Taj Mahal

Islamic culture and its art are different than the art of the western civilization. For example, their poetry is a lot more descriptive, even in love they tend to describe the feeling to the utmost. There are so much things that reside hidden between the lines, such is the case of the Taj Mahal also. In the words of Prophet Muhammad "In some poetry there is wisdom." Many poems have been written about the beauty of the Taj Mahal, the astonishing mausoleum made out of white marble. Taj Mahal has been built somewhere between 1631 and 1648 in Agra, India. This amazing piece of Islamic architecture has been admired throughout the whole world for its beauty and magnificence, and thus the Taj Mahal rightfully takes its place in the World's Heritage

At the northern end of the main axis of this vast oblong complex lies the mausoleum. The whole walled in complex measures 896.1 x 300.84 m. The garden of the tomb and its forecourt are preserved, and measure to 561.2 x 300.84 m. The so-called gaz, the Shahjahani linear yard, measures around 81-82 cm and it is not designed to be equal, the gaz varies from unit to unit.
The Taj Mahal has a classical form of a Mughal Agra, it is a waterfront garden. The tomb garden has two main components. There is the cross-axial, four-fold garden that takes the form of a chārbāgh. In the direction of the river, there is a raised terrace. On this terrace resides the mausoleum and its two flanking buildings. The chārbāgh is a form specifically designed to follow the geographic conditions of the area they reside in. The Mughals first lived in Central Asia, in mountainous surroundings, and later on they migrated to the Indo-Gangetic plain. There is a big difference in the flow of the water, as it is fast in the mountains, but here, they encountered new conditions, a slow flowing river called J????. The water for the garden had to be brought in a different manner, so they accustomed their architecture to the ways of the nature, in this case water had to be lifted from the plain. So in accordance to this, the main building was built to take advantage of the specific waterfront conditions, and it wasn’t put in the center of the garden like is the case of the classical Mughal chārbāgh. Instead, the mausoleum was placed on an oblong terrace (kursī) following the riverfront. This is an amazing form, how they understood nature and had built in accordance with it. The garden is placed on the landward side of the terrace, providing the garden pavilions with fresh flowing water and in the same time making the main building to be easily seen by people on the river or across it (Ebba