High Middle Ages · South Asia · War

1194

Qutb al-Din Aibak takes Ajmer

1194

The Ghurid slave-general defeated the remnants of Prithviraj Chauhan's Rajput state and occupied the sacred city of Ajmer. He demolished Hindu and Jain temples and used their pillars in the construction of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque at Delhi. The visual hybridity of early Delhi Sultanate architecture was born, as Hindu floral carvings and Islamic calligraphic inscriptions coexisted uneasily on the same repurposed stone columns.