Do you know that Shah jahan wanted to make another Taj Mahal in Black Marble ?
It was planned just opposite the bank of river Yamuna. This was to act as his burial place, as his own mausoleum. Shah jahan had planned to connect the two Taj Mahal white and black with a beautifully decorated bridge. People who would have come to see Taj Mahal would have felt the love and pangs of separation (signified by the separate burial of their bodies and still connected by a bridge) even many centuries after their death.What a sight it would have been had Shah jahan completed the Black Taj Mahal!
Unfortunately he couldn't complete due to the war of succession with his son Aurangzeb.He spend the remaining eight years of his life under imprisonment looking at the Taj Mahal and brooding over his incomplete dream.
Ultimately he was buried besides his wife Mumtaj Mahal in the Taj Mahal itself .
The Black Taj Mahal existed as a soul without body...
The Project
The Black Taj Mahal Project aims to complete the Black Taj Mahal Project. A smaller version of how the original one would have looked! It is in perfect scale, down to the minutest details of the inlay work, relief carving, filigree work and intricate calligraphy.
According to the Black Taj myth, Shah Jahan had planned to build mirror image of the Taj Mahal he built for Mumtaz, albeit in black, on the other side of the river and connect the two by a bridge. This Black Taj was to be dedicated to Shah Jahan himself.
A European traveler by the name of Jean Baptiste Tavernier who visited Agra in 1665 first mentioned the idea of Black Taj in his fanciful writings.
The writings of Tavernier mention that Shah Jahan began to build his own tomb on the other side of the river but could not complete it as he was deposed by his own son Aurangzeb.
Fuel to the fire is further added as some scholar suggests that the blackened marbles in Mehtab Bagh that lie on the other side of the river are actually grim remains and foundations of an abandoned plan. On the other hand, other section of scholars totally dismiss the theory of Black Taj as it was discovered that the black marble remains in the Mehtab Bagh are not natural black but have become black over the course of time due to staining and wear and tear. Also, Mehtab Bagh was built by the first Mughal Emperor Babur, years before construction of Taj Mahal even started. The theory is once again dismissed by some scholars who believe that if Shah Jahan wanted to build a Black Taj Mahal, he would have started working on it immediately after completion of the first Taj Mahal in 1653, after which he had 5 years before he got arrested. While historians continue to argue over it, the idea of a Black Taj standing in front of the White Taj certainly keeps the anticipations and imaginations on a high.→....
