Mughal palace architecture reached its peak with the construction of the Red Fort at Agra.  Built over many centuries under different regimes, it is the product of many different architects who each worked on only a small portion of the whole.  To our eyes, this gives the Red Fort a rather eclectic feel that is unified only by the ubiquitious red sandstone that gives the fortress its name.

The Red Fort began its life in the 10th century as a simple mud and brick fortress along the banks of the Yamuna river.  Under Akbar (1564-1570s) of the Mughal dynasty it was rebuilt along the lines of its predecessor, which accounts for its irregular outer walls.  Originally intended as a fortress, the site was partially converted into a palace during the reign of Shah Jahan, who lived in the fortress and died there - a prisoner of his own son.

The residential and defensive portions of the fortress can be described separately.  The outer walls, built during Akbar’s time, are penetrated by two gates, called the Amar Singh and the Delhi gate respectively.  The Delhi gate, to the west,  was originally the main entrance although the southern gate, the Amar Singh, is used today.  Both gates are sheathed in red sandstone and consist of an enormous facade flanked by twin towers.  Entry is on the diagonal, and to foil invaders, visitors were originally forced to negotiate several right-angled turns before reaching the gate.

The interior of the fortress is largely empty but for a row of residential dwellings facing the river.  Built during Shah Jahan’s time and after, these luxurious structures drew the resources of an entire empire and were worked on by craftsman of many different nationalities.  The earliest of these dwellings, the Jahangiri Mahal, was built by Akbar as a women’s quarters.  It is predominantly Hindu in character and was probably inspired by the Gwalior Man Mandir, a palace built earlier in the century.

The Jehangir palace was also built by Akbar, for his favorite son.

The Taj Mahal (Crown Palace) is India’s most famous structure, and, perhaps the most beautiful piece of architecture in the world.  Photographs cannot truly capture its grandeur.  While this is true for most photos, it seems especially true for this almost perfectly proportioned tomb of Mumtaz Mahal and its creator, Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal ruler

Mumtaz Mahal was the second, and favorite, wife of Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658).  A Persian princess born as Arjuman Banu Begum, she was a significant influence in his life and in his policies.  She died at age thirty-nine while giving birth to their fourteenth (some say thirteenth) child in 1631. The ruler went into deep mourning and much of his empire was compelled to do the same.

Almost immediately there was announced a competition for plans to construct a tomb and shrine worthy of the ruler’s beloved.  Numerous legends surround the selection of the architect–some even implausibly suggesting that it was a westerner from Italy or France. But although a number of names have been proposed, the architect’s name is unknown. It is clear that talent from many parts of the Muslim and western worlds came together in Agra to work on the mausoleum: engineers, carvers, artists, calligraphers, architects, craftsmen of all sorts, and a variety of common laborers.  It is estimated that 20,000 worked on the tomb from 1631 to 1648.  Work continued in the adjoining areas until 1653. It should be noted that the Taj Mahal is a total package of tomb, mosque, gardens, gateways and fountains.  The workers did produce a grand masterpiece, but it, as well as wars and other projects, also strained the resources of the entire empire.

Shah Jahan moved his capital to Delhi from Agra in 1648.  There he built a number of new buildings, including the Delhi Red Fort that added further to the debt of the Mughal empire.  His serious illness of 1657, however, eventually brought familial conflict and a struggle for power; his son, Aurangzeb, seized the throne and imprisoned his father until the latter’s death in 1666.

In the eighteenth century external forces challenged the power of the Mughals, as Persians, French and British overturned the loosely-knit Mughal empire.  The Taj Mahal, accordingly, suffered from neglect and willful looting. Under the British the marble terrace became a venue for balls and entertainments, and the gardens grew famous as trysting places.  The British treated the Mughal monuments with scorn, and in the late 1820s Lord William Bentinck, governor general of Bengal even announced plans to strip them of the marble and send it to England for auction.  The Taj luckily was spared destruction because there had been no market for the marble already sent.

The Taj Mahal is set on a raised platform that is 6.6 meters (20 ft) high and covers an area of 93.9 sq. meters (313 sq ft). The corner minarets are 41.1 meters (137 ft) high.  The main structure is 62 meters (186 ft) on each side.  In contast to the gleaming white marble of the mausoleum, there is a pair of red sandstone buildings flanking the tomb to the west and to the east; the western building is a mosque, while the other, sometimes called the guest house or museum, was built to complete the symmetry of the scene. The water causeway and fountains beautifully join the gateway and the tomb in perfect symmetry.

There are numerous significant and striking elements in the Taj Mahal. The marvelously graceful piedra dura (or stone inlay work) that Adorns many surfaces.  This ncludes the three major elements of the Muslim decorative arts: the sayings from the Q’uran, geometrical shapes and a variety of plant forms and flowers, often repeated as borders.  The marble and precious stone inlays are so skillfully fit together that one can hardly detect a seam, even with close examination. The calligraphy of sayings from the Q’uran on the mausoleum, are in a kind of trompe l’oeil style;  the letters gradually increase in size as they go up the side of the structure, so that from the ground all letters appear perfectly uniform.  Perhaps, however, the greatest impact is how all of its parts fit together so perfectly, making the entire complex much greater than the sum of its parts.

Finally, it is hoped that some solution will be found to deal with the enormous pollution of the area that is a threat to one of the world’s supreme architectural achievements.

The Mahabodhi temple at Bodhgaya is located on the spot where the Buddha attained enlightenment. The temple’s principle relic is a distant descendant of the Bo tree under which the Buddha sat when his enlightenment took place. The site, having been sacred to Buddhists since the earliest days of the faith, is of unknown antiquity. Elements of the temple date from the 3rd century BC, but the present form of the temple is a reconstruction of a later form that would have been familiar to Hiuen Xsiang, the 7th centunry Chinese Buddhist pilgrim whose story is the basis of “The Monkey King” drama of literary reknown.

The temple is one of the few early monumental brick structures to have survived in eastern India. Its enormous central tower (55 m tall) is a 19th century renovation faithful to the earlier towers that existed on the site. The tower comprises numermous horizontal bands of mouldings and arch motifs that extend upward to an amalaka topped by umbrella-shaped forms, recalling the umbrella motifs found at Buddhist stupas dating back to the time of Asoka and earlier. Around the central tower are four smaller towers added at the end of 19th century that mimic the form of the central tower.

West of the main temple is a smaller area housing the Boddhi tree relic. Here, on what may have been the first sanctuary on the site, can be found a stone seat from the 3rd century BC. Scattered around the site are plaster copies of stone posts dating from the Shunga period. The originals are stored in the nearby archaelogical museum and may have been used in the earliest stages of the temple to protect the Bodhi tree.

The Mahabodi temple is a site sacred to all Buddhists, particularly those of the Theravada branch mainly found in south and southeast Asia. In these areas, the form of the temple has been much copied in such places as Nepal, Thailand, and Burma, which each have their own representations of the Mahabodhi.

Quwwat-ul-Islam was sponsored by Qutb-ud-din Aibak, founder of the Mamluk dynasty.  Born a slave in Turkey, Qutb rose to prominence as a general during Muhammed Ghari’s invasion of India in the 1180s.  After Muhammed’s assasination in 1206, Qutb seized the throne and crowned himself Sultan of the Mamluk dynasty, often disparagingly called the “Slave Dynasty” after Qutb’s origins.  Although the dynasty lasted for only a few centuries, Muslim rule in India endured up to the British occuption in 1858.

Qutb was a fanatical Muslim.  When his garison occupied Delhi under the command of Muhammed Ghari in 1192, he ordered the destruction of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples to furnish building materials for the construction of Delhi’s first mosque.  Quwwat-ul-Islam, the “Glory of Islam,” was hastily erected by the young amir, who conscripted an army of local craftsmen, presumably Hindus, to assemble the structure.   The Hindu stonemasons re-used columns from the destroyed temples, but adapting them to use in a mosque proved problematic given Islam’s injunction against the use of images in temples.  The masons were forced to plaster over the highly sculpted Hindu columns and presumably cover them with geometric designs.  However, after centuries of neglect the plaster has fallen away, revealing the original Hindu carvings.

The Quwwat-ul-Islam is best known for its tower of victory, celebrating the Muslim conquest of India.  It is built of red sandstone, gray quartz, and white marble, but is probably inspired by the iron “Pillar of the Law” that stands on the site.  Built in the Mauryan dynasty in the 6th century, it is the only piece of the temple  that stands in its original location.   Qutb built around it when he constructed the mosque.  Although made of iron, it has resisted rust for over 1,500 years, evidence of the Mauryan’s superb knowledge of metallurgy.

Expansion of the mosque continued after the death of Qutb.  His son-in-law Altamash (or Illtutmish) extended the original prayer hall screen by three more arches (image 8).  By the time of Altamash the Mamluk empire had stablized enough that the Sultan could replace most of his conscripted Hindu masons with Islamic ones.  This explains why the arches added under Altamash are stylistically more Islamic than the ones erected under Qutb’s rule.

Just to the west of the expanded mosque, Altamash built his own tomb, the first to be erected for the Delhi Sultanate.  Despite the presence of Muslim craftsman, the tomb is mostly Hindu in design if not in execution.  Much of the superstructure and most of the walls are built of pillaged building material.  Altamash’s body was laid to rest in a subterranean chamber beneath the tomb.

The decline of Quwwat-ul-Islam began during the rule of Ala-ud-din (1296-1316), known to the West as “Alladin”.  Ala-ud-din at first seemed inclined to patronize the mosque, even adding an enormous new courtyard wall and erecting the base of a huge new minar (tower).  However, Ala-ud-dins dreams were so grand that he decided to abandon the Lal Kot (Delhi) capital and move to nearby Siri, whereupon Quwwat-ul-Islam lost its pre-eminence.

The interior of the tomb is much more successful. The marblework and ceiling decoration are particularly noteworthy, as are the mural paintings found in the galleries of the lower level.

Like its predecessors, the Safdar Jang mausoleum sits at the center of a char bagh paradise garden with gridded pathways, rows of trees, and long reflecting pools.