The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c30.25

v3.c30.25

Among other buildings associated with the name of Iltutmish, the most celebrated is the *Arhāī-din-ka-Jhompra* at Ajmer, which Qutb-ud-dīn Aibak had built in 1200 A.D. and which Iltutmish subsequently beautified with a screen. The story goes that Qutb-ud-dīn finished the original building in two-and-a-half days, whence its singular name of ‘Two-and-a-half days hut,’ but a more plausible explanation is that the name dates from Marāthā times, when an annual *melā* or fair was held there, lasting two-and-a-half days. Whatever the origin of the name, the mosque of Qutb-ud-dīn is more likely to have taken two-and-a-half years than two-and-a-half days to erect. In style and construction it closely resembles its older rival at Delhi, but its area is more than double as large and the several parts of the edifice are correspondingly more spacious and dignified. At Delhi, the planning of the prayer chamber had been done on makeshift lines, the colonnades being too constricted and the pillars in them too low and crowded. At Ajmer, these defects were remedied. A single broad aisle on three sides of the open court took the place of the two or three narrow ones at Delhi and the arrangement of domes and pillars in the prayer chamber was made strictly uniform and symmetrical. Both mosques were built out of the spoils of Hindu temples, but at Ajmer the architect went to work more boldly and, despite the multiplicity of his materials and their strange fantastic forms, he succeeded nevertheless in creating out of them a hall of really solemn beauty—fit setting for the exquisitely carved mihrāb of white marble set in its western wall (Pl. VI). A further note of distinction was given to this mosque by the addition of circular bastions, fluted and banded like the Qutb minar, at the two corners of its eastern façade. But if Qutb-ud-dīn’s mosque at Ajmer was an improvement on its predecessor at Delhi, the same cannot be said of the screen, magnificent as it undoubtedly was, which Iltutmish threw across the front of the prayer chamber. It had the advantage of being a third again as broad as Qutb-ud-dīn’s screen and vastly more massive; its engrailed arches were a pleasing novelty, its decorative reliefs admirable of their kind, and its workmanship beyond reproach. Yet, with all its grandeur and perfection of technique, it missed the delicate and subtle beauty of its rival. Mathematically it was correct to the minutest detail, but mathematical precision is not architecture and no amount of accuracy with compass and ruler can make up for lack of natural artistry. The two minarets set meaninglessly on the top of the central archway, the inappropriate niches and tiny medallions in the spandrels, and the abrupt determination of the base mouldings sufficiently betray the limitations of the designer, who produced in this screen rather a *tour de force* of technical excellence than an artistic triumph.