Tomb of Iltutmish

Shams al-Din Iltutmish ruled the Delhi Sultanate from 1211 until his death on 29 April 1236^2,7,8. Britannica counts him the third and greatest sultan of the so-called Slave dynasty⁷. At the Qutb he added three storeys to the minaret begun by his father-in-law and predecessor, Qutb al-Din Aibak, and enlarged the Quwwat al-Islam mosque². His tomb lies in the north-west corner of the complex, immediately west of his own extension of the mosque^1,3,4. The ASI dates it to 1235, a year before his death². UNESCO sees this square tomb as the start of a tradition of royal tombs that lasted into the Mughal era¹.

Every text carved on the tomb is from the Quran, with no foundation inscription; in 1926 the ASI’s J. A. Page noted that its identification as Iltutmish’s tomb had not been firmly established⁴. Firuz Shah Tughlaq (r. 1351-1388) recorded that he restored the fallen columns of Iltutmish’s tomb and the piers of its four towers^2,4,6. Page, citing Sir John Marshall, noted that this description does not fit this building but fits the nearby Sultan Ghari tomb, which Iltutmish built for his son⁴. Until the 1910s the Delhi-Gurgaon road ran across the site, touching the tomb’s north-west corner^4,5. Excavation under Gordon Sanderson in 1914 found the crypt full of fallen rubble, which was left in place for the building’s safety⁵.

The tomb is a square chamber about 9.1 m a side, built of newly cut stone rather than the reused temple material found elsewhere in the complex³. Outside, plain ashlar walls with sparse bands of grey quartzite contrast with central bays of red sandstone carved with arabesques and Arabic inscriptions⁴. Doorways open on the north, east and south; the west wall, facing Mecca, holds three mihrab niches^3,4. Inside, squinch arches built of corbelled courses turn the square into an octagon^3,4. They carried a dome: Page recorded fragments of its lowest inscribed course still in place on the south side and believed it was a low conical dome of Hindu type⁴. The chamber is now open to the sky; Archnet notes that the walls, about 2.2 m thick, may have been too thin to bear the outward thrust of a dome³.

Almost the whole interior is carved, except the lower walls on three sides, which Page thought were once plastered⁴. Bands of Quranic inscriptions in naskh and Kufic scripts frame the arches and niches and run as a frieze round the walls, set among arabesque and geometric patterns^2,3,4. Marble is used only for the central mihrab and the cenotaph; the two flanking niches and most of the interior facing are red sandstone⁴. Some motifs, such as the wheel, the tassel, lotus flowers and bells on chains, come from the Hindu decorative repertoire^2,3.

Visitors step into a single square room without a roof, with the marble cenotaph in the middle^3,4. On the west wall are three mihrab niches: the central one of marble, densely carved with inscriptions, and the two beside it of red sandstone^3,4. Above them the corner squinches that once carried the dome are still in place^3,4. The burial chamber lies beneath the floor and is not aligned with the room above; Page reported in 1938 that it had been left filled with rubble, while its three small light shafts and the original steps on the north side were kept open to view⁵.