تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 10.15.9

10.15.9

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.