A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c18.10

c18.10

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, when Kutb-ud-dīn and Iyaltimish undertook to build mosques and tombs at Delhi and Ajmēr, domes and pointed arches were recognized to be essential. But the conquerors were obliged to employ Hindu masons, unaccustomed to turning true radiating arches and domes, and ordinarily able only to make the semblance of such by means of the horizontal corbelled construction familiar to them, with which the Muslim architects had to be content. The cloisters were easily made up from the materials of overthrown Hindu temples, and retained a manifest Hindu character without objection.