Exploring the Indain heritage - Travel Diaries #india

Hi guys today I wanted to share my traveling story to Qutub Minar. An historical Place in my Country's Capital.It is Located in New Delhi. I took the opportunity of my Free day to visit this marvelous structure.In this post I will be sharing about  the history and few pictures of the Qutub Minar and Myself. Below is the picture of me getting in the car to the destination. I had to wake up really early in the morning to beat the traffic of New Delhi and Also the crowd ( tourists)

Few Facts about Qutub Minar -

•  Qutb Minar means pole or axis in Arabic. 

•  The Qutb Minar is surrounded by several great historical monuments and  all of them together are referred to as “Qutb Complex”. The complex  therefore includes: Iron Pillar of Delhi, Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque, Alai  Darwaza, the Tomb of Iltutmish, Alai Minar, Ala-ud-din’s Madrasa and  Tomb, the Tomb of Imam Zamin, Major Smith’s Cupola and Sanderson’s  Sundial. 

•  The top floor of the minar was destructed by the lightning and rebuilt  by Firoz Shah Tughlaq. These floors are quite distinguishable from the  rest of the minar as they are made up of white marble. 
•  Before 1974, the general public was allowed to access the top of the  minar accessed. On December 4 1981, 45 people were killed in a stampede  that followed an electricity failure that plunged the tower’s staircase  into darkness. Consequently, public access to the inside of the tower  has been banned. 
•  Qutb Minar has a Decorative Light Show every evening. The Qutb Minar  Festival in October/November shows the cultural art forms of the country  with a back drop of this exquisite minaret. 

•  The Iron Pillar in the Qutb Minar Complex has been standing tall without rusting for over 2000 years! That’s wondrous. 
•  There are 379 stairs inside the tower which lead to the marble top of the minaret. 

History Of  Qutub Minar-

 Qutb ud-Din Aibak, the founder of the Turkish rule in north-western  India and also of the Mamluk Dynasty in Delhi commissioned the  construction of this monument in 1192 AD. Aibak dedicated the minaret to  the Muslim Sufi mystic, saint and scholar of the Chishti Order,  Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki. Different beliefs surround the origin of the  minaret. While some sources believe it was constructed as a tower of  victory marking the beginning of Muslim dominion in India, some others  say it served the muezzins who called the faithful to prayer from the  minaret. Uncertainty hovers around naming of the tower with some  suggesting it was named after the Sufi saint, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki  while others believe it was named after Aibak himself. 

 The tower was completed by Aibak's son-in-law and successor  Shams-ud-din Iltutmish, regarded as the founder of the Delhi Sultanate,  in 1220. Iltutmish added three more storeys to the monument. This  historical monument faced a few natural disasters. A lightning hit the  top storey of the minaret in 1369 AD, knocking it off entirely. The then  ruler of the Sultanate of Delhi, Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq took charge  of its restoration and constructed two more storeys to the minaret made  of marble and red sandstone. Again when an earthquake damaged it in  1505, the then Sultan of Delhi, Sikandar Lodi, reconstructed the top two  storeys of the minaret with marbles. Parso-Arabic and Nagari characters  engraved in various sections of the minaret speak about the history of  its construction. The minaret faced the wrath of nature yet again when a  major earthquake on September 1, 1803 damaged it severely. In 1828, it  was renovated by Major Robert Smith of the British Indian Army, who  installed a cupola atop the tower. However in 1848, as instructed by the  then Governor General of India, Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge,  the cupola was uninstalled from the tower and placed in the east of it  where the cupola remains situated.

After My visit to Qutub Minar I went on a  little street shopping. The street market included handmande toys jewellery, home decors. I bought some Bangles for myself.It is always a busy street no matter what time of the day you visit.