Building Details of Taj Mahal
Material Used
Along
with the labourers flocking to Agra, materials for construction also began arriving
: principally red sandstone from local quarries and marble dug from the hills
of far-off Makrana, slightly southwest of Jaipur in Rajasthan.
Although the treasury was well filled, such prodigious quantities of rare stuffs
were required that caravans travelled to all corners of the empire and beyond
in search of precious materials. From Chinese Turkestan in Central Asia came
Nephrite jade and crystal; from Tibet, turquoise; from upper Burma, yellow amber;
from Badakhshan in the high mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, lapis lazuli;
from Egypt, chrysolite; from the Indian Ocean, rare shells, coral, and mother-of-pearl.
Topazes, onyxes, garnets, sapphires, bloodstone, forty three types of gems in
all - ranging in depth from Himalayan quartz to Golconda diamonds - were ultimately
to be used in embellishing the Taj Mahal.
In order to transport the marble, a ten mile long ramp of tamped earth was built
through Agra, and on it trudged an unending parade of elephants and bullock
carts dragging blocks of marble to the building site.
Once the marble reached the Taj, it was hoisted into place by means of an elaborate
post-and-beam pulley manned by teams of mules and masses of workers tugging
and hauling.
The
first buildings to be constructed were the tomb proper and the two mosques that
flank it; then came the four minarets; finally the gateway and auxiliary buildings
were erected.
All were built as integral parts of a single unit, carefully planned to harmonise,
for a law of Islam decrees that once a tomb is completed nothing can be added
to it and absolutely nothing can ever be taken away from it.
