Construction of the Taj Mahal
Shah Jahan began the Taj Mahal in 1632, the year after his wife Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to their fourteenth child while accompanying him on campaign in the Deccan. The mausoleum itself was largely complete by 1643 and the whole complex — gateway, mosque, guest house, gardens and outer courtyards — took until about 1653. Some twenty thousand workers and a thousand elephants were employed, and the white marble came from Makrana in Rajasthan, the jasper from the Punjab, the jade and crystal from China, the turquoise from Tibet and the lapis from Afghanistan. What distinguishes it is not the material but the geometry. The building is almost perfectly symmetrical about a central axis, set at the end of a garden divided into four by watercourses in the charbagh plan of paradise, and placed at the far end rather than the centre so that it is reflected in the length of the pool. The four minarets lean fractionally outward, so that they would fall away from the tomb in an earthquake. The Quranic inscriptions in black marble are graded in size as they rise, so that they appear uniform from below. The only asymmetry in the whole composition is Shah Jahan's own cenotaph, added beside his wife's after his death in 1666, off the central axis. Aurangzeb, who had deposed and imprisoned him, buried him there. The story that the craftsmen's hands were cut off has no contemporary source. Some six million people visit each year, and the marble is discolouring from air pollution and acid rain. It was named a World Heritage Site in 1983.
- Year: 1632 CE
- Category: Architecture
