Taj Mahal

Three’s a building, which represents a country- like the Eiffel Tower for France; the Sydney Opera House for Australia- then it has to be the Taj Mahal for India. This most famous Mughal monument was constructed by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumbai Mahal, Chosen of the Palace. It has been described as the most extravagant monument ever built for love, for the emperor was heartbroken when Mumtaj, to whom he had been married for 17 years, died in 1631 in childbirth, after producing 14 children. Construction of the Taj began in the same year and was not completed until in 1653. Workers were recruited not only from all over India but also from central Asia, and in total 20000 people worked on the building. Experts were even brought from as far away as Europe-the Frenchman Austin of Bordeaux and the Italian Veroneo of Venice had a hand in its decoration. The main architect was Isa Khan, who came from Shiraz in Iran.

The construction of Taj Mahal was started in AD 1631 and completed at the end of 1648 AD. For seventeen years, twenty thousand workmen are said to be employed on it daily, for their accommodation a small town, named after the deceased empress-'Mumtazabad, now known as Taj Ganj, was built adjacent to it. Amanat Khan Shirazi was the calligrapher of Taj Mahal, his name occurs at the end of an inscription on one of the gates of the Taj. Poet Ghyasuddin had designed the verses on the tombstone, while Ismail Khan Afridi of Turkey was the dome maker. Muhammad Hanif was the superintendent of Masons. The designer of Taj Mahal was Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. The material was brought in from all over India and central Asia and it took a fleet of 1000 elephants to transport it to the site. The central dome is 187 feet high at the centre. Red sandstone was brought from Fatehpur Sikri, Jasper from Punjab, Jade and Crystal from China, Turquoise from Tibet, Lapis Lazuli and Sapphire from Sri Lanka, Coal and Cornelian from Arabia and diamonds from Panna. In all 28 kind of rare, semi precious and precious stones were used for inlay work in the Taj Mahal. The chief building material, the white marble was brought from the quarries of Makrana, in distt. Nagaur, Rajasthan.

Soon after the completion of Taj Mahal Shah Jahan was deposed and put under house arrest by his son Aurangzeb at Agra Fort. It is said that Shah Jahan spent his remainder days by gazing Taj through the window. After the death of Shah Jahan his son Aurangzeb buried him in the Taj Mahal, next to his wife Mumtaz Mahal. In the year 1983 the Taj Mahal was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The monument constructed in the style of Iranian architecture is a major tourist destination. The calligrapher of Taj Mahal was Amanat Khan Shirazi, whose name appears in an inscription on one of the gates of the Taj.
Materials from all over the India and parts of Asia were used to construct Taj Mahal. It took a fleet of 1000 elephants to transport it to the site.

The white marble was brought from Rajasthan, the jasper from the Punjab, and the jade and crystal from China. The Lapis lazuli from Afganistan, the turquoise was from Tibet, the carnelian from Arabia and the sapphire from Sri Lanka. Over all 28 different types of precious and semi-precious stone were used along with white marble. The total construction cost of Taj Mahal was about 40 million Indian rupees. Today the value of construction cost if Taj is more that 500 million US dollars.