"Like his predecessors, Iltutmish was also a pious Sunni Muslim and followed the dictates of his religion dutifully. He completed the construction of the Qutub Minar which Qutub-ud-din Aibak had commissioned. He never missed saying the five prayers daily and strictly observed all the prescribed Islamic rituals. He also harboured an inveterate hatred and intolerance towards the Shias and persecuted them on a significant scale, which led to an Ismaili Shia rebellion in Delhi whose declared goal was his assassination. Iltutmish suppressed it with shocking violence which resulted in their indiscriminate slaughter. Needless to mention, his policy towards Hindus was far worse. Towards the end of his life, around 1233–1234, he marched against the sacred city of Vidisha and razed its ancient Sun Temple. Next, he proceeded towards Ujjain, the beloved city of Kalidasa and of generations of poets, scholars and people of learning from the ancient times. It was the proudest and the pre-eminent centre of culture and commerce during the golden Gupta era. Ujjain was also home to the magnificent and sublime Mahakala Temple (or Mahakal) dedicated to Shiva, one of the twelve sacred Jyotirlingas. The immortal poet Kalidasa, an unparalleled devotee of Shiva, dedicates beautifully poignant verses53 in his timeless poem Meghaduta to describe the Mahakala Temple complete with the evening Nada-Aradhana, the performance of music and dance before Shiva. Quite naturally, it was one of the great hubs of idolatry. With a savage stroke, Iltutmish demolished54 this exquisite temple—a majestic, living proof and a profoundly dignified symbol of the possibilities of what innate devotion and stainless piety could accomplish when it finds unsullied expression in architecture and refined sculpture. A work of three hundred painstaking years and countless generations of dedicated, joyous, backbreaking work, an awe-inspiring system of transmitting generational knowledge, an economic framework and political stability that sustained all this tragically fell to the sword, pickaxe and the fire of a determined vandal. The Mahakala Temple is described by Firishta himself as magnificent … surrounded by a wall one hundred cubits in height. The image of Vikramaditya, who had been formerly prince of this country, and so renowned, that the Hindus have taken an era from his death, as also the image of Mahakal, both of stone, with many other figures of brass, were found in the temple. After the pious ravage was complete, Iltutmish ordered his troops to carry these broken idols and ‘many other figures’ and ‘brass statues of Vikramaditya and other notable rulers’ to Delhi where they were ‘broken at the door of the great’ Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque so that the Faithful could trample upon it."