Love can change history

Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal

In today’s parlous political climate the Hindu Right in India has made the name of Babur Shah disreputable, token of the baleful Muslim infiltration of glorious original Hindu culture. And indeed, Babur reigned in Hindustan from 1526 to 1530 and founded the Mughal dynasty, which was very influential in shaping modern India. But if Babur is reviled in some quarters, his great-great-grandson Shah Jahan is remembered with something like national affection. The main reason for this affection is the Taj Mahal in Agra, which Shah Jahan commissioned in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. It stands as a landmark not only of Mughal Indian architecture but also as a touchstone in the annals of love.

At its height in the eighteenth century, the Mughal empire stretched across the entire breadth of the Indian subcontinent from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. Over the centuries of their rule the Mughals united the formerly fragmented subcontinent under a coherent and capacious vision of rational and tolerant rule, and their cuisine, music, dance, philosophy, and architecture had an even more lasting influence than their political universalism.

Among these, there is no more enduring monument to the legacy of the Mughals than the architectural masterpiece commissioned by Shah Jahan. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, the Taj Mahal has become emblematic of Indian identity, not just of Mughal or Muslim culture. Above all, it is a monument to love—to the permanence of love and the impermanence of earthly happiness.

Before he became emperor, Shah Jahan was Prince Khurram. Born in Lahore on 15 January 1592, he was named by his grandfather, Akbar the Great, and brought up in the main palace by one of Akbar’s wives, Ruqaiya Sultan Begum, who was childless. Khurram was raised speaking not Turki, the Mughals’ ancestral language, but Hindavi, the official language of the Mughal empire.

When he was fifteen years old Khurram was betrothed to Arjumand Banu Begum, who was fourteen. The wedding did not take place until five years later, and in the meantime Khurram took another wife. But the delay only strengthened the bond between him and Arjumand. Khurram’s father, Jahangir, fell in love with and married Arjumand’s beautiful and accomplished aunt, conferring on her the title Nur Jahan (Light of the World). Nur Jahan became very influential politically, establishing with her brother and father the core of the Iranian clan, the dominant faction in the royal court. When Khurram and Arjumand were finally married, in 1612, the celebrations reflected the clan’s prestige both in splendor and in symbolic touches, such as a personal visit paid by the emperor to the house of the bride’s father, Asaf Khan.

From the beginning the marriage was almost a fairy tale. Khurram gave his new bride the title Mumtaz Mahal Begam (Chosen Queen of the Palace). And although he would take yet another wife in 1617, and although he gave each of his other two wives a child, none of his other consorts would rise to the status of his Chosen One, Mumtaz. The intensity of their bond was described in terms utterly unfamiliar—in fact scandalous—to Muslim readers of the seventeenth century. Further proof came in the form of the fourteen children they had together over a marriage lasting nineteen years.

Not everything was to come up roses for the couple, however. Only half their children survived, and Khurram’s accession to the throne, in 1628, was achieved only after a deadly struggle against rivals, including some of his own blood. As emperor, Khurram became Shah Jahan, but as queen, Mumtaz lived only three more years.

In her brief reign Mumtaz did not emulate her powerful aunt Nur Jahan but sought rather to perform charity; to succor the poor, the suffering, and those condemned to death by the court; and to carry on a proud tradition of Mughal architectural patronage by grand ladies of royal families. For all this she was beloved by the common people. But by 1631, at the age of thirty-eight, she was dead.

The circumstances of her death were both commonplace and tragic. Having given birth to her fourteenth child, she realized she was dying and sent her eldest child, who was seventeen years old, to summon Shah Jahan so she could see him for one last time.

The emperor wept without restraint at her bedside. After she died, he put on the traditional white of mourning and withdrew from the public for an entire week, something unheard of in court history. Reportedly, he was so distraught that he contemplated abdicating his throne and becoming a hermit. He did abandon all worldly pleasures for two years, giving up music, fine clothes, perfume, and all personal vanity. He cried openly in court. He postponed the weddings of his sons Dara Shikoh and Shah Shuja. He forbade all entertainments on Wednesdays, the day Mumtaz had died. His hair turned entirely white.

Initially Mumtaz was buried in a garden at Zainabad. The emperor visited the grave every day during the Muslim holy week and prayed the traditional Fatiha beside the spot. But against Muslim custom, Mumtaz’s body was disinterred in the winter of 1631, taken to Agra, and reinterred in the place where the Taj Mahal would rise.

Construction began in 1632 and was completed in 1653. The Taj Mahal, whose name means Crown of All Grand Buildings, is the work of thousands of nameless artisans, skilled craftsmen, and workers, though we do have a record of some of the principal builders, the main designer being Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. Drawing on earlier great examples of Mughal, Iranian, and Indian buildings, the architects achieved in the Taj an unsurpassed fusion of engineering skill and artistic and spiritual feeling, just as its white marble is united with its brilliantly colored pietra dura panels. The main building is framed by the red sandstone of all the secondary buildings around it (red sandstone being the primary material used in earlier Mughal buildings), but it also reflects principles of traditional Hindu architecture, such as color gradations to mark relative importance. The finial on top of the main dome combines an Islamic crescent with a vertical spire to form a trident, emblem of the Hindu god Shiva. These unificatory features express the aim of the Mughal imperium: to unify the empire under its benevolent power. But above all the building memorializes the eternal union of the two lovers Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. They are buried side by side under the Taj Mahal.

—Samir Dayal

Love can change history—read more cases:

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