301. Window in Bhudder at Ahmedabad. (From a Photograph by Colonel Biggs.)
Above the roof of the mosques the minarets are always round towers slightly tapering, as in the mosque of Mooháfiz Khan ([Woodcut No. 300]), relieved by galleries displaying great richness in the brackets which support them as well as in the balustrades which protect them. The tower always terminates in a conical top relieved by various disks. They are, so far as I know, the only minarets belonging to mosques which surpass those of Cairo in beauty of outline or richness of detail, excepting those of the Rani Sîpri mosque, which are still more beautiful. Indeed, that mosque is the most exquisite gem at Ahmedabad, both in plan and detail. It is without arches, and every part is such as only a Hindu queen could order, and only Hindu artists could carve.[515]
Tombs.
302. Tomb of Meer Abu Touráb. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
Knowing the style, it would not be difficult to predicate the form of the tombs. The simplest would be that of Abu Touráb; an octagonal dome supported on twelve pillars, and this extended on every side, but always remaining a square, and the entrances being in the centre of the faces. The difference between this and the Jaina arrangement is that the latter is diagonal ([Woodcut No. 119]), while these are square. The superiority of the Hindu mode is apparent at a glance. Not, it is true, in so small an arrangement as that last quoted, but in the tombs at Sirkej ([Woodcut No. 298]), the effect is so monotonous as almost to become unpleasing. With the Jains this never is the case, however numerous the pillars may be.