HISTORY OF SHAHJAHAN

Shah Jahan has left behind an extraordinary architectural legacy. It was at his command that the Taj Mahal was built in Agra in memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. This mausoleum, made of white marble, took seventeen years to complete, and has intricate carvings and designs. His "Peacock Throne", which was to have a chequered history in later years, set the tone for a new era of ceremonial display. It featured precious stones embedded in gold. In 1648, he moved his court to the newly constructed capital, Shahjahanabad, at Delhi. Shahjahanabad was a carefully designed courtly city. The emperor's great palace fortress, Qila Mubarak [Auspicious Fortress], was built on the bank of the river Yamuna; opposite it stood the grand Mosque, the Jama Masjid, which remains to this day the largest such structure in India. Shah Jahan kept his architects and artisans occupied by numerous other ventures.It is certainly arguable that the Mughal Empire achieved its greatest prosperity under Shah Jahan. His traditional biographers have suggested that his military campaigns were organized with diligence, and judging from the hospitals and rest houses built in his reign, he appears not to have been devoid of a social conscience. He is said to have donated liberally to the poor and dispensed justice fairly. Poetry and music flourished in his reign. Yet it is indisputably clear that he had to exhaust the revenues of the state, and tax the peasants at exorbitant rates, to satisfy his craving for monunmental architecture. Nor was he as religiously tolerant as Akbar or Jahangir and it has been argued that some Hindu temples were destroyed in his reign. In 1658, Shah Jahan became very ill and, not unpredictably, a violent battle for succession broke out between his four sons, Dara Shikoh, Murad, Aurangzeb and Shuja. Though Shah Jahan favored the liberal Dara Shikoh, who championed a syncretistic Hindu-Muslim culture, it was Aurangzeb who eventually triumphed in the succession struggle by methodically eliminating his brothers. Aurangzeb captured Shah Jahan on 8 June 1658, and had him jailed at the Agra Fort, from where the old emperor could look wistfully at the glorious Taj. Shah Jahan died in captivity.