History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c33.s4.31.2

v3.c33.s4.31.2

He had further humbled and subjected to a yearly tribute the emperor of Northern India, at the battle on the Rahib and perhaps he had defeated and entered into friendly relations with the king of the Turks beyond the Oxus. He had finally obtained incalculable wealth from the raid on Mathura and Kanauj and human nature impelled him to expend it on a magnificent mosque at Ghazni, being incited thereto, perhaps, by the sight of the magnificent temple at Mathura "which the best architects" he said "could not have built in two hundred years." He, therefore, at this time designed and reared a splendid mosque at Ghazni, the old mosque there being built for a smaller number of people and at a time when Ghazni had but a small territory. Utbi describes the building of the grand Juma Masjid of Ghazni on which “slaves from Hind and Khorasan worked day and night and superintendents richly paid supervised from morning to evening. Trees were brought from Hind and Sind and used on the said works; mighty stones of marble, square and hexagonal, were brought from distant places. And they drew out the domed porticoes so perfectly spherical that the arch of the sky was but a myth in comparison.” They spared not the purest gold in their paintings and gilding, and crushed the bodylike idols and fastened them in the doors and walls. The Sultan commanded a closet to be constructed for his own use.