Shah Jahan - The Builder and Connoisseur

Shah Jahan – Connoisseur and Builder

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Shah Jahan believed that a good name for Kings is achieved by means of lofty buildings and he devoted much of talent, energy and his empire’s wealth to achieving that good name through his monumental architectural achievements.

Shah Jahan's great, great grandfather, the irst of the Mughal Emperors of India, had supported the arts, setting the precedent for Shah Jahan. He was fascinated by painting and jewelry, as his father Jahangir had been, and the fine arts flourished under Shah Jahan as they had in no previous reign.

Like his grandfather, Akbar the Great, Shah Jahan was passionate about architecture. Not content with the buildings in Akbar's Red Fort, he replaced them with resplendent palaces of pure white marble.

As soon as the Agra Fort was completed, he moved the Mughal capital from Agra back to the ancient site of Delhi where he built a magnificent new city, owing nothing to his ancestors, yet keeping the long-established legacy of the Delhi throne. (The palaces of Shahjahanabad, now Old Delhi, are also faced entirely in white marble. Consequently, the reign of Shah Jahan is sometimes referred to as the "reign of marble.")

Heir to an empire that spanned the sub-continent and beyond, Shah Jahan was also passionate about dynastic pride and his own celebrity and much of his life, according to historians, was devoted to demonstrating his power. He was well known as a connoisseur of jewels

He had time to dabble in the arts and was, perhaps, a jewel carver himself. Jewels were the basis for calculating wealth and thus was his power and wealth demonstrated through gaudy displays of jewelry epitomized by the Peacock Throne.

To further enhance his image as a pre-eminent ruler, Shah Jahan set aside the six thrones bequeathed to him by his forebears and commissioned another encrusted with hundreds of diamonds, emeralds, pearls and rubies – the famous Peacock Throne – where he held court surrounded by exquisite silk carpets and cushions under arches of silver inscribed in gold.

Paintings of Shah Jahan depict him with the coldness of an icon and European accounts of him, even as a young prince, portray him, as being very cold, very disdainful and extremely haughty.

He is presented as a symbol of royalty rather than a human being, which distinguishes him enormously from his father and grandfather, who delighted in a personal revelation of their characters. By contrast, Shah Jahan wanted to be seen as the symbol of perfection.

Shah Jahan spent incalculable wealth on his preoccupations: a life of ease, pageantry and pleasure, expeditions to expand his dominion and the creation of his celebrated edifices. Unlike the buildings of Akbar which show such eclectic delight in diversity, Shah Jahan's constructions demonstrate cool confidence in a new order.

In his structures, the Hindu and Islamic traditions are not simply mixed but synthesized in a resolved form – the balance of inlaid ornamentation and unadorned spaces; the cusped arch, neither Islamic nor Hindu; the simplified columns and brackets created without the rich carvings; the kiosks with Islamic domes – typical of the nobility, grace and genius that characterize the constructions of Shah Jahan.

For all the beauty of the embellishments used in the Taj Mahal and his other buildings, it is the stylistic unity and harmony of design and the dedication to the Mughal style of architecture that is the greatest architectural achievement of Shah Jahan.