A Most Costly “Tombstone”​—The Taj Mahal

By “Awake!” correspondent in India

“I WITNESSED the commencement and accomplishment of this great work, on which they have expended 22 years during which 20,000 men worked incessantly: this is sufficient to enable one to realize that the cost of it has been enormous.” Jean Baptiste Tavernier, French jewel trader, thus wrote of the Taj Mahal at Agra, India.

A new urban complex at Agra mushroomed about the year 1632. Master masons moved in from Delhi, Multan and Baghdad. Skilled dome builders traveled from Turkey and Samarkand. From Shiraz, Persia, came specialists in stone calligraphy. Crowds of stonecutters and laborers were recruited locally. Thus Taj Ganj, a new international township, was created.

What sparked this building effort? Who were the people behind the project?

Those Behind the Taj Mahal

At the time the building project began, the Grand Mogul was Shah Jahan. He belonged to the dynasty of Delhi rulers founded by Babur in 1526. Through Tamerlane the Tartar of Samarkand, Babur was a distant descendant of Genghis Khan of Mongolia. Babur and his Tartar hordes stormed into India, occupied Agra and Delhi, and proclaimed himself Padshah, or sovereign of Delhi, in 1526. He was followed by the Mogul emperors, Humayun, Akbar and Jahangir. The Muslim moguls ruled in material splendor, and their wealth, jewelry, patronizing of literature and fine arts, as well as their harems of veiled dancing girls, had become proverbial.

In 1611 Emperor Jahangir married the forbidden sweetheart of his youth, after murdering her husband. The new empress lost no time in reinforcing her power. In short order she secured the marriage of Jahangir’s third son by another wife, Prince Khurram, to her very beautiful niece, Arjumand Banu Begum, whose father, Asaf Khan, was the wealthiest and most powerful aristocrat in the realm.

For the next five years Prince Khurram was involved in warfare. All the while, his attractive wife was his constant companion. Seemingly, their endangered lives forged a mutual bond of affection between them.

Mumtaz Mahal

When Khurram ruthlessly eliminated all royal rivals, with the aid of his powerful father-in-law, and ascended the throne in 1628, Arjumand Banu became his empress. He assumed the title Shah Jahan, “king of the world,” while dubbing his queen Mumtaz Mahal, meaning, “chosen of the palace.” Mumtaz Mahal continued to accompany her husband in his Deccan wars. Indeed, when Shah Jahan encamped his army at Burhanpur to suppress a revolt, Mumtaz Mahal, pregnant with her 14th child, was with him in camp!

An army camp in the searing northern summer seems an unlikely place for an expectant mother. The queen, evidently drained of her bodily resources from bearing her previous 13 children in rapid succession, died in June 1631, a few hours after giving birth to the future princess Raushana Ara Begum.

Shah Jahan was plunged into grief! For two years he refrained from rich foods, royal dress, music and entertainment.

Conception of the Taj Mahal

The emperor, in planning an exceedingly magnificent memorial to his dead wife, appointed an international council of skilled architects and builders. That council studied sketches of the world’s most famous structures. Then a wooden model was made and reportedly worked on until the desired structural features were determined.

Breaking from mogul tradition, they planned a four-quartered garden, or charbagh, as a picturesque foreground instead of placing it in the center. Then by having the “Taj” overhang the broad river Jumna, the white edifice would be set against a blue sky. The first sod for the Taj Mahal construction was turned in 1632.

Construction of the Taj Mahal

The resources of an empire were mobilized to build Mumtaz’ tomb. An army of 20,000 workers was set in motion. White marble from Makrana, Rajasthan, and red sandstone from nearby Fatehpur Sikri were given by subject states. The emperor dipped into his treasury for 16,000 ounces of pure gold, originally valued at 600,000 rupees (£135,000 sterling). For inlay decorations, jasper came from the Punjab, diamonds from the Panna Hills, Madhya Pradesh; China supplied jade and crystal, and turquoises were brought from Tibet; sapphires were furnished by Ceylon, and Arabia provided coral and carnelian stones; onyx and amethysts came from Persia. Taj Mahal furnishings were lavish: exquisite Persian carpets, a tapestry of pearls, and a screen and oil lamps in pure gold.

Mohammed Hanif, chief mason, from Agra itself, was highest paid with a monthly wage of Rs1,000 (£112). Toiling laborers sweated to collect a mere half penny at the end of many a long, hot and exhausting day. But even at such low wages the total cost of the 22-year project was estimated at 40 million rupees (£4 1/2 million, 17th century). No expense or labor was spared for the regal “tombstone” extraordinary. Finally, the “Crown of the Palace,” Taj Mahal, was completed in 1648. The accessory structures took additional years for total completion.

A Tour of the Taj

We begin at the huge southern gateway, a work of art in itself! It towers over an old caravanserai edged by arched corridors. Moving into the cool, great arch, we note its interior panels of black marble. On its roof, through arched frames, spreads a sunlit vista.

The gigantic “tombstone” rises from a 313-foot-squarea platform, checkered in black and white marble. Framing the bulb-topped tomb are four slender, three-storied minarets of white marble. Contrasting the white memorial is a red sandstone mosque on its west and its jawab, or identical complement, on the east, to balance the entirety.

Each of the four facades and chamfers possesses a series of double arches that frame a massive central arch soaring 108 feet. Perhaps this moved the 17th-century French visitor Bernier to exclaim: “It consists almost wholly of arches upon arches and galleries upon galleries, disposed and contrived in an hundred different ways.”

Moving close to the monument, we observe where the architect stops and the jeweler takes up. Here the inlay artists gave vent to their exquisite skills. Every wall and panel is a riot of floral wreaths and scrolls inlaid with multicolored, semiprecious stones.

Within the central chamber under the lofty dome, the cenotaphs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan reveal the culmination of marble inlay artistry with the oleander scroll as the reigning motif. Set in one leaf on the queen’s cenotaph are 35 different types of carnelian. The real graves lie not in the mausoleum but in a crypt at ground level.

Truly, this extraordinary “tombstone,” the Taj Mahal, is a marvel in marble​—a monument to human skill and labor. If this is what man can do for his dead under sinful, oppressive rule, imagine the creative marvels humans will achieve for their living neighbors in God’s fast-approaching paradise on earth!

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