The Buildings of Shah Jehan by Esther Singleton

G. W. STEEVENS

The north-eastern approach to Agra is through a waste of land at the / same time flat and broken. Formless hillocks and ditches, colourless / sand and dead turf, the whole scene was mean and depressing. I raised / my eyes, and there, on the edge of the ugly prairie, sat a fair white / palace with domes and minarets. So exquisite in symmetry, so softly / lustrous in tint, it could hardly be substantial, and I all but cried, / "Mirage! " It was the Taj Mahal.

And now we were clanking over an iron bridge above a dark-green river / that filled barely a quarter of its sandy bed; deep, broad staircases / stepped down to its further bank with pillared pleasure-houses / overlooking them. Now on the right rose a great mosque, its bellying / domes zig-zagged with red and white; dawn from the left frowned the / weather-worn battlements of a great red fortress. This was the city of / Shah Jehan, emperor and devotee, artist and lover.

And this, in a few words, is the passionate story of Shah Jehan. He was / the grandson of Akbar the Great, the first Mogul Emperor of Hindustan. / While yet Prince Royal, conquering India for the Moguls, he married the / beautiful Persian, Arjmand Banu, called Mumtaz-i-Mahal, the chosen / of the palace, and loved her tenderly beyond all his wives for fourteen / years. But only a year after he became Sultan she died in travail of / her eighth child. Shah Jehan in his grief swore that she should have / the loveliest tomb the world ever beheld, and for seventeen years he / built the Taj Mahal. Also he built the palace of Agra, the fort and / palace of Delhi, and the great mosque of Agra; he took to wife many / fair ladies, and lived in all luxuriousness, ministering abundantly to / every sense, till he had reigned thirty years. Then his son Aurungzebe / rose up and dethroned him, and kept him a close prisoner in his own / private mosque, which he had built within the palace of Agra. There he / lived seven years more, attended by his daughter Jehanara, who would / not leave him, till at last, in 1645, being grown very feeble, he / begged to be laid in a chamber of the palace wherefrom he could see the / Taj Mahal. This was granted him, so that he died with his eyes upon the / tomb of the love of his youth. There they buried him beside her. And / his daughter, when her time came, wrote a Persian stanza begging that / no monument should be set up to "the humble transitory Jehanara," and / praying only for her father's soul.

Agra is the mirror of Shah Jehan. In the fort and palace you can read / all the story of the warrior and the lover -- in the fort so nakedly / grim without and the palace so richly voluptuous within. Under the / brow of the sheer sandstone walls you are dwarfed to a pigmy. Before / and beneath the great gateway stands a double curtain of loophole and / machicolation and tower: you go in through cavernous guard-houses, / up a ramp between sky-closing walls. Only thus do you reach the / real entrance -- the great Elephant Gate -- two jutting octagon towers / supporting spacious chambers thrown across the passage. On the lower / storey all is closed, and only white plaster designs relieve the / savage masses of the sandstone; in the upper balconies are windows and / recesses, all decked with white, and above all runs a gallery crowned / with cupolas.

Under this arch you go, a dome above, deep and lofty recesses on either / hand; now you are past the sternness. Shah Jehan is soldier no longer / but artist and amorist at large. You come to the Pearl Mosque. There / is a Pearl Mosque at Delhi, sandstone slabs without, marble within, / as this is; but the Delhi mosque is a bauble to this. This is a broad / court, paved with slabs of marble, veined with white and blue, gray / and yellow. This is all marble -- marble walls with moulded panels, / marble cloisters of multifoliate arches, marble gateways breaking three / walls of the square, marble columns supporting bell-cupolas above / them and at each corner, a marble basin in the centre of the court, / a marble sundial beside it. Along the west side of the court shines / the glorious face of the mosque itself -- only a roofed quarter of the / whole space, a mere portico, but colonnaded with three rows of seven / pillars apiece, each branching to right and left, to front and back, / with eight-pointed, nine-leaved arches. Along the entablature above / runs a Persian inscription in mosaic of black marble; on the roof, over / each pillar of the front row is a cupola with four columns, and at each / corner a cupola with eight columns. Three domes fold their broad white / wings behind and above all.

Three steps for the mullah to preach from, and that is all the / catalogue. No altar or shrine or image: there is no god but God. No / carving or lattice-work: but the simple pillars and arches, the few / cupolas and domes, are yet the richest of ornamentation. No paint or / gems -- only the clear harmonious veining of the marble. Only space / and proportion, form and whispers of colour -- and it is so beautiful / that you can hardly breathe for rapture. The radiant marble ripples / from shade to shade -- snow-white, pearl-white, ivory-white -- till it / seems half alive. The bells and pinnacles are so light that they seem / to float in the air. It cannot be a building, you whisper: it is / enchantment.