MUMTAZ MAHAL, the title of Arjamand Banu Begum, queen of Shah Jahan, emperor of Dehli. She was the daughter of •bul Hasan, son of Itimad-ud-Dowla, prime minister of the emperor Jahangir. She was twenty years married to Shah Jahan, and bore him a child almost every year. Bernier says the emperor loved her so passionately that his conjugal fidelity was never impeached while she lived. The death of the Begum on the 18th July 1631 was occa sioned by her giving birth to a daughter, who is fabulously said to have been heard crying in the womb by herself and her other daughters. The sultana died hi two hours after the birth of the princess. Her husband, Shah Jahan, erected over her remains a magnificent tomb, known to Euro peans as the Taj Mahal, a corruption of Mumtaz Mahal. Travernier says that in building the Taj 20,000 workmen were employed for 22 years in its erection, and he states it was erected by a Frenchman of the name of Austin de Bordeaux. The brick scaffolding is said to have cost as much as the building itself. The marble had been pre sented by the raja of Jeypore, and was brought from its quarries, a distance of 140 miles, upon wheeled carriages. The mausoleum stands on a marble terrace over the Jumna, is flanked at a moderate distance by two mosques, and is surrounded by extensive gardens. The building itself on the outside is of white, marble, with a high cupola and four minarets. in the centre of the interior is a lofty hall of a circular form under a dome, in the middle of which is the tomb, enclosed within an open screen of elaborate tracery formed of marble and mosaics. The walls are of white marble, with borders of a running pattern of flowers in mosaic. The grace ful flow, the harmonious colours, and, above all, the sparing use of this rich ornament, with the mild lustre of the marble on which it is displayed, form the peculiar charm of the building, and dis tinguish it from any other in the world. The
materials are the inferior gems, lapis-lazuli, jasper, heliotrope or bloodstone, a sort of golden stone (not well understood), with calcedony, agates, jade, and various stones of the same description. Voysey (As. Res. v. p. 434) says a single flower in the screen contains 100 stones, each cut to the exact shape necessary, and highly polished ; and yet, says Bishop Heber, though everything is finished like an ornament for a drawing-room chimney-piece, the general effect produced is rather solemn. and impressive than gaudy. In the minute beauties of execution, however, these flowers are by no means equal -to those on tables and other small works in Pietra Dura at Florence. It is the taste displayed in the outline and applica tion of this ornament, combined with the light ness and simplicity of the building, which gives it so prodigious an advantage over the gloomy panels of the chapel of-the Medici. The mosaics of the Taj are said, with great probability, to have been the workmanship of Italians. Her husband died in A.D. 1666. ln the middle of the apart ment, underneath the great cupola, are tho ceno taphs of the royal pair. They lie side by side, the empress to the left. Ilcr name, Mumtaz Mahal, Balm 13egutn, and tho date of her death, 1631, are read on the slab. That of her husband, and the date of his death, 1666, are also inscribed upon the other tomb.—Tr. Iliad. i. p. 413 ; Elphinstone, p. 531.