The Journey begins ..........

The Journey begins ..........
Originally uploaded by The Born Wanderer.

The making of the Taj involved an awful lot of skilled workers brought from all parts of the Mughal Empire. The Taj Mahal was constructed using materials from all over India and Asia. Over 1,000 elephants were used to transport building materials during the construction. The translucent white marble was brought from Rajasthan, the jasper from Punjab and the jade and crystal from China. The turquoise was from Tibet and the Lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, while the sapphire came from Sri Lanka and the carnelian from Arabia. In all, twenty eight types of precious and semi-precious stones were inlaid into the white marble The site was completed around 1653 and the name is possibly derived from a corruption of Mumtaz ('taz, hence Taj) together with Mahal which means abode.

An area of roughly three acres was excavated and filled with dirt to reduce seepage from the river. The entire site was leveled to a fixed height about 50 meters above the riverbank. The Taj Mahal is 55 meters tall. The dome itself measures 18 meters in diameter and 24 meters high.

The Taj Mahal was not designed by a single person. The project demanded talent from many people.
The names of many of the builders who participated in the construction of the Taj Mahal in different capacities have come down through various sources.
-- The Persian or Turkish architect, Ustad Isa and Isa Muhammad Effendi, trained by the Ottoman architect Koca Mimar Sinan Agha are frequently credited with a key role in the architectural design of the complex, but in fact there is little evidence to support this tradition.
-- 'Puru' from Benarus, Persia (Iran), has been mentioned supervising architect in Persian language texts.
-- The main dome was designed by Ismail Khan from the Ottoman Empire,considered to be the premier designer of hemispheres and builder of domes of that age.
-- Qazim Khan, a native of Lahore, cast the solid gold finial that crowned the Turkish master's dome.
-- Chiranjilal, a lapidary from Delhi, was chosen as the chief sculptor and mosaicist.
-- Amanat Khan from Persian Shiraz, Iran was the chief calligrapher (this fact is attested on the Taj Mahal gateway itself, where his name has been inscribed at the end of the inscription).
-- Muhammad Hanif was the supervisor of masons.
-- Mir Abdul Karim and Mukkarimat Khan of Shiraz, Iran handled finances and the management of daily production.


The creative team included sculptors from Bukhara, calligraphers from Syria and Persia, inlayers from southern India, stonecutters from Baluchistan, a specialist in building turrets, another who carved only marble flowers — thirty-seven men in all formed the creative nucleus. To this core was added a labour force of twenty thousand workers recruited from across northern India.


The order of construction was..
The plinth
The tomb
The four minarets
The mosque
The gateway