In 1607, a fifteen-year-old Mughal prince named Khurram walked through a bazaar in his father's palace and stopped dead. A fourteen-year-old girl stood at a stall — Arjumand Banu Begum, daughter of one of the most powerful Persian nobles at court. He went to his father, Emperor Jahangir, and said he would marry her. The astrologers picked a date — five years away. He waited every one of those days. They married in 1612, and he gave her a new name: Mumtaz Mahal, the Jewel of the Palace.
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Love & Heartbreak·3/3·1′
The place
Taj Mahal
The Emperor Who Turned to Stone
How the death of one woman transformed the richest empire on earth into a monument of grief that silenced the world
1607–1666 (from first meeting at Meena Bazaar to Shah Jahan's death in captivity)Taj Mahal
Moral of the Story
“The measure of love is not what we say in the presence of the beloved but what we build in their absence — and the most beautiful things on earth are not born from happiness but from the refusal to let grief remain silent.”
Characters
S
Shah Jahan (Emperor, born Prince Khurram)M
Mumtaz Mahal (Arjumand Banu Begum)J
Jahanara Begum (eldest daughter)A
Aurangzeb (third son, usurper)U
Ustad Ahmad Lahori (chief architect)A
Amanat Khan Shirazi (master calligrapher)Source
Abdul Hamid Lahori, Padshahnama (c. 1648); Muhammad Amin Qazwini, Padshahnama (c. 1638); Peter Mundy, Travels in Europe and Asia, Vol. II (1632–33); Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Les Six Voyages (1676); Ebba Koch, The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra (2006); R. Nath, The Taj Mahal and Its Incarnation (1985)