is from Lahore and were sweeping
down upon Delhi, but in the following year the gallant young Rajput was
crushingly defeated, captured, and done to death by a ruthless foe. Then
Delhi fell, and Kutub-ed-Din, in turn the favourite slave, the trusted
lieutenant and the deputed viceroy of the Afghan conqueror, growing
tired of serving an absent master, within a few years threw off his
allegiance. In 1206 he proclaimed himself Emperor of Delhi. That the
Slave Dynasty which he founded was in one respect at least not unworthy
of empire, in spite of the stigma attaching to its worse than servile
origin, the Kutub Minar and the splendid mosque of which it forms part
are there to show. The great minaret, which was begun by Kutub-ed-Din
himself, upon whose name it has conferred an enduring lustre not
otherwise deserved, is beyond comparison the loftiest and the noblest
from which the Musulman call to prayer has ever gone forth, nor
is the mosque which it overlooks unworthy to have been called
_Kuwwet-el-Islam_, the Might of Islam. To make room for it the Hindu
temples, erected by the Rajput builders of the Red Fort, were torn down,
and the half-effaced figures on the columns of the mosque, and many
other conventional designs peculiar to Hindu architecture, betray
clearly the origin of the materials used in its construction. But the
general conception, and especially the grand lines of the screen of
arches on the western side, are essentially and admirably Mahomedan. On
a slighter scale, but profusely decorated and of exquisite workmanship,
is the tomb of Altamsh, Kutub-ed-Din's successor, and like him
originally a mere favourite slave.

It had been well for these Slave kings had no other record survived of
them than those which they have left in stone and marble. Great
builders and mighty warriors they were in the cause of Allah and his
Prophet, but their depravity was only exceeded by their cruelty. The
story of the whole dynasty is a long-drawn tale of horrors until the
wretched Kaikobad, having turned Delhi for a short three years into a
house of ill-fame, was dragged out of his bed and flung into the Jumna,
his infant child murdered, and the house of Khilji set up where the
Slave kings had reigned. It was the second of these Khilji princes,
Ala-ud-Din, who built, alongside of Kutub-ed-Din's mosque, the Alai
Darwazah, the monumental gateway which is not only an exceptionally
beautiful specimen of external polychromatic decorat