Note sull'episodio
In 1199, on the ruins of Lal Kot, the citadel of Dilika, Qutbuddin Aybak began the Qutb Minar after the defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan, the last Hindu ruler of Delhi. Aybak was a deputy of the Ghurids, a nomadic clan from the mountains of western Afghanistan that unified, embraced Islam, and conquered Delhi by 1193. With Muslim communities fleeing the Mongols and moving east into India, the 72.5 meter minaret served as a beacon for new arrivals. The Quwwat ul-Islam Mosque at its base was built from the dismantled remains of 27 Jain and Hindu temples, a demolition Aybak recorded in an inscription on the eastern entrance, while a fourth century iron pillar dedicated to Vishnu was left standing in the courtyard. Local Hindu craftsmen who could not read Arabic carved the calligraphy as pattern, leaving many inscriptions scrambled.
Aybak finished only the first story. His son-in-law Shamsuddin Iltutmish added three more around 1220 with muqarnas balconies. After lightning struck in 1369, Firuz Shah Tughluq rebuilt the top as two stories of white marble, and later earthquakes brought repairs by Sikander Lodi in 1505 and by Major Robert Smith of the British Indian Army after 1803. Smith added a pillared cupola in 1828 that Viscount Hardinge had removed in 1848; it still sits on the lawn as Smith's Folly. A stampede on December 4, 1981 sealed the interior for good, and the tower remains contested ground in modern religious politics.
- Historical surveys disagree on whether the staircase has 399 or 379 steps
- Dev Anand built a life-size replica of the interior for a song in the 1963 film Tere Ghar Ke Samne because cameras would not fit inside
- In the 1981 stampede, a lighting failure trapped 300 to 400 visitors in darkness and killed 45 people, most of them schoolchildren
- On November 14, 2000, Delhi police detained 80 activists who tried to hold a yajna to free Hindu icons in the recycled pillars
- In May 2022 a former ASI regional director claimed Raja Vikramaditya built the tower as a sun observatory, and an excavation 15 meters south was ordered three days later