3. Moslem Architecture in India

The Afghan style—The Mogul style—Delhi—Agra—The Taj Mahal

The final triumph of Indian architecture came under the Moguls. The followers of Mohammed had proved themselves master builders wherever they had carried their arms—at Granada, at Cairo, at Jerusalem, at Baghdad; it was to be expected that this vigorous stock, after establishing itself securely in India, would raise upon the conquered soil mosques as resplendent as Omar’s at Jerusalem, as massive as Hassan’s at Cairo, and as delicate as the Alhambra. It is true that the “Afghan” dynasty used Hindu artisans, copied Hindu themes, and even appropriated the pillars of Hindu temples, for their architectural purposes, and that many mosques were merely Hindu temples rebuilt for Moslem prayer;¹¹⁹ but this natural imitation passed quickly into a style so typically Moorish that one is surprised to find the Taj Mahal in India rather than in Persia, North Africa or Spain.

The beautiful Kutb-Minar* exemplifies the transition. It was part of a mosque begun at Old Delhi by Kutbu-d Din Aibak; it commemorated the victories of that bloody Sultan over the Hindus, and twenty-seven Hindu temples were dismembered to provide material for the mosque and the tower.¹²⁰ After withstanding the elements for seven centuries the great minaret—250 feet high, built of fine red sandstone, perfectly proportioned, and crowned on its topmost stages with white marble—is still one of the masterpieces of Indian technology and art. In general the Sultans of Delhi were too busy with killing to have much time for architecture, and such buildings as they have left us are mostly the tombs that they raised during their own lifetime as reminders that even they would die. The best example of these is the mausoleum of Sher Shah at Sasseram, in Bihar;¹²¹ gigantic, solid, masculine, it was the last stage of the more virile Moorish manner before it softened into the architectural jewelry of the Mogul kings.

The tendency to unite the Mohammedan and the Hindu styles was fostered by the eclectic impartiality of Akbar; and the masterpieces that his artisans built for him wove Indian and Persian methods and motifs into an exquisite harmony symbolizing the frail merger of native and Moslem creeds in Akbar’s synthetic faith. The first monument of his reign, the tomb erected by him near Delhi for his father Humayun, is already in a style of its own—simple in line, moderate in decoration, but foreshadowing in its grace the fairer edifices of Shah Jehan. At Fathpur-Sikri his artists built a city in which all the strength of the early Moguls merged with the refinement of the later emperors. A flight of steps leads up to an imposing portal in red sandstone, through whose lordly arch one passes into an enclosure filled with chef-d’æuvres. The major building is a mosque, but the loveliest of the structures are the three pavilions for the Emperor’s favorite wives, and the marble tomb of his friend, Salim Chisti the sage; here the artists of India began to show that skill in embroidering stone which was to culminate in the screen of the Taj Mahal.

Jehangir contributed little to the architectural history of his people, but his son Shah Jehan made his name almost as bright as Akbar’s by his passion for beautiful building. He scattered money as lavishly among his artists as Jehangir had scattered it among his wives. Like the kings of northern Europe, he imported the surplus artists of Italy, and had them instruct his own carvers in that art of pietra dura (i.e., of inlaying marble with a mosaic of precious stones) which became one of the characteristic elements of Indian adornment during his reign. Jehan was not a very religious soul, but two of the fairest mosques in India rose under his patronage: the Juma Masjid—or Friday Mosque—at Delhi, and the Moti Masjid—or Pearl Mosque—at Agra.

Both at Delhi and at Agra Jehan built “forts”—i.e., groups of royal edifices surrounded by a protective wall. At Delhi he tore down with superior disdain the pink palaces of Akbar, and replaced them with structures which at their worst are a kind of marble confectionery, and at their best are the purest architectural beauty on the globe. Here is the luxurious Hall of Public Audience, with panels of Florentine mosaic on a black marble ground, and with ceilings, columns and arches carved into stone lacery of frail but incredible beauty. Here, too, is the Hall of Private Audience, whose ceiling is of silver and gold, whose columns are of filigree marble, whose arches are a pointed semicircle composed of smaller flowerlike semicircles, whose Peacock Throne became a legend for the world, and whose wall still bears in precious inlay the proud words of the Moslem poet: “If anywhere on earth there is a Paradise, it is here, it is here, it is here.” We gather again some faint conception of “the riches of the Indies” in Mogul days when we find the greatest of the historians of architecture describing the royal residence at Delhi as covering twice the area of the vast Escorial near Madrid, and forming at that time, and in its ensemble, “the most magnificent palace in the East—perhaps in the world.”*¹²²

The Fort at Agra is in ruins,* and we can only guess at its original magnificence. Here, amid many gardens, were the Pearl Mosque, the Gem Mosque, the halls of Public and Private Audience, the Throne Palace, the King’s Baths, the Hall of Mirrors, the palaces of Jehangir and of Shah Jehan, the Jasmine Palace of Nur Jehan, and that Jasmine Tower from which the captive emperor, Shah Jehan, looked over the Jumna upon the tomb that he had built for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

All the world knows that tomb by her shortened name as the Taj Mahal. Many an architect has rated it as the most perfect of all buildings standing on the earth today. Three artists designed it: a Persian, Ustad Isa; an Italian, Gieronimo Veroneo; and a Frenchman, Austin de Bordeaux. No Hindu seems to have shared in its conception; it is utterly un-Hindu, completely Mohammedan; even the skilled artisans were, in part, brought in from Baghdad, Constantinople, and other centers of the Moslem faith.¹²⁴ For twenty-two years twenty-two thousand workmen were forced to labor upon the Taj; and though the Maharaja of Jaipur sent the marble as a gift to Shah Jehan, the building and its surroundings cost $230,000,000—then an enormous sum.¹²⁵†

Only St. Peter’s has so fitting an approach. Passing through a high battlemented wall, one comes suddenly upon the Taj—raised upon a marble platform, and framed on either side by handsome mosques and stately minarets. In the foreground spacious gardens enclose a pool in whose waters the inverted palace becomes a quivering fascination. Every portion of the structure is of white marble, precious metals, or costly stones. The building is a complex figure of twelve sides, four of which are portals; a slender minaret rises at each corner, and the roof is a massive spired dome. The main entrance, once guarded with solid silver gates, is a maze of marble embroidery; inlaid in the wall in jeweled script are quotations from the Koran, one of which invites the “pure in heart” to enter “the gardens of Paradise.” The interior is simple; and perhaps it is just as well that native and European thieves coöperated in despoiling the tomb of its superabundant jewels, and of the golden railing, encrusted with precious stones, that once enclosed the sarcophagi of Jehan and his Queen. For Aurangzeb replaced the railing with an octagonal screen of almost transparent marble, carved into a miracle of alabaster lace; and it has seemed to some visitors that of all the minor and partial products of human art nothing has ever surpassed the beauty of this screen.

It is not the most sublime of all edifices, it is only the most beautiful. At any distance that hides its delicate details it is not imposing, but merely pleasing; only a nearer view reveals that its perfection has no proportion to its size. When in our hurried time we see enormous structures of a hundred stories raised in a year or two, and then consider how twenty-two thousand men toiled for twenty-two years on this little tomb, hardly a hundred feet high, we begin to sense the difference between industry and art. Perhaps the act of will involved in conceiving a building like the Taj Mahal was greater and profounder than the act of will of the greatest conqueror. If time were intelligent it would destroy everything else before the Taj, and would leave this evidence of man’s alloyed nobility as the last man’s consolation.