Dan Snow's History Hit - The Taj Mahal

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

The Taj Mahal is one of the most iconic and romanticised buildings on earth. Commissioned by a Mughal ruler to mark the passing of his beloved wife, it is thought that this monumental marble mausoleum was built by some 20,000 stone carvers, masons and artists. Perhaps 1,000 elephants were used in its construction, and materials were brought from as far away as Sri Lanka, Tibet and China.Joining Dan today is Mehreen Chida-Razvi, an art historian at the University of SOAS who specialises in the art and architecture of Mughal South Asia. Mehreen explains how the terrible grief of Shah Jahan led to the creation of a world wonder and discusses what the Taj Mahal means to modern India.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and James Hickmann, and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up now for your 14-day free trial.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It's one of the most recognisable buildings on earth, the outline as iconic as the Eiffel Tower, as Big Ben, the pyramids in Egypt. It was built by a powerful ruler to mark the passing of his beloved wife. It is the Taj Mahal in Agra. As the sun changes position through the day, the light bounces off the surface of the nearby river and it plays on the white marble of the Taj Mahal. So it appears to be moving, dancing, colours always changing, the building feels alive. It used to have something like 40 different types of precious or semi-precious stones built into the fabric of the building. It required something like 20,000 workers, a thousand elephants, some of the finest engineers and architects in the world

at the time, none of whom, folks, were mutilated after its building. That's an urban myth. whom, folks, were mutilated after its building. That's an urban myth. Materials came from as far away as Sri Lanka, Tibet, China. It was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, a man who was wrestling terrible grief. His wife Mumtaz Mahal had died from complications during the birth of their 14th child. He was broken with grief. She died in 1631 and immediately he started work on the monumental marble mausoleum.

We're going to have a look at the Taj Mahal in this podcast. We're lucky enough to have Mehreen Chida Razvi on the podcast. She is an art historian at the University of SOAS who specialises in the art and architecture of Mughal South Asia. But we're also going to finish up by talking about what the Taj Mahal means today, and why it's been drawn into the political battles, the culture wars, in which Hindu nationalists are trying to rewrite India's history. The story of the Taj Mahal is ongoing. Enjoy. the Taj Mahal is ongoing. Enjoy.

Irene, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. Tell me about this eruption of Mughal power into the Indian subcontinent. Where are they from and when did they arrive? So the Mughals are of Timurid origin. So the founder of the Mughal dynasty, Babor, is born in Fergana, the valley of Fergana, which is primarily in today's Uzbekistan, but also going into Turkmenistan. He becomes the leader of his tribe when he's, I believe he's about 12 years old. And basically he's one of many Timurid princelings in the region in Central Asia,

wanting to establish an empire for himself. And so he comes out of the Fergana Valley with his followers. He tries to capture Samarkand, which is the great capital city of Timur, with the intention of trying to re-establish the great Timurid empire. But he's not militarily strong enough to do this, and he tries several times. You mentioned re-establish the empire. Is this an empire that harks back? Is he a descendant of Genghis Khan? Is this still part of this extraordinary phenomenon of this mighty Mongol empire that stretched right across this area? He is a descendant of Genghis Khan. On his mother's side, he is descendant from Genghis

Khan and on his father's side from Timur. We don't consider the Mughals to be Mongol. However, we consider them to be Timurid and they consider themselves to be Timurid. So the Timurid Empire was a successor Mongol dynasty in Central Asia. Timur had married into the Genghisid line. And so there is this bloodline in Babur coming from Genghis Khan, coming from Timur. So he is of Mongol descent, but it's kind of interspersed by the time we're talking about, which is in the 15th century. of the Mongol Empire, this idea of kind of universal empire, means that if you're a princeling from this part of the world, your horizon is very broad, right? You know what's possible because the stories being told are about empires that stretch, well, from the Pacific to Europe. Definitely. But again, I just want to stress that it was more toward the Timurid background that Babur was looking, that the Mughal line, his successors, then looked as well.

And the Timurid Empire was also a great empire, centered in Samarkand and then Herat, controlling most of Central Asia into Afghanistan, into parts of Iran as well. And so it was a very wide geographic space, not as wide as the empire, you know, established by Genghis Khan, but still of great importance. And more importantly for Babur and his descendants, it was a great cultural center and a great courtly center, which is not what the Mongols were. The Mongols were nomadic. They did not have settled cities per se other than Khorokoram. So it was a different type of heritage coming from the Timurid line that Babur and his descendants really looked back to. So they want to make the Timurid empire great again. And does he succeed in doing

that? Ultimately, he does. Yes. At first, he's not very successful trying to capture Samarkand. He tries three times and he's unable to. Ultimately, he goes a bit further south, establishes himself in Kabul in the city, but then the province is what becomes his power base and his seat of authority. And from Kabul, he then looks east into Hindustan. And he's actually following Timur in this because Timur in 1398 had invaded into Hindustan. He sacked Delhi. And so Babur has this in his mind that this is a kind of game plan for him to follow again.

And at first he's actually invited into the region to make a bit of trouble and a bit of mayhem. At this time, we're now into the early 1520s. At this time, the northern area of what we refer to as Al-Hind in this time was ruled by the Delhi Sultanate. And the Sultan at the time, Ibrahim Lodi, was not beloved by some of his followers, including the governor of the province of Lahore. And so that governor invited Babur and his army into the region to

make a bit of turmoil to disrupt the Lodi power. And Babur first does this in 1524. And then he comes back again in 1526. It's a tale as old as the hills. What could possibly go wrong? Absolutely. Brilliant. Well, so he arises a raider, kind of opportunist, and not for the last time in history, he figures, hang on, hang on, there's opportunities for long term conquest here. Absolutely. So when he comes in in 1524, he causes his mayhem. He goes back to Kabul, although he leaves a garrison in Lahore. When he's asked to come back again in 1526, although he leaves a garrison in Lahore. When he's asked to come back again in 1526, this is when he comes in. He actually engages the Delhi Sultan and his army in battle at the Battle of Panipat, which is just north of Delhi. And after he defeats the Lodi Sultan and his army,

and he was vastly outnumbered, instead of going back to Kabul, as was expected by others, he stays and he claims the lands of the Delhi Sultan for himself. And so this is when we have the establishment of what becomes the Mughal Empire in 1526. Let's come on to Shah Jahan. He's on the throne. And is he a builder? I mean, why build in this period? Are they prestige projects? Is it a religious thing? What's going on with that? It is a combination of different factors. So just to say, Shah Jahan's father, Jahangir, died of natural causes, and then Shah Jahan came to the throne. It was Shah Jahan's son, Aurangzeb, who removed him from the throne. But in terms of the artistic production of the Mughal court, in terms of the material culture and

including architecture, there is an incredible symbolic importance to the patronage of the arts. And this has always been the case across not just Muslim kingdoms, but any royal entity strives to leave a legacy. And that includes a cultural legacy. It includes an artistic legacy. And the Mughals were no different from that point of view, but they were exceptionally good at it. And in terms of the buildings that they produced, we have layers of political symbolism where you are projecting not only your own political authority as the ruler, but the importance of your dynasty, the historical record of your line. You then have layers of religious symbolism as well, bearing in mind that the Mughals are a Muslim dynasty ruling over a

non-Muslim population. You're projecting the might of Islam as well in these regions. And then just the incredible cultural flourishing, which is happening as well. So the focus to build was something which all the emperors engaged in. And Shah Jahan was particularly good at it. Even as a prince, he was given the charge of commissions that his father wanted constructed. So Jahangir is the one who ordered the construction of the famous Shalimar Gardens in Shunigarh in Kashmir. But it was Shah Jahan who as a prince was put in charge of that project. And he did lots of other architectural commissions as a prince as well. So he was very engaged, very interested, and very good at it. And then once he becomes the emperor with the entire imperial treasury behind him, the scale of what he does is just magnificent. Speaking of becoming engaged as a prince, tell me about his relationship with his wife. is given. Her name was Arjuman Bono Begum. And her and Prince Khosrow, who then gets titled Shah Jahan, they are engaged when they are young. They're born in the same year, but he's, I think, five or six months older. So they are 15 and 14 or 15 and 16 when they're engaged. And then they get married six years later. Yeah, they're 19 and 20,

I think, when they get married. And there was between them a real solid relationship, a real deep love. Once Shah Jahan and Arjuman Banu Begum, now Mumtaz Mahal, married, he had his other wives, and I think he was married once more after, but he basically neglected the rest of his wives for her. They had a, I come back to this word, deep and true relationship. She traveled everywhere with him, even on his military campaigns. The children that they had together, I mean, it was just their children, the ones who survived to adulthood, who were Shah Jahan's then, you know, potential heirs and the princesses. They had 14 children together, seven survived to adulthood. And it's while giving birth to their 14th child in 1631 that Mumtaz Mahal passes away. But we know that they had an incredibly true relationship because when we think of how

these kind of marriages come about, primarily, you know, they're political and yes, you'll have a section which then comes into the marriages. But from one of Shah Jahan's own court historians, we're given a passage, and I'm just going to read it out to you if you don't mind, from his historian, Tasvini. And I'm taking this quote from the translation, which is in Abel Cox's seminal book on the Taj Mahal.

In terms of the relationship between Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, Tasvini, the official court historian, writes that the intimacy, deep affection, attention, and favor which his majesty had for the cradle of excellence, which was another title of Mumtaz Mahal, this exceeded by a thousand times what he felt for any other. And always that lady of the age was the companion, close confidant, associate, and intimate friend of that successful ruler, in hardship and comfort, joy and grief, when traveling or in residence. The mutual affection and harmony between the two had reached a degree never seen between a husband and wife among the classes of rulers or among the

other people. And this was not merely out of sexual passion. The excellent qualities, pleasing habits, outward and inward virtues, and physical and spiritual compatibility on both sides caused great love and affection and extreme affinity and familiarity. Now, Dan, I really want to stress how rare it is to have a passage like that written in any of these court histories. To have something like this written in an official court history, speaking not only about the intense relationship, but bringing in that little mention of the physical aspects as well of their relationship and how compatible they were in every single way. This is really rare. And in Shah Jahan's court histories, he approved everything that ended up being written in them.

So this is something he was very happy to have included in the court history. them. So this is something he was very happy to have included in the court history. So he was obviously, when she did die as a result of complications of that final pregnancy, childbirth, he was absolutely devastated. He was. He was. And again, we know this from his court histories. He went into deep mourning. He retired from public life for at least a week and again this speaks to the extreme level of his emotions because part of the daily ritual activities of the Mughal emperor was to physically be present in audiences to show oneself to not only the court but to a wider public at two specific viewings a day. And for him to retreat for a week and not engage in any of these activities was completely out of the ordinary.

But we're told that he did that. He then wore white, which is the color of mourning. The tears that he shed over the next weeks and months led him to then need spectacles. shed over the next weeks and months led him to the spectacles. After a period of time, his beard turned completely white from grief as well. So he was deeply, deeply affected by her death. And shortly after she passed away, he began the planning of the great funerary monument to her, which is, of course, the Taj Mahal. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking about the Taj Mahal. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.

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And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. And tell me, people will recognise the Taj Mahal, but what is its purpose and how is that reflected in its design? I mean, its purpose at the most basic level is obviously constructed as a commemorative monument to Mumtaz Mahal. But equally, and this is one of the things which I always stress because it gets passed over in the kind of common discussions about the Taj Mahal, because it always gets

put out there as this quintessential symbol of love and a monument that's built to love. And this is true. As I've said, Shah Jahan was deeply affected by Mumtaz Mahal's death, but this was a monument equally built to glorify him as the ruler of the Mughal empire. And it was a monument built to express the perfection of his rule, the perfection of his dynasty. It's one of four monumental imperial Mughal tombs. So there is a tradition of large scale tomb architecture before it in the mogul tradition so the first monumental imperial tomb is humayun's then we have akbar's tomb in sekandra jahangir's tomb in lahore and then we have the construction of the taj mahal which is not built as an imperial tomb it's built as a royal tomb and it's built for a queen. So it's part of this tradition of built structures.

But you can see in Hullayun's tomb in Delhi, a forerunner of the Taj Mahal in terms of its plan, in terms of its design of the building itself. And the Taj Mahal we can see as the kind of epitome of Shah Jahan-y classic Mughal architecture. It is a point where we can say the zenith of Mughal architecture has been reached. It's a perfection of what had come before it. It is a expression of Shah Jahan's political power and, as I said, of the perfection of his rule, while at the same time very much commemorating the wife that he deeply, deeply loved. It sounds like he wanted to give her as close as he could possibly give her to a full imperial tomb without being too transgressive, I suppose. Who was supposed to go in it, around it? Who's it for?

So these grand mausoleums effectively, they are places of visitation. The emperor's tombs take on shrine-like qualities. That was not the case with the Taj Mahal until Shah Jahan gets buried there, but we'll come to that. But these tombs were all constructed to have an area which had more public access and an area which was more private access. The immediate family would be able to go and visit. The members of the royal courts would be able to go and visit. But the way that the Taj complex is constructed, there's a four-court area into the tomb. You then go into the tomb garden, at the end of which is the Taj Mahal. What you don't see today is that immediately on the other side of the four-court area, there was an area called the Taj Ganj, which was both a caravanserai and a bazaar

complex, which was built as a part of the original Taj Mahal complex. And so this was an area that was completely open to the wider public because a bazaar space, a serai space and the caravanserais you can think of as travelers lodges. So there was a lot of societal visitation and interaction at the complex. Now, not everybody from the wider public would have been able to go into the mausoleum, but they could have been in the space and so in that way are paying homage to the queen as well. And you mentioned that he's buried there. Was it always designed as a place where he would be laid to rest beside his queen? No, no, not at all. So this mausoleum built as a

royal tomb for the queen becomes an imperial mausoleum once Shah Jahan is then buried there. So we know what an incredible architectural patron he was. And had he not been deposed by his son and imprisoned in Agra Fort, it's entirely possible he would have began planning his own mausoleum. But we don't know because there's nothing in the historical record to say that. But what does happen is that when he dies in 1666, his body is taken the night of his death. It's moved by river to the Taj Mahal and buried there immediately. And this was not the intention when the structure was built. And the design of the building, the symmetry of the building, this tells us that Mumtaz Mahal, her sarcophagus

in the crypt and her commemorative cenotaph, which is what you see when you go to the Taj Mahal today, they are in the very central axis. That is their placement in the building. They're placed in the most important part of the building, immediately in the center. And if you look at the tiled paving around her mausoleum, there is a border that has been created around her cenotaph. When Shah Jahan is later buried there, he's off center and his sarcophagus and his cenotaph then are covering parts of the paving design which is framing Wamtaz Mahal's these are all clues to the fact that this was only ever built to be her burial site and his inclusion is a later decision and he's given more prominence in certain ways but that placement in the center, had he ever intended

for himself to be buried there, would have been reserved for him. It's now one of the most famous buildings in the world. It's the subject of several myths. Should we dispatch the myth that he had the architect killed or maimed or blinded or whatever so that he could never create anything as beautiful? Yes, please. Let's do so. That was not the case. That never happened. You have all sorts of these stories of Oriental despots doing this kind of thing coming out of Europe. And no, this was not the case. We know the names of the individuals who were responsible for the architecture and construction of the Taj Mahal. We know that they are continuing to build for Shah Jahan once the Taj Mahal is complete. And it would have been the heights of folly to get rid of these masters who are creating these structures, which as the

patron, you are building with the intention of creating a legacy. So no, never happened. you are building with the intention of creating a legacy. So no, never happened. Please stop talking about that. Shah Jahan himself, his son, I keep being very mean about Mughals, but on this occasion, it is true, right, that his son did imprison him and he had a very sad end of life. Yes, unfortunately. So Shah Jahan got very ill and his sons began to place themselves for what was going to follow. Now, Shah Jahan had declared his eldest son, Dar Shikoh, as his heir, but this was not to the liking of the other brothers, especially Aurangzeb. And when Shah Jahan became ill under the premise of protecting his father, Aurangzeb imprisoned him in the fort in Agra. And then despite the fact that he gets better, the war between the brothers for the succession has already started. And it is full of backstabbing and it's very bloody.

But the end result is that Aurangzeb is the winner. He made alliances with his two other brothers, Murad Bakhsh and Shah Shuja, against Dara Shikoh and then turned on them. Dara Shikoh is the first one to be killed and then Murad Bakhsh and Shah Shuja are also killed and Aurangzeb proclaims himself the new emperor. But it does mean his dad was able to look across the river imprisoned in that fort and look at the Taj Mahal in his final days. Indeed. Yeah. For the final six years of his life, he's imprisoned in the Agra fort with his eldest daughter, Jahanara, who after Mumtaz Mahal's death basically took on the role of queen in the empire. And yes, it's quite poignant. You can go to the fort in

Agra and you can go to the site where he was imprisoned. And yeah, the river is curving around and just down you see the Taj Mahal in the distance. What does the Taj Mahal mean today in a world of tourism, in a world of heritage tourism and Instagram and photographs, but also in a world of a Hindu nationalist regime in India that's got very, well, maybe not very nuanced thoughts, but quite straightforward thoughts about Muslim moguls. What does the Taj Mahal mean today? It's a really important question, Dan, and it's become a very complicated question. In terms of tourism, obviously, it's one of the most visited sites in India. It is famous on a global level. It is promoted within India and obviously globally as a tourist site in order to bring in people. And so they put money into maintaining the Taj,

maintaining the complex for tourist purposes. It used to be the case that you would find it on any travel brochure, tourist brochure, but I believe they're now not using the visual image of the Taj so much on the official government material. But, you know, as you say, we live in this world of social media and the Taj is constantly photographed and put out there in the wider sphere. So it's very much a part of the visual record of India, it's identified with India. Now the complicated part of it comes into play when we think about what the current Indian government is doing in relation to the monument itself, but also to the wider Mughal Muslim past

of India. There are court cases brought by members of the government which are trying to get the Taj Mahal declared a Hindu temple. In 1989, there was this individual, P.N. Oak, who wrote a book called Taj Mahal, The True Story, in which he stated that it was actually originally a Hindu temple built in the 12th century, dedicated to Lord Shiva. And that's obviously nonsense, but he wrote this, he established an institute for rewriting Indian history. So the Taj wasn't the only building he attacked, but it was certainly the most famous. And that writing of his has been taken up and used by others of the same persuasion to push forth this myth that the Taj Mahal was not Mughal, that it there are Hindu sculptures and idols in the chambers beneath the Taj Mahal, and they will prove that this was first and foremost a Hindu temple. This is all part of a wider program to, I mean, its most basic essence to rewrite the history of India with a very strong Hindutva ideology slant. And it's extremely problematic.

And the Taj Mahal is probably the most visual symbol of this and the most famous symbol of this, but textbooks are being rewritten to remove parts of the history relating to the Muslims, relating to the Mughals. You see it across many different avenues in society at the moment. And it's really important, I think, for people to recognize that there is no proof for any of this. I used the word nonsense before. We have the historical record and the historical sources telling us that this was a structure built by the Mughals and not just Muslim sources, but Rajasthani sources as well. Because the land was bought from one of the Rajasthani rulers. And in their archives, we have the information about that land sale.

But it's information which is ignored in order to put forth this story that the current government is trying to tell. That is wild. What a world. Okay, well, thank you very much for coming on talking about the past, the present, and the future of the Taj Mahal. My pleasure. you