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Taj Mahal (Edited)
The Taj Mahal (; ) is an Islamic architecture, Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1631 by the Mughal Empire, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan () to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. The tomb is the centrepiece of a complex, which includes a mosque and a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a crenellated wall. Construction of the mausoleum was essentially completed in 1643, but work continued on other phases of the project for another 10 years. The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653 at a cost estimated at the time to be around Indian rupee sign, ₹32 million, which in 2020 would be approximately 70 billion (about US $, US $1 billion). The construction project employed some 20,000 artisans under the guidance of a board of architects led by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agra, Uttar Pradesh
Agra (, ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra is the fourth-most populous city in Uttar Pradesh and twenty-third most populous city in India. Agra's notable historical period began during Sikandar Lodi's reign, but the golden age of the city began with the Mughals. Agra was the foremost city of the Indian subcontinent and the capital of the Mughal Empire under Mughal emperors Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Under Mughal rule, Agra became a centre for learning, arts, commerce, and religion, and saw the construction of the Agra Fort, Sikandra and Agra's most prized monument, the Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his favourite empress. With the decline of the Mughal empire in the late 18th century, the city fell successively first to Marathas and later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crenellated
A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (i.e., a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at intervals to allow for the launch of arrows or other projectiles from within the defences. These gaps are termed " crenels" (also known as ''carnels'', or ''embrasures''), and a wall or building with them is called crenellated; alternative (older) terms are castellated and embattled. The act of adding crenels to a previously unbroken parapet is termed crenellation. The function of battlements in war is to protect the defenders by giving them something to hide behind, from which they can pop out to launch their own missiles. A defensive building might be designed and built with battlements, or a manor house might be fortified by adding battlements, where no parapet previously existed, or cutting crenellations into its existing parapet wall. A d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded on August 10, 1846, it operates as a trust instrumentality and is not formally a part of any of the three branches of the federal government. The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the United States National Museum, but that name ceased to exist administratively in 1967. Called "the nation's attic" for its eclectic holdings of 154 million items, the institution's 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine research centers, and zoo include historical and architectural landmarks, mostly located in the District of Columbia. Additional facilities are located in Maryland, New York, and Virginia. More than 200 institutions and museums in 45 states,States without Smithsonian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gauhara Begum
Gauhar Ara Begum (; 17 June 1631 – 1706) was a Mughal princess and the fourteenth and youngest child of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Her mother died giving birth to her in 1631. Gauhar Ara, however, survived the childbirth and lived for another three quarters of a century. Little is known about her and whether she was involved in the war of succession for her father's throne. Gauhar Ara died in 1706, aged about 75. Life Born on 17 June 1631, the day her mother Mumtaz Mahal died, Gauhar Ara Begum appears to have kept a fairly low profile throughout the reigns of her father and brother. Evidence vaguely indicates that she may have supported her fourth brother Murad Bakhsh's bid for the throne during the War of Succession. Were this to be true, this role was unlikely to have been particularly active since, unlike her father and sister Jahanara, she was not imprisoned afterwards by her victorious brother Aurangzeb. She, following her father's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Persian Language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian (officially known as ''Persian''), Dari Persian (officially known as ''Dari'' since 1964) and Tajiki Persian (officially known as ''Tajik'' since 1999).Siddikzoda, S. "Tajik Language: Farsi or not Farsi?" in ''Media Insight Central Asia #27'', August 2002. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a der ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perso-Arabic
The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th century after the Muslim conquest of Persia. The Persian dialect spoken in Tajikistan (Tajiki Persian) is written in the Tajik alphabet, a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet which has been in use since the Soviet era. The Persian alphabet is directly derived and developed from the Arabic alphabet. After the Muslim conquest of Persia and the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the 7th century, Arabic became the language of government and especially religion in Persia for two centuries. The replacement of the Pahlavi scripts with the Persian alphabet to write the Persian language was done by the Saffarid dynasty and Samanid dynasty in 9th-century Greater Khorasan. The script is mostly but not exclusively right-to-left; mathematical expressi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rauza
Rauza, Rouza, Roza ( ur, , bn, রৌজা, hi, रौज़ा) is a Perso-Arabic term used in Middle East and Indian subcontinent which means shrine or tomb. It is also known as mazār, ''maqbara'' or ''dargah''. The word ''rauza'' is derived through Persian from the Arabic ''rawdah'' ( ''rawḍah'') meaning garden, but extended to tomb surrounded by garden as at Agra and Aurangabad. Abdul Hamid Lahauri, the author of the Badshahnama, the official history of Shah Jahan's reign, calls Taj Mahal ''rauza-i munawwara'' (Perso-Arabic The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th cent ...: ''rawdah-i munawwarah''), meaning the illumined or illustrious tomb in a garden. References Burial monuments and structures Islamic architecture Arabic words and phrases Persian words a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Padshahnama
Padshahnama or ''Badshah Nama'' ( fa, پادشاهنامه or پادشاهنامه) (Chronicle of the Emperor Shah Jahan) is a group of works written as the official history of the reign of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. Unillustrated texts are known as '' Shahjahannama'', with ''Padshahnama'' used for the illustrated manuscript versions. These works are among the major sources of information about Shah Jahan's reign. Lavishly illustrated copies were produced in the imperial workshops, with many Mughal miniatures. Although military campaigns are given the most prominence, the illustrations and paintings in the manuscripts of these works illuminate life in the imperial court, depicting weddings and other activities. The most significant work of this genre was written by Abdul Hamid Lahori, the pupil of Akbar's biographer Abdul Fazal, in two volumes. He could not write the third volume of this genre because of the infirmities of old age. Majumdar, R. C. (ed.) (2007). ''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abdul Hamid Lahori
Abdul Hamid Lahori ( ur, ; died 1654) was a traveller and historian during the period of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan who later became a court historian of Shah Jahan (Shah Jahan's official chronicler). He wrote the book ''Padshahnama'', about the reign of Shah Jahan. He has described Shah Jahan's life and activities during the first twenty years of his reign in this book in great detail Infirmities of old age prevented him from proceeding with the Third decade which was then chronicled by Waris, a historian.The Padshahnama (book written by Abdul Hamid Lahori in 1656-57) Royal Collection Trust website, Retrieved 9 July 2019 Biography Not much is known about the biographical details about Abdul Hamid Lahori, except from ''Amai-i Salih'' of Muhammad Salih, a ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New 7 Wonders Of The World
The New 7 Wonders of the World was a campaign started in 2000 to choose Wonders of the World from a selection of 200 existing monuments. The popularity poll via free Web-based voting and small amounts of telephone voting was led by Canadian-Swiss Bernard Weber and organized by the New 7 Wonders Foundation (N7W) based in Zurich, Switzerland, with winners announced on 7 July 2007 in Lisbon, at Estádio da Luz. The poll was considered unscientific partly because it was possible for people to cast multiple votes. According to John Zogby, founder and current President/CEO of the Utica, New York-based polling organization Zogby International, New 7 Wonders Foundation drove "the largest poll on record". The program drew a wide range of official reactions. Some countries touted their finalist and tried to get more votes cast for it, while others downplayed or criticized the contest. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masterpiece
A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, skill, profundity, or workmanship. Historically, a "masterpiece" was a work of a very high standard produced to obtain membership of a guild or academy in various areas of the visual arts and crafts. Etymology The form ''masterstik'' is recorded in English or Scots in a set of Aberdeen guild regulations dated to 1579, whereas "masterpiece" is first found in 1605, already outside a guild context, in a Ben Jonson play. "Masterprize" was another early variant in English. In English, the term rapidly became used in a variety of contexts for an exceptionally good piece of creative work, and was "in early use, often applied to man as the 'masterpiece' of God or Nature". History Originally, the term ''masterpiece'' referred to a piece of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, scientific or other form of significance. The sites are judged to contain " cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity". To be selected, a World Heritage Site must be a somehow unique landmark which is geographically and historically identifiable and has special cultural or physical significance. For example, World Heritage Sites might be ancient ruins or historical structures, buildings, cities, deserts, forests, islands, lakes, monuments, mountains, or wilderness areas. A World Heritage Site may signify a remarkable accomplishment of humanity, and serve as evidence of our intellectual history on the planet, or it might be a place of great natural beauty. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
