The Taj Mahal is one of the world's most breathtaking sights. Twenty-two thousand men and women laboured 24 hours a day for 22 years to build it. This beautiful creatin rises out of the dusty plains of Agra, 125 miles south-east of New Delhi. The Taj Mahal is an enduring legacy of the great love that Emperor Shah Jahan had for his wife of 19 years, Mumtaz Mahal. Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor of the Moghul Dynasty, ruled from 1628 to 1658. He is believed to have decended from from Tamerlane and Genghiz Khan, the famous Moghul warrior.
Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal were supposed to have had an idyllic married life. In their nineteen years of marriage, she bore him fourteen children of which seven died infancy. Mumtaz Mahal, which means the chosen one, was only nineteen when she married the Emperor. She was said to be exremely lovable in character, compassionate, warm and generous. She was also, unlike many of the other court of that time. The Emperor and his wife were both inseperable. Mumtaz would even accompany her husband when he went to battle. In 1631, when he went to the south of India to fight with rebel forces, his beautiful dark-eyed queen went with him and the fact that she was heavily pregnant with their fourteenth child did not stop her. Shah Jahan was reluctant to have his wife accompany him on the long journey but she was adamant.
It was on this journey that tragedy struck. Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth at Burhanpur. Legend has it that the great Emperor was so devastated that he left his wife's deathbed and went straight to his own tent. He remained there alone for a week without food, drink and company. On the eighth day, he reappeared-a broken old man. So great was his grief that his hair was said to have turned completely white, his back bent and his face aged and wrinkeled.
When he returned to his place in Agra, the Emperor chose a site along Jamuna River as the locatin of his wife's tomb. He swore to immoralize her memory in her tomb. He wanted to show to the world the depth of his love for her.
The building of the tomb became an outlet for his grief. He gathered precious stones and gems from all over the world. The finest artisans were lured from as far as Bordeaux and Baghdad. There had never been so grand a tomb as no expense was spared. The Taj Mahal was a huge symmetrical buildling constructed using white dazzling marble. All through the white-marbled building, twenty-eight types of semi-precious gems were used as floral inlays. The intricate details of the floral inlays are remarkbly stunning as they resemble a beautiful painting from a far. When the tomb was complete, a sheet of pearls and many other precious stones were looted in the ensuing battles that followed over the centuries.
It was also believed that the builders of the great building had their thumbs and first finger chopped off so that they would not be able to replicated the majestic Taj Mahal. The architect of this tomb, a certain Ustad Isa, is believed to have hailed from Persia. It is rumoured that the eyes of the architect were gorged out so that he could never recreate another building like the Taj Mahal.
To Shah Jahan, the Taj Mahal was sacred ground. The sight of the tomb of Mumtaz would always evoke strong memories in him. The wounds he suffered from the loss of his beloved never healed. He was a broken man in black marble as his own tomb, but these plans were cruelly shot down. His life from then on became increasingly fraught with grief. His own son, Aurangzeb, usurped the throne in 1658 and made him a prisoner.
Shah Jahan was confined in his own palace and lived for eight years in this prison. He requested for a room from which he could see his wife's tomb. He placed mirrors all round this room, so that he could see the Taj Mahal from anywhere in the room. Even when he was dying, his throughts were still of his beloved Mumtaz. His last wish was that his body should be laid next to hers. It is believed that when Shah Jahan died at age of 74, his eyes were still open, fixed upon the shimmering Taj Mahal.
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