An Excursion to Agra...a history blurb

sometime ago...in the age of the Mughal emporers... a certain ruler by the name of Shah Jahan fell in love with a beautiful woman. He married her and called her Mumtaz Mahal "jewel of the palace". They were inseparable - even though he had other wives. She was a help and advisor to him and was loved by the people for her charity work. However, heartache followed when she died giving birth to their 14th child....
The heartbroken emporer poured out his grief and much of the royal treasury into the construction of what is now known as the Taj mahal (crown palace). It took the equivalent of 20,000 workers working everyday for 22 years to complete it. Over 1,000 elephants were used to transport building materials during the construction. In all, 28 types of precious and semi-precious stones were inlaid into the white marble.

It is rumored that Shah Jahan had no intentions of being buried at the Taj mahal but had plans to build an identical structure, but made of black marble, across the river facing the Taj. Soon after the completion of the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan was deposed and put under house arrest by his son Aurangzeb, at Agra Fort.

Legend has it that he spent the remainder of his days gazing through the window at the Taj Mahal. Upon Shah Jahan's death, Aurangzeb buried him in the Taj Mahal next to his wife, the only disruption of the otherwise perfect symmetry in the architecture.

in the picture above, you can see the Taj in the distance and what was once the moat around the fort. The moat was filled with crocodiles and turtles that surrounded the fort with leopards and tigers living in the "jungle" inside the high walls...