Medieval Art & Architecture: Features and Sultanate buildings

The Tughlaqs built in rubble masonry, plastered over, with battered (inward- sloping) walls, plain surfaces and little carving, giving a stern, military look. The tomb of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, set within a walled outwork once surrounded by water at Tughlaqabad, is the classic example; it is faced in red sandstone with white marble on the dome. The Khalji Alai Darwaza, by contrast, is richly carved with vertical walls.

Sultan Ghari was built by Iltutmish around 1231 over the remains of his eldest son and heir-apparent, prince Nasiruddin Mahmud, who had died while governing Lakhnauti (Bengal). Its octagonal grave-chamber lies underground inside a fortress-like walled enclosure with corner bastions, and reused temple pillars carry its roof. Iltutmish's own tomb stands in the Qutb complex; Aibak is buried at Lahore.

Firoz Shah Tughlaq had the Topra pillar of Ashoka carried to Delhi and mounted on a stepped pyramidal structure at Firoz Shah Kotla, and another from Meerut set up on the Ridge. When lightning damaged the Qutb Minar, he rebuilt its top, replacing the damaged storey with two storeys faced partly in white marble. Siri and the unfinished Alai Minar are works of Alauddin Khalji. So only two are his.

The screen (maqsura) that Qutbuddin Aibak added in front of the prayer hall has pointed arches, but local masons built them by corbelling horizontal courses inward and then shaping the profile, so they are not voussoir arches. Its bands of Quranic calligraphy mixed with serpentine tendrils show Indian hands. The colonnades, however, are made of pillars and other material reused from demolished temples, as the mosque's own inscription says, so statement 3 is wrong.

The tomb of Ghiyasuddin Balban (d. 1287) in Mehrauli is credited with the first true arch in India: unlike the corbelled arches of the Qutb mosque, its arches have radially set voussoirs held by a central keystone. Its dome has collapsed. The first surviving true dome came a little later, at the Alai Darwaza (1311). Iltutmish's tomb (Qutb complex) still uses corbelled forms; Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq's tomb is at Tughlaqabad.

Bengal had little good building stone, so its Sultanate builders worked mainly in brick, faced with carved terracotta and, in some buildings, a stone veneer re-used or brought from Rajmahal. A local feature is the curved cornice and roof, taken from the bent bamboo roofs of village huts (the do-chala form), seen at the Eklakhi tomb and the Qadam Rasul at Gaur. Gujarat, by contrast, had abundant stone. So statement 3 is wrong.

Alauddin Khalji planned four grand gateways to his enlarged mosque enclosure; only the southern one, the Alai Darwaza (1311), was finished. Its square hall is covered by a dome of dressed stone voussoirs, with true arches used as squinches to turn the square into an octagon, which makes it the first surviving true dome in India. It is faced in red sandstone with white marble bands, and a fringe of lotus buds hangs from its horseshoe-shaped arches, a local motif. All three statements are correct.

Sikandar Lodi's tomb (1517–18), built by his son Ibrahim Lodi, stands at the centre of a walled garden enclosure entered from a gateway on the south. The Bara Gumbad (c. 1490) is a square domed structure whose adjoining mosque is famous for its carved and painted stucco. Sikandar's tomb is, however, octagonal, with a deep verandah, reviving the Sayyid royal type; the square plan was used mostly for the tombs of nobles such as the Bara and Shish Gumbad. So statement 3 is wrong.