Shah Jahan - Emperor and Creator of The Taj Mahal India

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Shah Jahan was born Prince Khurram in 1592, the eldest son of Jahangir, the fourth Mughal Emperor after Babur, Humayun and Akbar.

He assumed the title Shah Jahan, which comes from Persian meaning "King of the World" when, at the age of 36 he succeeded his father to become the fifth Mughal Emperor in 1628.

He was to become the foremost Mughal builder on a grand scale with the Taj Mahal India, his symbol of his love for his first wife, becoming the epitome of Mughal artistic achievement.

However, his excessive financial expenditures on his grandiose architecrual achievements came at a time when resources in the empire were shrinking.

Between 1636 and 1646, Shah Jahan sent Mughal armies to conquer the Deccan in the south and the lands to the northwest of the empire, beyond the Khyber Pass.

Even though they aptly demonstrated Mughal military strength, these campaigns drained the imperial treasury. As the state became a huge military machine, causing the nobles and their contingents to multiply almost fourfold, the demands for revenue from the peasants greatly increased.

Political unification and maintenance of law and order over wide areas encouraged the emergence of large centers of commerce and crafts, such as Lahore, Delhi, Agra, and Ahmadabad, linked by roads and waterways to distant places and ports.

Despite these major social and economic developments Shah Jahan's reign is remembered more for monumental architectural achievements than anything else.

The single most important architectural change was the use of marble instead of sandstone. Shah Jahan demolished the austere sandstone structures of created by his grandfather, Akbar in the Red Fort in Delhi and replaced them with marble buildings such as the Diwan-i-Am (hall of public audience) , the Diwan-i-Khas (hall of private audience), and the Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque).

The tomb of Itmiad-ud-Daula, the grandfather of his queen, Mumtaz Mahal, was also constructed on the opposite bank of the Jumna or Yamuna river.

In 1638, just two years after becoming Emperor, he began to lay out the city of Shahjahanabad in Delhi beside the Jamuna river.

The Red Fort that he built as the palace for his new city at Delhi represents the pinnacle of centuries of experience in the construction of palace-forts. Outside the fort, he built the Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India.

However, it is for the Taj Mahal, which he built as a memorial to his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, that he is best remembered.

Shah Jahan's extravagant architectural indulgence carried a heavy price. The peasants had been impoverished by heavy taxes and by the time his son Aurangzeb ascended the throne, the empire was in a state of insolvency.

As a result, opportunities for grand architectural projects were severely limited. This is most easily seen at the Bibi-ki-Maqbara, the tomb of Aurangzeb's wife, built in 1678.

Though the design was inspired by the Taj Mahal, it is half its size, the proportions compressed and the detail clumsily executed.

The economic positions of peasants and artisans did not improve because the administration failed to produce any lasting change in the existing social structure.

There was no incentive for the revenue officials, whose concerns were primarily personal or familial gain, to generate resources independent of what was received from the Hindu zamindars and village leaders, who, due to self-interest and local dominance, did not hand over all the tax revenues to the imperial treasury.

In their ever-greater dependence on land revenue, the Mughals unwittingly nurtured forces that eventually led to the break-up of their empire, linked as it was to the history of the Taj Mahal India and Shah Jahan.

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