Origins and Architecture of The Taj Mahal - Mumtaz and Jahan

Mumtaz and Jahan

In 1607 (AH 1025) the Mughal Prince Khurrum (later to become Shah Jahan) was betrothed to Arjumand Banu Begum, the grand daughter of a Persian noble. She would become the unquestioned love of his life. They were married five years later in 1612. After their wedding celebrations, Khurram "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time," gave her the title Mumtaz Mahal (Jewel of the Palace).

The intervening years had seen Khurrum take two other wives known as Akbarabadi Mahal and Kandahari Mahal, but according to the official court chronicler Qazwini, the relationship with his other wives "had little more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which His Majesty had for the Cradle of Excellence lacked by a thousand times what he felt for any other."

Mumtaz died in Burhanpur on 17 June 1631, after complications with the birth of their fourteenth child, a daughter named Gauhara Begum. She had been accompanying her husband whilst he was fighting a campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried in a garden called Zainabad on the banks of the Tapti River in Burhanpur. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to this event and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise. Immediately after hearing the news the emperor was reportedly inconsolable. He was not seen for a week at court and considered abdicating and living his life as a religious recluse. The court historian Muhammad Amin Qazwini, wrote that before his wife's death the emperor's beard had "not more than ten or twelve grey hairs, which he used to pluck out', turned grey and eventually white" and that he soon needed spectacles because his eyes deteriorated from constant weeping. Since Mumtaz had died on Wednesday, all entertainments were banned on that day. Jahan gave up listening to music, wearing jewelry, sumptuous clothes or perfumes for two years. So concerned were the imperial family that an honorary uncle wrote to say that "if he continued to abandon himself to his mourning, Mumtaz might think of giving up the joys of Paradise to come back to earth, this place of misery — and he should also consider the children she had left to his care." The Austrian scholar Ebba Koch compares Shah Jahan to "Majnum, the ultimate lover of Muslim lore, who flees into the desert to pine for his unattainable Layla."

Jahan's eldest daughter, the devoted Jahanara Begum Sahib, gradually brought him out of grief and fulfilled the functions of Mumtaz at court. Immediately after the burial in Burhanpur, Jahan and the imperial court turned their attentions to the planning and design of the mausoleum and funery garden in Agra.