تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 10.15: ذكر جامع دهلى

The congregational mosque of Dihlī covers a wide area. Its walls, roof and paving are all of white stone, most exquisitely carved and most skilfully joined with lead, and there is no wood in it at all. It has thirteen domes of stone, its minbar is also of stone, and it has four courtyards. In the middle of the mosque is the awesome pillar of which no one knows what metal it is made.

One of their learned men told me that it is called haft jūsh (with a after the h, no vowel on the f, then t, j with u, and ending in sh), meaning "seven metals", and that it is composed of them. A portion of this pillar the length of a forefinger has been polished, and the polished part has a great lustre. Iron makes no mark on it. Its height is thirty cubits. We wound a turban around it, and the part of it that encircled its circumference was eight cubits.

At the eastern gate of the mosque are two very large idols of copper lying on the ground, fixed with stones, and everyone entering or leaving the mosque treads on them.

The site of this mosque was a budkhāna, that is, an idol-house; when [the city] was conquered it was made a mosque.

In the northern courtyard of the mosque is the minaret that has no equal in the lands of Islam. It is built of red stone, unlike the stone of the rest of the mosque, which is white. The stones of the minaret are carved, and it is lofty in height. Its finial is of pure white marble and its apples are of pure gold. Its passage is so wide that elephants can climb it.

Someone I trust told me that he saw an elephant, when it was being built, climbing with stones to its top. It was built by Sultan Muʿizz al-Dīn son of Nāṣir al-Dīn son of Sultan Ghiyāth al-Dīn Balaban.

The Sultan wanted to build in the western courtyard a minaret greater than it, and built about a third of it but was cut off by death before completing it. Sultan Muḥammad wanted to complete it, but then abandoned that as ill-omened.

This minaret is one of the wonders of the world in its massiveness and the width of its passage, such that three elephants side by side can climb it. This third of it that has been built equals the height of the entire minaret that we mentioned is in the northern courtyard.

I climbed it once and saw most of the houses of the city, and I beheld the walls, for all their height and loftiness, lying low; the people below appeared to me like small children. Yet to one looking at it from below, its height does not seem so great, because of its enormous bulk and breadth! Sultan Quṭb al-Dīn had also wanted to build a congregational mosque at Sīrī, which is called Dār al-Khilāfa, but nothing of it was completed except the qibla wall and the miḥrāb. It is built of white, black, red and green stones, and had it been finished it would have had no equal in the lands. Sultan Muḥammad wanted to complete it and sent master builders to estimate its cost, and they claimed that thirty-five lakhs would be spent on completing it, so he abandoned it, thinking it too much. But one of his intimates told me that he did not abandon it for its cost, but because he considered it ill-omened, since Sultan Quṭb al-Dīn had been killed before its completion.