80 Notes on Old Delhi. [No. 2, 



The Palace of Firiizaodd. 



The ruins known as ' Firuz Shah ka kotilah' close to the Delhi 

 gate of the modern city, undoubtedly constitute only the palace of 

 Firuzabad, which itself reached far into the modern town of 

 Shahjahan, and on the other hand it, or its suburbs, are said to have 

 stretched to the present village of Hauz Khac, and to Indrapat. 

 I have carefully searched, and I believe not a single inscription 

 can be found throughout the whole palace, probably because time 

 has kindly removed or blackened the plaster in which this king so 

 delighted. Immediately to the south of the pyramid, on which 

 Asoka's pillar has been set up, is the mosque, which Sayyid Ahmad 

 identifies as the Jami' Masjid of Timur Lang's days, and its size, 

 situation, as well as the absence of any other ruins on the old river 

 bank, which could be the mosque in question, render this highly 

 probable, notwithstanding its position inside the palace. If, how- 

 ever, it be the mosque, then that gracious monarch seems to have 

 been guilty of exaggeration in describing it as a a noble mosque of 

 polished marble" (Elphinstone's Hist, of India, p. 358), as it is only 

 built of masonry, covered with plaster, and can never have been 

 anything else, since in one or two places, ornamental medallions of 

 raised plaster work still remain on the walls, and bear due testi- 

 mony that the building was not raised in a reign of marble and 

 sand-stone. 



3Iosques of Jdh&n Klian. 



General Cunningham speaks of the Kdld Jlasji'd, now within the 

 enclosure of modern Delhi, as a characteristic and favourable speci- 

 men of the architecture of those days. It is a trite saying De 

 gustibus non est dispatandum, but it seems difficult to see what 

 there is to admire in low colonnades, surmounted by rows of hemi- 

 spherical domes of small diameter, each one touching its fellow, 

 with one of larger size here and there over a gateway. It may be 

 doubted too, if the sloping walls which crown so proudly the crests 

 of the Tughluqabad hills, are much adapted for crowded streets, 

 especially when for huge blocks of squared stone are substituted 

 paint and plaster. However, for admirers of the later Tughluq 

 style, I may observe that the mosque at the village of Khirkhi by 



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