Alai Minar
A tower that would have been twice as tall as the Qutub Minar, had it been completed; this is the story of Alai Minar.
From the tomb of Iltutmish, walk eastwards on the path that leads to Alai Minar. This is the location for the last story on this trail. After this story, you can continue on the same path to exit the Qutub Minar complex.
The last of the monuments in this complex is the Alai Minar. As you can see, it is an incomplete structure. This too was started by Alauddin Khilji. Khilji’s military campaigns had brought in enormous wealth and he wanted to build a monument that would match his great accomplishments. So, in the same complex that housed the Qutub Minar, he commissioned the Alai Minar. It was to be a humongous tower, double the height of the Qutub at 146 metres! What better way to awe posterity? But by the time the tower reached 25 metres he was very sick and he died 1316. None of his successors were capable of continuing the project and it was left incomplete.
That brings us to the end of this tour. Our trail covered a tumultuous period in Delhi’s history, from the 11th to the 15th centuries. Those were times when kings had to be tough and seen as invincible. And nothing spoke louder than a grand monument. The Qutub complex is a fine example. It was a statement, a BIG one, that marked the arrival of a new rule and the might of a new religion.
800 years have passed and many kings have come and gone. But these monuments continue to stand tall, as a reminder of a time when slaves became kings and shaped the destiny of a land.
