Mumtaz Mahal

Mumtaz Mahal was the chief consort of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, and the Taj Mahal is her tomb. She was born Arjumand Banu Begum in Agra into the Persian nobility that dominated the Mughal court: her father Asaf Khan was a senior official, and her aunt Nur Jahan was the effective ruler of the empire during Jahangir's later years. She was betrothed to Prince Khurram at fourteen and married him five years later, in 1612, on a date chosen by astrologers. He had other wives and appears to have had little interest in them. She travelled with him constantly, including on campaign, and contemporaries record her as his closest political confidante: she held the imperial seal, interceded for petitioners, and was given the title Mumtaz Mahal, the exalted one of the palace, when he became emperor in 1628. She bore fourteen children in nineteen years, of whom seven survived, among them Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh, whose war against each other would decide the empire's direction. She died at Burhanpur in 1631 giving birth to the fourteenth. Shah Jahan was said to have withdrawn from public life for a year and to have emerged with his hair turned white. Construction of the tomb at Agra began within months and took over twenty years. He was buried beside her, the only asymmetric element in the building. Her tomb took some twenty thousand workers and the labour of more than twenty years, and the marble was brought from Makrana in Rajasthan. Shah Jahan's plan for his own black marble tomb across the river is probably legend. Aurangzeb deposed and imprisoned his father in the fort at Agra, from which the Taj is visible.

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