History of Taj Mahal
The origin of the name "Taj
Mahal" is not clear. Court histories from Shah Jehan's reign only call it
the rauza (tomb) of Mumtaz Mahal. It is generally believed that "Taj
Mahal" (usually translated as either "Crown Palace" or
"Crown of the Palace") is an abbreviated version of her name, Mumtaz
Mahal.
The construction of this marble
masterpiece is credited to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan who erected this
mausoleum in the memory of his beloved wife, Arjumand Bano Begum, popularly
known as Mumtaz Mahal, who died in AH 1040 (AD 1630). Her last wish to her
husband was "to build a tomb in her memory such as the world had never
seen before". Thus emperor Shah Jahan set about building this fairytale like
marvel.
The construction of Taj Mahal was
started in AD 1631 and completed at the end of 1648 AD. For seventeen years,
twenty thousand workmen are said to be employed on it daily, for their
accommodation a small town, named after the deceased empress-'Mumtazabad, now
known as Taj Ganj, was built adjacent to it. Amanat Khan Shirazi was the
calligrapher of Taj Mahal, his name occurs at the end of an inscription on one
of the gates of the Taj. Poet Ghyasuddin had designed the verses on the
tombstone, while Ismail Khan Afridi of Turkey was the dome maker. Muhammad
Hanif was the superintendent of Masons.
The designer of Taj Mahal was Ustad
Ahmad Lahauri. The material was brought in from all over India and central Asia
and it took a fleet of 1000 elephants to transport it to the site. The central
dome is 187 feet high at the centre. Red sandstone was brought from Fatehpur
Sikri, Jasper from Punjab, Jade and Crystal from China, Turquoise from Tibet,
Lapis Lazuli and Sapphire from Sri Lanka, Coal and Cornelian from Arabia and
diamonds from Panna. In all 28 kind of rare, semi precious and precious stones
were used for inlay work in the Taj Mahal. The chief building material, the
white marble was brought from the quarries of Makrana, in distt. Nagaur,
Rajasthan.
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