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• Taj Mahal History In English In Short

The Taj Mahal is an enormous mausoleum complex commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the remains of his beloved wife. Constructed over a 20-year period on the southern bank of the Yamuna River in Agra, India, the famed complex is one of the most outstanding examples of Mughal architecture, which combined Indian, Persian and Islamic influences. At its center is the Taj Mahal itself, built of shimmering white marble that seems to change color depending on the daylight. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1983, it remains one of the world’s most celebrated structures and a stunning symbol of India’s rich history.

History of the Taj Mahal India's most famous monument, the Taj Mahal is also the most perfect mausoleum of Arab-Indian architecture. This page explains when, how and why it was built, but it also gives information about its history through the years. The Taj Mahal is a grand piece of craftsmanship built in 1631 and is still considered as one of the best attractions in the world. It is a symbol of great love; therefore many people visit it from all walks of life from all over the world because of its celebrated beauty. The Taj Mahal is a massive mausoleum and funerary complex in Agra, India created in the 17th century. It's one of the most famous buildings in the world, and a monument to a pretty great love.

Shah Jahan

Shah Jahan was a member of the Mughal dynasty that ruled most of northern India from the early 16th to the mid 18th-century. After the death of his father, King Jahangir, in 1627, Shah Jahan emerged the victor of a bitter power struggle with his brothers, and crowned himself emperor at Agra in 1628.

At his side was Arjumand Banu Begum, better known as Mumtaz Mahal (“Chosen One of the Palace”), whom he married in 1612 and cherished as the favorite of his three queens.

In 1631, Mumtaz Mahal died after giving birth to the couple’s 14th child. The grieving Shah Jahan, known for commissioning a number of impressive structures throughout his reign, ordered the building of a magnificent mausoleum across the Yamuna River from his own royal palace at Agra.

Construction began around 1632 and would continue for the next two decades. The chief architect was probably Ustad Ahmad Lahouri, an Indian of Persian descent who would later be credited with designing the Red Fort at Delhi.

In all, more than 20,000 workers from India, Persia, Europe and the Ottoman Empire, along with some 1,000 elephants, were brought in to build the mausoleum complex.

Design and Construction of the Taj Mahal

Named the Taj Mahal in honor of Mumtaz Mahal, the mausoleum was constructed of white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones (including jade, crystal, lapis lazuli, amethyst and turquoise) forming intricate designs in a technique known as pietra dura.

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Its central dome reaches a height of 240 feet (73 meters) and is surrounded by four smaller domes; four slender towers, or minarets, stood at the corners. In accordance with the traditions of Islam, verses from the Quran were inscribed in calligraphy on the arched entrances to the mausoleum, in addition to numerous other sections of the complex.

Inside the mausoleum, an octagonal marble chamber adorned with carvings and semi-precious stones housed the cenotaph, or false tomb, of Mumtaz Mahal. The real sarcophagus containing her actual remains lay below, at garden level.

The rest of the Taj Mahal complex included a main gateway of red sandstone and a square garden divided into quarters by long pools of water, as well as a red sandstone mosque and an identical building called a jawab (or “mirror”) directly across from the mosque. Traditional Mughal building practice would allow no future alterations to be made to the complex.

As the story goes, Shah Jahan intended to build a second grand mausoleum across the Yamuna River from the Taj Mahal, where his own remains would be buried when he died; the two structures were to have been connected by a bridge.

In fact, Aurangzeb (Shah Jahan’s third son with Mumtaz Mahal) deposed his ailing father in 1658 and took power himself. Shah Jahan lived out the last years of his life under house arrest in a tower of the Red Fort at Agra, with a view of the majestic resting place he had constructed for his wife; when he died in 1666, he was buried next to her.

Did you know? According to one gruesome (and most likely sensational) story, Shah Jahan had his minions cut off the hands of the Taj Mahal's architect and his workers after the structure was completed, ensuring they would never build another of its kind.

Taj Mahal Over the Years

Under Aurangzeb’s long rule (1658-1707), the Mughal empire reached the height of its strength. However, his militant Muslim policies, including the destruction of many Hindu temples and shrines, undermined the enduring strength of the empire and led to its demise by the mid-18th century.

Even as Mughal power crumbled, the Taj Mahal suffered from neglect and disrepair in the two centuries after Shah Jahan’s death. Xforce keygen 32bits or 64bits version. Near the turn of the 19th century, Lord Curzon, then British viceroy of India, ordered a major restoration of the mausoleum complex as part of a colonial effort to preserve India’s artistic and cultural heritage.

Today, some 3 million people a year (or around 45,000 a day during peak tourist season) visit the Taj Mahal.

Air pollution from nearby factories and automobiles poses a continual threat to the mausoleum’s gleaming white marble façade, and in 1998, India’s Supreme Court ordered a number of anti-pollution measures to protect the building from deterioration. Some factories were closed, while vehicular traffic was banned from the immediate vicinity of the complex.

Since the Taj Mahal was completed in the mid-1600s, the world's most famous monument to undying love has had to put up with an awful lot of meddling mortals.
In the 18th century, its bejeweled tomb was plundered, and by the 19th century, its formal garden had been lost under a thicket of trees. By the last century, the southernmost reaches of its enclosure were overrun by the teeming city of Agra.
Today's Taj has been cleaned and repaired, although work continues. Its current difficulties are more cultural than physical.
India's most iconic structure was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, a Muslim, a fact that sits uneasily in the psyche of a predominantly Hindu country.
At a time of increasing Hindu nationalism, and the rise to power of the right-wing Hindu political party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Taj has found itself on the outs.
One state legislator has labeled the Taj Mahal 'a blot' built by 'traitors.' Others have resurrected an unsubstantiated claim that it was originally a Hindu temple.
In June, a top state official and Hindu firebrand, Yogi Adityanath, questioned the Taj's legitimacy in Indian culture. Maybe somebody pointed out to him that the Taj Mahal is, if nothing else, a major money spinner in his state. On Oct. 26, he paid a high-profile visit to the mausoleum, symbolically sweeping it with a broom and describing it as 'India's gem.'
The furor seems to have passed -- the Taj is now receiving a more friendly mud-slinging, namely a cleaning with a soil-based poultice named Fuller's earth.
Ebba Koch, an Austrian scholar who has spent 45 years studying Mughal architecture, is not worried about the current attacks. 'The Taj is a power in itself,' she said.
Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal to hold the body of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in 1631. Built on a terrace above the meandering Yamuna River, it took 20,000 craftsmen and laborers more than a decade to complete.
It is not the earliest or largest Mughal tomb, but it is recognized as the most beautiful, romantic and serene. As imposing as it is, the mausoleum is given a lightness by its milky marble skin and the placement of its four minarets at the distant corners of its plinth.
The tomb chamber houses the emperor and his bride in highly decorated sarcophagi of marble and pietra dura, fashioned into exquisite floral patterns and calligraphy of Koranic script. The story is given added poignancy by Shah Jahan's fate. Deposed by his ruthless son, Aurangzeb, he spent his last years imprisoned in the nearby Agra fort, with a view of the Taj.
Perhaps the greatest injustice to the Taj Mahal has nothing to do with sectarian sensibilities but rather the idea that it is a single structure at the end of a reflecting pond. (Remember the picture of a forlorn Princess Diana on the bench?)
The mausoleum is the undisputed star, but the Taj complex is an enormous walled compound almost 1,000 feet across and originally more than half a mile long. It contains three other major buildings -- the mosque and the assembly hall that flank the mausoleum and an imposing portal, the Great Gate.
And yet the single biggest element of the Taj complex is its least recognized: the garden. The Mughal garden is a highly symbolic space shaped by its prescribed layout, features and allegories. It gives a foretaste of the paradisiacal afterlife.
Perhaps because their full glory seems gone forever, Mughal gardens have captured the imagination of Western garden historians like no other landscape style. I think this is also because they come the closest to fulfilling the ambitions of all gardeners, to create a version of heaven on Earth. This is why the garden at the Taj Mahal and other Mughal sites will outlive ideological assaults.
The organizing principle is a central axis, normally a narrow canal, bisected by a cross axis with a secondary channel. These waterways, originally built in Persian gardens as a way of irrigating the garden, came to symbolize the four Koranic rivers of paradise. Typically, the mausoleum or pleasure pavilion is placed at the key intersection of these canals to form the heart of the garden. The Taj, though, is set at the far end of its site, effectively making its landscape setting appear bigger and more lavish.
These four-square gardens, known as chahar bagh, create large quadrants that are further subdivided into smaller geometric planting beds or lawns (there are 16 at the Taj Mahal, for example).
The real allure of the chahar bagh is in its opposing forces, how something so sacred is also so pleasurable, which is perhaps the essence of paradise. Once the comforting order of the architecture is established, the garden becomes a playground for the senses. The water features, the chutes, the fountains, basins and canals bring delight, especially fast-moving in the Mughal's lakeside pleasure gardens in hilly Kashmir. Fruit trees abounded and the flower beds were full of tulips, irises and herbs. The scent of blossoms hung in the air, not just from damask roses but pinks, Persian lilacs and jasmine.
At the Emperor Jahangir's Kashmir garden, Shalamar Bagh, a water cascade creates a fluid curtain over niches that in their prime would have been filled with cut flowers by day, and lanterns at night, half-veiled by the tumbling water.
An English visitor to Akbar's tomb on the outskirts of Agra, in the 1600s, described its huge garden as full of fruiting trees -- oranges, apples, mangoes, bananas and figs. The square flower beds were planted with marigolds, poppies and carnations. The bounty exceeded anything he would have seen at home.
Jahangir, the son of Akbar, 'never talked about gardens as Islamic,' said Catherine B. Asher, author of 'The Architecture of Mughal India.' 'He talked about them as places of beauty and repose.'

Taj Mahal History In English In Short

In her quest to explore and explain the broader context of the Taj Mahal, Koch has moved beyond the Taj complex itself. In her book 'The Complete Taj Mahal,' Koch has identified the presence of 44 gardens and related structures fronting the Yumana River in Agra. They hail from the city's golden age, before the Mughals moved their court upriver to Delhi, and before the spread of modern Agra, with its environmental degradations.

The design of Humayun's Tomb, built in the 16th century, inspired the design of the Taj Mahal.

Koch sees Mughal Agra as a now-faded riverfront garden city but a utopia in its day. Its glory still can be felt at the Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal, but not so much elsewhere. Seven of the sites are preserved in some fashion; another seven are partly preserved, but the majority are ruined or lost. The tomb garden of a noble named Itimad-ud-Daula has been well preserved but not restored. Upriver a little, a garden was established by Mumtaz Mahal but developed by her daughter Jahanara. Only traces of its terraces remains, although its two riverfront towers are intact.
The biggest threat to what is left, said Koch, is the general encroachment of the city.
And yet there is a glowing example of what can be achieved in bringing back these Mughal jewels. At Humayun's Tomb in Delhi, the vast garden complex of a 16th-century emperor has been returned to something close to its original glory. The first phase began in 1997 with the restoration of the 26-acre enclosed garden. The work will be completed next year.
In addition to restoring the massive red sandstone and marble pavilion, and its garden, the project included the restoration of 10 smaller mausoleums dating to the 16th century. The restorations have been led by the Aga Khan Development Network, whose agencies provide cultural, medical, educational and other aid in developing countries. It is headed by the Aga Khan, the wealthy, jet-setting and philanthropic leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims.

Master craftsmen used temporary ramps to lift material required for the conservation works.

For the restoration of the garden, more than 4,000 truckloads of accumulated silt and soil were hauled away by hand. Stonework for paths and waterways was reset or carved afresh with 60 craftsmen hand-chiseling more than 11,000 linear feet of sandstone edging. The work marked the first time that a Mughal garden restoration had been so scientifically informed, said Ratish Nanda, chief executive of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in India.
The conservators discovered that the original garden engineers were highly skilled. The channels were built to drop just one centimeter every 40 meters. 'We could only do this with sophisticated surveying equipment,' Nanda said. 'How anybody could achieve this in the 16th century is unthinkable.' Hydraulic systems were rebuilt, and flowing water has been returned for the first time in generations, perhaps centuries. The garden has been extensively planted with period-correct flora, including 3,000 trees of 19 varieties. These include walnuts, apples, quince and pomegranate.
A total of 50 structures were restored in the 80-acre complex. The project also involved the extensive landscaping of a large city park, and improvements to housing, schools and social programs in the surrounding community.
The work has already spurred a tenfold increase in visitors to Humayun's Tomb, to 2 million annually, Nanda said. He said in another decade the site could draw as many as 8 million visitors a year, which is more than the Taj Mahal.
A new museum will explain Mughal architecture and building crafts and, according to an Aga Khan Trust for Culture news release, 'most significantly explain the pluralist Sufi cultural traditions that defined Hindustani culture for at least five centuries.'
The ideal brings poignant reminders of the salutary effect the Taj Mahal had on Western visitors, even in its 19th-century decline. In his 1899 Handbook for Visitors to Agra, H.G. Keene wrote that the Taj and its garden 'can make the whole world kin.'
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)