Hello everyone,
hope you enjoyed reading my last blog which was about the extraordinary foundation of the Taj mahal.
Today in this blog you will get to know another interesting thing about this fabulous architectural marvel and it is about it’s beautiful minarets.
The Taj Mahal looks unique because of it’s beautifully built minarets built around it. But do you know that this also has an interesting story behind.
in this context you will have to see a few pictures of few monuments, such as Tomb of Itimad ud daula or the Royal gate of the Taj Mahal or even both the adjacent structures. for your reference please these pictures below
You must have noticed that all these referred building have four minarets attached to them, which was an architectural compulsion. So this was supposed to be applied at the Taj mahal too.
Emperor Shahjahan who was the builder of the Taj Mahal wanted to build the Taj mahal bigger then any other previous mausoleums i.e. Akbar’s mausoleum in Agra and Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi.
But the foundation of the Taj mahal had its limitations. So the team of architects after long discourse, they came to a conclusion that if the can not make the Taj mahal desirably big at least they can make it look bigger.
This brought the Idea of separating it’s minarets away and build it a distance from the main mausoleum.
But again, this too was not so easy as if they would have built these minarets in usual pattern, the Taj mahal would have not been this beautiful because a normal tower or minaret is constructed with a wide base and tapering upper construction with narrow top. Isn’t it ? see the picture below for reference
If the Taj mahal had all it’s tower/minarets built in same technique, it would have looked as if it is tapering or squeezing at the top. so to counter this architectural issue they built all the towers around the Taj mahal in a way that the outer walls of all the towers become straight and parallel to the corner walls of the Taj Mahal and this is why the inner walls (wall facing the Taj mahal) of these towers look leaning away from the Taj Mahal( due to tapering reason).
And this makes the Taj mahal look perfectly straight from all it’s sides and make a World Heritage Monument look absolutely wonderful.
for reference see this picture below
I hope it was interesting information for you. If you like it please show your appreciation by sharing it with your family and friends. for more interesting stories keep looking at this page.
Thank You
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