"It is a small mosque wholly devoid of magnificence, erected, according to Mussulman practice, upon the ruins of a Hindoo temple. The limited site on which it was built may not have admitted of the usual display of beauty or splendour, or the imperial founder may have considered it more as a monument of triumph than of grandeur – have desired that it should express contempt than command admiration. Benares was indeed taken and plundered, and given up to every excess, by Mahomed Gauri in the year 1194; but the mosque in question was constructed by Aurungzebe, who has left behind him many similar proofs of his persecution of the Hindoos. A humane king would have lamented the past injuries of his subjects, a great one would have repaired them, but Aurungzebe, in a more enlightened age, and without the palliation of his predecessor, a barbarian and a conqueror, deliberately augmented the desolation of the city, the object of veneration of a whole people, and treated with derision and dishonour the religious feelings of its most peaceful inhabitants. It struck me as one of the most remarkable instances of the passive character of the Hindoos that they should have suffered the lofty minarets of this mosque to tower over their temples so long, and to be the first objects that meet the eye of the pilgrim on his approach to the far-sought sanctuary of his religion."