The Muslim monuments, apart from the beautiful gardens laid out in distinctive landscape architecture, are not dedicated to the beauty of nature or the joys of living, but rather to the glory of God and to a defiance of the passage of time: “I shall build such a tomb and lie in it for all eternity, like Ozymandias, so that people shall look upon it and be filled with respect and wonder.” I did add in my fleeting advice to the travellers that, even if the tourist guides didn’t direct them thence in Delhi, they ought to visit the shrines of Sufi saints such as Nizamuddin Auliya. They would have to be prepared to wade through slush, to bear the unsavoury odours of the slum that surrounds the tomb and its adjacent mosque, ward off a thousand beggars and touts, watch their wallets and valuables and pass through alleys and gangways which wouldn’t anywhere else but in India lead to the tombs of a sainted Sufi missionary, of a princess who was his follower and of two of the most important and glorious poets of the country. --Farrukh Dhondy
http://newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamIslamicCulture_1.aspx?ArticleID=5558
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