CUTTUB MINAR. 
233 
of Mahomet, and claimed as their own. It has, in- 
deed, been the puzzle of all modem speculators, whe- 
ther it really be a Hindoo or a Mahomedan building, 
but, notwithstanding the extracts from the Koran 
with which it is embellished, I believe the prevailing 
opinion to be that it is a Hindoo structure. Some 
writers, however, have conjecturd that this tower was 
intended to form one of the minarets of a splendid 
mosque, designed to have been built by a Mahomedan 
emperor who sat on the throne of Delhi in the thir- 
teenth century, and from whom the Minar now stand- 
ing derives its name. The tomb of Cuttub Shah, who 
is supposed by them to have built the Cuttub Minar, 
may be seen within a few hundred yards of it. Had 
he lived to complete a building to correspond with this 
tower, it would indeed have been a most marvellous 
structure. But this surmise seems to me to be con- 
tradicted by the remains of the larger tower, which 
could not have been intended as another corresponding 
minaret of the same edifice. Its vast size clearly 
points it out as designed to stand alone, a prodigious 
monument, which it would have been, at once of 
human labour and of human enterprise. Even the 
smaller pillar is perhaps at this moment the largest in 
the world. This building is circular, its base being a 
polygon of twenty-seven sides. The surface is fluted, 
having twenty-seven divisions partly semicircular 
and partly angular, and the flutings in each story 
are different. The structure is divided into four 
stories, at unequal distances, ornamented by four 
beautiful balconies. The whole is surmounted by a 
large cupola of red granite. Bishop Heber says of it, 
x 3 
