219. Building The Taj Mahal: Love, Loss, & Splendour (Ep 2)

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0:28Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Thurumpel. Now, in the last episode, we left you with Shah Jahan grieving the death of the love of his life, Mumtaz Mahal, who dies tragically during childbirth in June 1631. And you sort of pointed out that he almost turns white overnight, doesn't he? And loses his eyesight. Loses his eyesight. The famous Pharrell spectacles. Oh, never say the boy don't learn. Yes, Pharrell spectacles that he's wearing. So, you know, he's been crying. And we should explain that the spectacles are as a result of his copious weeping every day. And, you know, members of the court are really worried about him, that he's sort of losing his marbles somewhat in grief.

1:10He cancels every appointment. He doesn't appear in public. And this does remind me a little bit, actually, of Queen Victoria, who just says, you know what, when Albert died. It is similar, isn't it? I have nothing to do with the world anymore. I'm sick of this. I've lost the one person who made it all make sense. But then it doesn't take too long. I mean, we're talking within a matter of days that he starts to channel his grief into something solid. And that is the solid thing that we now know as the Taj Mahal. Now, before we go any further, how old were you when you first saw it? I was 18. 18 years old.

1:43And what did you think when you first saw it? I remember it very clearly. In those days, you could do this. I think they don't do it anymore. I went in on a full moon night and traveled down to Agra by the train and got off, dumped my rucksack in a hostel and then walked to Taj Gunj just as the sun was setting and walked in to see this extraordinary building in the gloaming, in the dark. There is something about this place that actually is better than any idea that you might have of it. You've seen pictures of it, but it not only lives up, it surpasses. And it never disappoints even if you see it multiple times.

2:22Yeah. My experience was very different. I was a lot younger. I was nine when I first saw it. And a family holiday, we went with my uncle. And what I remember most distinctly was him yelling at the family. It was quite crowded, saying, only tourists pay for socks. which is that's like only tourists pay for socks because you've got a bunch of people outside saying you can't go in with shoes and you can't go in barefoot it's disrespectful and selling socks to all of the many tourists you of course were never a tourist you were always a traveler who'd come to see the targe and just being completely transfixed with the sock transaction but when you walk through this you know sockageddon as I like to remember it absolute pandemonium over socks and shoes.

2:58You are just absolutely silenced by the scale and the beauty. And there is something so magical about approaching and getting closer and closer, and it just becomes more beautiful. The intricacy, the inlay, the carvings, and then you hear stories about the way in which the pillars are balanced. And there was a story that I think I told you this and you didn't know this before. And so I'll tell it again because it is such a great fact that the pillars around the Taj Mahal, these four enormous giants that stand as guarding sentinels around this absolutely mammoth pearl of a mausoleum, they are designed in such a way that if there's an earthquake, they fall out rather than in.

3:45I mean, the geometry of that, the calculation behind that. Oh, and also, you know, we have to mention, it is such an iconic building, thanks to a love that is lost. And that is, you know, the image of Diana in her violet and pink, her shocking pink sitting. I was there. What? I was there. Is that why she looks so depressed? No, not at all. The other things are, why were you there? I was a young journo. Were you? For some reason, because I never wrote for it regularly, but I was there on behalf of Daily Telegraph of all papers. Goodness gracious me. Writing a piece on the royal visit. Okay, well, let's put a pin in Shah Jahan because I want to know more about this.

4:22So how orchestrated was that picture? Because much has been said about how powerful that image was and actually how damaging to the royal family to see her alone in front of this great symbol of love. What was all the kerfuffle going on around it? I'm so excited. Tell me. Well, you'll be surprised to hear that it completely passed me by. Oh, for God's sake. Willie! I was there covering it. And it was just her, I mean, she was on her own because she was on her own. And she just sat on the bench where the photographers asked her to sit. And she did that looking slightly bored for five minutes because, well, they took her picture.

4:56And it didn't even occur to me that this was an iconic moment in the history of modern Britain. That's hilarious. What I remember from that trip was that because of the security surrounding her and it, I got to spend three hours in the Taj Mahal without a single tourist. And that was the magical thing that I came away with, the fact that there was no one there. You are a historian and not a journalist, darling. That's why that is the case. Look, let's get back to Shah Jahan and his grief because you've given me nothing of an inside story there. Literally nothing. It wasn't orchestrated in the sense that she wasn't even planning to sit there, as far as one could tell, until the photographer said, darling, sit there, will you, darling?

5:35Yeah, sad. Anyway, it's a very sad picture. Sadness sitting in front of sadness, it is true. She seemed to be having a great time. I really should. I remember that. She was great. She was fine. Just spoiling everything now. Okay, let's get back to Shah Jahar. So why, tell me this, why did his mind go straight to architecture at the height of his grief and pain? Because it was his great love. And it was how he expressed himself. And this man who was with everyone except Mumtaz, completely reserved and unemotional and formal, found expression in building. And he's one of history's great builders.

6:10He's like Justinian or Louis XIV. He's someone who consciously left his legacy instead. And so when he is widowed just four years into his reign, this is a woman who has plotted with him to come to the throne. She has supported him when he's fallen out with his dad when he looks like he's going to be hunted down and killed or exiled. And he's finally won the war of succession. He's got what he wants. And he's just moved with his young family to Burhanpur in the Deccan where he's hoping to have a great military triumph. And completely unexpectedly, unscripted, his whole life stops dead. And so what he decides to do is he's going to move her body from Burhanpur, which is in southern Madhya Pradesh, in the middle of nowhere, really, in modern India.

7:03You have to travel for days to get there. And he's going to take it to his new capital, Agra, which he's turning at the same time into a great water-born city. It's going to be a kind of Mughal Venice. And he has been buying up land, the land which the Taj is built on, was belonging to the Jaipur royal family. And he buys it off them, begins to plan this extraordinary building in his new capital. Remember, Akbar had ruled largely from Fatabur Sikri, then Lahore. Jahangir had mainly ruled from Lahore and Kashmir. And he's the one that brings the capital back to Agra. And one of his first things is to redesign the Red Fort.

7:50And then he sits in the Red Fort and watches this extraordinary mausoleum come up. But before we get to that, we should perhaps talk about how Shah Jahan consciously uses the arts and architecture and jewels and fine materials for the propaganda of the dynasty. Well, it's a projection of power because you just don't even have to say a word. Anyone claps eyes on these things. And we can't talk about that without first talking about the peacock throne. If ever there was a flex in history, there is no greater flex than the peacock throne. Commissioned in 1628. We've described it before on this podcast.

8:30when we, again, I keep referring back to the Kohenor because this is the time when the Kohenor makes its debut. The throne is like an ice cream kiosk, but an ice cream kiosk if you have Gatling gunned every precious stone in the world at it. I mean, it is an extraordinary flex propaganda piece. And do you remember how many jewels were involved in this? It was just thousands and thousands of the highest grade jewels in the treasury. So what he realizes, this is his greatest insight, when he comes to the throne. In 1628, he commissions this because he arrives in Agra at the imperial treasuries and he just finds vault after vault of the greatest jewel collection that's ever been.

9:13And it's just sitting there under lock and key. Sitting in darkness and no one... No one to love it. And his father, Jehangir, had initiated this tradition of giving jewels to the emperor at Nauros. And every ambitious governor and player and aristocrat who wanted promotion competed to give the best one so that they'd be remembered. And the result was that over the course of the reign of Jahangir, these jewels just accumulated in ever-increasing numbers in the vaults. And what Shah Jahan realizes is that he can use this extraordinary wealth of gemstones, the greatest jewel collection ever gathered by any ruler at any time in history, and that he can use it as the ultimate expression of power and majesty, which is the reason that the word mogul to this day is still a synonym for power and glory.

10:09When you talk about Donald Trump being a property mogul, that's a reflection of exactly this. And it's not just an opportunity, though, to show off what you got, you know, sort of bring the bling, as it were. But it is also a reflection of heavenly anointment, because it is meant to evoke the fabled throne of Solomon as well, that this is a man who is sitting in the middle of the universe. Like Solomon, he is a gift from God to the world. There's all this divinity wrapped up in it. And a symbol of justice. Yeah. A symbol of wisdom and justice. And those of you scratching your heads at this point, thinking I can't remember anything in the Bible about the throne of Solomon, are correct because this is one of those sort of extraordinary bits that's in the Quran, and which comes from a Judeo-Christian tradition, but which is preserved in the Quran, not in the Bible.

10:57And this was presumably a bit of sort of Middle Eastern oral history that makes it into the Quranic version. And also into poetry, the Shahnama and stuff. You know, they also talk about it, don't they? And so the Quranic description of the throne of Solomon is used as a model. And he goes first, bizarrely enough, to a French jeweler at the Mogul court to design it. And we have his name as Augusta Hiria. And he was initially put in charge of it. And I think there was also an Englishman with the probable name of Peter Mutton. Peter Mutton was also on hand. Was also on hand. But both of those guys seem to have left Mughal service at this point.

11:39Heriot goes to Goa, and in the end, it's an Iranian poet and calligrapher turned goldsmith and jewel master called Saeed Gilani, who starts work on this commission afresh. And he wipes the plans and starts all over again, goes back to the Quran, produces an image of the throne of Solomon as described in the Quran, but as decorated in jewels. And it's inaugurated on New Year's Day, Noros, 1635, on the emperor's return from his holidays in Kashmir. I mean, you know what, that's a seven-year project. But if you see the images of what it is, that is not bad going. Because the intricacy, the workmanship that goes into this, to have somewhere to show the very best of the very best jewels in the treasury is really something else.

12:33And you've got people who describe it at the time. Who is our best contemporary who talks about this throne? So we've got quite a lot of descriptions because it's the big thing of the moment. But that is an interesting story in itself. And this is where you and I first came together because we have a lot of descriptions of various bits of it. By, for example, the official court chronicler, Ahmed Shah Lahori, the Padishan Nama. He writes, in the course of many years, valuable gems have come into the imperial jewel house, each one of which might have served as an eardrop for Venus. What a wonderful expression that is.

13:09Or would adorn the girdle of the sun. Upon accession, the emperor thought that in the opinion of far-seeing men, the acquisition of such rare jewels and the keeping of such wonderful brilliance can only render one service, that of adorning the throne of empire. They ought therefore to be put to that use, and beholders might share in the benefit by their splendor, and that his majesty might shine with increasing brilliancy. So he goes on to describe how, in addition to all the jewels already stored in the jewel house, rubies, garnets, diamonds, rich pearls, and emeralds to the value of 200 lakh rupees should be brought for the inspection of the emperor, and that they, with some exquisite jewels of great weight exceeding 50 ,000 mishkals, have been carefully selected and handed over to Bebid al-Khan, the superintendent of the goldsmith's department.

14:03I mean, I don't know what a mishkle is, but we're talking about heavy heritage here. I mean, we're talking about really big gems that adorn this thing. We should talk about what it looks like. I mean, I said an ice cream kiosk and there is a place to sit in the center. And then there are these enormously bejeweled columns or pillars that go up and there is a canopy above it. Looking like a cypresses. They're green and they're meant to be jeweled cypresses. And on the top, there are two peacocks set with gems. And between the two peacock trees, a tree set with diamonds, emeralds, and pearls. But what is not mentioned at the time, which is now the most important thing really about the whole throne, is that the eye of one of the peacocks is the Koh-i-Noor.

14:50And we know this from a later account, when it gets stolen later by the Persians. And hacked to pieces by the Persians, yeah. After it's stolen and before it's hacked to bits, it's described by one of their chroniclers. And he gives this extraordinary description of the eye of the peacock being this diamond. And he names it for the first time, the Koh-i-Noor, the Mountain of Light. The Mountain of Light. But you know what? There's another very significant gem which really bizarrely gets overshadowed by the Koh-i-Noor. And that's the Timur Ruby. So now tell us about the Timor Ruby, which is also part of this kiosk of royalty.

15:25Yeah, the Timor Ruby is the thing that the mogul writers get excited about. And that's because moguls prefer red stones of light. Remember, Sue Strong was talking about this. And it's funny, her husband has written a wonderful paper on this. And while Europeans judge diamonds to be the king of all gemstones, it's rubies and red stones, which the moguls talk about. And so there's the Timur ruby, which was once belonged to Timur and has an inscription of his on it. But there's also a whole range of other enormous redstones called the Ain al-Hur, the Eye of the Huri, and the Fakraj. Well, it's like seeing rock stars performing on the same stage.

16:07So anyone who's going to come to the court and see Shah Jahan sitting in the midst of this will have heard and will have read about each one of these gems, pages and pages about them. And here they all are assembled in one place with one man sitting in the middle of all of that. Also, I think the timing of his inauguration when he shows this finished product to the world, 22nd of March, 1635, is the eighth anniversary of his accession. And it's also, it's unusual, you know, and again, sort of dates mean so much to Shah Jahan, as we discussed in the last episode. A rare conjunction of two major festivals.

16:41So you've got naros, which Willie's talked about, the Persian New Year, but also Eid Ulfitar, which is the end of a month of fasting. So it is a time of enormous celebration where, you know, sort of hungry, thirsty people, finally, there are banquets, there is joy. This is a man who understands his people in many ways. And, you know, this is when to do it. But also understands how to put on a big dazzle. Right. Yeah, you don't want to bring it out when people are sort of hungry. You bring it out when people have ended their fasting. And what's in a sense the tragedy of this is that he thinks about creating this throne when he is still King Solomon and Mumtaz is the Queen of Sheba.

17:19That's the symbolism that he's drawing on. And this throne is big enough for two. They can both sit there. But by the time, of course, 1835, by the time it's ready. She's been four years dead. He's had four years of grief. But this is very much a distraction for him. There's poetry which is engraved onto this throne. And you know more about this than I do. Tell us about this poetry and the significance of it. So as well as the jewels, the other great art that the Mughals valued above all was calligraphy. To us, Islamic calligraphy is a sort of minor pleasure, obviously, because so few people can understand the subtleties of it compared to Mughal art, which is readily accessible to anyone, and anyone that hasn't been to the wonderful V &A show at the moment of Mughal painting and calligraphy can see that.

18:08But there is calligraphy attached to the throne. And in Kutzi's words, the poet Kutzi, who is the guy that's commissioned to write about it and write the inscriptions, Hail, auspicious throne of the emperor, completed by divine assistance, the day the firmament made it, it first melted the sun's gold. So this is this wonderful golden throne But he's sitting on it now He's sitting on his own It's a bicycle made for two And there's only one in the saddle Which is a, you know That's a really powerful image We'll take a break here And when we come back We'll talk about the other You know, his grief doesn't end With the construction of the peacock throne This mausoleum is now under construction too The thing that he sort of started designing Just days after Mumtaz Mahal The love of his life dies So join us after the break and we will talk about the Taj itself

19:09Welcome back So we are now heading from the peacock throne To the other great aesthetic wonder built by Shah Jahan Which is the great Taj Mahal And what's strange is that we all come to it today the wrong way We come to it through, effectively, the back door, which is the land entrance, which is never how people were meant to see it. It was designed very deliberately to be arrived at by boat, because Shah Jahan had designed Agra as this river city on the Yamuna. The Yamuna was, if you like, the M1 of Mughal India. It connected Delhi with Agra. And all the great noblemen, all the men who controlled this empire, stretching from the middle of India straight up through Pakistan and Afghanistan to Bangladesh, all the main players at this court had their waterfront gardens and mansions along the Yamuna.

20:11And as we said, Shah Jahan buys the land for the Taj from the Jaipur family, from a descendant of Man Singh, the great general of Akbar. Who happily sell it to him? Because there's much said about the Mughals pressuring people to do things. But do we have any indication from any source that this was a happy transaction? I did think probably it was something that he was in any position to refuse. You can't say no. Yeah, you can't say no. Did he pay market value? It sounds like a stupid question, but genuinely, did he pay a fair price for the land? He did pay a fair price. We have the receipt, and that's still with the Jaipur family, which is an important point.

20:47What I think is lost on many accounts of the Taj Mahal, it's romanticized, not incorrectly, as a monument of love. But what is lost, I think, is that it is designed to be a model and symbol on earth of the heavenly mansion prepared for Mumtaz in paradise. This is a dream, if you like, of what Mumtaz's heavenly palace is going to look like. So on one hand, it's political propaganda showing the power and glory and the genius and good taste of Shah Jahan and his dynasty. On the other, it is showing an image of paradise deliberately and consciously. I touched on the mathematics, the sheer extraordinary calculations that go into even thinking that if these minarets are to fall, they must not fall inwards.

21:43They must not crush the great domed structure. Actually, symmetry is the key to the whole of the design here. So, I mean, this is very much a Mughal thing, isn't it? Having symmetry and balance in gardens, in buildings, but he takes it to another level. Not just Mughal, it's the whole Persianate tradition, which is at the root of Mughal art and design. And this idea of the Charbagh, the four-part garden, is very much there. The four gardens are four rectangles and they're divided by water, usually these channels of water. So you have this pleasant, cool breeze that will blow across from the water into anyone enjoying these very symmetrical, beautifully planted, scented rectangles of gardens.

22:29So also paradise, you know, sort of the symmetry and the peace and the assault on all the senses that the paradise might confer upon somebody. And from the beginning, it dazzles everyone. And there's very little that we don't know about this monument, because it's very much the center of attention from the moment that it's under construction. And we have an account by the writer Caswini, who says, a dome of high foundation and a building of great magnificence was created. The eye of the age has seen nothing like it under the nine volts of the enamel blue sky, and the ear of time has heard nothing like it in any past age, it will be a masterpiece for ages to come, increasing the amazement of humanity until the day of resurrection.

23:20So everyone knows that they're throwing everything at this, that this is Shah Jahan's great monument, not just for his wife, but also for himself. And we know a little about who built it. And there's new details been emerging from one of my favorite places in India. Have you ever been to Mandu? No, I haven't. You've got a great treat ahead of you. Yeah. It's in Madhya Pradesh. It's about two stops on the train south of Agra. You go to Indore and then travel across country. And it's this amazing plateau in the middle of jungle territory, wild, wonderful territory. and we know that Shah Jahan sent out to find architects and that the architects were then sent out to look at all the other examples which they could draw on when they were planning this and we have an inscription in Mandu that on the 14th of December 1659 four Mughal architects arrived in Mandu in order to research the different tomb traditions found across India.

24:30So rather like luchans get sent out before he plans Rastrapati Bhavan and is told to go and look at all the monuments of India before he plans the great viceroy's house. So Shah Jahan sends these four Central Asian architects and they leave a little inscription. On the 14th of February 1659. They arrive in Mandu, and they are strongly influenced by the tomb of Hoshang Shah, who does the first white marble mausoleum in all of India. And they think this is a wonderful idea. And inspired, the four men pull out a knife and etch a description onto the doorjamb of the tomb. and it reads, The humble beggar Lutfullah, an engineer, along with the son of Ustad Ahmed, architect of Shah Jahan, Kwajah Sadhu Rai, Ustad Shiram and Ustad Hamid, came on a pilgrimage to this tomb and wrote a few words to commemorate it.

25:31That is the most extraordinary graffiti, isn't it? It's like sort of the equivalent of Kilroy was here. It's the four men who are to build this great monument. I have two questions for you. So one is that great sock visit, my first sock visit, and it's been repeated since then. I heard this from a tour guide, one of those people who just yells at you saying, let me do your tour, I can tell you things like this, which of course my uncle wasn't paying for that either. But he did say, he said, Shah Jahan very famously cut off the hands of all the craftsmen who build the Taj Mahab so they could never build anything like it again.

26:03And since then, I haven't been able to find anything in the historical record, or maybe I just haven't looked in the right places. So does he chop off their hands? No, he doesn't. No. So it's rubbish. That's what I mean, the hand chopping thing is not there. But it is a Chinese whisper that has been carried through and lots of people will be told to you. So there are two Chinese whispers and both of them derive originally, or certainly the first recorded instances we have of them are from European travellers, not from authentic local sources. Right. I'm glad you brought us onto this. I want to talk about that a bit more in a bit.

26:34So I think one is Bernier and the other is Minucci. Oh my God, both of these guys have been coming up in my research and I very much want to discuss them. But there's two completely false stories. One is that Shah Jahan is so pleased with this extraordinary building that after it's finished, he cuts the hands off all the architects. And builders, so that no one, the master builders, so no one can build anything like it on earth again. I mean, everyone's always been very suspicious of this story because it's just improbable. And it sounds like a tall story and it is. But it's only been proved lately to be a false story by our friend and friend of the show who we've been talking about in the Humayun episode, Ebba Koch, who's this wonderful Viennese mogul specialist.

27:17and she is the sort of nerdy architectural specialist who slays the demons of myth with her scholarship. And in this case, she did it by sitting in the Taj Mahal, in the dome, over the parapets with a notebook and collecting all the Mason's marks because every Mason, after they do a particular length of this building, leaves a little very discreet signature on the stonework showing that not quite Kilroy was here, but Kilroy built this and wants to be paid for doing this bit of it. And they prove that they've done this particular stretch of the building by leaving the Mason's Marks. And Ebba spent months going over every inch of the building collecting these Mason's Marks.

28:03So she takes the marks and she traces who they are. And she then not only traces who they are and who built what bit of it, but the fact that the same Mason's Marks then appear 10 years later on Shah Jahanabad at the Red Fort. So they can't bloody have their hands chopped off. This is such a pervasive nonsense of a story, but it is brilliant. But it's not the only bit of nonsense. The other bit of nonsense, which is also, I think, in Minucci, is that we only have half the project and that the other half is going to be a black marble targe, which is going to be built opposite. And that has also been proved to be nonsense because recently another friend of the show and a friend of ours, George Michel, who's a wonderful archaeologist and art historian, along with the Archaeological Survey of India and the World Monuments Fund, have dug the site opposite the Taj, where the black Taj, if it had ever been planned, would have been.

29:06and what Ebba Koch and George Michel have between them worked out along with the ASI is that there was never any plan to build a black Taj because the moonlight garden, Matabag, was built opposite the Taj at the same time as the primary place to view the monument from. Right. And that the whole scheme centres around where you should look at it from. So he's thought of everything. It has a garden full of fountains and it is specifically planted with night plants. So they will be fragrant while you watch it. So you can watch it at night, listening to music in the cool of the evening, under the light of the moon.