Ustad Ahmad Lahori

Ustad Ahmad Lahori is generally identified as the chief architect of the Taj Mahal. Born in Lahore around 1580, he served as a court architect and engineer under Shah Jahan, whose reign was the most ambitious building programme in Mughal history. The evidence for his role comes chiefly from a Persian work written by his son, Lutfullah Muhandis, a mathematician and astronomer, which names his father as the designer of the mausoleum at Agra and of the fort and palace complex at Delhi. Mughal buildings were not signed by their architects, and imperial chronicles credit the emperor, so attributions of this kind are always partly inferential; his name nonetheless appears in several independent sources and is accepted by most historians. He held the title Nadir al-Asr, wonder of the age, and was a mathematician as well as a builder — his sons became astronomers and engineers, which suggests a household of technical learning. The Taj Mahal was begun in 1632 after the death of Mumtaz Mahal in childbirth, and the mausoleum was largely complete by about 1643, with the whole complex finished around 1653. Its achievement is geometric: a plinth, a cube with chamfered corners, a bulbous double dome, and four detached minarets that lean very slightly outward so that they would fall away from the tomb in an earthquake. The whole is laid out on a rigorous modular grid, and the four-part garden is bisected by watercourses that reflect the building. He is also associated with the Red Fort at Delhi, begun in 1639. The story that the workmen were mutilated afterwards has no evidence behind it.

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