Felice Beato was a British photographer of Italian origin. He travelled through India after the so-called ‘mutiny’ or uprising of the Indian army against their British officers in 1857. Beato took photographs of sites associated with the uprising, as well as more general photographs of the most important monuments of the cities he visited, as in this example.

This photograph is of the tomb of the sultan of Delhi, Shamsuddin Iltutmish (1211–36). Built in 1235 by Iltutmish himself, the tomb is situated south of Delhi near the Qutb Minar complex, where the earliest extant mosque in India was built between 1193 and 1199. As can be seen from this photograph, the bulk of the exterior of the monument is fairly plain, with a few strips of carved decoration, but the entranceway is more detailed. This carved entrance reflects the interior, which is intricately decorated with bands of arabesque designs and Qur’anic inscriptions in red sandstone. Two Indian men pose beside the marble cenotaph in the centre to give a sense of the scale of the architecture.