Agra, India boasts one of the world’s most famous buildings,
the Taj Mahal. But it also has a
magnificent complex called the Red Fort, which has served as a center of the
Mughal government, a fortress, a royal residence, and even a prison for the
builder of the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan.
Before we visited the Taj, we explored the Red Fort. It is surrounded by two moats: the first one used to have crocodiles, and
the second one had Bengal tigers. These
and other defensive mechanisms made this a very bad fortress to try to attack! In the photo you can see the first moat,
minus the crocodiles, and the red sandstone that gives the fort its name.
One of the many buildings in the Red Fort is this hall of
public audiences, where the emperor would meet with visitors. One of those visitors was the Englishman (Thomas
Roe) who obtained the Emperor Jahangir’s permission to establish at toehold for
the British East India Company in India in the early 1600s. The marble columns and arches are still
stunning, 400 years later!
To visit the Taj Mahal, we got up before dawn and arrived at
the entrance gate when it was still dark outside. By the time we got through the gate, the sun
was just over the horizon and gave an ethereal glow to the white marble of this
magnificent structure. Two of the
minarets were covered in scaffolding for cleaning, but the one on the right in
the back was just cleaned and was exceptionally white. Each minaret is canted outward at an angle of
about 2 degrees. In case of a bad earthquake,
they would be likely to fall away from the main part of the tomb.
Inlaid semi-precious stones in the marble are exquisite.
The architecture is full of symmetry. Our guide told us that the mausoleum was
built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz, who died at age 38,
after giving birth to their 14th child. Construction of the tomb was started the next
year, in 1632.
The giant dome catches the early morning sunlight. Shah Jahan himself said the building "makes sun and moon shed tears from their eyes."
