A renowned monument to love constructed (163254) at Agra in Uttar Pradesh, India, as a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal, the favourite wife of Shah Jahan. Built of white marble and inlaid with semi-precious stones and mosaic work, it is a masterpiece of Mughal architecture, and a world heritage site. A huge central dome surrounded by four smaller domes surmounts the main structure, which is flanked by four slim minarets. The whole is mirrored in an ornamental pool.
The Tāj Mahal (Hindi: ताज महल;
The Taj Mahal (sometimes called "the Taj") is generally considered the finest example of Mughal architecture, a style that combines elements of Persian, Indian and Islamic. The Taj Mahal has achieved special note because of the romance of its inspiration. While the white domed marble mausoleum is the most familiar part of the monument, the Taj Mahal is actually an integrated complex of structures.
Origin and inspiration
Agra (location of Taj Mahal) Location of the Taj Mahal within India
Shāh Jahān, who commissioned the monument, was a prolific [lover] with effectively limitless resources. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to Mumtaz Mahal's death and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise, and it may well be that the traditional "love-story" associated with the construction of the Taj has some basis in fact. The Taj Mahal was begun not long after Mumtaz's death in 1631. Visiting Agra in 1663, the French traveller François Bernier gave the following description of the Taj Mahal and Shah Jahan's motive for building it:
Influences on Taj Mahal design
The Taj Mahal incorporates and expands on many design traditions, particularly Persian, Hindu, Ottoman, and earlier Mughal architecture.
The overall design derived inspiration from a number of successful Timurid and Mughal buildings.
Hindu craftsmen, particularly sculptors and stonecutters, plied trade throughout Asia during this period, and their work was particularly prized by tomb builders. Whilst the rock-cut architecture which characterises much of this construction had little influence on the Taj Mahal (carvings are only one form of the decorative element), other Indian buildings such as the Man Singh palace in Gwalior were an inspiration for much Mughal palace architecture and the source for the chhatris which can be seen on the Taj Mahal.
Design elements
Consistent repeated design elements are employed throughout the complex.
Major design features of the tomb are echoed throughout the complex -- both the tomb and the outlying buildings.
Finial: decorative crowning element of the Taj Mahal domes Lotus decoration: depiction of lotus flower sculpted on tops of domes Onion dome: massive outer dome of the tomb (also called an amrud or apple dome) Drum: cylindrical base of the onion dome, raising it from the main building Guldasta: decorative spire attached to the edge of supporting walls Chattri: a domed and columned kiosk Spandrel: upper panels of an archway Calligraphy: stylised writing of verses from the Qu'ran framing main arches Arch: also called pishtaq (Persian word for portal projecting from the facade of a building) and Dado: decorative sculpted panels lining lower wallsMost of the elements can be found on the gateway, mosque and jawab as well as the mausoleum.
The garden
The complex is set in and around a large charbagh (a formal Mughal garden divided into four parts). Measuring 320 m × 300 m, the garden has sunken parterres or flowerbeds, raised pathways, avenues of trees, fountains, water courses, and pools that reflect the Taj Mahal.
Each of the four quarters of the garden is divided into 16 flowerbeds by raised pathways. A raised marble water tank at the centre of the garden, halfway between the tomb and the gateway, reflects the Taj Mahal.
The charbagh garden was introduced to India by the first Mughal emperor Babur, a design inspired by Persian gardens.
Most Mughal charbaghs are rectangular in form, with a central tomb or pavilion in the centre of the garden. The Taj Mahal garden is unusual in siting the main element, the tomb, at the end rather than at the centre of the garden.
The layout of the garden, and its architectural features such as its fountains, brick and marble walkways, geometric brick-lined flowerbeds, and so on, are similar to Shalimar's, and suggest that the garden may have been designed by the same engineer, Ali Mardan.
Early accounts of the garden describe its profusion of vegetation, including roses, daffodils, and fruit trees in abundance.
While visiting, one may be lucky enough to see the gardners trimming the lawns with an ox-drawn reel-mower.
Outlying buildings
The Taj Mahal complex is bounded by a crenellated red sandstone wall on three sides.
On the inner (garden) side, the wall is fronted by columned arcades, a feature typical of Hindu temples later incorporated into Mughal mosques.
The main gateway (darwaza) is a monumental structure built primarily of red sandstone.
At the far end of the complex, two grand red sandstone buildings open to the sides of the tomb.
The two buildings are precise mirror images of each other.
The mosque's basic design is similar to others built by Shah Jahan, particularly to his Jama Masjid in Delhi: a long hall surmounted by three domes. At the Taj Mahal, each sanctuary opens on to an enormous vaulting dome.
The tomb
Base
The focus of the Taj Mahal is the white marble tomb.
The tomb stands on a square plinth.
The base is essentially a cube with chamfered edges, roughly 55 metres on each side (see floor plan, right).
To either side of the main arch, additional pishtaqs are stacked above and below.
The design is completely uniform and consistent on all sides of the building.
Dome
The marble dome that surmounts the tomb is its most spectacular feature.
Because of its shape, the dome is often called an onion dome (also called an amrud or guava dome).
The dome shape is emphasised by four smaller domed chattris (kiosks) placed at its corners.
Tall decorative spires (guldastas) extend from the edges of the base walls, and provide visual emphasis of the dome height.
The lotus motif is repeated on both the chattris and guldastas.
Finial
The main dome is crowned by a gilded spire or finial.The finial used to be made of gold until the early 1800's, but is now made of bronze.
Similarly, the spire is made up of a number of bulbous forms.
Minarets
At the corners of the plinth stand minarets: four large towers each more than 40 m tall. The minarets again display the Taj Mahal's basic penchant for symmetrical, repeated design.
The towers are designed as working minarets, a traditional element of mosques, a place for a muezzin to call the Islamic faithful to prayer.
The minaret chattris share the same finishing touches: a lotus design topped by a gilded finial.
Decoration
Exterior decoration
Nearly every surface of the entire complex has been decorated. The exterior decorations of the Taj Mahal are among the finest to be found in Mughal architecture of any period.
Once again, decoration motifs are repeated throughout the complex.
The decorative elements come in basically three categories:
Calligraphy Abstract geometric elements Vegetative motifsIslamic strictures forbade the use of anthropomorphic forms.
The decorative elements were created in three ways:
Paint or stucco applied to the wall surface Stone inlay CarvingsCalligraphy
Throughout the complex passages from the Qur'an are used as decorative elements.
The calligraphy is made by jasper inlaid in white marble panels.
Recent scholarship suggests that Amanat Khan chose the passages as well.
Abstract geometric decoration
Abstract forms are used especially in the plinth, minarets, gateway, mosque, and jawab, and to a lesser extent on the surfaces of the tomb. The paint is then scraped off the surface of the stone, leaving paint in the incision.)
On most joining areas, herringbone inlays define the space between adjoining elements.
Floors and walkways throughout use contrasting tiles or blocks in tessellation patterns.
Vegetative motifs
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The lower walls of the tomb are white marble dados that have been sculpted with realistic bas relief depictions of flowers and vines. The dado frames and archway spandrels have been decorated with pietra dura inlays of highly stylised, almost geometric vines, flowers and fruits. |
Interior decoration
The interior chamber of the Taj Mahal steps far beyond traditional decorative elements.
Here the inlay work is not pietra dura, but lapidary.
The inner chamber
The inner chamber of the Taj Mahal contains the cenotaphs of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan.
The inner chamber is an octagon.
The interior walls are about 25 m high, topped by a "false" interior dome decorated with a sun motif.
Eight pishtaq arches define the space at ground level.
In addition to the light from the balcony screens, light enters through roof openings covered by the chattris at the corners of the exterior dome.
Each of the chamber walls has been highly decorated with dado bas relief, intricate lapidary inlay and refined calligraphy panels, reflecting in miniature detail the design elements seen throughout the exterior of the complex.
The jali
The octagonal marble screen or jali which borders the cenotaphs is made from eight marble panels.
The cenotaphs
Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decoration of graves, so the bodies of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan are laid in a relatively plain chamber beneath the inner chamber of the Taj Mahal.
The Taj Mahal has been raised over their cenotaphs (from Greek keno taphas, empty tomb).
Mumtaz's cenotaph is placed at the precise centre of the inner chamber.
Shah Jahan's cenotaph is beside Mumtaz's to the western side. (The pen box and writing tablet were traditional Mughal funerary icons decorating men's and women's caskets respectively.)
Details of lapidary
(craftsmanship is best seen in enlarged version -- click image to see enlargement)
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Arch of jali, entry to cenotaphs |
Delicate piercework |
Inlay detail |
Inlay detail |
Construction
The Taj Mahal was built on a stretch of land to the south of the walled city of Agra which had belonged to Maharajah Jai Singh: Shah Jahan presented him with a large palace in the centre of Agra in exchange.
In the tomb area, wells were then dug down to the point that water was encountered.
Instead of lashed bamboo, the typical scaffolding method, workmen constructed a colossal brick scaffold that mirrored the inner and outer surfaces of the tomb.
A fifteen-kilometre tamped-earth ramp was built to transport marble and materials from Agra to the construction site.
To raise the blocks into position required an elaborate post-and-beam pulley system.
The order of construction was
The plinth The tomb The four minarets The mosque and jawab The gatewayThe plinth and tomb took roughly 12 years to complete. For example, the mausoleum itself was essentially complete by 1643, but work continued on the rest of the complex.)
Water infrastructure
Water for the Taj Mahal complex was provided through a complex infrastructure. The water flowed into a large storage tank, where, by thirteen additional purs, it was raised to large distribution tank above the Taj Mahal ground level.
From this distribution tank, water passed into three subsidiary tanks, from which it was piped to the complex.
The fountain pipes were not connected directly to the feed pipes.
The purs no longer remain, but the other parts of the infrastructure have survived.
Craftsmen
The Taj Mahal was not designed by a single person.
The names of many of the builders who participated in the construction of the Taj Mahal in different capacities have come down to us through various sources.
Ustad Isa and Isa Muhammad Effendi, trained by the great Ottoman architect Koca Mimar Sinan Agha are frequently credited with a key role in the architectural design of the complex, but in fact there is little evidence to support this tradition, and the connection with Sinan (who died in 1588) is clearly a fairy-tale.
'Puru' from Benarus, Persia (Iran), has been mentioned supervising architect in Persian language texts (e.g.
The main dome was designed by Ismail Khan from the Ottoman Empire, considered to be the premier designer of hemispheres and builder of domes of that age.
Qazim Khan, a native of Lahore, cast the solid gold finial that crowned the Turkish master's dome.
Chiranjilal, a lapidary from Delhi, was chosen as the chief sculptor and mosaicist.
Amanat Khan from Persian Shiraz, Iran was the chief calligrapher (this fact is attested on the Taj Mahal gateway itself, where his name has been inscribed at the end of the inscription).
Muhammad Hanif was the supervisor of masons.
Mir Abdul Karim and Mukkarimat Khan of Shiraz, Iran handled finances and the management of daily production.
The creative team included sculptors from Bukhara, calligraphers from Syria and Persia, inlayers from southern India, stonecutters from Baluchistan, a specialist in building turrets, another who carved only marble flowers — thirty seven men in all formed the creative nucleus.
European commentators, particularly during the early period of the British Raj, suggested that some or all of the Taj Mahal was the work of European artisans. His conclusions were further supported by the research of Muhammad Abdullah Chaghtai, who examined carefully the origin of the tradition that the Taj was designed by a European, and concluded that it was a spurious 19th century invention, based on the misapprehension that "Ustad Isa", so often credited with the Taj's design, must have been a Christian because he bore the name "Isa" (Jesus). In fact this is a common Muslim name as well - and furthermore there is no source earlier than the 19th century which mentions an "Ustad Isa" in connection with the Taj Mahal (even if he existed he cannot, in any case, have been trained by Sinan, because the latter died in 1588).
Materials
The Taj Mahal was constructed using materials from all over India and Asia.
Costs
The total cost of the Taj Mahal's construction was about 50 million rupees.
History
Soon after its completion, Shah Jahan was deposed and put under house arrest at nearby Agra Fort by his son Aurangzeb. Upon Shah Jahan's death, Aurangzeb buried him in the Taj Mahal next to his wife, the only disruption of the otherwise perfect symmetry in the architecture. During the time of the Indian rebellion of 1857 the Taj Mahal faced defacement by British soldiers, sepoys, and government officials who chiseled out precious stones and lapis lazuli from its walls.
At the end of the 19th century British viceroy Lord Curzon ordered a massive restoration project, completed in 1908.
Its most recent threats came from environmental pollution on the banks of the Yamuna River including acid rain occurring due to the Mathura oil refinery (something opposed by Supreme Court of India directives).
As of 1983 the Taj Mahal was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Recently the Taj Mahal was claimed to be Sunni Wakf property, on the grounds that it is the grave of a woman whose husband Emperor Shah Jahan was a Sunni. The Indian government has dismissed claims by the Muslim trust to administer the property, saying their claims are baseless and the Taj Mahal is Indian national property.
The poet Tagore, a Nobel laureate, called Taj Mahal "a drop of tear on the cheek of history".
Visiting
The Taj Mahal is often described as one of the seven wonders of the modern world.
Legends and theories
Origins of the name
The name Taj comes from Persian, the language of the Mughal court, meaning crown, and Mahal, also Persian, means place, area, or neighborhood. Together, the term Taj Mahal translated into rough English from the original Persian means "Crown Place" or "The Place of the Crown."
The "Black Taj"
A longstanding popular tradition holds that an identical mausoleum complex was originally supposed to be built on the other side of the river, in black marble instead of white, for Shah Jahan himself.
Recent scholarship disputes this theory, and throws some interesting light on the design of the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal gardens, by contrast, form a great 'T', with the tomb at the centre of the crosspiece. But the outline of the ruins on the other river bank would extend the design of the Taj Mahal gardens to form a cross of proportions typical of other Mughal tombs. Further, the marble in the ruins opposite the Taj Mahal, while dark from staining, were originally white.
Scholars now believe that the reflection of the Taj Mahal in this pool is in fact what was meant when people referred to the 'black taj'.
Shah Jahan's asymmetric tomb
Aurangzeb had Shah Jahan's tomb and cenotaph placed in the Taj Mahal rather than building him a separate mausoleum such as other emperors had. He thus destroyed the symmetry of the Taj Mahal design. In Itmad-Ud-Daulah's Tomb however, which was a major influence on the Taj Mahal design, Aurangzeb's grandparents were interred in a similar asymmetric fashion.
Mutilation of the craftsmen
A seemingly endless number of stories describe, often in horrific detail, deaths, dismemberments and mutilations which Shah Jahan inflicted on various craftsmen associated with the tomb.
Stolen items
Legends abound concerning items originally attached to the Taj Mahal which were stolen. A golden railing supposed to have circled the cenotaphs (suggested perhaps by a temporary enamel railing that was replaced after completion of the marble jali) Diamonds supposedly inlaid in the cenotaphs A blanket woven of pearls supposedly covering Mumtaz's cenotaph
Numerous items from the Taj Mahal have gone missing however; these include the following
An entrance door of carved jasper Gold leaf that adorned the cast iron joints of the jali screen around the cenotaphs Numerous rich carpets that covered the interior of the tomb Enamelled lamps from the interior of the tombBritish plan to demolish the Taj Mahal
There is an often-repeated story that Lord William Bentinck, governor of India in the 1830s, planned to demolish the Taj Mahal and auction off the marble.
Was the Taj Mahal originally a temple or a palace?
P.N. Oak, President of The Institute for Rewriting Indian History, has repeatedly asserted that the Taj Mahal was a Hindu temple of the god Shiva, usurped and remodeled by Shah Jahan.
Oak also claims that the tombs of Humayun, Akbar and Itmiad-u-Dallah — as well as the Vatican in Rome, the Kaaba in Mecca, Stonehenge and "all historic buildings" in India — were also Hindu temples or palaces.
The Taj is only a typical illustration of how all historic buildings and townships from Kashmir to Cape Comorin though of Hindu origin have been ascribed to this or that Muslim ruler or courtier.
He further says that if Taj Mahal was not a Shiva temple, that it might then have been the palace of a Rajput king. In any case (he says), the Taj Mahal was Hindu in origin, stolen by Shah Jahan and adapted as a tomb — although Oak also claims that Mumtaz is not buried there.
Oak further states that the numerous eyewitness accounts of Taj Mahal construction, and Shah Jahan's construction orders and voluminous financial records, are elaborate frauds meant to hide its Hindu origin.
His many provocative assertions have gained a lot of popular interest and made Oak a well-known media figure.
He has sued to break open the cenotaphs, and to tear down brick walls in the lower plinth: In these "fake tombs" and "sealed apartments", Oak says Shivalingams or other temple items were hidden by Shah Jahan.
According to Oak, the Indian government's refusal to allow him unfettered access amounts to a conspiracy against Hinduism.
Oak's assertions are not accepted by legitimate scholars.
In 2000 India's Supreme Court dismissed Oak's petition to declare that a Hindu king built the Taj Mahal and reprimanded him for bringing the action. This case was brought by Amar Nath Mishra, a social worker and preacher who claims that the Taj Mahal was built by the Hindu King Parmar Dev in 1196.
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