Category: Dynasties

It is always galling to be obliged to agree with any timeworn banality; galling but sometimes unavoidable, for it is impossible to deny that the Taj Mahal is the most beautiful mausoleum in the world, surpassing all others, defying hyperbole and meretricious adjectives.

Commissioned by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan when his wife Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to their fourteenth child in 1631, the Taj has accreted myths, usually with little substance. It is said to be a monument to a great love story, that Shah Jahan was inconsolable after the death of his wife, that he planned to build a Black Taj for himself on the other side of the Yamuna River linking the two mausoleums by a bridge. There are stories of him severing the heads and gouging the eyes of his architects and craftsmen once the building was complete to prevent the creation of a rival structure. Later when deposed by his son, Aurangzeb, and imprisoned in the Agra Fort, it is claimed that Shah Jahan spent his last years gazing intently at the Taj, and when his sight began to fail, he lay in bed contemplating its reflection in a diamond fixed to the wall.

Yet such is the mystique and allure of the Taj Mahal that it has no need of fabricated legends. It stands at the apotheosis of Mughal architecture, drawing on Timurid building styles inspirationally fused with the traditions of the Indian subcontinent. Its roots lie in the mausoleum of Timur (Tamerlane) in Samarkand. Gur-e- Amir, the Tomb of the King, was built in 1403 when Timur’s grandson and chosen heir died. It became the family crypt of the Timurid dynasty, later housing Timur himself, his sons, and other grandsons.

At the Gur-e- Amir complex a traditional Islamic iwan or gateway opens to a courtyard and a symmetrical mausoleum with a fluted azure dome. The gateway comprises a rectangular space walled on three sides and decorated with calligraphy and blue ceramic tiles bearing geometric designs. Within the eight-sided mausoleum blue tiles jostle with onyx and marble stalactites. A dark green jade cenotaph indicates the location of Timur’s tomb which lies in the crypt beneath.

The Gur-e-Amir has attracted its own improbable folktales, for inscriptions on Timur’s cenotaph read:

When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble

 Whosoever disturbs my tomb will unleash an invader more terrible than I.

The Russian anthropologist Gerasimov opened the tomb in 1941… two days later the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Stalin allegedly believed the curse and had Timur’s body reburied with full Islamic burial rites…to be rewarded with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad.

Timur was the progenitor of the Mughal dynasty, for Babur, the first Mughal Emperor (1483-1530) was descended from him on his father’s side. Babur inherited Fergana in eastern Uzbekistan and conquered Kabul and Samarkand, before moving on to India, taking Delhi and Agra. And it was the tomb built for Babur’s son, Humayun, which was the first great Mughal architectural masterpiece.

Humayun’s tomb in New Delhi, commissioned by his Persian wife and designed by Persian architects in 1562, introduced central Asian architecture to India. It was modelled on the Gur-e- Amir with the same traditional gateway, geometrical symmetry, central bulbous dome, arched alcoves, lattice stone screens, and a paradise garden. The enclosed garden, divided into quarters with a main axis of water, was the first garden tomb on the Indian subcontinent. But the mausoleum also drew on Indian devices with decorative chattri, and it was built using indigenous stone, with red sandstone facework, inlaid with bands of white marble. The builders embraced the hierarchical use of sandstone and marble representing the kshatriyas (warrior caste) and Brahmins (priest caste) respectively.

At Sikandra, the mausoleum of Akbar, (1605) the third Mughal ruler, exhibits the same synthesis of styles, combining a traditional Islamic gateway, Arabic calligraphy and lattice work, with the use red sandstone bearing white marble features, and with chattri topped minarets at each corner of the gateway.

The tomb of Mizra Ghiyas Beg, the Itmad-ud-Daulah, or Baby Taj, marks the transition between the first monumental phase of Mughal architecture, exemplified in the red sandstone and marble decoration of the Humayun and Akbar tombs, and the second phase of white marble buildings inlaid with delicate pietra dura detailing. Built by Nur Jehan, wife of Jehangir, the fourth Mughal Emperor, for her father in 1622, the Baby Taj is the first Mughal structure built completely of marble. It stands on a red sandstone plinth, its walls inlaid with polychromatic precious and semi-precious stones and perforated by jali screens with ornamental patterns. Octagonal minarets, topped by chattri, rise at each corner, maintaining perfect symmetry. Often described as a jewel box, it is acknowledged as the ultimate prototype and inspiration for the Taj.

With the Taj Mahal, Indo-Islamic architecture reached its apogee. The Taj retains its Persian roots: the traditional gateway; the symmetry, balance and harmony of the mausoleum, with a white marble minaret at each corner, extending to the identical sandstone mosque and guest house which flank the central structure; the bulbous dome; and lattice windows. Behind a screen the false sarcophagi of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan, who was buried beside his wife three decades later, indicate the position of the burials in the tomb chamber below. In the only asymmetrical element, Shah Jahan’s cenotaph is larger than that of his wife, mounted on a taller base, and with a traditional pen box on top. But the translucent Indian white marble is now the dominant material, used for both the platform and the mausoleum. Both are inlaid with precious and semi-precious stones: jade, crystal, turquoise, lapis lazuli, sapphire, carnelian, coral, onyx. The skill and artistry of the Indian stonecutters, inlayers, and carvers have created exquisite flowers and patterns. Yet withal the complex is set around a Persian garden of paradise completing the perfect synthesis.

From an obscure castle in Switzerland in the eleventh century the Habsburg tentacles reached out across Europe and across the centuries perpetually grasping more territories. By dint of war, election, inheritance, skilful politicking, but most of all through judicious marriage, and  shored up by  the almost continuous presence of a member of the House of Habsburg as Holy Roman Emperor from 1438-1806, they expanded their holdings. In 1272 the Germans elected Rudolf I as their king, and his sons became Dukes of Austria in battle. In the fifteenth century Maximilian I acquired the Netherlands through marriage to Mary of Burgundy. A particularly auspicious marriage with Joanna of Castile, combined with his sister’s marriage to Joanna’s brother, enabled Philip I to claim Spain and its colonies for his son Charles V. Under the latter Habsburg power reached its apogee in the sixteenth century. In 1521 Charles’s brother Ferdinand had married Anna, the daughter of Vladislav II , King of Bohemia and Hungary, and his sister Mary had married Vladimir’s son Louis II. The marriage contract had stipulated that Ferdinand would succeed to the Hungarian and Bohemian lands if Louis died leaving no legitimate male heir. When Louis died at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526 the territories duly passed to Habsburg rule.

To preclude rival dynasties from emulating their tactics and to secure their position the Habsburgs, when not marrying into new possessions, intermarried. But this successful strategy came at a price and their consanguineous unions brought a range of physical and mental disabilities, miscarriages, still births, neonatal deaths, and the famous  Habsburg Jaw, a protruding lower jaw with a bulbous lip,  and Hapsburg Nose, long  with a hump and hanging tip. Between 1516 and 1700  88% of marriages in the Spanish branch of the Habsburg family were consanguineous: where most people have sixteen great great grandparents, Charles II of Spain had only nine. His mother was the niece of his father, his grandmother was also his aunt. Known as el Hechizado (the Bewitched) the poor man was short, lame, had congenital heart disease and epilepsy, suffered from depression, was impotent, and so developed was his Hapsburg Jaw  that he struggled to eat and speak. Extended periods of ill health dogged his life and when he died in 1700 leaving no heirs Habsburg rule ended in Spain with a Bourbon victory in the War of Spanish Succession.

In the Austro-Hungarian territories of central and eastern Europe however the Habsburgs clung to power into the twentieth century. Maria Theresa survived potential disaster,  despite the loss of Silesia to Prussia, and defended her right to inherit the rest of the Habsburg lands  in the War of Austrian Succession. In 1804 Francis I, although forced to accept the demise of the Holy Roman Empire under pressure from Napoleon, declared himself instead Emperor of Austria and in 1867 established the Dual Monarchy  of the Austro-Hungarian Empire  with Hungary as a nominal co-equal in response to Hungarian nationalism and growing Austrian weakness. Franz Joseph’s attempt to reverse declining fortunes and increase Habsburg territory with the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 however proved disastrous. Serbia, closely related geographically and ethnically to these territories, was outraged. Serbian nationalism was inflamed and in 1914 a Serbian nationalist movement the Black Hand  sought the removal of Austria-Hungary from Bosnia Herzegovina and the formation of a southern Slavic state. Under their influence a group of Bosnian Serbs assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, nephew and heir of the Emperor Franz-Joseph. Austria-Hungary responded by declaring war on Serbia and through systems of alliances Germany, France, and Britain were drawn into war. By 1918 the Empire had collapsed in defeat: the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Slavs all declared their political independence; Austria and Hungary sought to determine their own future. Karl I of Austria, IV of Hungary, the grandnephew of Franz-Joseph who had succeeded him in 1916, refused to abdicate, still believing himself the rightful Emperor, but Austria and Hungary became  republics, and the Habsburg Law of 1919 banished the Habsburgs until they renounced all claims to the throne. Karl went into exile in Madeira and spent his remaining years trying to restore the monarchy, making two unsuccessful attempts to regain the Hungarian throne in 1921 . At his death in 1922 his son Otto, raised by his mother to see himself as the rightful heir, became the pretender to the throne, making several attempts to promote Habsburg restoration in the 1930s. Not until 1961 did he reluctantly renounce his claim.

Given such tenacious seeking and clinging to power in life, the Hapsburg way of  death did not  surprise  me. In the stygian gloom of the Kaisergruft, the Imperial crypt beneath the Capuchin church in Vienna, scions of the House of Habsburg lie entombed. Established under the terms of the will of Anna of Tyrol in 1617, she and her husband the Emperor Matthias were the first incumbents. Since then, they have been joined by the bones of almost 150 other Habsburgs. Before entry into this grandiose burial chamber the Habsburg organs are removed as part of the embalming process for display before the funeral. Between 1654-1878 the mortal remains were then dispersed between three separate crypts: the heart placed in a silver urn went to the Herzgruft, a burial chamber in the Augustinian church in Vienna; entrails in copper urns went to the Duke’s crypt in the catacombs of Saint Stephen’s cathedral; and the bones were first placed  in a wooden coffin lined with silk, black with gold trim for rulers and red with silver trim for others, which was then enclosed in a metal coffin with two locks. One key  was kept by the Capuchin guardian of the crypt and the other in the Treasury of the Hofberg Palace. The baroque metal sarcophagi in the sprawling crypt are embellished with secular emblems of power, and although there is a tradition of battering the face of the corpse to make it appear more humble in the sight of god and an elaborate ritual whereby the funeral cortege abases itself before being granted entry to the church, these bombastic tombs speak of a dynasty unwilling  surrender  power even in the face of death.

And after a morning in the company of the Austrian Habsburgs it’s time for coffee and cake in the Cafe Central.