The Tower of “Victory” When Aibak returned to Delhi flushed with these great victories, he decided to commemorate them by building the first ever mosque in the city. But it was not enough to simply build the Quwwat-ul-Islam, the “glory of Islam.” It necessitated an emphatic spectacle and a permanent reminder of what this glory meant in actual practice. Accordingly, Qutub-ud-din Aibak demolished twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples and used their debris as construction material for the mosque. The Quwwat-ul-Islam is noted for the Qutub Minar, the “tower of victory,” celebrating and stamping the
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