The Mughal Empire: The Taj Mahal Empire

The Mughal Empire was one of the great dynastic powers of the medieval Islamic world and its nature has always been of captivating interest to historians of India and Europe alike. Ruling as large a territory as the Indian subcontinent with such a diversity of people and cultures was an extremely difficult task for any ruler to accomplish in the Middle Ages. Quite in contrast to their predecessors, the Mughals created an empire and accomplished what had hitherto seemed possible for only short periods of time. From the latter half of the sixteenth century they expanded their kingdom from Agra and Delhi, until in the seventeenth century they controlled nearly all of the subcontinent. They imposed structures of administration and ideas of governance that outlasted their rule, leaving a political legacy that succeeding rulers of the subcontinent could not ignore.

The Mughals were descendants of two

the Taj Mahal is distinguished as the finest example of Mughal architecture, a blend of Indian, Persian, and Islamic styles. One of the most beautiful structural compositions in the world. It was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahān (reigned 1628–58) to immortalise his wife Mumtāz Mahal. But according to Stephen Knapp, a well known researcher on Taj Mahal, it was not built by Shah Jahan and he writes, “There is ample evidence that the Taj Mahal was never built by Shah Jahan. Some say the Taj Mahal pre-dates Shah Jahan by several centuries and was originally built as a Hindu or Vedic temple/palace complex and Shah Jahan merely acquired it (by brute force) from its previous owner, the Hindu King Jai Singh.” Not only Stephen Knapp but many other researchers like Yogesh Saxena, V S Godbole and Prushottam Nagesh Oak (or P N Oak) hold a similar view and P N Oak is the most prominent and pioneer among scholars who worked to discover the real author of Taj