Taj Mahal Story
Male Protagonist: Shah Jahan (Prince Khurram)
Female Protagonist: Mumtaz Mahal (Arjumand Baionabnu Begum)
The story of Taj Mahal is one of great passion and grief. The story of Taj Mahal is incomplete without the mention of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. Shah Jahan chose to express his grief through architecture. Shah Jahan and Arjumand Banu Begum famous as Mumtaz Mahal fell in love at first sight about twenty four years earlier. After five years they finally married on March 27, 1612. Soon after the marriage Mumtaz Mahal instantly became his beloved wife and constant companion. Over the years the couple had fourteen children. Seven survived beyond childbirth but on June, 1631, Mumtaz Mahal died at Burhanpur while giving birth to her fourteen child. In accordance with the emperor’s wishes, the mortal remains of the deceased were a mausoleum worthy of the empress could be built.
Six months after the death of Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan left the arid plains of the Deccan in central India, where for more than a year he has been warring against the rulers of the Muslim kingdoms hostile to Mughal hegemony, and returned to Agra with his wife’s body. In the imperial capital he acquired some land below the Red Fort, a piece of ground on a bend in the Yamuna River. On January 9, 1632, the body of Mumtaz Mahal was buried facing the river under a hastily raised dome, and thus the foundations of the most famous mausoleum in the world were laid. This mausoleum which the chroniclers of the reign of Shah Jahan quite simply called rauza, the tomb, was to go down in history as the Taj Mahal__ a deformation of Mumtaz Mahal, “The Chosen one of the Palace”, a title that the emperor had conferred on his spouse, Arjumand Banu Begum, on the day of their marriage.
A year after construction began (it would take nearly twelve to complete), the body of the empress was transferred to a crypt surrounded by gold railing to await, in secret and in silence. Refuting the romanticism of these “facts” and the charm of legend, today rational, contemporary minds affirm that the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum far too imposing to commemorate the memory of a woman, even the favorite wife of an emperor and the mother of his fourteen children. Behind the beauty and the majesty of the forms, the purity of line of the monument, and the sober refinement of the decoration, it is more logical to discern an autocratic ruler vaunting his grandeur and munificence to the world. Now this legendary monument to love can be seen as no visitor to the site has ever viewed it.
