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- [00:01]
William Durrymple
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com. this episode is brought to you by Indeed. We're driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search match with Indeed. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com SBO terms and conditions app.
- [00:58]
Anita Anand
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand, and me, William Durumple. Now, in the last episode, we left you with Shah Jahan grieving the death of the love of his life, Mumtaz Mahal, who dies tragically during childbirth in June 1631. And you sort of pointed out that he almost turns white overnight, doesn't he?
- [01:18]
William Durrymple
And loses his eyesight.
- [01:19]
Anita Anand
Loses his eyesight. The famous oh, don't do that Pharrell spectacles. Oh, never say the boy don't learn. Yes, Pharrell spectacles that he's wearing. So, you know, he's been crying and we should expl. The spectacles are as a result of his copious weeping every day. And, you know, members of the court are really worried about him, that he's sort of losing his marble somewhat in grief. He cancels every appointment. He doesn't appear in public. And this does remind me a little bit actually of Queen Victoria who just says, you know what? When Albert died, it is similar, isn't it? I have nothing to do with the world anymore. I'm sick of this. I've lost the one person who made it all make sense. But then it doesn't take too long. I mean, we're talking within a matter of days that he starts to channel his grief into something solid. And that is the solid thing that we now know as the Taj Mahal. Now, before we go any further, how old were you when you first saw it?
- [02:10]
William Durrymple
I was 18.
- [02:11]
Anita Anand
18 years old. And what did you think when you first saw it?
- [02:14]
William Durrymple
I remember it very clearly in those days. You could do this. I think they don't do it anymore. I went in on a full moon night and traveled down to Agra by the train and got off, dumped my rucksack in a hostel and then walked to Tajganj just as the sun was setting and walked in to see this Extraordinary building in the gloaming in the dark.
- [02:38]
Anita Anand
There is something about this place that actually is better than any idea that you might have of it. You've seen pictures of it, but it not only lives up, it surpasses, and.
- [02:48]
William Durrymple
It never disappoints, even if you see it multiple times.
- [02:51]
Anita Anand
Yeah, yeah. My experience was very different. I was a lot younger. I was nine when I first saw it. And a family holiday we went with my uncle. And what I remember most distinctly was him yelling at the family was quite crowded, saying, only tourists pay for socks. Which is only tourists pay for socks. Because you've got a bunch of people outside saying, you can't go in with shoes and you can't go in barefoot. It's disrespectful. And selling socks to all of the many tourists. You, of course, were never a tourist. You were always a traveler who'd come to see the Taj and just being completely transfixed with the sock transaction. But when you walk through this, you know, Sockeageddon, as I like to remember it, absolute pandemonium over socks and shoes. You are just absolutely silenced by the scale and the beauty. And there is something so magical about approaching and getting closer and closer, and it just becomes more beautiful. The intricacy, the inlay, the carvings. And then you hear stories about the way in which the pillars are balanced. And, you know, there was a story that I think I told you this and you didn't know this before, and so I'll tell it again because it is such a great fact that the pillars around the Taj Mahal, these four enormous giants that stand as guarding sentinels around this absolutely mammoth pearl of a mausoleum, they are designed in such a way that if there's an earthquake, they fall out rather than in. I mean, the geometry of that, the calculation behind that. Oh, and also, you know, we have to mention it is such an iconic building, thanks to a love that is lost. And that is, you know, the image of Diana in her violet and pink, her shocking pink, sitting.
- [04:31]
William Durrymple
I was there.
- [04:31]
Anita Anand
What?
- [04:32]
William Durrymple
I was there.
- [04:32]
Anita Anand
Is that why she looks so depressed? No, not at all. There are other things on her mind. Why were you there?
- [04:37]
William Durrymple
I was a young journal.
- [04:38]
Anita Anand
Were you?
- [04:39]
William Durrymple
And for some reason, because I never wrote for it regularly, but I was there on behalf of the Daily Telegraph of all papers.
- [04:44]
Anita Anand
Goodness gracious me.
- [04:46]
William Durrymple
Writing a piece on the royal visit.
- [04:48]
Anita Anand
Okay, well, let's put a pin in Shah Jahan, because I want to know more about this. So how orchestrated was that picture? Because much has been said about how powerful that image was and actually how damaging to the royal family to see her alone in front of this great symbol of love. What was all the kerfuffle going on around it? I'm so excited. Tell me.
- [05:07]
William Durrymple
Well, you'll be surprised to hear that it completely passed me by.
- [05:10]
Anita Anand
Oh, for God's sake, Willy.
- [05:13]
William Durrymple
I was there covering it and it was just her. I mean, she was on her own because she was on her own. And she just sat on the bench where the photographers asked her to sit. And she did that, looking slightly bored for five minutes because, well, they took her picture. And it didn't even occur to me that this was an iconic moment in the history of modern Britain.
- [05:31]
Anita Anand
That's hilarious.
- [05:32]
William Durrymple
What I remember from that trip was that because of the security surrounding her and it, I got to spend three hours in the Taj Mahal without a single tourist. And that was the magical thing that I came away with, the fact that there was no one there.
- [05:45]
Anita Anand
You are a historian and not a journalist, darling. That's why that is the case. Look, let's get back to Shah Jahan and his grief, because you've given me nothing of an inside story there. Literally nothing.
- [05:56]
William Durrymple
It wasn't orchestrated in the sense that she wasn't even planning to sit there, as far as one could tell, until the photographer said, darling. Oh, Diana, sit there, darling.
- [06:05]
Anita Anand
Sad. Anyway, it is a very sad picture. Sadness sitting in front of sadness. It is true.
- [06:09]
William Durrymple
She seemed to be having a great time with the revolver. She's great. She's fine.
- [06:12]
Anita Anand
She's spoiling everything now. Okay, let's get back to Shah Jahan. So why tell me this? Why did his mind go straight to architecture at the height of his grief and pain?
- [06:22]
William Durrymple
Because it was his great love and it was how he expressed himself. And this man who was with everyone except Mumtaz, completely reserved and unemotional and formal, found expression in building. And he's one of history's great builders. He's like Justinian or Louis xiv. He's someone who consciously left his legacy instead. And so when he is widowed just four years into his reign, this is a woman who has plotted with him to come to the throne. She has supported him when he's fallen out with his dad, when he looks like he's gonna be hunted down and killed or exiled, and he's finally won the war of succession, he's got what he wants, and he's just moved with his young family to Burhanpur in the Deccan, where he's hoping to have a great Military triumph and, you know, completely unexpectedly, unscripted, his whole life stops dead. And so what he decides to do is he's going to move her body from Burhanpur, which is in southern Madhya Pradesh in the middle of nowhere really, in modern India. You have to travel for days to get there. And he's going to take it to his new capital, Agra, which he's turning at the same time into a great water borne city. It's going to be a kind of Mughal Venice. And he has been buying up land. The land which the Taj is built on was belonging to the Jaipur royal family. And he buys it off them, begins to plan this extraordinary building in his new capital. Remember, Akbar had ruled largely from Fatehpur Sikri, then Lahore. Jahangir had mainly ruled from Lahore and Kashmir. And he's the one that brings the capital back to Agra. And one of his first things is to redesign the Red Fort. And then he sits in the Red Fort and watches this extraordinary mausoleum come up. But before we get to that, we should perhaps talk about how Shah Jahan consciously uses the arts and architecture and jewels and fine materials for the propaganda of the dynasty.
- [08:41]
Anita Anand
Well, it's a projection of power because you just don't even have to say a word. Anyone claps eyes on these things. And we can't talk about that without first talking about the Peacock Throne. If ever there was a flex in history, there is no greater flex than the Peacock throne commissioned in 1628. We've described it before on this podcast when we again, I keep referring back to the Koh I Noor because this is the time when the Koh I Noor makes its debut. The throne is like an ice cream kiosk. But an ice cream kiosk, if you have Gatling gunned every precious stone in the world at it. I mean, it is an extraordinary flex propaganda piece. And do you remember how many jewels were involved in this? It was just thousands and thousands of the highest grade jewels in the treasury.
- [09:27]
William Durrymple
So what he realizes, this is his great insight when he comes to the throne in 1628. He commissions this because he arrives in Agra at the imperial treasuries and he just finds vault after vault of the greatest jewel collection that's ever been. And it's just sitting there under lock.
- [09:44]
Anita Anand
And key, sitting in darkness and no.
- [09:46]
William Durrymple
One, no one to love it. And his father, Jahangir had initiated this tradition of giving jewels to the emperor at Naruz. And every ambitious governor and plier and aristocrat who wanted promotion competed to give the best one so that they'd be remembered. And the result was that over the course of the reign of Jahangir, these jewels just accumulated in ever increasing numbers in the vaults. And what Shah Jahan realizes is that he can use this extraordinary wealth of gemstones, the greatest jewel collection ever gathered by any ruler at any time in history, and that he can use it as the ultimate expression of power and majesty, which is the reason that the word mogul to this day is still a synonym for power and glory. When you talk about Donald Trump being a property mogul, that's a reflection of exactly this.
- [10:44]
Anita Anand
And it's not just an opportunity, though, to show off what you got, you know, sort of bring the bling, as it were. But it is also a reflection of heavenly anointment because it is meant to evoke the fabled throne of Solomon as well. That this is a man who is sitting in the middle of the universe. Like Solomon, he is a gift from God to the world. There's all this divinity wrapped up in it.
- [11:06]
William Durrymple
And a symbol of justice. Yeah, symbol of wisdom and justice. And those of you scratching your heads at this point thinking, I can't remember anything in the Bible about the throne of Solomon are correct, because this is one of those sort of extraordinary bits that's in the Quran and which comes from a Judeo Christian tradition, but which is preserved in the Quran, not in the Bible. And this was presumably a bit of sort of Middle Eastern oral history that makes it into the Quranic version and.
- [11:33]
Anita Anand
Also into poetry, the shahnameh and stuff. You know, they also talk about it, don't they?
- [11:37]
William Durrymple
And so the Quranic description of the throne of Solomon is used as a model. And he goes first, bizarrely enough, to a French jeweler at the Mogul court to design it. And we have his name as Augusta Hiria. And he was initially put in charge of it. And I think there was also an Englishman with the probable name of Peter Mutton.
- [12:01]
Anita Anand
Peter Mutton was also on hand.
- [12:03]
William Durrymple
Was also on hand. But both of those guys seem to have left Mogul service at this point. Harriet goes to Goa, and in the end, it's an Iranian poet and calligrapher turned goldsmith and jewel master called Saeed Gilani, who starts work on this commission afresh. And he sort of, you know, he wipes the plans and starts all over again, Goes back to the Quran, produces an image of the throne of Solomon as described in the Quran, but as decorated in jewels. And it's inaugurated on New Year's Day, Noroz 1635 on the Emperor's return from his holidays in Kashmir.
- [12:45]
Anita Anand
I mean, do you know what? That's a seven year project. But if you see the images of what it is, that is not bad going because the intricacy, the workmanship that goes into this to have somewhere to show the very best of the very best jewels in the treasury is really something else. And you've got people who describe it at the time who is our best contemporary who talks about this throne.
- [13:08]
William Durrymple
So we've got quite a lot of descriptions because it's the big thing of the moment. But that is an interesting story in itself and this is where you and I first came together because we have a lot of descriptions of various bits of it by for example the official court chronicler Ahmed Shahlahori the Padshannama. He writes in the course of many years valuable gems had come into the Imperial jewel house, each one of which might have served as an ear drop for Venus.
- [13:36]
Anita Anand
What a wonderful, wonderful expression that is.
- [13:39]
William Durrymple
Or would adorn the girdle of the sun upon accession. The Emperor thought that in the opinion of far seeing men, the acquisition of such rare jewels and the keeping of such wonderful brilliance can only render one service, that of adorning the throne of empire. They ought therefore to be put to that use and beholders might share in the benefit by their splendor and that His Majesty might shine with increasing brilliancy. So he goes on to describe how in addition to all the jewels already stored in the jewel house, rubies, garnets, diamonds, rich pearls and emeralds to the value of 200 lakh rupees should be brought for the inspection of the Emperor and that they, with some exquisite jewels of great weight exceeding 50,000 Miskals have been carefully selected and handed over to Bebed Al Khan, the superintendent of the goldsmith department.
- [14:32]
Anita Anand
I mean, I don't know what a mishkal is but we're talking about heavy carrotage here. I mean we're talking about really big gems that adorn this thing. We should talk about what it looks like. I mean I saw an ice cream kiosk and there is a place to sit in the centre and then there are these enormously bejeweled columns or pillars that go up and there is a canopy above it looking like cypresses.
- [14:53]
William Durrymple
They're green and they're meant to be jeweled cypresses. And on the top there are two peacocks set with gems and between the two peacock trees a tree set with diamonds, emeralds and pearls. But what is not mentioned at the time, which is now the most important thing really about the whole throne, is that the eye of one of the peacocks is the Koh I Noor. And we know this from a later account when it gets stolen later by the Persians.
- [15:24]
Anita Anand
Hacked to pieces by the Persians. Yeah.
- [15:26]
William Durrymple
After it's stolen and before it's hacked to piece, it's described by one of their chroniclers, and he gives this extraordinary description of the eye of the peacock being this diamond, and he names it for the first time, the Koh I Noor. The Mountain of Light.
- [15:40]
Anita Anand
The Mountain of Light. But you know what? There's another very significant gem which really bizarrely gets overshadowed by the Koh I Noor, and that's the Timur Ruby. So now tell us about the Timur Ruby, which is also part of this kiosk of royalty.
- [15:54]
William Durrymple
Yeah, the Timur Ruby is the thing that the Mogul writers get excited about. And that's because Moguls prefer red stones of light. Remember, Sue Strong was talking about this, and it's funny enough, her husband has written a wonderful paper on this. And while Europeans judge diamonds to be the king of all gemstones, it's rubies and redstones which the Moguls talk about. And so there's the Timur Ruby, which once belonged to Timur and has an inscription of his on it. But there's also a whole range of other enormous redstones called the Ayn al Hur, the Aya of the Houri and the Fakraj.
- [16:34]
Anita Anand
Well, it's like seeing rock stars performing on the same stage. So anyone who's going to come to the court and see Shah Jahan sitting in the midst of this will have heard and will have read about each one of these gems, pages and pages about them. And here they all are assembled in one place with one man sitting in the middle of all of that. Also, I think the timing of his inauguration when he shows this finished product to the world. 22nd of March, 1635, is the 8th anniversary of his accession. And it's also. It's unusual, you know, and again, sort of dates mean so much to Shah Jahan, as we discussed in the last episode, a rare conjunction of two major festivals. So you've got narrows which will. He's talked about the Persian New Year, but also Eid ul Fitr, which is the end of a month of fasting. So it is a time of enormous celebration where, you know, sort of hungry, thirsty people, finally there are banquets, there is joy. This is a man who understands his people in many Ways and like, you know, this is. This is when to do it, but.
- [17:29]
William Durrymple
Also understands how to put on a big dazzle, right?
- [17:31]
Anita Anand
Yeah. You don't want to bring it out when people are sort of hungry. You bring it out when people ended their fasting and once, in a sense.
- [17:37]
William Durrymple
The tragedy of this is that he thinks about creating this throne when he is still King Solomon and Mumtaz is the Queen of Sheba. That's the symbolism that he's drawing on. And this throne is big enough for two. They can both sit there. But by the time, of course, 1835, by the time it's ready, she's been four years dead.
- [17:59]
Anita Anand
He's had four years of grief. But this is very much, you know, a distraction for him. There's poetry which is engraved onto this throne. And you know more about this than I do. Tell us about this poetry and the significance of it.
- [18:13]
William Durrymple
So as well as the jewels, the other great art that the Mughals valued above all was calligraphy. To us, Islamic calligraphy is a sort of minor pleasure, obviously, because so few people can understand the subtleties of it compared to Mughal art, which is readily accessible to anyone. And anyone that hasn't been to the wonderful V and A show at the moment of Mogul painting and calligraphy can see that. But there is calligraphy attached to the throne. And in Coetzee's words, the poet Coetzee, who is the guy that's commissioned to write about it and write the inscriptions. Hail auspicious throne of the Emperor, completed by divine assistance the day the firmament made it. It first melted the sun's gold. So this is this wonderful golden throne. But he's sitting on it now.
- [19:05]
Anita Anand
He's sitting on his own. It's a bicycle made for two, and there's only one in the saddle, which is a. You know, that's a really powerful image. We'll take a break here, and when we come back, we'll talk about the other. You know, his grief doesn't end with the construction of the peacock throne. This mausoleum is now under construction, too. The thing that he sort of started designing just days after Mumtaz Mahal, the love of his life, dies. So join us after the break, and we will talk about the Taj itself.
- [19:38]
William Durrymple
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- [20:39]
Katty
Katty here from the Rest IS Politics US Anthony Scaramucci. And I want to tell you about our new series that looks at one of the darkest days in modern American history, the capitol riots of January 6th.
- [20:50]
Anthony Scaramucci
You know, four years have passed since Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and tried to overturn the 2020 election results. And Katie and I are going to explore the tensions and the personalities at the heart of that storm.
- [21:04]
Katty
Yeah, we're going to look at the whole story, starting off with, of course, the 2020 election result itself. Joe Biden's victory, Donald Trump's attempts to undermine that result right up until January 6th, and those horrifying scenes that all of us watched on television back then. So don't miss it. Go and search the Rest is Politics US wherever you get your podcast to hear just how Donald Trump tried to defy American democracy. And we've included a clip from the series for you to listen to at the end of this episode.
- [21:40]
William Durrymple
Welcome back. So we are now heading from the peacock throne to the other great aesthetic wonder built by Shah Jahan, which is the great Taj Mahal. And what's strange is that we all come to it today the wrong way. We come to it through effectively the back door, which is the land entrance, which is never how people were meant to see it. It was designed very deliberately to be arrived at by boat because Shah Jahan had designed Agra as this river city on the Yamuna. The Yamuna was, if you like, the M1 of Mughal India. It connected Delhi with Agra and all the great noblemen, all the men who controlled this empire, stretching from the middle of India straight up through Pakistan, Afghanistan to Bangladesh. All the main players at this court had their waterfront gardens and mansions along the Yamuna. And as we said, Shahjan buys the land for the Taj from the Jaipur family, from a descendant of Man Singh, the great general of Akbar, who happily.
- [22:52]
Anita Anand
Sell it to him. Or, I mean, because there's much said about the Mughals sort of pressuring people to do things, but, I mean, do we have any indication from any source that this was a happy transaction?
- [23:01]
William Durrymple
I don't think probably it was something that he was in any position to refute.
- [23:04]
Anita Anand
You can't say no.
- [23:05]
William Durrymple
You can't say no.
- [23:06]
Anita Anand
Did he pay market value? It sounds like a stupid question, but genuinely, did he pay a fair price for the land?
- [23:11]
William Durrymple
He did pay a fair price. We have the receipt, and that's still with the Jaipur family, which is an important point. What I think is lost on many accounts of the Taj Mahal. It's romanticized, not incorrectly, as a monument of love, but what is lost, I think, is that it is designed to be a model and symbol on earth of the heavenly mansion prepared for Mumtaz in paradise. This is a dream, if you like, of what Mumtaz's heavenly palace is going to look like. So on one hand, it's political propaganda showing the power and glory and the genius and good taste of Shah Jahan and his dynasty. On the other, it is showing an image of paradise deliberately and consciously.
- [24:04]
Anita Anand
I touched on the mathematics, you know, the sheer extraordinary calculations that go into even thinking that, you know, if these minarets are to fall, they must not fall inwards, they must not crush the great domed structure. And actually, symmetry is the key to the whole of the design here. So, I mean, this is very much a Mughal thing, isn't it, having symmetry and balance in gardens, in. In buildings. But he takes it to another level.
- [24:29]
William Durrymple
Not just Mughal, it's the whole Persianate tradition which is at the root of Mughal art and design. And this idea of the charbagh, the four part garden, is very much there.
- [24:40]
Anita Anand
The four gardens are four rectangles and they're divided by water, usually these channels of water. So you have this pleasant, cool breeze that will blow across from the water into anyone enjoying these very symmetrical, beautifully planted, scented rectangles of garden. So also paradise, you know, sort of the symmetry and the peace and the assault on all the senses that paradise might confer upon somebody.
- [25:07]
William Durrymple
And from the beginning, it dazzles everyone. And there's very little that we don't know about this monument because it's, you know, it's very much the center of attention from the moment that it's under construction. And we have an account by the writer Casuini who says a dome of high foundation and a building of great magnificence was created. The eye of the age has seen nothing like it. Under the nine vaults of the Enamel, blue sky. And the ear of time has heard nothing like it in any past age. It will be a masterpiece for ages to come, increasing the amazement of humanity until the Day of Resurrection. So everyone knows that they're throwing everything at this, that this is, you know, Shah Jahan's great monument, not just for his wife, but also for himself. And we know a little about who built it. And there's new details been emerging from one of my favorite places in India. Have you ever been to Mandu?
- [26:09]
Anita Anand
No, I haven't.
- [26:10]
William Durrymple
You've got a great treat ahead of you. Yeah, it's in Madhya Pradesh. It's about two stops on the train south of Agra. You go to Indore and then travel across country and it's this amazing plateau in the middle of jungle territory, wild, wonderful territory. And we know that Shah Jahan sent out to find architects and that the architects were then sent out to look at all the other examples which they could draw on when they were planning this. And we have an inscription in mandu that on 14 December 1659, four Mogul architects arrived in Mandu in order to research the different tomb traditions found across India. So rather like Lachens gets sent out before he plans Rashtrapati Bhavan and is told to go and look at all the monuments of India before he plans the great Viceroy's house. So Shah Jahan sends these four Central Asian architects and they leave a little inscription. On 14 February 1659, they arrive in Mandu and they are strongly influenced by the tomb of Hoshang Shah, who does the first white marble mausoleum in all of India. And they think this is a wonderful idea. And inspired the four men pull out a knife and etch a description onto the door jamb of the tomb. And it reads, the humble beggar Lutfula, an engineer, along with the son of Ustad Ahmed, architect of Shah Jahan Khajasadurai, Ustad Shiur Ram and Ustad Hamid came on a pilgrimage to this tomb and wrote a few words to commemorate it.
- [28:01]
Anita Anand
That is the most extraordinary graffiti, isn't it? It's like sort of the equivalent of Kilroy was a year.
- [28:05]
William Durrymple
It's the four men who are to build this great monument.
- [28:08]
Anita Anand
I have two questions for you. So one is that, you know that great sock visit, my first sock visit, and it's been repeated since then. I heard this from a tour guide, you know, one of those people who just yells at you, saying, let me do your tour. I can tell you things like this, which of course my uncle wasn't paying for that either. But he did say, he said Shah Jahan very famously cut off the hands of all the craftsmen who build the Taj Mahab, so they could never build anything like it again. And since then I haven't been able to find anything in the historical record, or maybe I just haven't looked in the right places. So does he. Does he chop off their hands?
- [28:40]
William Durrymple
No, it doesn't.
- [28:41]
Anita Anand
No. So it's rubbish. That's what I mean. The hand chopping thing is not there, but it is a Chinese whisper that has been carried through and lots of people will be told to you.
- [28:50]
William Durrymple
So there are two Chinese whispers and both of them derive originally, or certainly the first recorded instances we have of them are from European travelers, not from authentic Mogul sources.
- [29:01]
Anita Anand
Right, I'm glad you brought us onto this. I want to talk about that a bit more in a bit.
- [29:03]
William Durrymple
So I think one is Bernier and the other is Manucci.
- [29:06]
Anita Anand
Oh, my God. Both of these guys have been coming up in my research and I very much want to discuss them.
- [29:10]
William Durrymple
But there's two completely false stories. One is that Shah Jahan is so pleased with this extraordinary building that after it's finished, he cuts the hands off.
- [29:20]
Anita Anand
All the architects and builders so that no one, the master builder, so no one can build anything like it on earth again.
- [29:26]
William Durrymple
I mean, everyone's always been very suspicious of this story because it's just improbable. And it's a. It sounds like a tall story and it is, but it's only been proved lately to be a false story by our friend and friend of the show who we've been talking about in the Humayun episode, Eber Koch, who's this wonderful Viennese mogul specialist. And she is the sort of nerdy architectural specialist who slays the demons of myth with her scholarship. And in this case, she did it by sitting in the Taj Mahal in the dome over the parapets with a notebook and collecting all the mason's marks. Because every mason, after they do a particular length of this building, leaves a little, very discreet signature on the stonework showing that not quite Kilroy was here, but Kilroy built this and wants to be paid for doing this bit of it. And they prove that they've done this particular stretch of the building by leaving the mason's marks. And Ebba spent months going over every inch of the building collecting these mason's marks.
- [30:33]
Anita Anand
So she takes the marks and she traces who they are, and she then.
- [30:37]
William Durrymple
Not only traces who they are and who built what bit of it. But the fact that the same mason's marks then appear 10 years later on Shah Jahanabad at the Red Fort, so.
- [30:47]
Anita Anand
They can't bloody have their hands chopped off. This is such a pervasive nonsense of a story, but it is brilliant.
- [30:53]
William Durrymple
But it's not the only bit of nonsense. The other bit of nonsense, which is also, I think in Mnucci, is that we only have half the project and that the other half is going to be a black marble Taj which is going to be built opposite. And that has also been proved to be nonsense because recently another friend of the show and friend of ours, George Michel, who's a wonderful archaeologist and art historian, along with the Archaeological Survey of India and the World Monuments Fund, have dug the site opposite the Taj, where the Black Taj, if it had ever been planned, would have been. And what Eber Koch and Georges Michel had between them worked out along with the asi, is that there was never any plan to build a black Taj because the Moonlight Garden Matabagh was built opposite the Taj at the same time as the primary place to view the monument from.
- [31:56]
Anita Anand
Right.
- [31:57]
William Durrymple
And that the whole scheme centres around where you should look at it from.
- [32:02]
Anita Anand
So he's thought of everything.
- [32:03]
William Durrymple
It has a garden full of fountains and it is specifically planted with night.
- [32:10]
Anita Anand
Plants so they will be fragrant while you watch it.
- [32:13]
William Durrymple
So you can watch it at night listening to music in the cool of the evening, under the light of the moon.
- [32:18]
Anita Anand
The gardens of paradise, where every sense is assaulted by beauty. I want to talk a little bit about something that is less beautiful and that's Nicola Minucci. Can we just talk about him for a minute? Because there is a lot of wafting nonsense that comes from Manucci. So Minucci was a Venetian writer, he was a self taught physician. So it's the kind of person that you don't want to go and see.
- [32:38]
William Durrymple
Well, he was a con man who pretended to be a physician.
- [32:40]
Anita Anand
Yeah, exactly that. There were a lot of them floating around India. There was a homeopath who was sort of treating Ranjit Singh or not. So, you know, you've got a lot of these Europeans who come with their snake oil saying, I can make that grow back anyways. But Manucci is considered to be a very useful first hand source here in Europe for the Mughal rule because he's up close and personal to it. But he does waft these stories. I mean, one of the stories I remember chatting to you just yesterday saying, Manucci's really unkind about Shah Jahan and the love for his wife, because he does paint a picture of Shah Jahan going completely man whore after his wife dies. And that doesn't really fit with what I view understood to be grief and pining and sort of drifting away.
- [33:26]
William Durrymple
It's complete nonsense. And it's the beginning of those sort of Orientalist fantasies, Europeans arriving in India hearing exactly that the Moguls have harems of 2000 women and sort of doing sort of, you know, porno imaginings of what's going on. And as I say, one of the extraordinary things about the Moguls is that they are extraordinary, uxurious. We have these whole succession of men who, despite having access to every woman in South Asia and Iran and Central Asia, actually fall in love and are very good husbands. And this continues through to Shah Jahan's son, Dara Shuka, who we're going to be talking about in the next episode. So Mnucci arrives very young in Mughal India. He is, I think, 17 or 18. He's a Venetian, he's looking to make money. And as you say, he successfully passes himself off as a doctor, which he has no training in at all. And according to him, and many, many Indian historians doubt the veracity of this, he gets into the Mughal apartments and puts his hand through grills and various harem women rub their breasts against his hand. And this sort of story, whether or not that's true, he seems to have been, at a slightly later period, an artilleryman, because the Moguls had great opinion about European artillerymen being better than them. And anyone that says that they know how to run a cannon is immediately welcomed into the Mogul forces, whether they're competent or not. So Mnucci goes around, and why we are so lucky to have him, despite his unreliability, is that he writes voluminously about all sorts of things which no one else mentions. He writes four volumes in the translated English edition. But apparently I have a friend called Gianni Dubini who's done a PhD on Manucci and who is himself a Venetian and has studied the original Manucci manuscript, which survives in the Great Library opposite San Marco. Apparently, half of the Manucci writings are not translated or published at all. They're just sitting there, oh, my gosh. In this manuscript, waiting a final scholarly edition. He gives an entire story of his outward journey from Venice through Iran and on his way out and on his way back. And there's various points where, because he becomes very fluent in Persian, he's. He's of great use to all sorts of people. He settles in the young city of Madras, Madrasopatnam, which has just been founded by the East India Company at the end of his life. And he at one point is sent out when the Nawab of the Karnatic surrounds Madras and the ruler points out to the East India Company that they haven't paid their taxes for 10 years and could they cough up or else he'll besiege the city and destroy it. And the Eastern Company doesn't send an army out, it sends Nicolao Manucci, right? And Manucci just walks out the gates and he says, look here, you can do all these terrible things and we can't stop you. We're certainly not militarily powerful enough to resist you. But the East India Company will boycott your regime and we will found a new factory in Bengal and all your neighbors will become richer than you. And it's the same argument that Amazon uses today in deciding to pay tax in Ireland or not pay tax in Ireland rather than anywhere else.
- [36:45]
Anita Anand
So, I mean, that's a brilliant pen portrait of Mnuchi. But when you have somebody like, as a historian of many decades standing, at what point do you start calling bullshit on everything if there is bullshit on much? So, you know, with Mnucci, who's peddling these stories about Shahan being actually, I mean, he paints him as like a drunk, womanizing, useless sod after his wife dies.
- [37:08]
William Durrymple
Well, I think people, what they tend to do is that they distinguish between the things Manucci clearly was involved in and knew about and things which he clearly can't possibly have known about, such as Shah Jahan's sex life, you know, any more than we can judge on the outskirts of Buckingham Palace. What's going on in Buckingham palace today, we can speculate and tabloid newspapers will do. But Manucci clearly is a good source for other things, such as we're going to have in the next episode, the great battle of succession between Shah Jahan's children. And that is something that Mnucci is actually a very useful source for.
- [37:40]
Anita Anand
There is another person. We just mention him because he may come up again in the next episode with Supriya Gandhi, but another sort of traveling, dodgy doctor, this time not Italian or Venetian, but French. This is Francois Bernier, who also travels in the Mughal Empire. And do we also call bullshit on what he says or do we say actually on this period, he's pretty, pretty good.
- [38:01]
William Durrymple
So again, we're kind of sceptical, but because he provides evidence which no one else has, we do rather like hearing what he has to say. And what we should also say is that Mnucci plagiarizes Bernier.
- [38:16]
Anita Anand
Okay?
- [38:17]
William Durrymple
He gets a copy at some point of Bernier's manuscript and there are all sorts of passages which are kind of just reduced. I love Bernier. He's so French. I mean, although he's 17th century, and I'm suspicious in general of national stereotypes, he just comes across as sort of brilliantly French. He's proud and arrogant. He's a gourmand and an aesthete. He's obviously an admirer of female beauty, but he's also a terrific scandal monger. So a lot of these naughty stories that Meducci tells start off with Bernier and there are these lovely comparisons of Mughal India in 17th century France. He says that. That the Yamuna compares favorably with Loire, which is the opposite of the Jolly Good today. Jolly Good, where the Loire is a bit cleaner than the poor Yamuna. He thinks that adultery is easier in Paris than it is in Delhi. In France, it only excites merriment. But in this part of the world, there are few instances where it is not followed by some dreadful and tragical catastrophe.
- [39:16]
Anita Anand
Can I commend you on your restraint because you started Clusoe and then gave it up very, very quickly. In that question, can I say, I think you made the right with Clouseau.
- [39:27]
William Durrymple
Because there's a wonderful passage when he compares Indian naan with good Parisian baguettes, Right? And he says, bakers are very numerous, but their ovens are unlike our own and very defective. The bread, therefore, is neither well made nor properly baked, although that sold in the fort is tolerably good in its composition. The bakers are not sparing of fresh butter, milk and eggs, but though it be raised and has a burnt taste, it is too much like cake. It is never to be compared with the pain de gonesse and other delicious varieties to be met with in Paris and Empire.
- [40:04]
Anita Anand
Would like to apologise to all our French listeners wherever they may be listening from around the world. We in no way endorse or support that last quotation.
- [40:12]
William Durrymple
One last thing about Bernier, if I'm allowed just. I know I'm going over time, but the one thing that Bernier says is far more wonderful than is given credit for is Mughal architecture. And he sort of apologizes to his French readers. He says, I have sometimes been astonished to hear of the contemptuous manner.
- [40:31]
Anita Anand
Stop doing it in French. I can't concentrate on what you're saying. Do it again. Do it proper. Go on.
- [40:37]
William Durrymple
I have sometimes been astonished to hear the contemptuous manner in which Europeans of the Indies speak of Mughal architecture. He writes, writes, I grant that this building is not constructed according to those rules of architecture which we seem to think ought to be implicitly followed. Yet I can find no fault that offends the taste. I'm satisfied that even in Paris, a church erected after the model of this temple would be admired were it only for its singular style of architecture and extraordinary appearance. But what terrifies him is when he goes to the Taj and he too, like you, and I just thinks it's the most wonderful building ever. And then he begins to worry that he's been so long in India he's lost his sense of taste. And he says, the longer I stay in India, I'm worried that I'm losing my Parisian sensibilities. The last time I saw Taj Mahal's mausoleum, I was in the company of a French merchant who, like myself, thought that this extraordinary fabric could not be sufficient. I did not venture to express my opinion, fearing that my taste might have become corrupted by my long residence in the Indies. But since my companion had recently come from France, it was quite a relief to hear him say that he had seen nothing in Europe quite so bold and majestic.
- [41:54]
Anita Anand
See, that's a lovely way of writing. That is a love. I just had to check myself to make sure I hadn't gone completely native. And then my mate, who's just arrived, said, no, no, you're right, it's lovely. One thing I wanted to say, no, I'm not leaving Bernier et al, because he does write about Jahanara, who, you know, we adore Jahanara, the one member of the family no one wants to kill. The daughter, the favourite daughter, and she's 16 at the time, and she kind of shifts into place and takes the place of her mother in being the most authoritative female in the court. But she is also counsellor, support and, you know, just everything to her dad, who's crumbling and falling apart. And Bernier writes about this. Shah Jahan reposed unbounded confidence in his favourite child. He writes, she watched over his safety and so cautiously observant that no dish was permitted to appear upon the royal table which hadn't been prepared under her superintendence. He does also. He says there's incest in this relationship. So let me. Let me read what he says. He said it would have been unjust to deny the King the privilege of gathering fruit from the tree he himself had planted. So he's basically saying that Shah Jahan is having a sexual relationship with his daughter.
- [43:00]
William Durrymple
And it's 100% wrong because we've got innumerable letters between the two of them and there's not the slightest hint of scandal, nor was there at the time, except with this guy.
- [43:10]
Anita Anand
So why is he doing this? I mean, it's the worst thing you can say.
- [43:14]
William Durrymple
I think again, it's just the way that Europeans are brought up to kind of think about Oriental despots. They do these terrible things in the minds of the travelers at this time and these rumors spread. But one of the great things about this period is we have a huge amount of documentation. And Jahnah is actually rather a saint. She's this kind of incredibly reconciliatory figure, bringing all the warring men in this family constantly together. And she writes wonderful poetry and she looks after her dad in old age. She's an admirable character. And it is just, you know, what.
- [43:49]
Anita Anand
A scandal mongering gossip of the worst grade. Now look, we've talked about the Taj Mahal, which is the mausoleum to Jahanara's mother, Shah Jahan's wife. But what is he, Is he going to find his final place of rest next to his wife? Or he's got something else in mind? There's another place for him, isn't there?
- [44:06]
William Durrymple
Well, we don't know. And we don't have any record of him making plans either to put himself in this tomb or not. What is clear is that Mumtaz is put in the center under the dome as if it's only her mausoleum. And when eventually he is laid to rest next to her, he's buried off center in this building where everything is symmetrical. The one thing which is asymmetrical is his grave, which is just sort of appended awkwardly next to his wife because.
- [44:43]
Anita Anand
There was talk that Shah Jahanabad was where he was going to be laid to rest. And tell us about Shah Jahanabad.
- [44:49]
William Durrymple
So Shah Jahanabad may well have been where he planned to bury himself, because all the evidence is that the Taj Mahal was specifically planned for Mumtaz. In the inscriptions in the layout, there is no sign that he thought he was going to end up there himself. And yes, I mean, he presumed that he would have many years to live and plan something for himself somewhere else.
- [45:11]
Anita Anand
But Shah Jahanabad is ostensibly Delhi, what we call Delhi.
- [45:14]
William Durrymple
Shah Jahanaabad is what we call Old Delhi today. The walled city to the north of the British New Delhi. This is Shah Jahan's last great major building project. In the years after he's built the Taj Mahal, he plans a new capital. He decides to leave Agra partly perhaps because of memories of Mumtaz and her tomb and not wanting to spend his life looking onto her tomb and having to remember or maybe just because he, he was this sort of manic builder who wanted to build a new city. And there are wonderful descriptions of him setting out to build a last great capital just like Akbar had done at Fatehpur Sikri. He is the first Mogul to really see Delhi as a capital. Babur had hardly gone there. Akbar was nearly assassinated there and stays away from it. Jahangir is between Agra and Lahore. And it's Shah Jahan who moves the capital of the Mughal empire back to Delhi, the ancestral center. It's been the center ever since the Muslims arrived in 1192 and conquered the city of Delhi. It's been the center of political action in North India. And in 1648 he begins this project of creating a new imperial capital. So as with everything to do with Shah Jahan, there's a lot of consulting of astrologers and looking at the moments of the heavens and at the Precise moment on April 18, 1648, deemed to be most auspicious by the astrologers, Shah Jahan lands at the Khwaja Kizza Gate of the river Yamuna, just below what will be known for future posterity as the Red Fort. And he made, quote, his ceremonial entry into the splendid palaces of the fort. After inspecting the various buildings and edifices, he took his seat at the jeweled throne of the hall of Public Audience where he held a public levee while loud beating of the royal drums made glad sounds of rejoicing hurl through the universe. And of course this building is still to this day where Indian prime ministers address their people, people every Independence Day. And this year Prime Minister Modi made his speech from the Red Fort. Although this is a prime minister who has almost built his career on attacking the Moguls as a period of what he calls a thousand years of slavery, he still can't get away from this tradition of speaking, making the great annual address from the steps of the Red Fort.
- [47:55]
Anita Anand
Well, look, we're sort of coming to the end of our time here, but join us next time when we talk about, you know, a man that we've presented to you who is in the midst of building up his absolute authority through architectural grandeur. He's, you know, built a whole city, Old Delhi, from the ground up Shahjahanabad. He looks as though nothing can touch him. He is impregnable. But he is about to become very vulnerable indeed. Join us next time. Till then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand.
- [48:23]
William Durrymple
Goodbye from me, William Durrymple.
- [48:33]
Katty
As promised, here's a clip from the Rest Is Politics US miniseries.
- [48:37]
Anthony Scaramucci
Trump is naturally a conspiracy theorist fueler. He will fuel the fire of any conspiracy theory because he's always seen himself as an outsider and he wants to foment the people from the outside to attack the people from the inside. So he's developing these ideas that he eventually uses in January, on the 6th of January. And the ideas are, there's misinformation out there, there's lies out there. Let's use these lies as fodder to attack the people on the inside. He's doing it with COVID I think hydroxychloroquine works. You may remember this. I took hydroxychloroquine, Mr. President. You took hydroxychloroquine. Yeah, yeah, I'm on it. I took it. And this is the beginnings. This is the kernels of what's about to come. And it all starts with COVID and it leads up to this insurrection, or as the president says, a very peaceful group of tourists descending upon the Capitol building.
- [49:48]
Katty
If you want to hear the rest of the show, go and search. The Rest is politics, us, wherever you get your podcasts.