. I tried to trace the
origin of this paradox, and I think I found it in a silly old
'munshi' (clerk) in the service of the Emperor. He told me that he
believed it was built by a former Hindoo prince for his daughter, who
wished to worship the rising sun, and view the waters of the Jumna
from the top of it every morning.[21]

There is no other Hindoo building like, or of the same kind as
this;[22] the ribbons or belts of passages from the Koran are all in
relief; and had they not been originally inserted as they are, the
whole surface of the building must have been cut down to throw them
out in bold relief. The slope is the peculiar characteristic of all
the architecture of the Pathans, by whom the church to which this
tower belongs was built.[23] Nearly all the arches of the church are
still standing in a more or less perfect state, and all correspond in
design, proportion, and execution to the tower. The ruins of the old
Hindoo temples about the place, and about every other place in India,
are totally different in all three; here they are all exceedingly
paltry and insignificant, compared with the church and its tower, and
it is evident that it was the intention of the founder to make them
appear so to future generations of the faithful, for he has taken
care to make his own great work support rather than destroy them,
that they might for ever tend to enhance its grandeur.[24] It is
sufficiently clear that the unfinished minar was commenced upon too
large a scale, and with too small a diminution of the circumference
from the base upwards. It is two-fifths larger than the finished
tower in circumference, and much more perpendicular. Finding these
errors when they had got some thirty feet from the foundation, the
founder, Shams-ud-din (Iltutmish), began to work anew, and had he
lived a little longer, there is no doubt that he would have raised
the second tower in its proper place, upon the same scale as the one
completed. His death was followed by several successive revolutions;
five sovereigns succeeded each other on the throne of Delhi in ten
years.[25] As usual on such occasions, works of peace were suspended,
and succeeding sovereigns sought renown in military enterprise rather
than in building churches. This church was entire, with the exception
of the second minar, when Tamerlane invaded India.[26] He took back a
model of it with him to Samarkand, together with all the masons he
could find at Delhi, and is said t