A Guide to the Taj Mahal’s Architecture and History

The Taj Mahal is a seventeenth-century mausoleum that is located on the southern bank of the Yamuna river in the city of Agra, in the Uttar Pradesh province in India. In 1631, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan commissioned the Taj Mahal to entomb his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal who died earlier that year. In addition to the mausoleum, the grounds of the Taj Mahal include a mosque, living quarters, a garden with an immense reflecting pool, and two additional tombs where Shah Jahan’s two other wives were buried.

The story of the Taj Mahal begins with the love story between a king and his wife and continues for centuries to come. Here is an overview of the history of the Taj Mahal.

• Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal’s love story: Shah Jahan was the fifth emperor of the Mughal Empire, and he reigned over what is now considered the golden age of Mughal architecture. In 1631, Shah Jahan's beloved wife, a Persian princess whom he gave the nickname “Mumtaz Mahal” (meaning “jewel of the palace”) died giving birth to their fourteenth child. A distraught Shah Jahan spent nearly two years in intense mourning for Mumtaz Mahal, and construction on a place to house her remains began in 1632. This would become the Taj Mahal.
• Construction of the Taj Mahal: Shah Jahan hired two architects to work on the design of the Taj Mahal including Ustad Ahmad Lahauri (who is thought to have been the chief architect) and Mir Abdul Karim (who is listed as a supervisor). He was inspired by other Mughal mausoleum designs, including his own Jama Masjid in Delhi. The project took the work of 22,000 laborers to complete, including stonecutters, calligraphers, embroiderers, and painters. The heavy building materials allegedly required 1,000 elephants to transport. The main mausoleum was completed in 1638, six years after construction began. The additional elements of the Taj Mahal complex—including the mosque, the guest house, the main gateway, the outer courtyard, and the cloisters—were all completed by 1653. Shah Jahan spent his years after completing the Taj Mahal under house arrest in Agra Fort until he died in 1666 when he was interred beside his wife in the mausoleum.
• Eighteenth-century attacks: The Taj Mahal was attacked in the eighteenth century by the Jat rulers of Bharatpur. Two chandeliers were stolen, along with two of the tomb’s unique stone-carved marble screens and a shield that covered a finial topping the main dome.
• Twentieth-century restoration and modern-day status: At the end of the 19th century, Lord Curzon, who acted as the British viceroy to India from 1899 to 1905, initiated a restoration project for the Taj Mahal, which had fallen into disrepair. The restoration, which included new European-style gardens to replace the traditional Mughal gardens, was completed in 1908. Later in the century, large layers of scaffolding were built around the Taj Mahal during World War II and again during the Indian-Pakistan Wars from 1965–1971 to confuse bombers. In 1983, the Taj Mahal was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site for being a “jewel of Muslim art.” In 2000, it was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

The Taj Mahal exemplifies the highest achievements of Islamic art and architecture. Its design details are intricate and precious, from the window’s cut marble screens to the calligraphic accents in the central dome. These are some of the architectural features that highlight the Taj Mahal as a major Indian architectural landmark.

1. 1. Precious materials and design accents: The main white marble mausoleum of the Taj Mahal is built from brick-in-lime mortar, with a facade of red sandstone and white marble from Makrana, Rajasthan. Much of the interior is decorated with inlays of precious and semi-precious stones crafted into Hindu and Persian decorative elements such as flower designs, tessellated patterns, and calligraphic inscriptions of Muslim passages from the Quran. The Taj Mahal comprises a number of buildings, gardens, and water features constructed with the most precious building materials from across Asia, including black marble, jasper from Punjab, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, and jade from China.
2. 2. Symmetry: The Taj Mahal borrowed from other Mughal architectural styles, and perfected the use of bilateral symmetry, creating a design that is divisible into two symmetrical halves. When you view the main building on its central axis, the two sides are mirror images of each other.
3. 3. Calligraphic inscriptions: At the time that the Taj Mahal was built, any detail work that incorporated anthropomorphic figures was prohibited by Islam. Instead, the mausoleum is decorated with inscriptions of Arabic calligraphy containing passages from the Quran.
4. 4. Raised tombs: The Taj Mahal is an example of a “raised tomb” mausoleum, in which the remains of the dead are housed in large, body-sized, rectangular tombs located on raised platforms. The mausoleum sits on a raised square platform of marble that you can access from a set of lateral stairs on the southern side. The tomb is located in an octagon-shaped alcove displaying pietra dura inlays of precious stone such as lapis lazuli, intricate calligraphy inlays, and ornately decorated cenotaphs, square plinths commemorating the dead.
5. 5. Central dome: The marble dome is the Taj Mahal's most recognizable feature, and makes it a prime example of Islamic architecture. Inside, the dome’s vaulted ceilings have a carved, honeycomb pattern. The dome is often called an onion dome because of its bell-like shape. The Taj Mahal's dome is almost as tall as the main building itself, creating a sense of balance. The dome is flanked by four smaller, similarly-shaped domes at the central dome's four corners.
6. 6. Minarets: Four minarets (small, slender towers) are located at the four corners of the platform that the mausoleum sits upon. The free-standing minarets provide further balance to the building’s design, adding further depth to the design when looked at face-on and providing a spatial reference for the main building to sit within.
7. 7. Landscaping: The main building of the Taj Mahal is set towards the back of a quadripartite garden. This allows for a sense of depth and distance when you’re facing the building’s front. To accentuate that sense of distance, a long reflecting pool stretches towards the main building, creating another dimension of symmetry as the building is reflected in the pool's waters.

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