Product Description
An enduring monument of haunting beauty, the Taj Mahal seems a symbol of stability itself. The familiar view of the glowing marble mausoleum from the gateway entrance offers the very picture of permanence. And yet this extraordinary edifice presents a shifting image to observers across time and cultures. The meaning of the Taj Mahal, the perceptions and responses it prompts, ideas about the building and the history that shape them: these form the subject of Giles Tillotson’s book. More than a richly illustrated history—though it is that as well—this book is an eloquent meditation on the place of the Taj Mahal in the cultural imagination of India and the wider world.
Since its completion in 1648, the mausoleum commissioned by the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, has come to symbolize many things: the undying love of a man for his wife, the perfection of Mughal architecture, the ideal synthesis of various strands of subcontinental aesthetics, even an icon of modern India itself. Exploring different perspectives brought to the magnificent structure—by a Mughal court poet, an English Romantic traveler, a colonial administrator, an architectural historian, or a contemporary Bollywood filmmaker—this book is an incomparable guide through the varied and changing ideas inspired by the Taj Mahal, from its construction to our day. In Tillotson’s expert hands, the story of a seventeenth-century structure in the city of Agra reveals itself as a story about our own place and time.
(20080822)
Tags: giles tillotson, Mughal, emperor shah jahan
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The Complete Taj Mahal was written by the leading expert of this magnificent site, Ebba Koch. This book has two outstanding and very helpful Reviews here on Amazon. If you have any serious interest in the Taj Mahal, read both reviews, and then seriously considering purchasing Koch’s book. My wife and I visited the Taj Mahal three years ago, and Koch taught us both a great deal that we missed on the ground, despite a knowledgeable guide with excellent English.
Giles Tillotson agrees that Ebba Koch is the leading expert on the Taj Mahal today, he cites Koch extensively, and is unstinting in his praise, and frankly and openly summarizes Koch’s teachings on the architectural context of the Taj Mahal and the importance of Agra in the Mogul Empire.
Nevertheless, Tillotson is much more than an introductory survey of the Taj Mahal, “Koch Lite”, as it were. The theme of the Wonders of the World series is to place a site in its cultural context, and to convey its many layers of meaning. Tillotson’s volume is one of the most successful of any of the books in the series.
For example, Tillotson points out that in the East India Company period British artists such as Thomas Daniell and his nephew William produced images of the Taj surrounded by English trees “of no species known to India … to create the impression we have stumbled on this scene in the corner of the park of an English county house”.
The Victorians were convinced of the racial inferiority of Indians, and argued that Taj Mahal was the work of a European architect, either Austin of Bordeaux or Geronimo Veroneo, both of whom were in Agra when it was built.
Hindu supremacists of the 20th century found it hard to believe it was built by Muslims; Ram Nath in 1972 argued the style “not a monument of Islam”; it was instead been “produced in accordance with our ancient vastu canons”.
In The Taj Mahal is a Hindu palace, Nages Oak argues that all Islamic buildings in Asia were built by an ancient Hindu civilisation that once conquered the world. (He also argues that “Westminster Abbey is also a Shiva temple” and that “ancient Italy was a Hindu country and the Pope a Hindu priest”.) Oak’s theories have led the Bajrang Dal to demand that the Taj be “renamed” the Tejo Mai Mahal and “reconverted” into a Hindu temple. Tillotson is brutal and convincing in rejecting these claims.
Tillotson debunks a number of other myths about the origin of this wonderful structure. His book is clear, very readable, and an excellent introduction and addition to a library on the Taj Mahal.
Robert C. Ross 2010
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a splendid and very readable introduction to the Taj Mahal. Giles Tillotson’s research cuts away at the various myths that have surrounded this supreme structure, such as the idea that it was designed by a European, or that Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj, intended to construct another Taj across the river as his tomb, which would have been black in contrast to the Taj Mahal’s startling whiteness. Indeed, a lot of myths have built up about the Taj, usually born to serve the prejudices of each particular author, such as P. N. Oak, who claimed that the Taj had been built by a previous Hindu ruler rather than the Muslim Shah Jahan. Tillotson reveals how the Taj has been viewed in the past by quoting by historical accounts of the building, many of which aptly claim to be unable to convey its majesty. Tillotson shows how the treatment of the Taj by the British very much changed from the early nineteenth century, when colonials tended to graffiti and steal pieces from the monument, to later in the century, when Viceroy Lord Curzon empowered efforts to conserve Indian monuments through law (although even he was not adverse to embellishing the Taj with foreign objects, such as a lamp from Cairo). Furthermore, Tillotson relates how the Taj still influences modern architects today, since a replica has recently been built in Dubai. The question of who should care for the Taj on behalf of the Indian nation is still a hot political potato, as Tillotson reports, and there are worries that the building may one day be targeted by Al Qaeda. However, the many excellent illustrations within this book, combined with the views of numerous travellers throughout the centuries, should be enough to compel anyone to visit this fantastic monument, which has been very fittingly described as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
Rating: 5 / 5
The most famous and easily recognized building in the world quite possibly is the Taj Mahal. It is like no other structure, and is one of the most photographed and visited of architectural sites. Eight thousand visitors a day go through it (only slightly fewer than go through the Sistine Chapel). Although there have been plenty of pictures taken of the place, over the centuries there has not been a great deal of scholarship devoted to it. There was a detailed scholarly monograph in 2006 by Ebba Koch, and Giles Tillotson has drawn upon it and upon many other sources to produce a guide to the building that is slim, accessible, and entertaining. _Taj Mahal_ (Harvard University Press) covers the personalities involved in creating the Taj, the architecture and its sources, its interpretation, and its current status and preservation.
The Taj was completed in 1643. Its builder was the Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan who may have had an eye for design, but could be a cold-blooded warrior. It was a tomb for his best-loved wife, who bore him fourteen children and died giving birth to the last one while she was with him on a military campaign. He went into deep and sincere grief, and after he returned with her body to the great Mogul city of Agra, the stricken emperor planned her tomb. We don’t know for sure who the Taj architects were or how much responsibility they had for the eventual look of the building; there are no plans or statements of architectural purpose, and the lack of documentation may be a reason that the Taj has had relatively little scholarship directed toward it. With little documentation about the planning or building of the Taj, for centuries interest groups have been trying to claim it as their own. “For a building that is supposedly a symbol of love,” writes Tillotson, the Taj has generated a lot of anger.” The Victorians, convinced that no indigenous people could have produced such a masterpiece, developed the ludicrous theory that a visiting European had planned it all. Hindu supremacists would rather not acknowledge that this is a Muslim building, convincing themselves that it was actually produced in accord with ancient Hindu scriptures. A fellow named P. N. Oak published a book in 1968 to show how the Taj is really a Hindu palace (Tillotson calls it a “startling piece of pseudo-scholarship”), and this could be but laughable except that Hindu organizations have used such claims to attempt to wrest control of the site from the Archeological Survey of India which has custodianship of the Taj as a national monument.
Tillotson’s book is a perfect guide for the armchair traveler, but there is a final chapter with practical information on how to make a visit to the Taj, and as long as you are in Agra, the other things you can see including the Agra Fort, inside which are palaces that Shah Jahan built. Tillotson addresses the nonsense about the Taj’s “real” origins and its other myths with authority. He is a historian specializing in the art and architecture of India, but this guide gives good general information rather than being a scholarly tome. It also has a sense of fun. Although it never mention the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in New Jersey, it does allude to Taj Mahal brand teabags, for instance, and to the popular Hindi film _Bunty aur Babli_, in which flimflam artists sell the Taj to gullible Americans.
Rating: 5 / 5
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