MAHAL

I was going to write about my time visiting the Taj Mahal but then I thought I would let the pictures tell the story. They speak for themselves:

This is the walk way that leads to the courtyard just outside the gate which leads to the garden in front of the Taj Mahal... I know...

The building in this picture is actually the gate that you pass through to enter the garden in front of the Taj Mahal. You can see by the size of the people that the Moguls did not play around when they built gates.

Here is a closer view of the main gate itself. Around the outside of the gate in a "square horseshoe" shape are some strange looking markings creating a sort of border around the entrance. They are quotes from the Koran, and look Arabic but they Urdu. I am told that even though the lines on this "border" look straight, they are actually wider at the top, creating an optical illussion for those standing underneath it. Making it wider at the top makes it look straight from bottom to top. The eleven domes across the top represent the eleven years it took to construct the main part of the Tomb. Symetry and Symbolism...

This is a close up of the walkway through the gate with the entrance to the Taj just beyond the gate. The flowers and vines that you see just above the entrance are cut stone that has been fitted perfectly into the white marble for decoration. I will show you a close up in a little bit.

This is the Taj Mahal as seen from inside the building that is the gate between the outer court and within the walls surrounding the garden in front of the Taj

My view of the Taj Mahal as I stood directly in front of it on the otherside of the gate. This is the garden. It does not look like what most of us think of when we think of a garden. There are trees and pools, and stone work-a-plenty. The designers were very careful to make everything symetrical.

I walked off to the side to get a view from a different angle. To the left you will see a building make with red stone, the same as the gate. That building is a mosque. It is used on Friday evenings for prayer and that is about it. I was there on a Saturday so there was no chance of seeing it in action. From this angle you can see how the Taj is built up on a platform. You may also notice that the towers at the four corners of the platform are leaning slightly.


Here is the front gate to the Taj Mahal. You will see the same Urdu lettering up and down the sides and along the top as on the gate. I am not sure what verse it is but it is from the Koran. The same ornate flowers and vines decorate the top part of the entrance. And the white Marble is what sets the whole thing apart from the rest of the structures around it.

Here is a close up of the lettering that looks Arabic but is actually Urdu.


This is hand carved out of the white granite wall in the entrance way into the Taj. This extremely detailed work is hundreds of years old.

Each of these shapes, the vine, the flowers, the gold hook looking things, are cut stone about two or three milimeters thick. Each one is individualy cut to fit into its spot in the wall. and a place is cut specifically for it as well. That is my tour guides finger in the lower left hand corner. If you were to blindfold someone and have them run there fingers acorss the surface, it would likely feel like on peice of granite that has not been touched with tools of any kind.

Pictures are not allowed inside the Taj so this next photo is from the other side of the Taj, the "back porch". This minerete looking tower is on the river side of the Taj as you can tell from the lower left side of the pic. These towers actually lean away from the main structure of the Taj so that if there were some kind of catastrophic event like an earthquake the towers would topple and crash away from the the building.

Inside the Taj Mahal lays the tombs of two individuals. Here is a brief synopsis. Shah Jahan was the fifth emperor of the Mughal Empire in the first half of the 1600's. It was a time of great prosperity. He took two other wives in the interveneing years but Mumtaz Mahal was always his favorite. They were married for ninteen years and she bore him 14 children. She died giving birth to the fourteenth child. As she was dying she asked Jahan to build a building in her memory.

And so out of love and devotion to her he began to assemble a team to build a magnificent building for his beloved wife to demonstrate and reflect his love for her. The buiding is called the Taj Mahal, you can see her name in the name of the building. The word Mahal means palace... That is what he built. Today her tomb is at rest beneath the floor of the Taj, but there is a replica tomb inside that you can see when you walk througth the building.

This is called the moonlight garden. Shah Jahan was going to build another mosoleum on the other side of the river. A black Taj Mahal for himself, but he never got to build it. He was arrested and thrown in to prison by his son who took over in a coup.

Off in the distance of this picture you can make out a complex that is called Agra Fort. It was in this for that Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son. He could look out his window and see the Taj that he had built, He could see the tomb of his beloved wife, but he could not be near her.

The next building that you are seeing here is a red stone building that serves no purpose other than to provide balance and symytry to the who Taj Mahal layout. The building on the other side is a functioning mosque but this one is simply for looks.

One last look at the Taj before I head out...