The construction of the Taj Mahal (literally translated from Persian as "Crown of the Mughals") was associated with the name of the beauty - Arjumand Bano Begum, or Mumtaz - "queen of the soul."
At 200 kilometers from the capital of India, Delhi, on the high bank of the Ganges tributary, the Jamna, there is a five-domed mausoleum Taj Mahal. The white stone building surprises and delights with its perfect proportions, elegant mosaics of colored precious and semi-precious stones, skillful carving.
Taj Mahal is a whole complex of buildings. Taj - white, and around the fortress and minarets of red sandstone. The mausoleum has absolute proportions: in terms of base and height - an exact square, each side of which is 75 meters. There are several paths to the Taj Mahal, between them there is water in the pools, the whole mausoleum is reflected in it first, and as you get closer - its individual details.
Local architects worked together with artists from Damascus, gardeners from Constantinople and Samarkand to create the Indian pearl. When creating the interior, interior decoration of the mausoleum, the craftsmen used the best varieties of white, occasionally yellow and black marble, mother of pearl, jasper, agates, emeralds, aquamarines, pearls and hundreds of other stones.
Queen of the soul
Arjumand Bano Begum was only 19 years old when she became the second wife of Prince Guram (the future Shah Jahan). And although the prince had several more wives and many concubines, Mumtaz won the heart of her husband and reigned supreme until the end of his days. It was an extraordinarily romantic and poetic love. Mumtaz was not only his most beloved wife, but also his most loyal companion since those turbulent times when Prince Guram wandered around the world, pursued by his father Jahangir, when he won his throne in a fierce struggle with his brothers. In 1627, Guram, having won a final victory over them and seizing the throne of his father, took the title of emperor, Shah-Jahan - "ruler of the world." Mumtaz finally became the queen of India.
Shah Jahan adored his wife and every time he honored her, arranged magnificent receptions and grandiose holidays in her honor, without her any important ceremony did not begin, not a single state act was adopted. Mumtaz attended meetings of the State Council, her opinion was almost never disputed by anyone.
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A portrait of the queen, painted by her contemporary, has been preserved. Having violated one of the strictest prohibitions of Islam - to paint portraits of animals and people, the unknown artist skillfully conveyed the beauty of Mumtaz, a white-faced Persian woman, the pearl of the East.
The happy life together was interrupted suddenly. In the spring of 1636, Mumtaz suddenly fell ill: before her death, she turned to her husband with a request to take care of their eldest daughter Jahanara Begum and took an oath from him - to build a tomb worthy of their love, their nineteen-year marriage together. Jahan was shocked by Mumtaz's death.
WHITE AND BLACK PALACES
Widowed, he ordered to build a mausoleum of unprecedented beauty. Shah was presented with many different projects, the authors of which were the best of the best architects of the East. Of these, he chose a project created by the Indian architect Ystad Khan Efendi. Following this, an army of twenty thousand builders was driven into Agra: masons, marble cutters, jewelers and handymen. Marble was brought from Makrana near Jaipur, sandstone from Sikri, gems from India, Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia.
The entire complex of the mausoleum was created within twenty two years. Having fulfilled the mandate of the “queen of his soul”, Jahan began a new, no less grandiose construction project - exactly the same mausoleum, but only of black marble, for himself - on the other (left) bank of the Jamna River. According to the Shah's plan, both mausoleums, like marital chambers, were to be connected by a high lace bridge made of black and white marble. Preparatory work had already begun, but this plan, unfortunately, was not destined to come true.
While Shah Jahan was building a new tomb, his sons fought among themselves. Having defeated the brothers, one of them - Aurangzeb - seized power in 1658, killed the brothers, arrested his father and imprisoned him in the Red Fort under reliable protection along with his beloved daughter Jahanara Begum. Shah Jahan spent the last years of his life in a marble palace that he had once built for Mumtaz, from where he could constantly see the Taj Mahal. Here he died on January 23, 1666. Fulfilling the last wishes of his father, Aurangzeb ordered the transfer of his body to the Taj Mahal the next day and buried without ceremony or honor next to Mumtaz.
UNRESOLVED SECRET
The mausoleum of the Taj Mahal stands alone in its unspeakable beauty on the banks of the blue Jamnah, reflecting its pure, proud appearance. He appears as a kind of vision from another, better, purer world. According to the Russian philosopher Pyotr Uspensky, who visited India at the beginning of the 20th century, "The Taj Mahal has a secret that everyone feels, but no one can give it an interpretation."
“The Taj Mahal attracts like a magnet,” says our contemporary, historian and traveler V. Rudnev. - You can stand for hours and look at everything and look at this miracle, at this fabulous ghost, ascending into the bottomless azure sky. The illumination of the Taj Mahal changes like a mirage. It glows from the inside, changing shades depending on the position of the sun: it suddenly becomes light pink, then bluish, then pale orange. At night, with the moon, against a black sky, it looks dazzling white. Only when you come very close, you notice that it is all in the finest patterns woven over white marble, marble blocks are inlaid with gems and seem to shine through, emitting a flickering light."
The dazzling white walls of the mausoleum are covered with mosaics - garlands of flowers made of precious stones. Branches of white mother-of-pearl jasmine shimmer with a red pomegranate carnelian flower and delicate tendrils of vines and honeysuckle, while delicate oleanders peep out of the lush green foliage. Each leaf, each petal is a separate emerald, yacht, pearl or topaz; sometimes there are up to a hundred such stones for one branch of flowers, and there are hundreds of similar stones on the panels and trellises of the Taj Mahal!
DEATH DID NOT SEPARATE
In the central hall of the mausoleum, there are two sarcophagi, carved from white-pink marble, decorated with floral ornaments. These are the cenotaphs of the deceased, symbolic projections of those who are at the very bottom of the mausoleum. There, in an underground vaulted room, dusk reigns. Both tombs with the remains of the royal spouses, Mumtaz and Jahan, are surrounded like a screen with a white marble carved fence about two meters high, decorated with fabulous flowers - red, yellow, blue, along with green garlands, interweaving of marble leaves and flowers.
What is the power of the Taj Mahal impression? Where does the irresistible impact on everyone who sees it come from? Pyotr Uspensky tried to answer these questions: “Neither the marble lace, nor the fine carvings covering its walls, nor the mosaic flowers, nor the fate of the beautiful queen - none of this in itself could make such an impression. The reason must be something else. However, something in the Taj Mahal fascinated me and made me excited. … It seemed to me that the mystery of the Taj Mahal was connected with the secret of death, that is, with that secret about which, in the words of one of the Upanishads, "even the gods were at first in doubt." A light burns over the tomb where the queen's body lies. I felt that this is where the beginning of the solution lies. For the light that flickers over the tomb where her ashes lie,this light … is a little transitory earthly life. And the Taj Mahal is eternal life to come."
PLACE OF PILGRIMS
The creation of the Taj Mahal dates back to the Muslim conquest of India. The grandson of the padishah Akbar Jahan was one of those conquerors who changed the face of the vast country. A warrior and statesman, Jahan was also a keen connoisseur of art and philosophy; his court in Agra attracted the most prominent scholars and artists of Persia, which at that time was the cultural center of all Western Asia.
Jahan's son Aurangzeb ("beauty of the throne", 1665-1706) was nothing like his father. He was a stern, withdrawn and ascetic-religious monarch. While still a prince, he disapproved of his father's useless and ruinous activities. Throughout his long and hectic life, Aurangzeb spent in military campaigns aimed at retaining power over the empire.
Aurangzeb raised a rebellion against his father, accusing him of spending all the state revenues on the mausoleum. He imprisoned the former ruler in an underground mosque in one of the inner palaces of the Agra fortress. Shah Jahan lived in this underground mosque for seven years; feeling the approach of death, he asked to be transferred to the so-called Jasmine Pavilion in the fortress wall, to the tower of lace marble, where the favorite room of Queen Arjumand Bano was located. There, on the balcony of the Jasmine Pavilion overlooking Jamna, from where the Taj Mahal was seen standing at a distance, Shah Jahan died.
This is a brief history of the Taj Mahal. Since then, the mausoleum of Queen Mumtaz has experienced many vicissitudes. During the wars that continued in India in the 17th and 18th centuries, Agra repeatedly passed from hand to hand and was often plundered. The conquerors removed large silver doors from the Taj Mahal, carried out precious lamps and candlesticks, and tore off ornaments made of precious stones from the walls. However, the building itself and most of the decoration remained intact. Today, the Taj Mahal has been restored and carefully guarded.
In the central hall of the mausoleum, there are two sarcophagi sculpted from white-pink marble, decorated with floral ornaments.
But today, the Taj Mahal has partly dressed in scaffolding due to cracks in the walls. The marble Taj Mahal weighs many hundreds of thousands of tons. A huge mass presses on the soil, and it gradually settles. Over the past centuries, as a result of soil displacement, the mausoleum tilted towards the river, although this is invisible to the naked eye. Once the abounding Jamna came close to the building, but then the river became shallow and receded. This last circumstance changed the structure of the soil and also influenced the stability of the mausoleum. Now it has been decided to plant trees on the banks of the Djamna in order to stop soil erosion.
The Taj Mahal was and will remain a place of pilgrimage …
Author: Irina Strekalova