In 1631 Mumtaz Mahal, chief consort of the fifth Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, died delivering their 14th child, a daughter named Gohara Begum. The emperor shut down his court for a week, banned music for two years, and set out to build an earthly replica of Jannah, the Islamic paradise, on the Yamuna River in Agra. He traded Raja Jai Singh I a palace in the center of the city for the riverfront plot. From roughly 1632 to 1653, more than 20,000 workers raised the site 50 feet, built a brick scaffold around the tomb, and hauled Makrana marble up a 15 kilometer earthen ramp with elephants and oxen. The project cost around 32 million rupees and used 28 kinds of precious and semi-precious stones from China, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Tibet.

The builder did not get a happy ending. His son Aurangzeb won a war of succession, deposed him in 1658, and held him under house arrest in Agra Fort, where he could only look at the Taj until his death in 1666. Aurangzeb then placed his father’s larger cenotaph off to the west of Mumtaz’s centered one, breaking the room’s perfect symmetry. Later centuries brought Jat looters from Bharatpur, Lord Curzon’s British lawns in 1908, bamboo camouflage against bombers, and clay mud packs to fight yellowing from refinery pollution.

• The four minarets lean slightly outward so they would fall away from the dome in an earthquake
• Calligrapher Amanat Khan enlarged the Quranic lettering toward the top of the arches so it reads as uniform from the ground, and was allowed to sign his work
• The tomb sits at the garden’s northern edge, likely so the Yamuna could serve as one of the rivers of paradise
• No evidence supports the legend that Shah Jahan maimed his builders, many of whom went on to other imperial projects
• 1990s excavations at Mehtab Bagh found no Black Taj, only discolored white stones and a pool built to reflect the monument at night