Which Famous Landmark was built by an emperor to Honor his late wife?

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Despite her numerous pregnancies, the empress frequently accompanied her husband on his travels around the country. In 1631, after 19 years of happy marriage and during a visit to the Burhanpur campaign, where Shah Jahan’s troops were meeting with the aim of putting down a rebellion, Mumtaz Mahal died suddenly giving birth to the couple’s fourteenth child. , a girl named Gauhara Begum. Before he died, Mumtaz asked his king to fulfill the following promises: to build his tomb, to marry again, to be kind to his children, and to visit his grave every year on the anniversary of his death.

Mumtaz Mahal’s Wishes Fulfilled
The emperor and loving husband felt such intense pain that he wished to die alongside his wife . His sadness was so deep that he locked himself in his rooms for eight days and eight nights, without eating or drinking. On the way out, Jahan ordered mourning to be carried out throughout the kingdom by forbidding colored clothing, playing music, wearing perfumes and jewelery and even forbidding smiles among the subjects. Jahan locked himself in the palace in his grief and did not reappear until a year later in great age and, to the amazement of his subjects, his hair and beard had turned white in just a few months.

Although Mumtaz’s body was originally interred temporarily in Burhanpur, in a walled garden known as Zainabad originally built by Shah Jahan’s uncle, on the banks of the Tapti River, the emperor never intended to leave her there. In 1631, Mumtaz’s body was exhumed and transported in a beautiful golden sepulcher , escorted by his son Shah Shuja and the Imperial Princess Jahanara Begum, to the city of Agra where the Imperial Palace was located.

Once there, Mumtaz was buried in a small building on the banks of the Yamuna River until finally Jahan complied with the first of his wife’s requests, and, unfortunately, the only one that the emperor could fulfill. Jahan determined that Mumtaz would have the most beautiful tomb the world had ever seen, thus paying tribute to his beloved that would last forever and ever and he succeeded.

With that idea in mind, the emperor had the building complex of the Taj Mahal built, which is generally translated as “Palace of the Crown” or “Crown of the Palace”, although historians claim that its designation is nothing more than an abbreviation. from the name of Mumtaz Mahal. The chosen location was the curve that the Yamuna River that reaches Agra from the north so that its waters reflected the changes of light from the white marble walls of the palace whose construction lasted for twenty-two years, ending in 1653. More than twenty thousand workers participated in the construction of this tributeto love according to the plans of a council of architects from India, Persia and Central Asia, although it seems that the real inspiration was the emperor himself. The master builder was the Turkish Listad Isa and, legend has it that, when the building was finished, Jahan had his hand cut off to prevent him from repeating a similar work.

The best materials were used for its construction regardless of its place of origin. Everything was little for his beloved. One of the legends that surround this beautiful story is that it was more than a thousand elephants that transported the fine white marble of its walls that was brought from the quarries of Rajasthan. Ox, buffalo and camel carts brought to Agra the jade and crystal of China, the turquoise of Tibet, the lapis lazuli of Afghanistan, the chrysolite of Egypt, the agates of Yemen, the sapphires of Ceylon, the amethysts of Persia, the coral from Arabia, malachite from Russia, quartz from the Himalayas, diamonds from Golconda and amber from the Indian Ocean to decorate the walls and rooms of the mausoleum.

But although the mausoleum is the most emblematic building, the Taj Mahal is not a single construction, but an entire complex of large dimensions . Surrounding the enclosure is a high wall of red sandstone with a monumental entrance door in the south through which you access an immense 300 meter wide courtyard, with a marble pool in the center that reflects the buildings, producing an effect additional symmetry. Each section of the garden is divided by paths into sixteen flower beds , with a central marble pond halfway between the entrance and the mausoleum.

The mausoleum itself is located just on the other side of the patio, in the north, and is located in a symmetrical garden, typically Muslim, crossed by a canal flanked by two rows of cypress trees where its most imposing image is reflected, with a majestic dome that has survived numerous wars throughout history thanks to a gigantic scaffold that was placed as protection in anticipation of an air attack by the Luftwaffe and, later, the Japanese air force and which was re-erected during the wars between India and Pakistan of 1965 and 1971.

Inside the mausoleum is the burial chamber surrounded by thin marble walls inlaid with precious stones that filter natural light . In it are both graves, that of Mumraz represented by a small tablet that symbolizes the blank paper on which her husband writes and that of Jaham, in which a small box of pens is represented to write. As Muslim tradition prohibits elaborate tomb decoration, the bodies of Mumtaz and Jahan actually rest in a relatively simple chamber below this room along a north-south axis, with their faces tilted to the right in the direction of Mecca.

This majestic tribute, however, had dire consequences for Shah Jahan who, lost in his eagerness to honor and venerate the one who was the love of his life, did not notice the costs and the fifty million rupees that he finally spent on its construction, which According to the current valuation, they could amount to more than five hundred million dollars, it caused him to fall into economic ruin and consequently in the loss of his throne at the hands of his third son Aurangzeb in 1658. Although he allowed him to remain alive, he was confined to the Confinement in the Red Fort, from where, sick and defeated, he contemplated the Taj Mahal, his great work, monument to his beloved and refuge for the eternal rest of both.

His confinement, which lasted eight long years, prevented him from completing his dream, which included the construction of his own mausoleum in black marble in the image and likeness of his wife’s , on the other side of the Yamuna River, and which he later intended to unite both through a golden bridge. In fact, today, in front of the Taj Mahal, there remains a remnant, in red stone, of what is said to have been the beginning of the construction of the twin building, although that is also part of the legend that always adorns any story .

A story of eternal love
Upon his death, at the age of 74 and after long years of illness, it was his own son, Aurangzeb, who banished the idea of ​​making his father’s dream come true, also taking charge of breaking the symmetry who ruled the entire Taj Mahal complex by burying his father next to Mumtaz Mahal. In the beginning, the tomb of Mumtaz was in the exact center of the main room, so when adding that of Jahan the whole set is displaced to one side.

It is not very clear if Aurangzeb did it out of love, so that his parents could rest together forever or because of the envy they said he felt towards the love that Jahan professed for his wife throughout his life, but the truth is that this break symmetry would have deeply saddened his father who, if he had wanted to rest in the same place as his wife, would have designed the room so that both tombs were built in the center of it.

The truth is that, although Jahan had three other wives, he always kept fidelity to Mumtaz and it is even said that, already on his deathbed, he asked for a mirror to be able to see the grave of his beloved while he had a second to live. Other legends claim, on the other hand, that he did it through a diamond strategically embedded in a certain point of the room and that when he died he gazed spellbound at the resting place of his beloved. What is real is that Jahan dedicated his life to the construction of that monument and, whether or not all the legends surrounding the history of the Taj Mahal are true, for centuries they have managed to immortalize this monument as the symbol of eternal love for all women. couples in love.