The Qutb Minar Is Commissioned

Qutb ud-Din Aibak, a general under Muhammad Ghori, commissions the Qutb Minar to commemorate their victory against the Chauhan rulers of the region. The Minar, along with its adjoining Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque and the Alai Darwaza, will take nearly 150 years to be completed, through the patronage of the subsequent Delhi Sultanate rulers Iltutmish, Alauddin Khilji and Firoz Shah Tughlaq. Consequently, the materials, architectural styles and proportions of each storey vary. 

The Minar and its complex is built on the plinth of a demolished temple, and the column shafts, bases, capitals and reliefs are taken out of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples plundered by the Ghurids under whom Aibak served. Most of the temple spolia dates to between the eighth and tenth centuries. The Iron Pillar at the site, speculated to date back to 400 CE (and possibly commissioned under Gupta rule), is brought most likely from Udayagiri (in present-day Madhya Pradesh). While one present-day theory claims that the pillar was moved by Iltutmish, another suggests that it was moved by Anangpal Tomar, a Tomar Rajput king who ruled Delhi in the mid-eleventh century. This, and the other reused temple components at the site, can be compared to the appropriation and reinstallation of sacred objects by other South Asian kings, such as sculptures in the Gangaikondacholapuram temple (in present-day Tamil Nadu) which were taken from Kalinga temples (in present-day Odisha) in the early eleventh century.