MUGHAL ARCHITECTURE

All the early Mughal Rulers except Aurangzeb were great bui1ders. With the coming of the Mughals, Indian architecture was greatly influenced by Persian styles. The Mughals constructed excellent mausoleums, mosques, forts, gardens and cities. The Mughal buildings show a uniform pattern both in structure and character.

The main characteristic features of Mughal architecture are the bulbous domes, the slender minarets with cupolas at the four corners, large halls, massive vaulted gateways and delicate ornamentation.

The few mosques and palaces built by Babar and Humayun are not of much architectural significance

Purana Quila (Old Fort), Delhi

Sher Shah of the Sur Dynasty who ruled over the Kingdom of the Mughals after driving Humayun out of  the country was not only a great administrator but a lover of art also. He built several forts, tombs and mosques. The monuments of Sher Shah are a continuation of the Lodi style. The mausoleums are octagonal in plan and have verandahs around them, surmounted by huge domes. The verandahs have three smaller domes on each side.  

Sher Shah built the Purana Quila in Delhi. Started by him, it was completed by Humayun. Built of red and buff sand-stone, it is ornamented with black and white marble and coloured tiles. A beautiful mosque inside the Quila with ornamental arches, decorative panels, geometrical designs and inscriptions is an example of the development of architecture and ornamentation during Sher Shah's reign.

Fatehpur Sikri

Akbar intended his city of Fatehpur Sikri to serve as an imperial capital, an alternate to the overcrowded city of Agra. Completed in 1585, the city was abandoned after only 15 years because of insufficient water supply. Thereafter it remained deserted, and almost perfectly preserved. Here the early Mughal fusion of Hindu and Muslim architectural styles was embodied in spacious courtyards, wide palaces, and open pavilions, quarried from the local sandstone and cooled by numerous water channels, ponds, and tanks.

Shown here is a view looking west across the first court of the palace complex towards the Diwan-i Amm, the entrance to Akbar's private residence.

Mughal Empire

The Mughal Empire (Persian: شاهان مغول, Shāhān-e Moġul; Urdu: مغلیہ سلطنت; self-designation: گوركانى, Gūrkānī), or Mogul (also Moghul) Empire in former English usage, was an imperial power in South Asia that ruled a large portion of the Indian subcontinent. It began in 1526, invaded and ruled most of India by the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and ended in the mid-19th century.
The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids, and at the height of their power around 1700, they controlled most of the Indian Subcontinent—extending from Bengal in the east to Balochistan in the west, Kashmir in the north to the Kaveri basin in the south.Its population at that time has been estimated as between 110 and 150 million, over a territory of more than 3.2 million square kilometres (1.2 million square miles).
The "classic period" of the Empire started in 1556 with the accession of Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar, better known as Akbar the Great. It ended with the death and defeat of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707 by the rising Hindu Maratha Empire,although the dynasty continued for another 150 years. During this period, the Empire was marked by a highly centralized administration connecting the different regions. All the significant monuments of the Mughals, their most visible legacy, date to this period which was characterised by the expansion of Persian cultural influence in the Indian subcontinent, with brilliant literary, artistic, and architectural results.
Following 1725 the empire declined rapidly, weakened by wars of succession, agrarian crises fueling local revolts, the growth of religious intolerance, the rise of the Maratha, Durrani, and Sikh empires and finally British colonialism. The last king, Bahadur Zafar Shah II, whose rule was restricted to the city of Delhi, was imprisoned and exiled by the British after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
The name Mughal is derived from the original homelands of the Timurids, the Central Asian steppes once conquered by Genghis Khan and hence known as Moghulistan, "Land of Mongols". Although early Mughals spoke the Chagatai language and maintained some Turko-Mongol practices, they became essentially Persianized and transferred the Persian literary and high culture to India, thus forming the base for the Indo-Persian culture.

Taj Mahal - Model of Mughal Art

Taj Mahal history provides many details on how this extravagant building came to exist. The Taj Mahal was built in honor of Mumtaz Mahal, who was the wife of Emperor Shah Jahan. Mumtaz Mahal died while birthing their fourteenth child and the Emperor was stricken with grief over her death. He decided to build the Taj Mahal in her honor and construction of the building began a year after Mahal’s death in 1632.
This building was designed with influences from the Persians and Mughal architecture. There were specific buildings, such as mosque Jama Masjid that were used as inspiration for the building of the Taj Mahal. The construction of this building took the efforts of nearly 20,000 workers who were recruited from all over India. Many of the finest materials were used to make the Taj Mahal, which is one of the reasons it is such a breathtaking structure.
In all, it took an estimated 21 years for the entire building to be completed as certain areas, such as the tomb, were constructed first while the mosque and gateway were completed at later dates. The construction began in 1632 and was believed completed in 1653.

Creative Mughal Art

Mughal art and architecture a characteristic Indo-Islamic-Persian style that flourished on the Indian subcontinent
during the Mughal empire (1526-1857). This new style combined elements of Islamic art and architecture,
which had been introduced to India during the Delhi Sultanate (1192-1398) and had produced great monuments
such as the Qutb Minar, with features of Persian art and architechture. Mughal monuments are found chiefly in N India,
but there are also many remains in Pakistan. This article discusses these distinctive forms of art and architecture
as they developed under a succession of Mughal emperors.



Humayun
The school of Mughal painting began in 1549 when Humayun (1530-56) invited two Persian painters to his court, then at Kabul. They came to direct the illustration of the Amir Hamza, a fantastic narrative of which some 1,400 large paintings were executed on cloth.
Achievements under Akbar
In architecture the first great Mughal monument was the mausoleum to Humayun, erected during the reign of Akbar (1556-1605).
The tomb, which was built in the 1560s, was designed by a Persian architect Mirak Mirza Ghiyas.
Set in a garden at Delhi, it has an intricate ground plan with central octagonal chambers,
joined by an archway with an elegant facade and surmounted by cupolas, kiosks, and pinnacles.
At the same time Akbar was building his fortress-palace in his capital, Agra. Native red
sandstone was inlaid with white marble, and all the surfaces were ornately carved on the
outside and sumptuously painted inside. Akbar went on to build the entire city of Fatehpur Sikri
(City of Victory) in which extensive use was made of the low arches and bulbous domes that
characterize the Mughal style. Built in 1571 the choice of the site of Sikri reflected Akbar's
gratitude to a Muslim saint at Sikri for the birth of his son. Courtiers soon followed suit
and built homes surrounding the palace and mosque.
The new city became the capital of the empire, but in 1585 it was abandoned.
Under Akbar, Persian artists directed an academy of local painters. The drawings,
costumes, and ornamentation of illuminated manuscripts by the end of the 16th cent.
Illustrate the influence of Indian tastes and manners in the bright coloring and detailed
landscape backgrounds. Modeling and perspective also began to be adapted from Western pictures.
Basawan, Lal, and Daswanth were Akbar's most famous painters.
Jahangir
Jahangir (1605-27) favored paintings of events from his own life rather than illustrated fiction.
He encouraged portraiture and scientific studies of birds, flowers, and animals, which were collected in albums.
Mansur and Manohar were among his famous painters. Jahangir, who resided at Lahore, built less than his
predecessors but effected the significant change from sandstone to marble.

Shah Jahan
It was Shah Jahan (1628-58) who perfected Mughal architecture and erected at Agra its most noble and famous building,
the tomb of his favorite wife, which is known as the Taj Mahal. A huge white marble building of simple, symmetrical plan,
it is inlaid with colorful semiprecious materials and is set in an equally beautiful and symmetrical garden. The Taj Mahal
continues the tradition of Mughal garden tombs, of which Humayun's tomb was the first. Shah Jahan established (1638)
Delhi as his capital and built there the famous Red Fort, which contained the imperial Mughal palace. Painting also
flourished during Shah Jahan's reign. Portraiture was most highly developed at his sophisticated court, and ink drawings were of high quality.
Decline under Aurangzeb
Under the orthodox Aurangzeb (1659-1707) the decline of the arts began, although his ornate Pearl Mosque (1662)
at Delhi is worthy of mention. During his reign the Mughal academy was dispersed.
Many artists then joined Rajput courts, where their influence on Hindu painting is clearly evident.
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