Taj Mahal – Location and History

Located at the city of Agra in State of Uttar Pradesh (U.P), India the elegant structure dates back to sixteenth and nineteenth centuries when Muslim emperors ruled the Northern India. The city of Agra is approx 200 km from New Delhi, the present capital of India.
It was Shah Jehan, the Mogul Emperor who ordered the building of the Taj, in honour of his wife, Arjumand Banu who later became known as Mumtaz Mahal. Mumtaz and Shah Jehan were married in 1612 and, over the next 18 years, had 14 children together. The Empress died in 1630, in Burhanpur during the childbirth. Such was the intensity of the Emperor’s love to his wife that he ordered the building of the most beautiful mausoleum on Earth for her.
English poet Sir Edwin Arnold has aptly captured the essence when he said, "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passions of an emperor's love wrought in living stones."There is much debate as to who designed this monument but most historians believe that it was executed by an Indian architect of Persian descent, Ustad Ahmad Lahori. The historical dates attributed to the construction of this architectural wonder are between 1632 -1648. One of the noted historians Prof P N Oak, argues in his book titled –“Taj Mahal: The True Story” that this masterpiece existed well before the Mughal invasion and was customised to its present form. Irrespective of the debate on the origin of this masterpiece there is no doubt that Taj Mahal is matchless in grandeur and architecture when compared with other monuments that were built during the Mughal period