A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: The Story of the Taj Mahal (7 page)

Traveller Peter Mundy’s sketch of a tower of human heads
.

Akbar debated with Hindus, had their epics translated, attended their festivals and appeared with their red
tilak
mark on his forehead. A disgusted Muslim complained that Akbar had been persuaded
‘to venerate fire, water, stones and trees and all natural objects, even down to cows and their dung’
. Akbar prostrated himself before the sun in the manner of the Parsees or other Zoroastrians. Jains convinced him of the benefits of vegetarianism. He saw merit in Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Sikhs found him ‘an attentive listener’.

In 1579 Akbar summoned Jesuits from the Portuguese colony of Goa on the southwest coast of India. He treated the priests with much courtesy and they reported that he received four volumes of the Bible
‘with great reverence’, kissing each in turn and placing it ‘on his head which amongst these people signifies honour and respect’
. He even removed his turban when entering the priests’ small chapel and was sometimes persuaded to wear a crucifix and hang one over his bed. Although the priests remained hopeful for over two years that he would emulate Constantine and bring an empire to Christianity, he never did.

To Akbar, Christianity was one faith among many from the four quarters of the globe, each containing elements of truth. Instead of embracing any, Akbar inaugurated a new religion – known as Din Ilahi, ‘The Divine Faith’ – that would unite his people without compelling them to forgo their original beliefs. His was a loosely defined faith in which the principles of reincarnation and karma were accepted and forgiveness, toleration and kindness towards all living things were encouraged. Ten vices and ten virtues were enumerated. The sun was worshipped as the body of the divinity, and unification with God was the ultimate aim. Because ‘the divine will manifests itself in the intuition of kings’, Akbar himself was the only conduit between the divine and humanity, but was never clear as to whether he was claiming any divine status for himself. He changed his coinage by inscribing on it the words ‘Allah Akbar’ rather than, as previously, just his name. Throughout the Muslim world the phrase means ‘God is
akbar
’ – ‘great’ – but it could also be interpreted ‘Akbar is God’.

Although expediency brought many of Akbar’s leading nobles into his faith, he did not make it a proselytizing religion; consequently, it never achieved a wide following and faded away on Akbar’s death. However, the very existence of the religious debates and Akbar’s lifelong religious tolerance had promoted a greater sense of inclusion among his subjects whichever of the contending religions of his empire they adhered to.

Despite his many wives, by the time Akbar was in his mid-twenties he had not yet fathered a living heir and began to consult holy men. Hearing of one such, a Sufi or Muslim mystic named Shaikh Salim Chishti, dwelling in the small town of Sikri twenty-three miles west of Agra, he visited him.
*
The shaikh consoled Akbar that he would have three sons. Soon afterwards Akbar’s principal wife, the daughter of the Rajput Raja of Amber, became pregnant. Akbar sent her to live with the shaikh to bring good fortune upon her pregnancy. On 30 August 1569 she gave birth at Sikri to a son named Salim by Akbar after the mystic but to be known as Jahangir when he became emperor. Two other sons, Murad and Daniyal, born to different mothers, followed within the next three years, one born at Sikri and the other at another Chishti shrine.

To honour his adviser and to capitalize on the good fortune that had come to him from Sikri, Akbar decided to move his capital from Agra to a new city to be built there. Later he would embellish Sikri’s name with the prefix ‘Fatehpur’, meaning ‘city of victory’, to commemorate the success of his military campaigns in Gujarat. Fatehpur Sikri was not, however, the first major building project of Akbar’s reign – that was the tomb of his father Humayun. The vast garden complex was built to the southeast of Delhi and, even to the inexpert eye, is a clear forerunner of the Taj Mahal. Constructed to a symmetrical plan the mausoleum sits on a square twenty-two-foot-high arched plinth of red sandstone in a large walled garden. The tomb is faced with sandstone inset with intricate white marble designs and is topped by a broad white marble dome sitting over an
iwan
, or recessed entrance arch. Unlike most Moghul buildings, the tomb can be connected with known architects, Sayyid Muhammad and his father Mirak Sayyid Ghiyas. Both were of Persian descent and the tomb is mainly of Persian design, with its arched portals and octagonal burial chamber. It does, however, contain indigenous elements such as the twenty-foot-high bulbous brass finial surmounting the dome, the six-pointed star – an important Hindu cosmological symbol representing spirit and matter held in balance – on the walls over the arches and the
chattris
on the roofs of each of the main parts of the building. (The word
chattri
means ‘umbrella’ but in architecture denotes domed and pillared open kiosks.)

Humayun’s tomb was the first building in India to combine marble and sandstone in such great quantities. Some architectural historians have even suggested that in the use of white (marble) and red (sandstone) the ecumenical, inclusive Akbar was associating the Moghuls with the two highest castes of the Hindu social structure – the white of the Brahmins and the red of the military Kshatriyas.

Akbar had gone on to rebuild the fortress of Agra beside the Jumna and, indeed, to show his own strength by running around the one-and-a-half-mile sandstone battlements with a man under each arm. However, Fatehpur Sikri best illustrates his architectural vision. The city is in the form of a vast quadrilateral, fortified on three sides and protected on the fourth by a ridged hill. Although the layout of the city follows Moghul principles, the design of the buildings, many of which survive today in a remarkably good state of preservation, is almost entirely Hindu in inspiration. The city is constructed of sandstone, a rock that can be carved by a skilled mason in much the same way as wood by a carpenter. The sharply etched decoration therefore much resembles the ornate woodcarvings on Hindu temples. The qualities of sandstone also allowed prefabrication. Father Antonio Monserrate, a European Jesuit priest, noted,
‘in order to prevent himself being deafened by the noise of the tools Akbar had everything cleverly fashioned elsewhere in accordance with the exact plan of the building and then brought to the spot, and there fitted and fastened together’. Miniature paintings show Akbar taking a detailed interest in the work of the stonemasons of Fatehpur Sikri. Monserrate went further, reporting that ‘Akbar sometimes quarries stone himself along with the other workers. Nor does he shrink … from practising, for the sake of amusement, the craft of an ordinary artisan.’

While prefabrication was not universal at Fatehpur Sikri, as Monserrate suggested, it may well have been one reason why the nine-gated walled city was complete in seven years. Within the walls were the royal mint, bathhouses, barracks, halls, gardens, mosques, quarters for the nobles and, of course, Akbar’s own palace. His personal apartments overlooked the shining Anup Talao, or ‘Peerless Pool’.

The huge harem, protected by a guard-house and by thick metal-studded gates, resembles a fortress. The women’s only contact with the outside world was through peeping out from screened balconies set high in the walls. Yet behind these thick walls was a luxurious pleasure palace. Fountains played among beds of bright flowers and the azure roof tiles shone in the sunlight. When refreshing breezes blew, the women gathered in a high pavilion – the Hawa Mahal, or ‘wind palace’ – to enjoy them. The red sandstone carvings of their apartments and of the interlinking courtyards had a Hindu voluptuousness. Akbar, who could access the harem through a network of screened corridors, reputedly played hide-and-seek with his women or a kind of chess using human pieces.
*

The most striking building of all is a hall whose interior is dominated by a broad, richly carved pillar supporting a platform connected by slim, diagonal bridges to hanging galleries at each corner. Historians argue about its precise use, but most consider that Akbar used it as an audience chamber. When he held council, he would sit on the circular platform, soliciting advice from those on the balconies, who could, if necessary, approach him along the bridges.

Ralph Fitch, an early English trader, was so impressed by Agra and Fatehpur Sikri that he wrote,
‘[they] are two very great cities. Either of them much greater than London and very populous.’
However, the magnificent city of Fatehpur Sikri remained fully inhabited for just fourteen years, after which, beginning in 1586, it was gradually abandoned. The reason has been much debated but never resolved. A poor water supply and unsatisfactory communication links may have been contributing factors. Unlike Agra, Fatehpur Sikri did not sit on one of the great trunk roads connecting Akbar’s empire; nor was it on the Jumna, a major waterway for goods and travellers, particularly for those making the journey to and from Delhi. However, Akbar perhaps never took a formal decision to leave Fatehpur Sikri – it just happened over time in response to his changing priorities.

Akbar’s attention had been caught by, among other things, a very different place – Kashmir. Captured in 1586 after a short campaign, it won the heart of Akbar and his descendants. The Vale of Kashmir nestles among high mountains in northern India and is only about ninety miles long and twenty-five miles wide. Watered by the River Jhelum, it is a verdant Shangri-La, its slopes cloaked in rhododendrons and juniper, spruce and cedar, while poplars and pines fringe its lakes. Akbar particularly enjoyed the blazing colours of autumn and the violet saffron fields of summer.

By the mid-1580s Akbar, then in his forties, was at the height of his pomp and power, an impressive figure, regal and charismatic in the eyes of all who saw him, Indians and Europeans alike. Father Monserrate described him as
‘of a stature and of a countenance well-fitted to his royal dignity so that one could easily recognise even at the first glance that he is the king. He has broad shoulders, somewhat bandy legs well-suited to horsemanship and a light-brown complexion … His expression is tranquil, serene and open, full also of dignity and, when he is angry, of awful majesty … It is hard to exaggerate how accessible he makes himself to all … for he creates an opportunity every day for any of the common people or of the nobles to see him and converse with him; and he endeavours to show himself pleasant-spoken and affable rather than severe toward all who come … it is remarkable how great an effect this courtesy and affability have in attaching to him the minds of his subjects … He has an acute insight and shows much wise foresight.’

Akbar’s son Salim did, however, point to one failing. Despite the imperial library having grown to 25,000 sumptuously bound manuscripts, his father was
‘illiterate. Yet from constantly conversing with learned and clever persons, his language was so polished that no one could discover from his conversation that he was entirely uneducated.’
Akbar’s intelligence was also evident from his deep curiosity about the wider world which made him
‘well disposed towards foreigners’
.

In 1577 a particularly well-educated foreigner, an ambitious Persian nobleman named Mirza Ghiyas Beg, arrived at Akbar’s court. Charming as he was poor, this economic migrant had deserted his homeland to travel with his heavily pregnant wife and three young children through wild and lonely country in the hope of building his fortunes in the Moghuls’ service. The journey was arduous and dangerous, despite the fact that, for greater security, they had joined a caravan. While still in Persia, thieves attacked the family and stole everything they had except two mules. Taking it in turns to ride the stumbling beasts, the bedraggled party reached Kandahar, where Ghiyas Beg’s wife gave birth to a daughter. They named her Mehrunissa, ‘the Sun of Women’.

According to some chroniclers, the desperate, destitute parents abandoned the baby to die of exposure but her tiny form was spotted by the caravan’s wealthy leader, who scooped her up, sought out her mother and promised to help the family. Other tales relate how the parents could not, after all, face leaving the new-born infant. Ghiyas Beg rushed back to the tree under which they had left her to find the gurgling Mehrunissa caught in the coils of a great black serpent. At the frantic father’s approach the snake unravelled itself to slink away, leaving Ghiyas Beg to reclaim his child.

Whatever the reality, Mehrunissa survived the early, uncertain hours of her life to travel on with her family into Moghul territory. Reaching Fatehpur Sikri, Ghiyas Beg, in accordance with the custom for strangers arriving at court, was presented to Akbar. The Persian adventurer made an immediate impression. He had inherited the eloquence of his father, a smooth-tongued poet who had risen to become
wazir
, chief minister, of Isfahan. He was also helped by the fact that other members of his family had already joined the Moghul court and rendered useful service. None would, however, achieve the success of Ghiyas Beg, whose family would capture successive emperors both emotionally and intellectually. His daughter and granddaughter would become Moghul empresses and his great-grandson would ascend the Moghul throne.