Catching Up With Ibn Battutah

I've not mentioned my fourteenth-century travelling companion Ibn Battutah for a while. We parted company in Samarkand when I headed on eastwards through Kygyrstan into China, Tibet and Nepal. Meanwhile, he turned southward through Afghanistan and crossed the Kyber Pass into the province of Sind (now Pakistan), before entering Northern India. In Delhi I've been re-acquainting myself with my wandering muse. This is a city in which he hung up his boots for quite a number of years, obtaining a position of some authority under one of India's greatest and most tyrannical rulers, the Sultan Mohammed Tughlaq.

Back in 1333 the centre of Delhi was a good 15 km to the south of the present 'Old Delhi' and was focused around the magnificent Qutb Minar mosque complex. At the heart of this was a 73 metre minaret of surpassing beauty, already old at the time of Ibn Battutah's visit. He describes it as the most beautiful minaret in all of Islam, which is quite a statement coming from one who had travelled so extensively.

Finding myself with an inadequate amount of time to explore this fascinating city, I vowed that at least I would make a pilgrimage into the suburbs to see this one place that had so greatly impressed Ibn Battutah. I didn't regret the decision. The mosque, which is actually the oldest in India, is now ruinous and rather reminiscent in its gutted grandeur of some the great ruined abbeys of northern England. Yet the minaret still stands tall and proud as it has done since 1193, betraying a slight tilt as a small concession to its old age. It is simply gigantic. Ibn Battutah described it's internal staircase as being wide enough to ride an elephant up and suggested this was how the building materials were carried up to the top. The lower sections are constructed of red sandstone with a lovely fluted exterior that accentuates the effect of the minaret's taper. The top section is faced in translucent white marble which in the fourteenth century was surmounted with a golden ball.

Given that Delhi is a big and brash city that bears almost no resemblance whatsoever to its antecedent of the fourteenth century, I found it rather moving to be confronted with one building at least which would be instantly recognisable across seven long centuries.