The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra
| Author | : Ebba Koch |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 296 |
| Release | : 2006 |
| Genre | : Gardening |
| ISBN | : |
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Taj Mahal
| Author | : Amina Okada |
| Publisher | : Abbeville Publishing Group |
| Total Pages | : 238 |
| Release | : 1993-10-19 |
| Genre | : Architecture |
| ISBN | : |
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A sumptuously illustrated portrait of perhaps the most fascinating architectural marvel of all time. Built between 1632 and 1643 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in honor of his deceased wife Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj Mahal is unquestionably the most renowned mausoleum in the world. Now this legendary monument to love can be seen as no visitor to the site has ever viewed it. On the pages of this exquisitely illustrated volume, the Taj Mahal is revealed detail by detail. Starting inside the mausoleum, a sequence of closeups show the semiprecious stones, inlaid in white marble, that form the interior's Koranic calligraphy and floral patterns. The next sequence of images presents the octagonal plan of the structure, emphasizing both its perfect symmetry and its subtle variations. The final sequence is devoted to the decorative patterns carved in the walls of the mosque and entrance gate. In addition, four lavish fold-out photographs show the entire Taj Mahal complex from different perspectives. In their informative texts, authors Amina Okada and M.C. Joshi provide historical and architectural analyses of the Taj Mahal. Quotations from the Koran and from the journals of travelers as diverse as Jean-Bapiste Tavernier, Pierre Loti, and Aldous Huxley complete a breathtaking tribute.
Taj Mahal
| Author | : Giles Tillotson |
| Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
| Total Pages | : 209 |
| Release | : 2012-11-12 |
| Genre | : Travel |
| ISBN | : 0674066286 |
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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 historyÑthough it is that as wellÑthis 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 structureÑby a Mughal court poet, an English Romantic traveler, a colonial administrator, an architectural historian, or a contemporary Bollywood filmmakerÑthis 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.
Islamic Gardens and Landscapes
| Author | : D. Fairchild Ruggles |
| Publisher | : University of Pennsylvania Press |
| Total Pages | : 291 |
| Release | : 2011-12-30 |
| Genre | : Architecture |
| ISBN | : 0812207289 |
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Western admirers have long seen the Islamic garden as an earthly reflection of the paradise said to await the faithful. However, such simplification, Ruggles contends, denies the sophistication and diversity of the art form. Islamic Gardens and Landscapes immerses the reader in the world of the architects of the great gardens of the Islamic world, from medieval Morocco to contemporary India. Just as Islamic culture is historically dense, sophisticated, and complex, so too is the history of its built landscapes. Islamic gardens began from the practical need to organize the surrounding space of human civilization, tame nature, enhance the earth's yield, and create a legible map on which to distribute natural resources. Ruggles follows the evolution of these early farming efforts to their aristocratic apex in famous formal gardens of the Alhambra in Spain and the Taj Mahal in Agra. Whether in a humble city home or a royal courtyard, the garden has several defining characteristics, which Ruggles discusses. Most notable is an enclosed space divided into four equal parts surrounding a central design element. The traditional Islamic garden is inwardly focused, usually surrounded by buildings or in the form of a courtyard. Water provides a counterpoint to the portioned green sections. Ranging across poetry, court documents, agronomy manuals, and early garden representations, and richly illustrated with pictures and site plans, Islamic Gardens and Landscapes is a book of impressive scope sure to interest scholars and enthusiasts alike.
Mughal Architecture
| Author | : Ebba Koch |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2014 |
| Genre | : Architecture |
| ISBN | : 9789380607535 |
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The architecture created in southern Asia under the patronage of the great Mughals (1526-1858) is one of the richest and most inventive of the Islamic area, including such world famous buildings as the Taj Mahal in Agra or the tomb of Humayun in Delhi, the palaces and mosques in Agra, Delhi, Fatehpur Sikri and Lahore. All buildings types are considered, not only the well known masterpieces but also country houses, hunting palaces, gardens, mausoleums, mosques, bath houses, bazaars and other public buildings. Many of these are still unknown even to specialists. The unique book, covering the whole range of Mughal architecture and including numerous new photographs and detailed plans presents the results of the author's extensive field work in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Iran and the central Asian region of the Soviet Union. The author's in-depth knowledge of the original sources provides the reader with invaluable background information.
A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture
| Author | : Finbarr Barry Flood |
| Publisher | : John Wiley & Sons |
| Total Pages | : 1442 |
| Release | : 2017-06-16 |
| Genre | : Art |
| ISBN | : 1119068576 |
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The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)
The Garden and the Fire
| Author | : Nerina Rustomji |
| Publisher | : Columbia University Press |
| Total Pages | : 227 |
| Release | : 2013-10-01 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 0231140851 |
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Islamic conceptions of heaven and hell began in the seventh century as an early doctrinal innovation, but by the twelfth century, these notions had evolved into a highly formalized ideal of perfection. In tracking this transformation, Nerina Rustomji reveals the distinct material culture and aesthetic vocabulary Muslims developed to understand heaven and hell and identifies the communities and strategies of defense that took shape around the promise of a future world. Ideas of the afterworld profoundly influenced daily behaviors in Islamic society and gave rise to a code of ethics that encouraged abstinence from sumptuous objects, such as silver vessels and silk, so they could be appreciated later in heaven. Rustomji conducts a meticulous study of texts and images and carefully connects the landscape and social dynamics of the afterworld with earthly models and expectations. Male servants and female companions become otherworldly objects in the afterlife, and stories of rewards and punishment helped preachers promote religious reform. By employing material culture as a method of historical inquiry, Rustomji points to the reflections, discussions, and constructions that actively influenced Muslims' picture of the afterworld, culminating in a distinct religious aesthetic.
Taj Mahal
| Author | : Giles Tillotson |
| Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
| Total Pages | : 209 |
| Release | : 2012-06-01 |
| Genre | : Travel |
| ISBN | : 0674063651 |
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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.
The Mughal Empire from Jahangir to Shah Jahan
| Author | : Ali Anooshahr |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 336 |
| Release | : 2019-02-28 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9789383243266 |
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* The first multi-disciplinary analysis of Shah Jahan and his predecessor Jahangir, this collection of essays focuses on one of the least studied periods of Mughal history, the reign of Shah Jahan* Through subaltern court writing, art, architecture, accounts of foreign traders and poetry, the authors reconstruct the court of the Mughal emperor, whose influence extended even to 19th-century AfghanistanThe reign of Shah Jahan (1628-58) is widely regarded as the golden age of the Mughal empire, yet it is one of the least studied periods of Mughal history. In this volume, 14 eminent scholars with varied historical interests - political, social, economic, legal, cultural, literary and art-historical - present for the first time a multi-disciplinary analysis of Shah Jahan and his predecessor Jahangir (r. 1605-27). Corinne Lefèvre, Anna Kollatz, Ali Anooshahr, Munis Faruqui and Mehreen Chida-Razvi study the various ways in which the events of the transition between the two reigns found textual expression in Jahangir's and Shah Jahan's historiography, in subaltern courtly writing, and in art and architecture. Harit Joshi and Stephan Popp throw light on the emperor's ceremonial interaction with his subjects and Roman Siebertz enumerates the bureaucratic hurdles which foreign visitors had to face when seeking trade concessions from the court. Sunil Sharma analyses the new developments in Persian poetry under Shah Jahan's patronage and Chander Shekhar identifies the Mughal variant of the literary genre of prefaces. Ebba Koch derives from the changing ownership of palaces and gardens insights about the property rights of the Mughal nobility and imperial escheat practices. Susan Stronge discusses floral and figural tile revetments as a new form of architectural decoration and J.P. Losty sheds light on the changes in artistic patronage and taste that transformed Jahangiri painting into Shahjahani. R.D. McChesney shows how Shah Jahan's reign cast such a long shadow that it even reached the late 19th- and early 20th-century rulers of Afghanistan.This imaginatively conceived collection of articles invites us to see in Mughal India of the first half of the 17th century a structural continuity in which the reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan emerge as a unit, a creative reconceptualization of the Mughal empire as visualized by Akbar on the basis of what Babur and Humayun had initiated. This age seized the imagination of the contemporaries and, in a world as yet unruptured by an intrusive colonial modernity, Shah Jahan's court was regarded as the paradigm of civility, progress and development.
The Language of the Taj Mahal
| Author | : Michael D. Calabria |
| Publisher | : Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 292 |
| Release | : 2021-10-21 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0755637879 |
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The Taj Mahal, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1592-1666 CE) as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal (1593-1631 CE), is considered exceptional in the history of world architecture.This book provides a deeper understanding of the Taj Mahal and its builder by examining its inscriptions within their architectural, historical and biographical contexts. The texts adorning the Taj Mahal comprise verses from twenty-two different chapters of the Qur'an but their meaning and significance escapes most non-Muslim visitors or those unable to read them. This book will be the first dedicated solely to the inscriptions in the monument, providing translations, commentary and interpretation of the texts. As well as offering a unique approach to the study of the building, the book uses the inscriptions to expound the foundational elements of Islam, the faith of Shah Jahan and also what the Taj Mahal still means today.
