Qutb Minar

Mehrauli, South Delhi, Delhi Indo-Islamic architecture; Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque complex

Served from the stored corpus. Last scan Sep 29, 2026. Next scan Oct 29, 2026.

“Kootub”

Colonial caption spelling used on Beato’s 1858 prints. Not an inscription on the tower.

Photograph

Earliest republishable photograph in this record.

1 of 2

Albumen photograph from 1858 by Felice Beato showing the shaft of the Qutb Minar.

Minaret shaft

Felice Beato photographed the Qutb Minar in 1858, in the same year as the Tytler view, during his documentation of Delhi after the 1857 uprising.

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1858 Felice Beato, 1858. Public domain, Getty Museum via Wikimedia Commons. Source and license

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Each line keeps the confidence of its source. Conflicts are not collapsed.

Photographed immediately after 1857 Beato, Murray, and the Tytlers made named photographs of the minaret in 1858. This record treats those prints as evidence of the monument’s appearance then, not as a construction date. 1858 photographic campaign · Documented fact · Medium confidence

Evidence summary

Counts are records in this corpus, including gaps.

2 Republishable photographs

0 Interior photographs

0 Diagrams

1 Documents

About the temple

The Qutb Minar stands in Mehrauli, south Delhi, in the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque complex. Secondary accounts attribute the tower’s beginning to Qutb-ud-din Aibak and its completion and later stages to Iltutmish and others. The Iron Pillar and early pointed arches of the mosque screen are part of the same complex. After the 1857 uprising, Felice Beato, John Murray, and Robert and Harriet Tytler photographed the minaret and ruins in 1858. Those are among the earliest named photographs of the Delhi monument stored in public archives. The earliest photograph stored here is Robert and Harriet Tytler’s general view of 1858.

Primary deity:

Secondary accounts begin the tower in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, with later repairs. Those dates are not checked against an inscription edition here. The stored photographs begin in 1858.