nearly a litre of water with me, and was continually thirsty, and eventually started to feel a bit light headed. That might have had something to do with the health bar still in my bag uneaten, so I sat down in the shade with a drink and my mango and cereal bar. It didn’t feel unbearably hot, but I must have been sweating quite profusely to need so much water. Anyway, I didn’t linger as long as I might have done had it been a fraction cooler, and as I left the site, I purchased a further litre of chilled water in a sealed bottle, and probably drank at least half of it when I got back in the car, which was blessedly air conditioned.