35 Amazing Facts About Taj Mahal | Amazing Facts 4U
- The name Taj Mahal means “Crown of Palaces”.
- Situated at Agra, a city in the Uttar Pradesh region of northern India 125 miles from Delhi. It is a UNESCO world heritage site.
- The Taj Mahal was declared one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007, receiving over 100 million votes.
- Taj Mahal attracts 2-4 million visitors annually with over 200,000 from overseas.
- It was believed to be built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in the loving memory of his third wife Mumtaj Mahal as her final resting place.
- Shah Jahan lost Mumtaz Mahal when she died giving birth to their 14h child.
- With construction beginning around 1632 A.D. and finishing in 1653, the Taj Mahal took an estimated 22 years to build.
- Ustad Ahmad Lahauri, generally regarded as the chief architect of the Taj Mahal, was not Indian; he was a Persian from Iran.
- There were more than 22,000 people involved to build this amazing monument.
- The Tajmahal is a Mixture of Indian, Persian, and Islamic style Architectures.
- The Taj Mahal is surrounded by significant gardens and a number of other buildings including a mosque and guest houses which make up the 17 hectares of land within the complex walls.
- During British rule in India, the garden landscaping was changed to look more like the lawns in London, England. The original garden was adorned with lots of roses and daffodils.
- Taj Mahal was built in stages, with the plinth and the tomb taking up roughly 15 years.
- The building of minarets, mosques, jawab, and gateway took additional 7 years to be completed.
- Amazingly more than 1,000 elephants were employed to transport the construction materials used to build the Taj.
- The Taj Mahal is mainly made of heavy white marble which was transported from Rajasthan.
- As many as 28 different varieties of semi-precious and precious stones were used to adorn the Taj with exquisite inlay work. They brought marbles from Rajasthan, blue stones from Tibet, emerald from Sri Lanka, jasper from Punjab, and crystals from China.
- The color of the Taj Mahal appears to change color depending on the time of the day. The Taj Mahal appears pink in the morning, while it appears white in the day. And interestingly, the Taj Mahal appears golden in the moonlight.
- Passages from Quran have been used as decorative elements throughout the complex.
- On the sides of the actual tomb of Mumtaz Mahal, 99 names of Allah can be found as calligraphic inscriptions.
- The Taj Mahal cost about Rs. 32 million, which in today’s money is equivalent to about $1 billion!
- One of the Taj Mahal’s most recognizable features is a large white dome that is often called an ‘onion dome’ due to its shape. The Height of the dome is amazing at 214 feet and it is 59 feet in diameter. It is surrounded by 4 smaller domes.
- The minarets of the Taj Mahal in India are angled at 88 degrees outwards so that they would not collapse into the structure should an earthquake occur.
- The Taj Mahal is perfectly symmetrical in every way except two tombs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz kept inside the structure. These two tombs are not equal because the male tomb had to be larger than the female tomb.
- Following the Taj Mahal’s completion, Shah Jahan was put under house arrest in 1658 by his son, Aurangzeb. Shah Jahan was only able to view the Taj Mahal from his window for the last eight years of his life.
- There was a plan to construct the Black Taj mahal on the opposite side of the river but the plan didn’t materialize due to Emperor Shahjahan getting imprisoned and his son’s unwillingness to continue with the project. An identical Taj Mahal was supposed to be built in black marble instead of white. The base of it can still be seen across the river.
- By the late 19th century, the Taj Mahal had been defaced by the British soldiers who chiseled out precious stones from the walls of the monument during the Indian rebellion of 1857.
- Islamic tradition forbids the decoration of graves, so Shah Jahan and his wife are actually buried in a plain crypt in the basement 7 feet below the surface and locked behind a metal door beneath the main inner chamber.
- Shah Jahan’s other wives and even his favorite servant are buried in mausoleums just outside of the Taj Mahal.
- The Taj Mahal’s white marble is rapidly turning yellow because of terrible air pollution in Agra. Only electric vehicles are allowed near the structure and a 4000-square-mile environmental radius has been declared around the monument to help control emissions.
- In 2008, a Bangladeshi filmmaker constructed a replica of the Taj Mahal in Bangla Desh at a cost of US $56 million dollars. The replication took five years to complete with modern equipment.
- Different studies suggest that the Taj Mahal is very slowly sinking in the Yamuna River.
- Mr. P. N. Oak’s celebrated book titled ” Tajmahal: The True Story” has claimed that the Taj Mahal is a Hindu Temple and wasn’t built by Shah Jahan but existed previously giving many pieces of evidence to prove his claim.
- A wooden piece from the riverside doorway of the Taj subjected to the carbon 14 test by an American Laboratory, has revealed the door to be 300 years older than Shahjahan, since the doors of the Taj, broken open by Muslim invaders repeatedly from the 11th century onwards, had to b replaced from time to time. The Taj edifice is much older. It belongs to 1155 A.D, i.e., almost 500 years before Shahjahan.
- Well-known Western authorities on architecture like E.B.Havell, Mrs.Kenoyer, and Sir W.W.Hunter have gone on record to say that the TajMahal is built in the Hindu temple style. Havell points out the ground plan of the ancient Hindu Chandi Seva Temple in Java is identical to that of the Taj.
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