Place · unfinished Khilji minaret · India
Alai Minar
Also known as Alai Minar, Ala'i Minar, Alauddin's Minar
The 25-metre rubble core of an unfinished minaret inside the Qutb complex at Mehrauli, begun by Alauddin Khilji around 1311 and intended to rise twice the height of the existing Qutb Minar beside it. Alauddin died in 1316 before the lower storey could be dressed and no successor continued the project. The surviving stump — a shapeless brick-and-rubble cylinder about half the width of what the completed tower would have been — stands north of the Qutb Minar within the Alai extension of the Quwwat-ul-Islam enclosure. It is the single clearest architectural evidence of Alauddin Khilji's imperial ambition and its abrupt interruption.
- Date
- 1311–None
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Patron dynasty
- Khilji
- Tradition
- ASI conservation records; Catherine Asher on Delhi Sultanate architecture.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.525, 77.185
Worth knowing
Alauddin Khilji had already extended the Qutb complex with the Alai Darwaza (1311) and had built the Siri Fort, Jamaat Khana Masjid and the Hauz-i-Alai (now Hauz Khas) tank; the Alai Minar was intended to crown this programme. The intended height — twice the Qutb Minar's 73 metres — would have made it the tallest brick minaret in the medieval Islamic world. The stump has been consolidated by ASI but never restored above its surviving height.
Connections (3)
- Built byAlauddin Khilji
Alauddin Khilji began the Alai Minar inside the Qutb complex around 1311, intending it to rise twice the height of the existing Qutb Minar beside it as the crown of his imperial building programme. Alauddin died in 1316 before the lower storey had been dressed, and no successor continued the project; the 25-metre rubble core is all that was ever built. It is the single clearest architectural evidence of Alauddin Khilji's imperial ambition and its abrupt interruption at his death.
- Site adjacencyQutb Minar
The Alai Minar stands directly north of the Qutb Minar within the Alai extension of the Quwwat-ul-Islam enclosure — Alauddin Khilji intended it to replace and surpass the Qutb Minar beside it, as a doubled architectural statement of his sultanate's claim over the Mamluk one that preceded it. The two minarets together frame the Khilji-period expansion of the complex, with the Qutb Minar as the Mamluk anchor and the Alai Minar as the unfinished Khilji ambition.
- Site withinQutb complex, Delhi
The Alai Minar sits inside the Qutb complex at Mehrauli, in the extension of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque enclosure that Alauddin Khilji added from 1311 onward along with the Alai Darwaza, the extended congregational hall and the intended new minaret. The whole Alai extension more than doubled the complex's footprint, and the unfinished minar remains visible from across the enclosure.